I grant I am a woman; but, withal,Even the child Juliet at fourteen is able to resist her whole proud household, and there is more peril in her eyes than in twenty of their swords. The very disproportion between bodily and mental strength makes personal character more conspicuous in women, as it was often noticed in our army that some boy-officer, if a hero in heart, had a peculiar power over rough men who could have felled him with a blow. We all enjoy records of womanly heroism — of the Countess of Nithisdale's rescue of her husband from prison, of the Baroness de la Rochejaquelein's adventures in La Vendee, and of Catherine Douglas, who barred the door by thrusting her delicate arm through the staples in defence of her royal mistress. Our own civil war furnished many similar instances of courage; yet none surpassing, or perhaps equalling, the narrative given by the daughter of General Stone1 of the manner in which her mother protected her whole household of girls and young children in Cairo (Egypt) in time of insurrection, without money and almost without friends, by mere strength of will. No wonder one
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife;
I grant I am a woman; but, withal,
A woman well reputed-Cato's daughter.
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1 Century for June, 1884.
Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square, New York. 1888.
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