In the latter part of January, 1892, these two brave and enterprising women left Suez for their destination in the heart of the Arabian desert. They were accompanied only by their dragoman and Bedouin servants. Eleven camels carried the two travelers, their baggage, tents and provisions for fifty days. They had laid in supplies not only for the two or three weeks they were to spend on the way to and from Sinai, but also for the month they expected to remain at the Convent of St. Catherine.
Arriving at the end of their journey, they were most cordially received by the monks, who afforded them every facility for examining the treasures of their unique and venerable library. They immediately set to work, and before they left the room in which the manuscripts were preserved they had made one of the most remarkable finds of the century. For, in closely inspecting a dirty, forbidding old manuscript whose leaves had probably notbeen turned for centuries, they discovered a palimpsest, of which the upper writing contained the biographies of women saints, while that beneath proved to be one of the earliest copies of the Syriac Gospels, if not the very earliest in existence.
No find since the celebrated discovery by Tischendorf of the Sinaitic Codex, in the same convent nearly fifty years before, ever excited such interest among Scriptural scholars or was hailed with greater rejoicings. It was by all Biblical students regarded as an invaluable contribution to Scriptural literature, and as a find which "has doubled our sources of knowledge of the darkest corner of New Testament criticism." To distinguish it from theCodex Sinaiticus, the precious manuscript brought to light by Mrs. Lewis has been very appropriately named after the fortunate discoverer, and will hereafter be known as the Codex Ludovicus.[223]
Another find of rare importance made by the gifted twin sisters was a Palestinian Syriac lectionary similar to the hitherto unique copy in the Library of the Vatican. Aspecial interest attaches to this lectionary from the fact that it is written in the language that was most probably spoken by our Lord.
Among other notable discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister during the four visits[224]which they made to Mt. Sinai and Palestine between the years 1892 and 1897 were a number of manuscripts in Arabic and a portion of the original Hebrew manuscript of Ecclesiastes which was written about 200 B.C. Previously the oldest copies of this book of the Old Testament were the Greek and Syriac versions.
What is specially remarkable about the discoveries made by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson is that they were able to make so many valuable finds after the convent library at Mt. Sinai had been so frequently examined by previous scholars. The indefatigable Tischendorf made three visits to this library and had but one phenomenal success. But neither "he nor any of the other wandering scholars who have visited the convent attained," as has been well said, "to a tithe of the acquaintance with its treasures which these energetic ladies possess."
But more remarkable than the mere discovery of so many invaluable manuscripts, which was, of course, an extraordinary achievement, is the fact that these manuscripts, whether in Syriac, Arabic or Hebrew, have been translated, annotated and edited by these same scholarly women. Already more than a score of volumes have come from their prolific pens, all evincing the keenest critical acumenand the highest order of Biblical and archæological scholarship. The reader who desires a popular account of their famous discoveries should by all means read Mrs. Gibson's entertaining volume,How the Codex Was Found, and Mrs. Lewis' charming little work entitled,In the Shadow of Sinai. As to those men—and the species is yet far from extinct—who still doubt the capacity of women for the higher kinds of intellectual effort, let them glance at the pages of the numerous volumes given to the press by these richly dowered women under the captions ofStudia SinaiticaandHoræ Semiticæ; and, if they are able to comprehend the evidence before them, they will be forced to admit that the long-imagined difference between the intellectual powers of men and women is one of fancy and not one of reality.[225]
And yet, strange to relate, while Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson were electrifying the learned world by their achievementsin the highest form of scholarship, the slow-moving University of Cambridge was gravely debating "whether it was a proper thing to confer degrees upon women," and preparing to answer the question in the negative. The fact that there were "representatives of the unenfranchised sex at their gates who had gathered more laurels in the field of scholarship than most of those who belong to the privileged sex" did not appeal to the university dons or prevent them from putting themselves on record as favoring a condition of things which, at this late age of the world, should be expected only among the women-enslaving followers of Mohammed.
The saying that "a prophet hath no honor in his own country" was fulfilled to the letter in the case of the twowomen who had shed such luster on the land of their birth. While foreign institutions were vying with one another in showering honors on the two brilliant Englishwomen, with whose praises the whole world was resounding, the University of Cambridge was silent. The University of St. Andrews conferred on them the degree of LL.D., while conservative old Heidelberg, casting aside its age-old traditions, made haste to honor them with the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In addition to this, Halle made Mrs. Lewis a Doctor of Philosophy. One would have thought that sheer shame, if not patriotic spirit, would have compelled the university in whose shadows the two women had their home, and in which Mrs. Lewis' husband had held for years an official appointment, to show itself equally appreciative of superlative merit and equally ready to reward rare scholarship, regardless of the sex of the beneficiaries. But no. The illustrious archæologists and Biblical scholars were women, and this fact alone was in the estimation of the Cambridge authorities enough to withhold from them that recognition which was so spontaneously accorded them by the great universities of the Continent.
Nor was this the only instance of the kind. While the celebrated twin sisters just referred to were so materially contributing to our knowledge of Biblical lore, another Englishwoman, Jane E. Harrison, who lived within hearing of the church bells of Cambridge, was lecturing to delighted audiences in Newnham College on the history, mythology and monuments of ancient Athens, and writing those learned works on the religion and antiquities of Greece which have given her so conspicuous a place among modern archæologists.[226]But, as in the case of her distinguishedneighbors, the discoverers of theCodex Ludovicus, the degrees she was honored with came not from Cambridge, with which, through her fellowship in Newnham, she was so closely connected.
And while this gifted lady was deserving so well of science and literature, the undergraduate students of Cambridge, following the cue given by the twenty-four hundred graduates who had just rejected the proposal to give honorary degrees to women who could pass the required examinations, were giving an exhibition of rowdyism which far surpassed that which, a few years before, had so disgraced the University of Edinburgh, when the same question of degrees for women was under consideration.
According to the report of an eye witness of the turbulent scene at Cambridge, "The undergraduate students appeared to be, as a body, viciously opposed to the proposal to give degrees to women, and became fairly riotous. They hooted those who supported the reform and fired crackers even in the Senate House and made the night lurid with bonfires and powder. They put up insulting effigies of girl students, and such mottoes as 'Get you to Girton, Beatrice. Get you to Newnham. Here is no place for maids!'"
Verily, when such scenes are possible in one of the world's great intellectual centers—a place where, above all others, women should receive due recognition for their contributions toward the progress of knowledge—one is constrained to declare that what we call civilization is still far from the ideal. And, when one witnesses the total indifference of institutions like Cambridge and the French Academy to the splendid achievements of women like Mrs. Lewis, Mrs. Gibson and Mme. Curie, one cannot but exclaim in words Apocalyptic: "How long, O Lord, holy and true," is this iniquitous discrimination against one-half of our race to endure? O Lord, how long?
FOOTNOTES:[215]A. Michælis,A Century of Archæological Discoveries, p. 6, New York, 1908.[216]The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Renaissance, p. 152, by Christopher Hare, London, 1904.[217]Michælis, Op. cit., p. 20, Cf. also Fiorelli'sPompeinarum Antiquitatum Historia, Vol. I, Pars. III, Naples, 1860. Arditi characterized Queen Caroline's interest in the excavations as "entusiasmo veramente ammirabile."[218]Frauenarbeit in der Archæologie in Deutsche Rundschau, March, 1890, page 396.[219]Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, pp. 296-297, by her niece, Geraldine Macpherson, London, 1878.[220]Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans, pp. 657-658, by Dr. Henry Schliemann, New York, 1881.As an illustration of Mrs. Schliemann's devotion to the work which has rendered her, as well as her husband, immortal, a single passage from the volume just quoted, p. 261, is pertinent. Referring to the sufferings and privations which they endured during their third year's work at Hissarlik, Dr. Schliemann writes as follows:"My poor wife and myself, therefore, suffered very much since the icy north wind, which recalls Homer's frequent mention of the blasts of Boreas, blew with such violence through the chinks of our house-walls, which were made of planks, that we were not even able to light our lamps in the evening, while the water which stood near the hearth froze into solid masses. During the day we could, to some degree, bear the cold by working in the excavations; but, in the evenings, we had nothing to keep us warm except our enthusiasm for the great work of discovering Troy."So high was Dr. Schliemann's opinion of his wife's ability as an archæologist that he entrusted to her—as well as to their daughter, Andromache, and son, Agamemnon—the continuation of the work which death prevented him from completing.[221]See Mme. Dieulafoy's graphic account of the expedition in a work which has been translated into English under the title,At Susa, the Ancient Capital of the Kings of Persia, Narrative of Travel Through Western Persia and Excavations Made at the Site of the Lost City of the Lilies, 1884-1886, Philadelphia, 1890.See also her other related work—crowned by the French Academy—entitled,La Perse, La Chaldée et la Susiane, Paris, 1887.[222]Among the specimens secured were two of extraordinary beauty and interest. One of them is a beautiful enameled frieze of a lion and the other, likewise a work in enamel, represents a number of polychrome figures of the Immortals—the name given to the guards of the Great Kings of Persia. Both are truly magnificent specimens of ceramic art, and compare favorably with anything of the kind which antiquity has bequeathed to us. Commenting on the pictures of the Persian guards, Mme. Dieulafoy writes: "Whatever their race may be, our Immortals appear fine in line, fine in form, fine in color and constitute a ceramic work infinitely superior to the bas-reliefs, so justly celebrated, of Lucca della Robbia." Op. cit., p. 222.[223]One passage in this codex bears so strongly on a leading argument of this work that I cannot resist the temptation to give it with Mrs. Lewis' own comment:"The piece of my work," she writes,In the Shadow of Sinai, p. 98 et seq., "which has given me the greatest satisfaction, consists in the decipherment of two words in John IV, 27. They were well worth all our visits to Sinai, for they illustrate an action of our Lord which seems to be recorded nowhere else, and which has some degree of inherent probability from what we know of His character. The passage is 'His disciples came and wondered that with the women he wasstanding and talking'...."Why was our Lord standing? He had been sitting on the wall when the disciples left Him; and, we know that He was tired. Moreover, sitting is the proper attitude for an Easterner when engaged in teaching. And an ordinary Oriental would never rise of his own natural free will out of politeness to a woman. It may be that He rose in His enthusiasm for the great truths He was uttering; but, I like to think that His great heart, which embraced the lowest of humanity, lifted Him above the restrictions of His race and age, and made Him show that courtesy to our sex, even in the person of a degraded specimen, which is considered among all really progressive peoples to be a mark of true and noble manhood. To shed even a faint light upon that wondrous story of His tabernacling amongst us is an inestimable privilege and worthy of all the trouble we can possibly take."[224]Mrs. Gibson, unaccompanied by her sister, has since made two more visits to Mt. Sinai in order to complete the work so auspiciously begun.[225]The following partial list of the works of these erudite twins on subjects connected with Scripture and Oriental literature gives some idea of their extraordinary attainments and of their prodigious activity in researches that are usually considered entirely foreign to the tastes and aptitudes of women.Some Pages of the Four Gospels Retranscribed From the Sinaitic Palimpsest, with a translation of the whole text by Agnes Smith Lewis.An Arabic Version of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians and part of Ephesians.Edited from a ninth century MS. by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.Apocrypha Sinaitica.Containing the Anaphora Pilati in Syriac and Arabic: the Syriac transcribed by J. Rendel Harris, and the Arabic by Margaret Dunlop Gibson; also two recensions of theRecognitions of Clement, in Arabic, transcribed and translated by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles, from an eighth or ninth century MS., with a treatise on the Triune Nature of God and translation. Edited by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.Apocrypha Arabica, Edited by Margaret D. Gibson, containing 1,Kitab al Magallor theBook of the Rolls; 2,The Story of the Aphikia Wife of Jesus Ben Sira(Carshuni); 3,Cyprian and Justa, in Arabic and Greek.Select Narratives of Holy Women, from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest, as written above the Old Syriac Gospels in A. D. 778. Translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.Apocrypha Syriaca Sinaitica, being theProtevangelium JacobiandTransitus Mariæ, from a Palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century. Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis.Forty-One Facsimiles of Dated Christian Arabic Manuscripts, with Text and English Translation, arranged by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with introductory observations in Arabic calligraphy by the Rev. David S. Margoliouth.The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, edited from a Mesopotamian MS, with various readings and collations of other MS, by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.The Arabic Version of the Acta Apocrypha Apostolorum, edited and translated by Agnes Smith Lewis, with fifth century fragments of the Acta Thomæ, in Syriac.The Gospel of Isbodad in Syriac and English, by Margaret D. Gibson.Acta Mythologica Apostolorum in Arabic, with translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.For an elaborate and sympathetic account of the labors and discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister, the reader is referred to an article from the pen of the learned Professor V. Ryssel, in theSchweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift, XVI, Jahrgang, 1899.[226]For an evidence of this learned lady's competency to deal with the most recondite stores of history and archæology, the reader is referred to two of her later works, viz.,Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides, Cambridge, 1906, andProlegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 1903.
[215]A. Michælis,A Century of Archæological Discoveries, p. 6, New York, 1908.
[215]A. Michælis,A Century of Archæological Discoveries, p. 6, New York, 1908.
[216]The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Renaissance, p. 152, by Christopher Hare, London, 1904.
[216]The Most Illustrious Ladies of the Renaissance, p. 152, by Christopher Hare, London, 1904.
[217]Michælis, Op. cit., p. 20, Cf. also Fiorelli'sPompeinarum Antiquitatum Historia, Vol. I, Pars. III, Naples, 1860. Arditi characterized Queen Caroline's interest in the excavations as "entusiasmo veramente ammirabile."
[217]Michælis, Op. cit., p. 20, Cf. also Fiorelli'sPompeinarum Antiquitatum Historia, Vol. I, Pars. III, Naples, 1860. Arditi characterized Queen Caroline's interest in the excavations as "entusiasmo veramente ammirabile."
[218]Frauenarbeit in der Archæologie in Deutsche Rundschau, March, 1890, page 396.
[218]Frauenarbeit in der Archæologie in Deutsche Rundschau, March, 1890, page 396.
[219]Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, pp. 296-297, by her niece, Geraldine Macpherson, London, 1878.
[219]Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, pp. 296-297, by her niece, Geraldine Macpherson, London, 1878.
[220]Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans, pp. 657-658, by Dr. Henry Schliemann, New York, 1881.As an illustration of Mrs. Schliemann's devotion to the work which has rendered her, as well as her husband, immortal, a single passage from the volume just quoted, p. 261, is pertinent. Referring to the sufferings and privations which they endured during their third year's work at Hissarlik, Dr. Schliemann writes as follows:"My poor wife and myself, therefore, suffered very much since the icy north wind, which recalls Homer's frequent mention of the blasts of Boreas, blew with such violence through the chinks of our house-walls, which were made of planks, that we were not even able to light our lamps in the evening, while the water which stood near the hearth froze into solid masses. During the day we could, to some degree, bear the cold by working in the excavations; but, in the evenings, we had nothing to keep us warm except our enthusiasm for the great work of discovering Troy."So high was Dr. Schliemann's opinion of his wife's ability as an archæologist that he entrusted to her—as well as to their daughter, Andromache, and son, Agamemnon—the continuation of the work which death prevented him from completing.
[220]Ilios, the City and Country of the Trojans, pp. 657-658, by Dr. Henry Schliemann, New York, 1881.
As an illustration of Mrs. Schliemann's devotion to the work which has rendered her, as well as her husband, immortal, a single passage from the volume just quoted, p. 261, is pertinent. Referring to the sufferings and privations which they endured during their third year's work at Hissarlik, Dr. Schliemann writes as follows:
"My poor wife and myself, therefore, suffered very much since the icy north wind, which recalls Homer's frequent mention of the blasts of Boreas, blew with such violence through the chinks of our house-walls, which were made of planks, that we were not even able to light our lamps in the evening, while the water which stood near the hearth froze into solid masses. During the day we could, to some degree, bear the cold by working in the excavations; but, in the evenings, we had nothing to keep us warm except our enthusiasm for the great work of discovering Troy."
So high was Dr. Schliemann's opinion of his wife's ability as an archæologist that he entrusted to her—as well as to their daughter, Andromache, and son, Agamemnon—the continuation of the work which death prevented him from completing.
[221]See Mme. Dieulafoy's graphic account of the expedition in a work which has been translated into English under the title,At Susa, the Ancient Capital of the Kings of Persia, Narrative of Travel Through Western Persia and Excavations Made at the Site of the Lost City of the Lilies, 1884-1886, Philadelphia, 1890.See also her other related work—crowned by the French Academy—entitled,La Perse, La Chaldée et la Susiane, Paris, 1887.
[221]See Mme. Dieulafoy's graphic account of the expedition in a work which has been translated into English under the title,At Susa, the Ancient Capital of the Kings of Persia, Narrative of Travel Through Western Persia and Excavations Made at the Site of the Lost City of the Lilies, 1884-1886, Philadelphia, 1890.
See also her other related work—crowned by the French Academy—entitled,La Perse, La Chaldée et la Susiane, Paris, 1887.
[222]Among the specimens secured were two of extraordinary beauty and interest. One of them is a beautiful enameled frieze of a lion and the other, likewise a work in enamel, represents a number of polychrome figures of the Immortals—the name given to the guards of the Great Kings of Persia. Both are truly magnificent specimens of ceramic art, and compare favorably with anything of the kind which antiquity has bequeathed to us. Commenting on the pictures of the Persian guards, Mme. Dieulafoy writes: "Whatever their race may be, our Immortals appear fine in line, fine in form, fine in color and constitute a ceramic work infinitely superior to the bas-reliefs, so justly celebrated, of Lucca della Robbia." Op. cit., p. 222.
[222]Among the specimens secured were two of extraordinary beauty and interest. One of them is a beautiful enameled frieze of a lion and the other, likewise a work in enamel, represents a number of polychrome figures of the Immortals—the name given to the guards of the Great Kings of Persia. Both are truly magnificent specimens of ceramic art, and compare favorably with anything of the kind which antiquity has bequeathed to us. Commenting on the pictures of the Persian guards, Mme. Dieulafoy writes: "Whatever their race may be, our Immortals appear fine in line, fine in form, fine in color and constitute a ceramic work infinitely superior to the bas-reliefs, so justly celebrated, of Lucca della Robbia." Op. cit., p. 222.
[223]One passage in this codex bears so strongly on a leading argument of this work that I cannot resist the temptation to give it with Mrs. Lewis' own comment:"The piece of my work," she writes,In the Shadow of Sinai, p. 98 et seq., "which has given me the greatest satisfaction, consists in the decipherment of two words in John IV, 27. They were well worth all our visits to Sinai, for they illustrate an action of our Lord which seems to be recorded nowhere else, and which has some degree of inherent probability from what we know of His character. The passage is 'His disciples came and wondered that with the women he wasstanding and talking'...."Why was our Lord standing? He had been sitting on the wall when the disciples left Him; and, we know that He was tired. Moreover, sitting is the proper attitude for an Easterner when engaged in teaching. And an ordinary Oriental would never rise of his own natural free will out of politeness to a woman. It may be that He rose in His enthusiasm for the great truths He was uttering; but, I like to think that His great heart, which embraced the lowest of humanity, lifted Him above the restrictions of His race and age, and made Him show that courtesy to our sex, even in the person of a degraded specimen, which is considered among all really progressive peoples to be a mark of true and noble manhood. To shed even a faint light upon that wondrous story of His tabernacling amongst us is an inestimable privilege and worthy of all the trouble we can possibly take."
[223]One passage in this codex bears so strongly on a leading argument of this work that I cannot resist the temptation to give it with Mrs. Lewis' own comment:
"The piece of my work," she writes,In the Shadow of Sinai, p. 98 et seq., "which has given me the greatest satisfaction, consists in the decipherment of two words in John IV, 27. They were well worth all our visits to Sinai, for they illustrate an action of our Lord which seems to be recorded nowhere else, and which has some degree of inherent probability from what we know of His character. The passage is 'His disciples came and wondered that with the women he wasstanding and talking'....
"Why was our Lord standing? He had been sitting on the wall when the disciples left Him; and, we know that He was tired. Moreover, sitting is the proper attitude for an Easterner when engaged in teaching. And an ordinary Oriental would never rise of his own natural free will out of politeness to a woman. It may be that He rose in His enthusiasm for the great truths He was uttering; but, I like to think that His great heart, which embraced the lowest of humanity, lifted Him above the restrictions of His race and age, and made Him show that courtesy to our sex, even in the person of a degraded specimen, which is considered among all really progressive peoples to be a mark of true and noble manhood. To shed even a faint light upon that wondrous story of His tabernacling amongst us is an inestimable privilege and worthy of all the trouble we can possibly take."
[224]Mrs. Gibson, unaccompanied by her sister, has since made two more visits to Mt. Sinai in order to complete the work so auspiciously begun.
[224]Mrs. Gibson, unaccompanied by her sister, has since made two more visits to Mt. Sinai in order to complete the work so auspiciously begun.
[225]The following partial list of the works of these erudite twins on subjects connected with Scripture and Oriental literature gives some idea of their extraordinary attainments and of their prodigious activity in researches that are usually considered entirely foreign to the tastes and aptitudes of women.Some Pages of the Four Gospels Retranscribed From the Sinaitic Palimpsest, with a translation of the whole text by Agnes Smith Lewis.An Arabic Version of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians and part of Ephesians.Edited from a ninth century MS. by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.Apocrypha Sinaitica.Containing the Anaphora Pilati in Syriac and Arabic: the Syriac transcribed by J. Rendel Harris, and the Arabic by Margaret Dunlop Gibson; also two recensions of theRecognitions of Clement, in Arabic, transcribed and translated by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles, from an eighth or ninth century MS., with a treatise on the Triune Nature of God and translation. Edited by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.Apocrypha Arabica, Edited by Margaret D. Gibson, containing 1,Kitab al Magallor theBook of the Rolls; 2,The Story of the Aphikia Wife of Jesus Ben Sira(Carshuni); 3,Cyprian and Justa, in Arabic and Greek.Select Narratives of Holy Women, from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest, as written above the Old Syriac Gospels in A. D. 778. Translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.Apocrypha Syriaca Sinaitica, being theProtevangelium JacobiandTransitus Mariæ, from a Palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century. Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis.Forty-One Facsimiles of Dated Christian Arabic Manuscripts, with Text and English Translation, arranged by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with introductory observations in Arabic calligraphy by the Rev. David S. Margoliouth.The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, edited from a Mesopotamian MS, with various readings and collations of other MS, by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.The Arabic Version of the Acta Apocrypha Apostolorum, edited and translated by Agnes Smith Lewis, with fifth century fragments of the Acta Thomæ, in Syriac.The Gospel of Isbodad in Syriac and English, by Margaret D. Gibson.Acta Mythologica Apostolorum in Arabic, with translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.For an elaborate and sympathetic account of the labors and discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister, the reader is referred to an article from the pen of the learned Professor V. Ryssel, in theSchweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift, XVI, Jahrgang, 1899.
[225]The following partial list of the works of these erudite twins on subjects connected with Scripture and Oriental literature gives some idea of their extraordinary attainments and of their prodigious activity in researches that are usually considered entirely foreign to the tastes and aptitudes of women.
Some Pages of the Four Gospels Retranscribed From the Sinaitic Palimpsest, with a translation of the whole text by Agnes Smith Lewis.
An Arabic Version of St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians and part of Ephesians.Edited from a ninth century MS. by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.
Apocrypha Sinaitica.Containing the Anaphora Pilati in Syriac and Arabic: the Syriac transcribed by J. Rendel Harris, and the Arabic by Margaret Dunlop Gibson; also two recensions of theRecognitions of Clement, in Arabic, transcribed and translated by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.
An Arabic Version of the Acts of the Apostles and the Seven Catholic Epistles, from an eighth or ninth century MS., with a treatise on the Triune Nature of God and translation. Edited by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.
Apocrypha Arabica, Edited by Margaret D. Gibson, containing 1,Kitab al Magallor theBook of the Rolls; 2,The Story of the Aphikia Wife of Jesus Ben Sira(Carshuni); 3,Cyprian and Justa, in Arabic and Greek.
Select Narratives of Holy Women, from the Syro-Antiochene or Sinai Palimpsest, as written above the Old Syriac Gospels in A. D. 778. Translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.
Apocrypha Syriaca Sinaitica, being theProtevangelium JacobiandTransitus Mariæ, from a Palimpsest of the fifth or sixth century. Edited by Agnes Smith Lewis.
Forty-One Facsimiles of Dated Christian Arabic Manuscripts, with Text and English Translation, arranged by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson, with introductory observations in Arabic calligraphy by the Rev. David S. Margoliouth.
The Didascalia Apostolorum in Syriac, edited from a Mesopotamian MS, with various readings and collations of other MS, by Margaret Dunlop Gibson.
The Arabic Version of the Acta Apocrypha Apostolorum, edited and translated by Agnes Smith Lewis, with fifth century fragments of the Acta Thomæ, in Syriac.
The Gospel of Isbodad in Syriac and English, by Margaret D. Gibson.
Acta Mythologica Apostolorum in Arabic, with translation by Agnes Smith Lewis.
For an elaborate and sympathetic account of the labors and discoveries of Mrs. Lewis and her sister, the reader is referred to an article from the pen of the learned Professor V. Ryssel, in theSchweizerische Theologische Zeitschrift, XVI, Jahrgang, 1899.
[226]For an evidence of this learned lady's competency to deal with the most recondite stores of history and archæology, the reader is referred to two of her later works, viz.,Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides, Cambridge, 1906, andProlegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 1903.
[226]For an evidence of this learned lady's competency to deal with the most recondite stores of history and archæology, the reader is referred to two of her later works, viz.,Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides, Cambridge, 1906, andProlegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 1903.
"There have been very learned women as there have been women warriors, but there have never been women inventors."[227]Thus wrote Voltaire with that flippancy and cocksureness which was so characteristic of the author of theDictionnaire Philosophique—a man who was ever ready to give, offhand, a categorical answer to any question that came before him for discussion. His countryman, Proudhon, expressed the same opinion in other words when he wrote,Les femmes n'ont rien inventé, pas mème leur quenouille—women have invented nothing, not even their distaff.
Had these two writers thoroughly sifted the evidence available, even in their day, for a proper consideration of this interesting subject, they would, both of them, have reached a very different conclusion from that which is expressed in the sentences just quoted. Had they consulted the records of antiquity, they would have learned that most of the earliest and most important inventions were attributed to women; and, had they studied the reports of explorers among the savage tribes of the modern world, they would have found that these early legends and traditionsregarding the inventions of women were fully confirmed by what was being done in their own time. Man's first needs were food, shelter and clothing; and tradition in all parts of the world is unanimous in ascribing to woman the invention, in essentially their present forms, of all the arts most conducive to the preservation and well-being of our race.
In Egypt, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, the inventors of specially useful things were, as a reward of their deserts, enrolled among the gods, as were certain heroes among the ancient Greeks and Romans. Foremost among these was Isis, who laid the foundation of agriculture by the introduction of the culture of wheat and other cereals. Before her time the Egyptians lived on roots and herbs. In lieu of these crude articles of food, Isis gave them bread and other more wholesome aliments. She invented the process of making linen and was the first to apply a sail to the propulsion of a boat. To her also was attributed the art of embalming, the discovery of many medicines and the beginnings of Egyptian literature.
Even more prominent was Pallas Athene, one of the greatest divinities of the Greeks. Virgil, in hisGeorgics, invokes her as
"Inventor, Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil,Thou founder of the plow and the plowman's toil."
"Inventor, Pallas, of the fatt'ning oil,Thou founder of the plow and the plowman's toil."
But not only was she regarded as theoleæ inventrix-inventress of the olive—as Virgil phrases it, but also as the inventor of all handicrafts, whether of women or men. Like Isis, she was deemed the originator of agriculture and many of the mechanic arts. But, above all, she was the inventor of musical instruments and those plastic and graphic arts which have for ages placed Greece in the forefront of civilization and culture.
From the beginning it was woman who first made use of wool and flax for textile fabrics; and of this prehistoricwoman one can affirm what Solomon, in hisBook of Proverbs, said of the virtuous woman of his day:
"She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her hands;She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff."
"She seeketh wool and flax and worketh diligently with her hands;She layeth her hands to the spindle and her hands hold the distaff."
She was also the first one to weave cotton and silk. It was Mama Oclo, the wife of Manco Capac, as the Inca historian, Garcilasso de la Vega, tells us, who taught the women of ancient Peru "to sew and weave cotton and wool and to make clothes for themselves, their husbands and children."
And it was a woman, Se-ling-she, the wife of the emperor, Hwang-te, who lived nearly three thousand years before Christ, to whom the most ancient Chinese writers assign the discovery of silk. Her name is perpetuated in the name China, the goddess of silkworms, and under this appellation she still receives divine honors.
The preparation and weaving of silk were introduced into Japan by four Chinese girls, and the new industry soon became there, as in China, one of the chief sources, as it is to-day, of the country's wealth. To perpetuate the memory of these four pioneer silk weavers the grateful Japanese erected a temple in their honor in the province of Setsu.
According to tradition, the eggs of the silk moth and the seed of the mulberry tree were conveyed to India, concealed in the lining of her headdress, by a Chinese princess. She was thus instrumental in establishing in the region watered by the Indus and the Ganges the same industry which her countrywomen had introduced into the Land of the Rising Sun.
Cashmere shawls and attar of roses, the costliest of perfumes, are attributed to an Indian empress, Nur Mahal, whom her husband, in view of her achievements, as well ason account of his passionate love for her, called "The Light of the World."[228]
And what shall we say of those exquisite creations of woman's brain and hand—needle-point and pillow lace? These two inventions, like the manufacture of silk, have given employment to tens of thousands of women throughout the world; and, in such countries as Italy, Belgium and France, where lace-making has received special attention, they have for centuries been most prolific sources of revenue. Silk fabrics in ancient Rome were worth their weight in gold. The finest specimens of point lace are, even to-day, as highly prized as precious stones, and, like the great masterpieces of plastic art, are handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation. In no other instance, except possibly in the hairspring of a watch, is there such an extraordinary difference in value between the raw material and the finished product as there is in the case of the finest thread lace.
A great sensation was caused in Italy a few decades ago when a humble workwoman, Signora Bassani, succeeded in rediscovering the peculiar stitch of the celebrated Venetian point, which had been lost for centuries. She was at once granted a patent for her invention, which was by her countrymen regarded as an event of national importance.
After painting and sculpture, probably no art has contributed more to the development of the esthetic senseamong the nations of the world than has the art whose chief tools are the needle and the bobbin in the deft hands of a beauty-loving woman. If the name of the first lace-maker had not been lost in the mists of antiquity, it is reasonable to suppose that she, too, would long since have had a monument erected to her memory, as well as the weavers of silk and makers of attar of roses and cashmere shawls. She was surely as deserving of such an honor.
More conclusive information respecting woman as an inventor is, strange as it may appear, afforded by a systematic study of the various races of mankind which are still in a state of savagery. Such a study discloses the interesting fact that woman, contrary to the declaration of Proudhon, has not only been the inventor of the distaff, but that she has furthermore—pace Voltaire—been the inventor of all the peaceful arts of life, and the inventor, too, of the earliest forms of nearly all the mechanical devices now in use in the world of industry.
Architecture, as well as many other things, was credited by the ancient Greeks to Minerva. This was a poetical way of stating the fact—now generally accepted by men of science—that women were the first homemakers. But the first home was a very simple and a very humble structure. When not a cave, it was a simple shelter made of bark or skins, sufficient to afford protection to the mother and her child. Subsequently it was a lodge made of earth, of stone or wattle work or adobe.
Women were, in the light of anthropology, as well as in that of mythology and tradition, the first to discover the nutritive and medicinal values of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots and vegetables. They were consequently the first gardeners and agriculturists and the first to build up a materia medica. While men were engaged in the chase or in warfare, women were gradually perfecting those divers domestic arts which, in the course of time, became their recognized specialties. They soon found that it was better tocultivate certain food plants and trees than to depend on them for nourishment in the wild state. This was particularly true in the case of such useful and widely distributed species as wheat, rice, maize, the yam, potato, banana and cassava.
At first most of these food products were used in the raw state, but woman's quick inventive genius was not long in making one of the most important and far-reaching discoveries—a method for producing fire. In a certain sense this was the greatest discovery ever made, and the Greeks showed their appreciation of the value of it by asserting that fire was stolen from heaven. Considering its multifarious uses in heating and cooking, thereby immensely adding to the comfort and well-being of primitive man, we are not surprised that in certain parts of the world fire has always been considered something sacred, and that the old Romans instituted Vestal Virgins, and the ancient Peruvians Virgins of the Sun, to preserve this precious element and have it ever ready when required for sacrifice or for any of their various liturgical functions. If any one ever deserved a "monument more durable than bronze," it was the woman who, "on the edge of time," first drew the Promethean spark from a piece of pyrites by striking it with flint or produced it by the friction of two pieces of wood.
After building a home and establishing in it a fireplace for the preparation of food, woman's next concern was to secure more raiment than was afforded by the traditional fig leaf. This she found in the bark of certain trees, in the fiber of hemp and cotton and in the wool of sheep and goats. With these and her distaff she spun thread, and from the thread thus obtained she was by means of her primitive loom—likewise her invention—able to provide all kinds of textile fabrics for clothing for herself and family.
But there was much more to invent before the home ofprimitive man, or rather primitive woman, could be considered as fairly equipped. Furniture and culinary utensils were required, and these, too, were provided by the deft and cunning fingers of woman. She was the first potter and the first basketmaker; and anyone who has lived among the savages of any land, especially among the aborigines in the interior of South America, knows what an important part is played in domestic economy by native basketry and ceramic ware. Both of these articles were at first of the simplest character, but woman's innate esthetic sense soon enabled her to produce those highly ornate specimens of pottery and basketry that are so highly prized in the public and private collections of this country and Europe.
The first device for converting grain into flour was, like the many other articles already named, the invention of woman. Whether the simple mortar and pestle of the North American Indian, or the Mexican metate and muller, or the Irish quern, it was, in every case, the product of woman's brain and handiwork, as it was also the basal prototype of our most improved types of flouring mills. And so was the soapstone pot—the predecessor of the iron or brass kettle—a woman's invention, as well as many similar contrivances for preparing food.
But what is probably the most remarkable culinary invention of woman in the state of savagery is her unique contrivance for converting the poisonous root of themanihot utilissima—the staple food of tropical America—into a wholesome and nutritious aliment. It is a bag, calledmatapi, which serves both as a press and as a sieve. For the inhabitants of the vast basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco, where the chief articles of diet are derived from the manihot and the plantain, this invention of woman is the most important ever made and ranks in importance with the discovery by the same skilled food purveyor of the dietetic value of manihot itself.
The first knife was a woman's invention, as the arrow-head and the spear point were the inventions of her hunter husband. It was in the beginning a most primitive implement; but, whether in the form of a simple flake of flint of obsidian, or in that of an Eskimo ulu—the woman's knife—it was the archetype of all the forms of cutlery now in use. With this rude knife the primitive housewife skinned and carved the game brought to her by her male companion. With it she scraped the interior of the hide and cut it up into articles of clothing. She was thus the first furrier and tailor. With it she made the first sandals and moccasins, and, in doing so, became the first shoemaker and the original St. Crispin.
To woman, the originator of the first home, is due also the invention of the oven and the chimney. She was also the first maker of salt—that all-important condiment and sanitary agent—and the first to obtain nitre from wood ashes. She was the first engineer, as is evinced in her invention of the parbuckle and in the bamboo conduit, which was the predecessor of the great canals of Babylonia[229]and the imposing aqueducts of ancient Rome.
Important, however, as are all the foregoing inventions, we must not forget what was an equally important contribution by woman to the welfare and progress of our race—the domestication of animals. No discovery after that of artificially producing fire has contributed more toward the development of our race than the taming of milk- and fleece-bearing animals, like the cow, the sheep, the goat and the llama, or of burden-bearing animals, like the horse, the ass, the camel and the reindeer, or of hunting and watching animals like the faithful, ubiquitous dog. For, in the first place, the domestication of thesesupremely useful animals diminished man's labor as burden bearers. It likewise supplemented the fecundity of women and facilitated the multiplication of the race, because it supplied to the child a nourishment that previously could be obtained only from the mother, who had been obliged to suckle her young several years longer than was necessary after the friendly goat and cow came to her aid. Still another consequence of the domestication of animals was that it immensely diminished the amount of woman's care and labor, afforded her the necessary leisure to develop the arts of refinement, and stimulated intellectual growth in a way that otherwise would have been impossible.
It is often stated by certain writers who love to indulge in fanciful speculations that women inventors got their ideas as home builders and weavers and potters from nest-building birds, from web-weaving spiders, and from clay workers like termites and mud wasps. Be this as it may, the fact remains in all its inspiring truth that, in the matter of industrialism, as opposed to the militancy of man, we can unhesitatingly declare, with Virgil,Dux femina facti—woman was the leader in all the arts of peace—arts which have been slowly perfected through the ages until they present the extraordinary development which we now witness.
When we contemplate the splendid porcelain wares of Meissen and Sèvres, or the countless varieties of cutlery produced in the factories of Sheffield, or the beautiful textile fabrics from the looms of Lowell and Manchester, or the delicate silks woven in the famous establishments of Lombardy and Southern France, or the countless forms of footwear made in Lynn and Chicago, or the exquisite furs brought from Siberia and the Pribyloff Islands, and dyed in Leipsic and London, or the astonishing output of food products from the factories of Pittsburgh and the immense roller mills of Minneapolis, we little think that the colossalwheels of these vast and varied industries were set in motion by the inventive genius of woman in the dim and distant prehistoric past.
And yet such is the case. Her handiwork from the earliest pottery may be traced through its manifold stages from its first rude beginnings to the most gorgeous creations of ceramic art. The primeval knife of flint or obsidian has become the keen tool of tempered steel; the simple distaff has issued in the intricate Jacquard loom; the metate and pestle actuated by a woman's arm have, by a long process of evolution, developed into our mammoth roller mills impelled by water power, steam or electricity.[230]
But these extraordinary changes from the rude implements of prehistoric time to the complicated machinery of the present is but a change of kind, not one of principle. It is a change due to specialization of work which became possible only when men, liberated from the avocations of hunting and warfare, were able to take up the occupations of women, and develop them in the manner with which we are now familiar.
Why men, rather than women, should have achieved this work of specialization; whether it was due to social causes or to woman's physical and mental organization, or to these various factors combined, we need not inquire; but such is the fact. Whereas in primitive times every woman having a home was a cook, a butcher, a baker, a potter, a weaver, a cutler, a miller, a tanner, a furrier, an engineer, man, in assuming the work which was originally exclusively feminine and performed by one and the same person, has subdivided and specialized by improved forms of machinery and otherwise, so that what is now done is accomplishedmore rapidly and to better purpose, and with correspondingly greater results in the development of industry and in the progress of civilization.
And the remarkable fact is that many of the most important of these improvements due to specialization have been made within the memory of those yet living, while still others have been originated in quite recent years. Nevertheless, great as has been the work of specialization and coördination in every department of human industry during the last few decades, it is, to judge by the reports of the Patent Office, as yet in little more than its initial stage.
We are now prepared for the consideration of the part woman has taken in this specializing movement and for a discussion of her share in modern inventions and in the improvements of those manifold inventions which were due to her genius and industry untold ages ago. Considering the short time during which her inventive mind has been specially active, and the many handicaps which have been imposed on her, the wonder is not that she has achieved so little in comparison with man, but rather that she has accomplished so much.
The first woman to receive a patent in the United States was Mary Kies. It was issued May 5, 1809, for a process of straw-weaving with silk or thread. Six years later Mary Brush was granted a patent for a corset. It seems to have been quite satisfactory, for no other patent for this article of feminine attire was issued to a woman until 1841, when one was granted to Elizabeth Adams. During the thirty-two years which elapsed between the issuing of a patent to Mary Kies and Elizabeth Adams, but twenty other patents were granted to women. The chief of these were for weaving hats from grass, manufacturing moccasins, whitening leghorn straw, for a sheet-iron shovel, a cook stove and a machine for cutting straw and fodder.
During the decade following 1841, fourteen patents wereissued to as many different women. Among the articles patented by them were an ice-cream freezer, a weighing scale and a fan attachment for a rocking chair. It was not recorded, however, that this last invention, valuable as it was apparently, ever became particularly popular. But by far the most remarkable of woman's inventions during this period was a submarine telescope and lamp, for which a patent was awarded in 1845 to Sarah Mather.
From 1851 to 1861, twenty-eight patents were issued to women—just twice the number awarded them during the preceding decade. Most of these patents were for articles of domestic use or feminine apparel. Four of them, however, comprised a scale for instrumental music, for mounting fluid lenses, a fountain pen and an improvement in reaping and mowing machines.
The following decade is remarkable for the wonderful increase in the number of inventions due to women, for there was a sudden jump from twenty-eight to four hundred and forty-one patents awarded them between the years 1861 and 1871. Women now began to have confidence in their inventive faculties, and, no longer content with exercising their genius on articles of clothing and culinary utensils, sewing, washing and churning machines, they began to devote their attention to objects that were entirely foreign to their ordinary home activities. This is clearly evinced by the patents they obtained for such inventions as improvements in locomotive wheels, devices for reducing straw and other fibrous substances for the manufacture of paper pulp, improvements in corn huskers, low-water indicators, steam and other whistles, corn plows, a method of constructing screw propellers, improvements in materials for packing journals and bearings, in fire alarms, thermometers, railroad car heaters, improvements in lubricating railway journals, in conveyors of smoke and cinders for locomotives, in pyrotechnic night signals, burglar alarms, railway car safety apparatus, in apparatusfor punching corrugated metals, desulphurizing ores and other similar inventions in the domain of mechanical engineering, inventions that, at first blush, would seem to be quite alien to the genius and capacity of woman.
From now on women's inventions in the United States increased at an extraordinary rate, for from 1871 until July 1, 1888, when the first government report was made on the patents issued to women inventors, she had to her credit nearly two thousand inventions, many of which were of prime importance.[231]
During the seven years following 1888 she was awarded twenty-five hundred and twenty-six patents—more than the total number that had been granted her during the preceding seventy-nine years. Between 1895 and 1910, three thousand six hundred and fifteen more patents were placed to her credit, making a grand total for her first century of inventive achievement of eight thousand five hundred and ninety-six patents. No Patent Office reports are available since 1910, but the number of inventions for which women have received patents since Mary Kies was awarded hers on May 5, 1809, for "straw-weaving with silk or thread," cannot be far from ten thousand. This fact will, doubtless, be a revelation to that large class of men who still seem to share the views of Voltaire and Proudhon that women are incapable of inventing even the simplest article of domestic use.
The following story well illustrates the prevailing ignorance regarding the part women have taken in the invention of certain articles that are so common that most people think they were never patented.
"I was out driving once with an old farmer in Vermont," writes Mrs. Ada C. Bowles, "and he told me,'You women may talk about your rights, but why don't you invent something?' I answered, 'Your horse's feed bag and the shade over his head were both of them invented by women.' The old fellow was so taken aback that he was barely able to gasp, 'Do tell!'"
Had he investigated further he would have found that the flynet on his horse's back, the tugs and other harness trimmings, the shoes on his horse's feet[232]and the buggy seat he then occupied were all the inventions of women. He would, doubtless, also have discovered that the currycomb he had used before starting out on his drive, as well as the snap hook of the halter and the checkrein and the stall unhitching device were likewise the inventions of members of that sex whose capacity he was so disposed to depreciate; for women have been awarded patents—in some instances several of them—for all the articles that have been mentioned. He might furthermore have learned that the fellies in his buggy wheels and his daughter's side saddle had been made under women's patents; and that, to complete his surprise and confusion, the leather used in his harness had been sewn by a machine patented by a woman who was not only an inventor but who was also for many years the manager and proprietor of a large harness factory in New York City.
What particularly arrests one's attention in reading the Patent Office reports is not only the large number of inventions by women, but also the very wide range of the devices which they embrace. It is not surprising to find them inventing and improving culinary utensils, house furniture and furnishings, toilet articles, wearing apparel and stationery, trunks and bags, toys and games, designs for printed and textile fabrics, for boxes and baskets, screens, awnings, baby carriers, musical instruments, appliances forwashing and cleaning, attachments for bicycles and type-writing machines, art, educational and medical appliances; for these things are in keeping with their propermétier; but it is surprising for those who are not familiar with the history of modern inventions to learn of the share women have had in inventing and improving agricultural implements, building appurtenances, motors of various kinds, plumbing apparatus, theatrical stage mechanisms, and, above all, countless railway appliances from a coupling or fender to an apparatus for sanding railroad tracks, or a device for unloading boxcars.
Those who are still of the opinion of Voltaire and Proudhon—and their name is legion—respecting woman's inventive powers, might be willing to accord to her the capacity to design a new form of clothes pin, or hair crimper, or rouge pad, or complexion mask, or powder puff, or baby jumper; but they would limit her ability to contrivances of this character. But what would these same people say if they were told that over and above the things just mentioned for which many women have actually received patents, the much depreciated female sex had been granted patents for locomotive wheels, stuffing boxes, railway car safety apparatus, life rafts, cut-offs for hydraulic and other engines, street cars, mining machines, furnaces for smelting ores, sound-deadening attachments for railway cars, feed pumps and transfer apparatus for traction cars, machines for driving hoops on to barrels, apparatus for destroying vegetation on and removing snow from railroads, coke crushers, artificial stone compositions, elevated railways, new forms of cattle cars, dams and reservoirs, welding seams of pipes and hardening iron, alloys for bell metal and alloys to resemble silver, methods of refining and hardening copper, processes for concentrating ores, improvement in elevators and designs for raising sunken vessels? And yet, incredible as it may appear to these scoffers at woman's genius, patents for all these inventions,methods and processes—many of them of exceeding value—and for hundreds of others of a similar nature, have been issued to women during recent years. And the activity of the fair inventors, far from abating, is becoming daily more pronounced, and promises to reward their efforts with far greater triumphs. Indeed, women are becoming so active in the numerous fields of invention—even in such unlikely ones as metallurgy and civil, mechanical and electrical engineering—that they bid fair to rival men in what they have long regarded as their peculiar specialty.
In 1892 a woman in New York was granted two patents, one for a process of malting beer and the other for hooping malt liquors. These inventions, however, are not so foreign to the avocation of woman as they at first appear. For, if we may believe the teachings of ethnology and prehistoric archæology in this matter, women were the first brewers. The one, therefore, who two decades ago secured the two patents just mentioned was but taking up anew an occupation in which her sex furnished the first invention many thousand years ago.
An instructive fact touching woman's inventive achievements is that her fullest success is coincident with her enlarged opportunities for education, and began with the breaking down of the prejudices which so long existed against her having anything to do with the development of the mechanical or industrial arts. When one recollects that the public schools of Boston, established in 1642, were not open to girls until a century and a half later, and then only for the most elementary branches and for but one-half the year; and that girls did not have the benefit of a high school education in the center of New England culture until 1852; and when one furthermore recalls the attitude of the general public toward women and girls extending their activities beyond the nursery and the kitchen, it is easy to understand that there was not much encouragementfor them to exercise their inventive talent, even if they had felt an inclination to do so.
The experience of Miss Margaret Knight, of Boston, who in 1871 was awarded a valuable patent for making a paper-bag machine is a case in point and well illustrates some of the difficulties that women inventors had to contend with only a few decades ago.
"As a child," she writes to a friend, "I never cared for the things that girls usually do; dolls never had any charms for me. I couldn't see the sense of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces; the only things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet and pieces of wood. My friends were horrified. I was called a tomboy, but that made very little impression on me. I sighed sometimes because I was not like other girls, but wisely concluded that I couldn't help it, and sought further consolation from my tools. I was always making things for my brothers. Did they want anything in the line of playthings, they always said, 'Mattie will make them for us.' I was famous for my kites, and my sleds were the envy and admiration of all the boys in town. I'm not surprised at what I've done; I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly."
Even after she had demonstrated her skill as an inventor, Miss Knight had to encounter the skepticism of the workmen to whom she entrusted the manufacture of her machines. They questioned her ability to superintend her own work, and it was only her persistency and remarkable competency that ultimately converted their incredulity into respect and admiration.
Since women have come into the possession of greater freedom than they formerly enjoyed, and have been afforded better opportunities of developing their inventive faculties, many of them have taken to invention as an occupation, and with marked success. They find it the easiest and most congenial way of earning a livelihood, and not afew of them have been able thereby to accumulate comfortable fortunes, besides developing industries that have given employment to thousands of both sexes.
Thus the straw industry in the United States is due to Miss Betsy Metcalf, who, more than a century ago, produced the first straw bonnet ever manufactured in this country. Since then the industry which this woman originated has assumed immense proportions. The number of straw hats now made in Massachusetts alone, not to speak of those annually manufactured elsewhere, runs into the millions.
Scarcely less wonderful is the industry developed by Miss Knight, already mentioned, through her marvelous invention for manufacturing satchel-bottom paper bags. Many men had previously essayed to solve the problem which she attacked with such signal success, but all to no purpose. So valuable was her invention considered by experts that she refused fifty thousand dollars for it shortly after taking out her patent.
Often what are apparently the most trivial inventions prove the most lucrative. Thus, a Chicago woman receives a handsome income for her invention of a paper pail. A woman in San Francisco invented a baby carriage, and received fourteen thousand dollars for her patent. The gimlet-pointed screw, which was the idea of a little girl, has realized to its patentee an independent fortune. Still more remarkable is the Burden horseshoe machine, the invention of a woman, which turns out a complete horseshoe every three seconds and which is said to have effected a saving to the public of tens of millions of dollars.
The cotton gin, one of the most useful and important of American inventions—a machine that effected a complete revolution in the cotton industry throughout the world—is due to a woman, Catherine L. Greene, the wife of General Nathaniel Greene, of Revolutionary fame. After she had fully developed in her own mind a method for separatingthe cotton from its seed, which was after her husband's death, she intrusted the making of the machine to Eli Whitney, who was then boarding with her, and who had a Yankee's skill in the use of tools. Whitney was several times on the point of abandoning as impossible the task which had been assigned to him, but Mrs. Greene's faith in ultimate success never wavered, and, thanks to her persistence in the work and the putting into execution of her ideas, her great undertaking was finally crowned with success. She did not apply for a patent for her invention in her own name, because so opposed was public opinion to woman's having part in mechanical occupation that she would have exposed herself to general ridicule and to a loss of position in society. The consequence was that Whitney—her employee—got credit for an invention which, in reality, belonged to her. She was, however, subsequently able to retain a subordinate interest in it through her second husband, Mr. Miller.
This is only one of many instances in which patents, taken out in the name of some man, are really due to women. The earliest development of the mower and reaper, as well as the clover cleaner, belongs to Mrs. A. H. Manning, of Plainfield, New Jersey. The patent on the clover cleaner was issued in the name of her husband; but, as he failed to apply for a patent for the mower and reaper, his wife was, after his death, robbed of the fruit of her brain by a neighbor, whose name appears on the list of patentees of an invention which originated with Mrs. Manning.
A few years ago men of science awoke to the startling fact that the earth's supply of nitrates was being rapidly exhausted. It was then realized that, unless some new store of this essential fertilizer could be found, it would soon be impossible to provide the food requisite for the world's teeming millions. What was to be done? Never was a more important problem presented to science forsolution, and never did science more quickly and efficaciously respond. It was soon recognized that the earth's atmosphere was the only available storehouse for the much-needed nitrogen. Forthwith scientists and inventors the world over proceeded to tap this source of supply and to convert its vast stores of nitrogen into the nitrates which are so indispensable to vegetable life.
To form some idea of the importance of the problem and the urgency of its solution, it may be stated that the amount of fertilizer required for the cotton crop alone in the Southern States in 1911 was no less than three million tons. What, then, must have been the total amount used through the world for cereals and other crops that need constant fertilizing? The famous nitrate deposits of Chili could supply only a small fraction of the stupendous amount required, and they, according to recent calculations, cannot continue to meet the present demands on them for more than a hundred years longer, at most.
The process involved, when once conceived, was simple enough, for it merely required the conversion of the nitrogen of the air into nitric acid, which in turn was employed in the production of nitrate of lime. But, simple as it was, mankind had to wait a long time for its origination, and action was taken only when necessity compelled. At present there are numerous nitrate factories in France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway and the United States, and the output is already enormous and constantly increasing. Electricity, that mysterious force which has so frequently come to man's assistance during the last few decades, is the agent employed.
But who was the originator of the idea of utilizing the atmosphere for the production of nitrates? Who took out the first patent for a process for making nitrates by using the nitrogen of the air? It was a Frenchwoman—Mme. Lefebre, of Paris—long since forgotten. As early as 1859 she obtained a patent in England for her invention, but,as the need of fertilizers was not so urgent then as it is now, it was allowed to drop into oblivion, and the matter was not again taken up until a half-century later, when others secured the credit for an idea which was first conceived by a woman who happened to have the misfortune to live fifty years in advance of her time.
It were easy to extend the list of important inventions due to women and of patents which were issued in the name of their husbands or other men; to tell of inventions, too, of whose fruits, because they happened to be helpless or inexperienced women, the real patentees were often robbed; but the foregoing instances are quite sufficient to show what woman's keen inventive genius is capable of achieving in spite of all the restrictions put on her sex, and in spite of her lack of training in the mechanic arts.
Had women, since the organization of our Patent Office, enjoyed all the educational opportunities possessed by men; had they received the same encouragement as the lordly sex to develop their inventive faculties; had the laws of the country accorded them the rewards to which their labor and genius entitled them, they would now have far more inventions to their credit than those indicated in our government reports; and they would, furthermore, be able to point to far more brilliant achievements than have heretofore, under the unfavorable conditions under which they were obliged to work, been possible. But when we recall all the obstacles they have had to overcome and remember also the fact that most of the patents referred to in the preceding pages have been secured by women living in the United States—little being said of the modern inventions of women in foreign countries—we can see that their record is indeed a splendid one, that their achievements are not only worthy of all praise, but also a happy augury for the future. When they shall have the same freedom of action as men in all departments of activity in which they exhibit special aptitude, when they shall have the sameadvantages of training and equipment and the prospect of the same emoluments as the sterner sex for the products of their brainwork and craftsmanship, then may we expect them to achieve the same distinction in the mechanic arts as has rewarded their efforts in science and literature; and then, too, may we hope to see them once more regain something of that supremacy in invention which was theirs in the early history of our race.