Sisters of Charity, Catholic and Protestant and The Communion of Labor

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Ticknor and Fields, 1857 - 302 pages

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Page 174 - Dire was the tossing, deep the groans : Despair Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch ; And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invoked With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Page 34 - nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are, and I cannot tell, however much I puzzle over it, how they are to be altered for the better ; but I feel there is something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have more to do — better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they possess now.
Page 143 - everywhere Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, Two in the tangled business of the world, Two in the liberal offices of life, Two plummets dropt for one to sound the abyss Of science, and the secrets of the mind : Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more : And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth Should bear a double growth of those rare souls, Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.
Page 111 - THE HAPPY WARRIOR. WHO is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be ? — It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought...
Page 35 - Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters when they observe their manoeuvres : they order them to stay at home. What do they expect them to do at home ? If you ask — they would answer, sew and cook. They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly, all their lives long, as if they had no germs of faculties for...
Page 34 - I observe that to .such grievances as society cannot readily cure, it usually forbids utterance, on pain of its scorn : this scorn being only a sort of tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness.
Page 36 - Men of England ! look at your poor girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids — envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them...
Page 34 - ... of tinselled cloak to its deformed weakness. People hate to be reminded of ills they are unable or unwilling to remedy: such reminder, in forcing on them a sense of their own incapacity, or a more painful sense of an obligation to make some unpleasant effort, troubles their ease and shakes their self-complacency. Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs parents.
Page 32 - I insist on particularly is, that the means do not exist for the training of those powers; that the sphere of duties which should occupy them is not acknowledged ; and I must express my deep conviction that society is suffering in its depths through this great mistake and this great want. We require in our country the recognition — the public recognition, — by law as well as by opinion, of the woman's privilege to share in the communion of labour at her own free choice, and the foundation of...

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