Rebecca Harding Davis — American Author born on June 24, 1831, died on September 29, 1910

Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis was an American author and journalist. She is deemed a pioneer of literary realism in American literature. She graduated valedictorian from Washington Female Seminary in Pennsylvania. Her most important literary work is the novella Life in the Iron Mills, published in the April 1861 edition of the Atlantic Monthly which quickly made her an established female writer. Throughout her lifetime, Davis sought to effect social change for blacks, women, Native Americans, immigrants, and the working class, by intentionally writing about the plight of these marginalized groups in the 19th century... (wikipedia)

The sun, the earth, love, friends, our very breath are parts of the banquet.
War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the personal habits of the slums.
For, after all, put it as we may to ourselves, we are all of us from birth to death guests at a table which we did not spread.
Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young.
Reform is born of need, not pity.