On the Tarbell Trail

[Rob Wick]

Last night I finished Kathleen Brady's Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (which I highly recommend to anyone wanting a succinct biography of her). Toward the end of the book, in which Brady describes Tarbell's last days, there was a paragraph which I'd like to share which will hit home to anyone who has watched a loved one die whether through old age or a terminal illness.

Brady writes:

Her own fatigue increased her empathy for others. Increasingly, Tarbell found herself thinking of a puppy that she had found in 1906 after she left McClure. She had rented a house in Nantucket and the collie that was there gave birth. The weakest of the litter kept crawling away to die, but Tarbell would bring it back to the sun. Over and over the puppy kept struggling away, trying to find a place to die in peace. She thought she understood that puppy now.

That passage speaks volumes.

Best
Rob