Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/207

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Who are the Great?
205

by nameless and unknown. The countenance was surely that of an angel. Through Joan's brief life, that face alone had helped her to conceive what angel faces might be.

Falling peacefully asleep, Joan departed—it might be to behold that lovely and familiar visage nearer still. She had accomplished her destiny and finished her work. She had written no books that would send her name down to posterity, had sung no songs which future ages would sing, had achieved nothing glorious in the realms of art, had made no marvellous discoveries, had earned no fame; but she had set a great example, which might profit others as much as literature, or artistic creations, or the wonders of science, or the deeds of the famous.

Had she not answered Rogers' definition of true greatness? Had she not done what deserves to be written? If she could have written, would it not have been what deserves to be read? Had she not made others better and happier for her life, in spite of its narrow sphere? And therefore was not the obscure child of toil one of the Great?