Mississippi Leader

What Faith and Love Can Do.

The departure of Miss Jennie Casseday, one who did not walk a step, sit erect or raise herself in bed for thirty years, is one of the chief necrological events of the year 1893. From a beautiful memorial pamphlet, by Miss Angie F. Newman, we make the following extracts to show how marvelous the work may be of one physically disabled but "of good courage, hoping in the Lord." May her spirit be multiplied all over the land!

Mrs. Newman read the address at the Flower Mission memorial services in the Nebraska Penitentiary. Unless we are misinformed, Miss Casseday was the author of the custom of strewing flowers upon the soldiers' graves, as well as putting them in all desolate places where a human heart could be cheered.

"Jennie's sister Fanny, nee Mrs. John Duncan, gave to the ever weary invalid all the strength of her own brave soul, all the wealth of her abounding faith, and, together with her husband, expended herself in ministration, than which the world furnishes few illustrations of such sublime self-abnegation. Under its gentle touch Miss Casseday's thought was moved toward the sick in "poverty's flat," unable to purchase the sunlight or soft air, delicate viands or skilled nursing. She called to her bed-side wise women and men of business capacity and laid before them a plan for a training school for nurses. Miss Casseday never thought but for a purpose. She never wandered in the realm of dreams, or suffered her feet to become entangled in the morasses of reverie. Thought and action were wedded at the altar of her soul and achievement was the offspring of the Union.

The Training School for Nurses is today one of Louisville's greatest philanthropies.

Another, under the conduct of the King's Daughters, who, to use the expression of one of their number, "had grown up under her molding hand," is the Jennie Casseday Free Infirmary of Louisville, where the sick who are unable to secure the requisite medical treatment and nursing may here secure it as a gratuity. This institution was formally opened and dedicated April 12, 1892.

The building stands in the center of a foliage crowned lot, 110x200 feet, its dense shade, its sunny nooks, its floral avenues, tempting the trembling feet of the convalescent. Here the best surgical attendance and skillful nursing with appropriate clothing and abundant and nourishing food is given the invalid working women. Ninety-eight were thus treated the past year.

But the crowning enterprise, because the final one, is that of "Rest Cottage," located eighteen miles from Louisville, a summer holiday home for saleswomen, teachers, office girls, seamstresses or other employees who need rest and recreation.

Under most charming auspices this sweet, this unusual, this deserving philanthropy was evolved. Miss Casseday, though utterly helpless, was by a series of inventive appliances borne thither each of the past two summers, and for months was herself the center of a system, all others moving in orbits about her, herself the magnet, the light, the warmth, the centripetal force, as the sun."