Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1878 — The True and Brave Women in Memphis. [ARTICLE]

The True and Brave Women in Memphis.

There are women of pluck and unsurpassable devotion in Memphis, who are daring everything for those they love. The faithless are of the other sex, of those whom the world in one of its greatest misnomers has dubbed “the stronger sex.” While one man forsakes his wife and leaves his children to die in strangers’ hands, while a son hies to Arkansas Sprifogs and leaves his mother and two brothers to be borne by other hands to the grave, in contrast shines out the faithfulness of woman as a devoted mother, as a patient, .attentive wife, as a life-risking daughter, sister, friend. By the bedside of the burning body, inhaling the poison of the sick-room, foul with the odor which tells the naturo of the dreadful disease, performing service which none other will do, wearing a smile while the hearts is breaking, and lifting up the bead when in the last agony, her person is befouled by that most repulsive and horrible of all sub-stance-black vomit—she sits and watches, and nurses and cares for her loved one till he lives again or passes beyond her aid. The penalty of her service of love is generally death. Instances come to the writer’s blind faster than he can record them, instances which are but few of the manv iVhich have become like a part of Heaven in so much of earth's hell. A Citizens’ Relief Committee man walked into an humble cottage in the southern part of the city. There he found two children ill. one weak and listless, but evidently convalescing, the other tossing in burning fever. A little woman in olack sat between the two, and was in the act of kissing thp brow of the little fevered one. "Can’t I send you a nurse, madam?” asked the visitor.* “ No, sir*” the pale* little woman smiled, “I have brought one clmd through, and I shall bring the other.” “But you are worn out. “ Oh, no, sir. A kind Italian womannear by comes in and helps me sometimes.” „ She would not yield; no other hand but hers could minister to her little ones. ,7 An old'grandmother to|d the Key,

Mr. Parsons not only of having nursed her grandson to his death, but,ln want of some one else to do it, had with her old hands prepared him for the grave. A child was stricken with fever on Alabama street. Go,”, said the mother to the father, 1* I shall never leave the boy, but you must not be endangered.” The coward complied, and saw from over the way a snort coffin borne out of his home. The mother is paying the price of her devotion, and by to-morrow will herself pas's to her last home in the city. A sick man’s lady friend wrote: “Please let me come.” And when his friends thought the die was cast, they consented to his summoning her. Boldly she laid aside her hat, pushed back her hair, and, forcing a smile to her Ups, entered the room. Some of his male friends stood outside on the doorsteps “to inquire how the dear old boy is getting along.” These are a lew of hundreds. Mothers have made their sons leave town, and then, relieved apparently of all alarm, have sunk down to die. Wivcjt ajssent have returned against positive orders and wishes of their husbands, preferring to die with those they love rather than to suffer the suspense away. God in his mercy has sent these ministering angels to make us forget for a time the horrors of wholesale death, and contemplate in them the glory anil beauty of a better world.— Memphis Avalanche.