Helpful Wives.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 163, 31 July 1886, Page 11

Helpful Wives.

An English writer says that when things are going wrong, women show to the besfc advantago. Ee'illustrates his remark by the touching: story of the w ire ot John R. Green, the historian, who was cut off in the zenitb of his fame. What Mrs Green said of her hu?band'a persistency at work during hia fatal illness was told in the ''Companion" last week. She did not tell what part the took in the heroic work. Yet she tended him with such skilful c*re as to prolong his life, and was more than a nurse. She was his amannensis, writing at his dictation ; his private secretary, consulting authorities and ex* amining obscure points, thus doing for him, work which he could not do Ib was by her sympathy and intelligent help that the, book was prepared. He could not work more than two hours a day, and often weeks passed when he could not do the slightest mental labour. In those days of enforced idleness, the was busy getting ready matter for him to work over when the propitious, hours 6hould come. Sir William Napier, the historian of the Peninsular War, was effectively helped by hia wife in the preparation of his great work* A great mass of documents, some of them in cipher, had to be translated and ' epitomised. Lady Napier did it all. The historian's handwriting was almost illegibly —he himself, could hardly read it after it had been written twenty-four hours. She took the rough, interlined sheets and, made a copy of them for a printer. She, did nil, reading, deciphering, epitomising and copyir.gr, without for a day neglecting the care anrireducation of a large family. ' _ When Wellington learned of her skill ia deciphering the contents of King Joseph. Bonaparte's portfolios, and the corresponds ence captured at Vittoria, he said : "I Mroi\ld have given twenty thousand pounds to any person, who could have done this for me in the PenJneuWV^YbutE'a, Companion," v