Editorials by the People

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A Room In The Hospital For Women Of Maryland As A Memorial To The Confederate Women Of The State—Lee Scholarship Too.

To the Editor of The Evening Sun:

I have been much interested in the proposal of the Daughters of the Confederacy to erect a monument to the memory of the Maryland women who suffered and sympathized with the Confederate cause.

During the winter of 1862 an entertainment was given in Richmond, Va., in aid of the hospital fund. A tableau of the Confederate States was shown. Each State was represented by a beautiful girl, clad in white and draped with her State flag. At a little distance stood Maryland, her lovely eyes raised in supplication, her extended hands bound with a chain. Behind the scenes a quartet sang softly a verse of “Maryland, My Maryland.”

That pathetic figure has always personified to me the Confederate women of Maryland. But is not there an opportunity for a nobler and more enduring memorial than a marble monument on a city street?

The Maryland Women’s Hospital bas just been rebuilt and established on new lines.

What a memorial it would be to endow a room, for all time, for the benefit of the descendants of those women who made sacrifices for the Confederacy! One can see the beneficent influence continuing through the coming years, giving aid and comfort in times of sorest need to those who can trace descent from these heroines of Maryland. There could be no surer way of “keeping their memory green.”

The late Dr. Tormer Porter, of South Carolina, while at the grave of his dearly loved son, who was killed in battle, was considering a monument to his memory. The thought came to him to use the money required for the education of some of the boys left destitute and fatherless by the Civil War. So began in 1865 the Porter School of Columbia, which has educated hundreds of young men and still goes on in ite noble work, an Incalculable benefit to the State.

One more suggestion. In a poem in a late issue of Scribner’s Magazine there is a wonderful vision of the “House of Broken Swords.” wherein are seen Excalibus, Goliath’s blade, Soldan’s scimitar and other famous weapons, but in the loftiest niche of all are seen the swords of the conquered heroes, chief among them Hannibal’s, Napoleon’s, Robert E. Lee’s!

In memory of that sword, glorious In defeat, let us establish in each Southern State a Lee scholarship, with a [illegible] examination, so that one young [illegible] of highest character and ability may always be in training at the best college in his native State for some profession, under the inspiration of the name and fame of the peerless hero of the Confederacy. What marble monument could compare with this as a memorial to General Lee and the cause “for which he died, but diyng might not win?”

A VIRGINIA DAUGHTER OF THE CONFEDERACY.
Baltimore, May 3.