3-056-393 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Soldiers' Wives, 1873. '...though a wife may well be expected to mourn if her husband be drowned outside the moaning bar of the harbour in sight of their native village, it is not for his working that she has cause for sorrow, but for his ceasing to work and to live. The soldier's wife, too, may be of the same mind with the sailor's, in tolerating the special risks or dangers of her brave partner's calling and service, as well as the long periods of his absence from home..."And men must fight, though women may weep," is a remark that sounds quite as appropriate, in the present condition of humanity, as that doleful lamentation over the accidental perils of industry...Those whom the reader sees in kindly talk with each other beside the cot of an innocent babe, depicted in our front-page Engraving, are women of different social rank : the one is a lady of refined education and the wife of a distinguished officer; the other, with a heart as true, is the wife of Private Jones, No. 89 in his company of the regiment. But we can well believe that they have a thorough mutual sympathy in the anxious, not despondent, feelings with which they have just bidden farewell to the men who are now gone where duty calls them'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.