The Eleventh Hour in the Life of Julia Ward Howe

My mother’s diary for 1906, her eighty-seventh year, opens with this entry:

“I pray for many things this year. For myself, I ask continued health of mind and body, work, useful, honorable and as remunerative as it shall please God to send. For my dear family, work of the same description with comfortable wages, faith in God, and love to each other. For my country, that she may keep her high promise to mankind, for Christendom, that it may become more Christlike, for the struggling nationalities, that they may attain to justice and peace.”

Not vain the prayer! Health of mind and body was granted, work, useful, honorable, if not very remunerative, was hers that year and nearly five years more, for she lived to be ninety-one and a half years old. When Death came and took her, he found her still at work. Hers the fate of the happy warrior who falls in thick of battle, his harness on his back.