On this day 13th of January 1915, Mary Slessor died. Born in Aberdeen in 1848 Mary Slessor went to work in the Dundee mills. She went to Nigeria as a missionary where she became a teacher.

Mary Slessor learned Efik, the local language. She promoted women’s rights and successfully campaigned to have the Ibibio practice of infanticide of twins stopped.

She is commemorated in the Hall of Heroes in The Wallace Monument , Stirling.

She was the first woman on a Scottish bank note, became the first ever female Magistrate in the British Empire ,a skilful diplomatic emissary and is also celebrated in Dundee: Dundee Women’s Trail

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers

By Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.