Dix, weighed in connection with the fire-apparatus story and her terrible power of rebuke, when rebuke was demanded, will serve together to call up a vivid idea of the manner of woman she was in these last years of her active life. Pleasanter it no doubt was to receive the visitation of duly appointed State inspectors, who would beam graciously and ignorantly on the excellent condition in which they found everything, take a glass of wine in the medicinal room of the establishment, and then adjourn to a good dinner. But this was not Miss Dix's way. From the hour in which the terrible abyss of human suffering had been opened to her, and a sacred voice within had summoned her to consecrate her life to the service of these miserable ones, her faith had never wavered that God had eternally ordained her for this special mission. It was to be no child's play, but a stern and awful ordeal. Every day made it clearer to her that "Eternal Vigilance is the Price" of justice and mercy toward these outcasts of the world.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE LAST OF EARTH.

FREQUENT allusion has been make in past chapters to the eagerness with which Miss Dix seized every opportunity to extend the blessings of a rational and humane treatment of insanity into all quarters of the world. Very pleasant, then, is it to narrate one more happy result of these widespread efforts, the knowledge of which came to her as late as in 1875.

Years before, when first a chargé d'affaires was sent to Washington from Japan to represent its interests before the United States Government, had she sought his acquaintance, and held long and earnest interviews with him on the subject that lay nearest her heart. Fortunately, in Jugoi Arinori Mori she found a man of great intellectual capacity and large humanity. Readers of this biography will recall the shock produced in the minds of all true friends of Japan by his assassination a year or more ago in his own country at the hands of a fanatic. that time become acknowledged as the foremost statesman in his native land. From him, came to Miss Dix, in 1875, a letter which was one more illustration of the wisdom of a favorite maxim with her, "Sow beside all waters!"

He had by

"TOKIO, JAPAN, November 23, 1875. "MY DEAR MISS DIX, During the long silence, do not think I have been idle about the matter in which you

take so deep an interest. my time and attention, and have successfully established an asylum for the insane at Kiyoto, and another in this city is being built and will soon be ready for its work of good. Other asylums will follow, too, and I ardently hope they will be the means of alleviating much misery.

I have given the subject much of

66

"Very truly yours,

"ARINORI MORI."

Two more asylums in far-away Japan, with others very likely to follow, were now to be added to the thirty-two she had already been the instrument of either founding outright or greatly enlarging. She was accustomed to mark each one on a map with the sign of the cross. Could all the prisons on new and better plans she carried bills for, and all the almshouses she caused to be thoroughly reconstructed be added to these, and then all brought vividly before the mind's eye, how amazing would be the impression left!

It was noted by benevolent minds in these latter days of Miss Dix's career that, whenever any great calamity occurred like the terrible fires which destroyed such large portions of Chicago and Boston, she was sure soon to appear on the spot with sums of money she had collected from her many friends, and quietly and judiciously searching out for herself where help was most needed, or what persons already on hand. could be relied on to expend the fund most wisely, would seek to do her part in mitigating the wide-spread distress. Not human beings alone, but the brute creation likewise appealed to her unfailing compassion. Thus among her other projects of relief in these days was that of setting up a drinking fountain in a densely thronged part of Boston where she had noticed that

the draught-horses were subjected to the hardest work. It was her application to the Poet Whittier to send her the translation of an Arabic inscription cut on the curb of a similar fountain in the East, an inscription the beauty of which had struck her when he had repeated it on a previous occasion, which called out from him the ensuing letter:

"OAK KNOLL, 18th 8th Mo., 1879. "MY DEAR FRIEND, I cannot recall the Arabic in scription I referred to for the fountain, and have written one myself, taking it for granted that the fountain was to be thy gift, though thee did not say so.

"Such a gift would not be inappropriate for one who all her life has been opening fountains in the desert of human suffering, who, to use Scripture phrase, has passed over the dry valley of Baca, making it a well.'

Whatever the strength, however, or whatever the power of the inspiring motive, there must come an end to every mortal tether. In October, 1881, worn out with fatigue, Miss Dix went for rest to one of her hospital homes, the Trenton, New Jersey, Asylum, which she was destined never again to leave. Previous to this, the last characteristic glimpse of her is caught in the following account related by Dr. George F. Jelly, former Superintendent of the McLean Asylum.

She arrived at my house in Boston, said, in sub

stance, Dr. Jelly, after nightfall one bitter, snowy winter evening. She seemed chilled to the marrow, and said she would go straight to bed. I offered her my assistance in mounting the staircase, but she declined every aid. The furnace draughts were opened for greater heat, a large fire was kept blazing in the grate of her bedroom, my wife piled five or six blankets on her, and I administered some warming drink. Spite of all she shivered with cold and would, I felt sure, succumb to pneumonia. She was on one of her tours of inspection, and had ordered the carriage to come for her in the early morning. Nothing could move her to change her plan, and when morning came she was up and ready to start. It was still a bitter snowstorm. I begged her at least to let me go with her to the station, for I feared she might die before she reached her destination. No! she would go alone. She was used to such things, she said, and, as soon as she had got through her work in New England, would go farther South, where she always became better

soon.

Something pathetic and painful is there in such a narrative of exposure in extreme old age; something sad and hard to be reconciled to in this refusal of so much as the helping hand of a strong man in mounting the staircase on tottering feet, the refusal, too, by one whose whole long life had been a ceaseless ministry to others. Still, the anecdote is too characteristic to be omitted, revealing, as it does, such persistence to the end of the indomitable will power that had led on to such vast achievement.

From Trenton, however, there was to be no more going forth. Those thousand-mile journeys from Halifax to Texas, from New York to San Francisco, were now over forever.