MARGARET OF NEW ORLEANS
:
Stories To Tell Children
If you ever go to the beautiful city of New Orleans, somebody will be
sure to take you down into the old business part of the city, where
there are banks and shops and hotels, and show you a statue which stands
in a little square there. It is the statue of a woman, sitting in a low
chair, with her arms around a child, who leans against her. The woman is
not at all pretty: she wears thick, common shoes, a plain dress, with a
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little shawl, and a sun-bonnet; she is stout and short, and her face is
a square-chinned Irish face; but her eyes look at you like your
mother's.
Now there is something very surprising about this statue: it was the
first one that was ever made in America in honour of a woman. Even in
Europe there are not many monuments to women, and most of the few are to
great queens or princesses, very beautiful and very richly dressed. You
see, this statue in New Orleans is not quite like anything else.
It is the statue of a woman named Margaret. Her whole name was Margaret
Haughery, but no one in New Orleans remembers her by it, any more than
you think of your dearest sister by her full name; she is just Margaret.
This is her story, and it tells why people made a monument for her.
When Margaret was a tiny baby, her father and mother died, and she was
adopted by two young people as poor and as kind as her own parents. She
lived with them until she grew up. Then she married, and had a little
baby of her own. But very soon her husband died, and then the baby died,
too, and Margaret was all alone in the world. She was poor, but she was
strong, and knew how to work.
All day, from morning until evening, she ironed clothes in a laundry.
And every day, as she worked by the window, she saw the little
motherless children from the orphan asylum, near by, working and
playing about. After a while, there came a great sickness upon the city,
and so many mothers and fathers died that there were more orphans than
the asylum could possibly take care of. They needed a good friend, now.
You would hardly think, would you, that a poor woman who worked in a
laundry could be much of a friend to them? But Margaret was. She went
straight to the kind Sisters who had the asylum and told them she was
going to give them part of her wages and was going to work for them,
besides. Pretty soon she had worked so hard that she had some money
saved from her wages. With this, she bought two cows and a little
delivery cart. Then she carried her milk to her customers in the little
cart every morning; and as she went, she begged the pieces of food left
over from the hotels and rich houses, and brought it back in the cart to
the hungry children in the asylum. In the very hardest times that was
often all the food the poor children had.
A part of the money Margaret earned went every week to the asylum, and
after a few years that was made very much larger and better. Margaret
was so careful and so good at business that, in spite of her giving, she
bought more cows and earned more money. With this, she built a home for
orphan babies; she called it her baby house.
After a time, Margaret had a chance to get a bakery, and then she became
a bread-woman instead of a milk-woman. She carried the bread just as she
had carried the milk, in her cart. And still she kept giving money to
the asylum. Then the great war came, the Civil War. In all the trouble
and sickness and fear of that time, Margaret drove her cart of bread;
and somehow she had always enough to give the starving soldiers, and for
her babies, beside what she sold. And despite all this, she earned
enough so that when the war was over she built a big steam factory for
her bread. By this time everybody in the city knew her. The children all
over the city loved her; the business men were proud of her; the poor
people all came to her for advice. She used to sit at the open door of
her office, in a calico gown and a little shawl, and give a good word to
everybody, rich or poor.
Then, by and by, one day, Margaret died. And when it was time to read
her will, the people found that, with all her giving, she had still
saved a great deal of money, and that she had left every penny of it to
the different orphan asylums of the city,--each one of them was given
something. Whether they were for white children or black, for Jews,
Catholics, or Protestants, made no difference; for Margaret always said,
"They are all orphans alike." And just think, dears, that splendid,
wise will was signed with a cross instead of a name, for Margaret had
never learned to read or write!
When the people of New Orleans knew that Margaret was dead, they said,
"She was a mother to the motherless; she was a friend to those who had
no friends; she had wisdom greater than schools can teach; we will not
let her memory go from us." So they made a statue of her, just as she
used to look, sitting in her own office door, or driving in her own
little cart. And there it stands to-day, in memory of the great love and
the great power of plain Margaret Haughery, of New Orleans.