Lives of Girls Who Became Famous | Page 9

road to authorship is a hard one, and only those
should attempt it who have courage and perseverance.
Again her health failed, but not her cheerful spirits. She travelled to
Colorado, and wrote a book in praise of it. Everywhere she made
lasting friends. Her German landlady in Munich thought her the kindest
person in the world. The newsboy, the little urchin on the street with a
basket full of wares, the guides over the mountain passes, all
remembered her cheery voice and helpful words. She used to say, "She
is only half mother who does not see her own child in every child. Oh,
if the world could only stop long enough for one generation of mothers
to be made all right, what a Millennium could be begun in thirty years!"
Some one, in her childhood, called her a "stupid child" before strangers,
and she never forgot the sting of it.
In Colorado, in 1876, eleven years after the death of Major Hunt, she
married Mr. William Sharpless Jackson, a Quaker and a cultured
banker. Her home, at Colorado Springs, became an ideal one, sheltered
under the great Manitou, and looking toward the Garden of the Gods,
full of books and magazines, of dainty rugs and dainty china gathered
from many countries, and richly colored Colorado flowers. Once, when
Eastern guests were invited to luncheon, twenty-three varieties of
wildflowers, each massed in its own color, adorned the home. A friend
of hers says: "There is not an artificial flower in the house, on
embroidered table-cover or sofa cushion or tidy; indeed, Mrs. Jackson
holds that the manufacture of silken poppies and crewel sun-flowers is
a 'respectable industry,' intended only to keep idle hands out of

mischief."
Mrs. Jackson loved flowers almost as though they were children. She
writes: "I bore on this June day a sheaf of the white columbine,--one
single sheaf, one single root; but it was almost more than I could carry.
In the open spaces, I carried it on my shoulder; in the thickets, I bore it
carefully in my arms, like a baby.... There is a part of Cheyenne
Mountain which I and one other have come to call 'our garden.' When
we drive down from 'our garden,' there is seldom room for another
flower in our carriage. The top thrown back is filled, the space in front
of the driver is filled, and our laps and baskets are filled with the more
delicate blossoms. We look as if we were on our way to the ceremonies
of Decoration Day. So we are. All June days are decoration days in
Colorado Springs, but it is the sacred joy of life that we decorate,--not
the sacred sadness of death." But Mrs. Jackson, with her pleasant home,
could not rest from her work. Two novels came from her pen, Mercy
Philbrick's Choice and _Hetty's Strange History_. It is probable also
that she helped to write the beautiful and tender Saxe Holm Stories. It is
said that Draxy Miller's Dowry and Esther Wynn's Love Letters were
written by another, while Mrs. Jackson added the lovely poems; and
when a request was made by the publishers for more stories from the
same author, Mrs. Jackson was prevailed upon to write them.
The time had now come for her to do her last and perhaps her best work.
She could not write without a definite purpose, and now the purpose
that settled down upon her heart was to help the defrauded Indians. She
believed they needed education and Christianization rather than
extermination. She left her home and spent three months in the Astor
Library of New York, writing her Century of Dishonor, showing how
we have despoiled the Indians and broken our treaties with them. She
wrote to a friend, "I cannot think of anything else from night to
morning and from morning to night." So untiringly did she work that
she made herself ill, and was obliged to go to Norway, leaving a
literary ally to correct the proofs of her book.
At her own expense, she sent a copy to each member of Congress. Its
plain facts were not relished in some quarters, and she began to taste

the cup that all reformers have to drink; but the brave woman never
flinched in her duty. So much was the Government impressed by her
earnestness and good judgment, that she was appointed a Special
Commissioner with her friend, Abbott Kinney, to examine and report
on the condition of the Mission Indians in California.
Could an accomplished, tenderly reared woman go into their adobe
villages and listen to their wrongs? What would the world say of its
poet? Mrs. Jackson did not ask; she had a mission to perform, and the
more culture, the more responsibility. She brought cheer and hope to