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Title: Lives of Girls Who Became Famous
Author: Sarah Knowles Bolton

Release date: April 1, 2004 [eBook #12081]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
LIVES OF GIRLS WHO BECAME FAMOUS ***

Lives
of

Girls Who Became Famous.
by

Sarah K. Bolton,
Author of Poor Boys Who Became Famous, Social Studies in England,
etc.

1914

"Earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected." -- James Russell Lowell.

"Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them." --
Madame de Staël.

To

My aunt

Mrs. Martha W. Miller

Whose culture and kindness I count

among the blessings of

my life.

Preface.

All of us have aspirations. We build air-castles, and are probably the
happier for the building. However, the sooner we learn that life is not a
play-day, but a thing of earnest activity, the better for us and for those
associated with us. “Energy,” says Goethe, “will do anything that can be
done in this world”; and Jean Ingelow truly says, that “Work is heaven's
hest.”

If we cannot, like George Eliot, write Adam Bede, we can, like Elizabeth
Fry, visit the poor and the prisoner. If we cannot, like Rosa Bonheur, paint a
"Horse Fair," and receive ten thousand dollars, we can, like Mrs. Stowe and
Miss Alcott, do some kind of work to lighten the burdens of parents. If
poor, with Mary Lyon's persistency and noble purpose, we can accomplish
almost anything. If rich, like Baroness Burdett-Coutts, we can bless the
world in thousands of ways, and are untrue to God and ourselves if we fail
to do it.

Margaret Fuller said, “All might be superior beings,” and doubtless this is
true, if all were willing to cultivate the mind and beautify the character.

S.K.B.

Contents.

Harriet Beecher Novelist
Stowe
Helen Hunt Jackson Poet and Prose
Writer
Lucretia Mott Preacher

Mary A Livermore Lecturer

Margaret Fuller Journalist
Ossoli
Maria Mitchell Scientist

Louisa M Alcott Author

Mary Lyon Teacher

Harriet G Hosmer Sculptor

Madame de Staël Novelist and
Political Writer
Rosa Bonheur Artist

Elizabeth Barrett Poet
Browning
"George Eliot" Novelist

Elizabeth Fry Philanthropist

Elizabeth Thompson Painter
Butler
Florence Hospital Nurse
Nightingale
Lady Brassey Traveller

Baroness Burdett- Benefactor
Coutts
Jean Ingelow Poet

Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In a plain home, in the town of Litchfield, Conn., was born, June 14, 1811,
Harriet Beecher Stowe. The house was well-nigh full of little ones before
her coming. She was the seventh child, while the oldest was but eleven
years old.

Her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, a man of remarkable mind and sunshiny
heart, was preaching earnest sermons in his own and in all the neighboring
towns, on the munificent salary of five hundred dollars a year. Her mother,
Roxana Beecher, was a woman whose beautiful life has been an inspiration
to thousands. With an education superior for those times, she came into the
home of the young minister with a strength of mind and heart that made her
his companion and reliance.

There were no carpets on the floors till the girl-wife laid down a piece of
cotton cloth on the parlor, and painted it in oils, with a border and a bunch
of roses and others flowers in the centre. When one of the good deacons
came to visit them, the preacher said, "Walk in, deacon, walk in!"

"Why, I can't," said he, "'thout steppin' on't." Then he exclaimed, in
admiration, "D'ye think ya can have all that, and heaven too?"

So meagre was the salary for the increasing household, that Roxana urged
that a select school be started; and in this she taught French, drawing,
painting, and embroidery, besides the higher English branches. With all this
work she found time to make herself the idol of her children. While Henry
Ward hung round her neck, she made dolls for little Harriet, and read to
them from Walter Scott and Washington Irving.

These were enchanting days for the enthusiastic girl with brown curls and
blue eyes. She roamed over the meadows, and through the forests, gathering
wild flowers in the spring or nuts in the fall, being educated, as she
afterwards said, "first and foremost by Nature, wonderful, beautiful, ever-
changing as she is in that cloudland, Litchfield. There were the crisp apples
of the pink azalea,--honeysuckle-apples, we called them; there were scarlet
wintergreen berries; there were pink shell blossoms of trailing arbutus, and
feathers of ground pine; there were blue and white and yellow violets, and
crowsfoot, and bloodroot, and wild anemone, and other quaint forest
treasures."

A single incident, told by herself in later years, will show the frolic-loving
spirit of the girl, and the gentleness of Roxana Beecher. "Mother was an
enthusiastic horticulturist in all the small ways that limited means allowed.
Her brother John, in New York, had just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-
bulbs. I remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner of the nursery
one day when she was gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea that
they were good to eat, and using all the little English I then possessed to
persuade my brothers that these were onions, such as grown people ate, and
would be very nice for us. So we fell to and devoured the whole; and I
recollect being somewhat disappointed in the odd, sweetish taste, and
thinking that onions were not as nice as I had supposed. Then mother's
serene face appeared at the nursery door, and we all ran toward her, and
with one voice began to tell our discovery and achievement. We had found
this bag of onions, and had eaten them all up.

"There was not even a momentary expression of impatience, but she sat
down and said, 'My dear children, what you have done makes mamma very
sorry; those were not onion roots, but roots of beautiful flowers; and if you
had let them alone, ma would have had next summer in the garden, great,
beautiful red and yellow flowers, such as you never saw.' I remember how
drooping and disappointed we all grew at this picture, and how sadly we
regarded the empty paper bag."

When Harriet was five years old, a deep shadow fell upon the happy
household. Eight little children were gathered round the bedside of the
dying mother. When they cried and sobbed, she told them, with
inexpressible sweetness, that "God could do more for them than she had
ever done or could do, and that they must trust Him," and urged her six sons
to become ministers of the Gospel. When her heart-broken husband
repeated to her the verse, "You are now come unto Mount Zion, unto the
city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable
company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the first-born,
which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits
of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant,"
she looked up into his face with a beautiful smile, and closed her eyes
forever. That smile Mr. Beecher never forgot to his dying day.

The whole family seemed crushed by the blow. Little Henry (now the great
preacher), who had been told that his mother had been buried in the ground,
and also that she had gone to heaven, was found one morning digging with
all his might under his sister's window, saying, "I'm going to heaven, to find
ma!"

So much did Mr. Beecher miss her counsel and good judgment, that he sat
down and wrote her a long letter, pouring out his whole soul, hoping
somehow that she, his guardian angel, though dead, might see it. A year
later he wrote a friend: "There is a sensation of loss which nothing
alleviates--a solitude which no society interrupts. Amid the smiles and
prattle of children, and the kindness of sympathizing friends, I am alone;
Roxana is not here. She partakes in none of my joys, and bears with me
none of my sorrows. I do not murmur; I only feel daily, constantly, and with

deepening impression, how much I have had for which to be thankful, and
how much I have lost.... The whole year after her death was a year of great
emptiness, as if there was not motive enough in the world to move me. I
used to pray earnestly to God either to take me away, or to restore to me
that interest in things and susceptibility to motive I had had before."

Once, when sleeping in the room where she died, he dreamed that Roxana
came and stood beside him, and "smiled on me as with a smile from
heaven. With that smile," he said, "all my sorrow passed away. I awoke
joyful, and I was lighthearted for weeks after."

Harriet went to live for a time with her aunt and grandmother, and then
came back to the lonesome home, into which Mr. Beecher had felt the
necessity of bringing a new mother. She was a refined and excellent
woman, and won the respect and affection of the family. At first Harriet,
with a not unnatural feeling of injury, said to her: "Because you have come
and married my father, when I am big enough, I mean to go and marry your
father;" but she afterwards learned to love her very much.

At seven, with a remarkably retentive memory,--a thing which many of us
spoil by trashy reading, or allowing our time and attention to be distracted
by the trifles of every-day life,--Harriet had learned twenty-seven hymns
and two long chapters of the Bible. She was exceedingly fond of reading,
but there was little in a poor minister's library to attract a child. She found
Bell's Sermons, and Toplady on Predestination. "Then," she says, "there was
a side closet full of documents, a weltering ocean of pamphlets, in which I
dug and toiled for hours, to be repaid by disinterring a delicious morsel of a
Don Quixote, that had once been a book, but was now lying in forty or fifty
dissecta membra, amid Calls, Appeals, Essays, Reviews, and Rejoinders.
The turning up of such a fragment seemed like the rising of an enchanted
island out of an ocean of mud." Finally Ivanhoe was obtained, and she and
her brother George read it through seven times.

At twelve, we find her in the school of Mr. John P. Brace, a well-known
teacher, where she developed great fondness for composition. At the
exhibition at the close of the year, it was the custom for all the parents to

come and listen to the wonderful productions of their children. From the list
of subjects given, Harriet had chosen, "Can the Immortality of the Soul be
proved by the Light of Nature?"

"When mine was read," she says, "I noticed that father brightened and
looked interested. 'Who wrote that composition?' he asked of Mr. Brace.
'Your daughter, sir!' was the answer. There was no mistaking father's face
when he was pleased, and to have interested him was past all juvenile
triumphs."

A new life was now to open to Harriet. Her only sister Catharine, a brilliant
and noble girl, was engaged to Professor Fisher of Yale College. They were
to be married on his return from a European tour, but alas! the Albion, on
which he sailed, went to pieces on the rocks, and all on board, save one,
perished. Her betrothed was never heard from. For months all hope seemed
to go out of Catharine's life, and then, with a strong will, she took up a
course of mathematical study, his favorite study, and Latin under her
brother Edward. She was now twenty-three. Life was not to be along the
pleasant paths she had hoped, but she must make it tell for the future.

With remarkable energy, she went to Hartford, Conn., where her brother
was teaching, and thoroughly impressed with the belief that God had a work
for her to do for girls, she raised several thousand dollars and built the
Hartford Female Seminary. Her brothers had college doors opened to them;
why, she reasoned, should not women have equal opportunities? Society
wondered of what possible use Latin and moral philosophy could be to
girls, but they admired Miss Beecher, and let her do as she pleased.
Students poured in, and the seminary soon overflowed. My own school life
in that beloved institution, years afterward, I shall never forget.

And now the little twelve-year-old Harriet came down from Litchfield to
attend Catharine's school, and soon become a pupil-teacher, that the burden
of support might not fall too heavily upon the father. Other children had
come into the Beecher home, and with a salary of eight hundred dollars,
poverty could not be other than a constant attendant. Once when the family
were greatly straitened for money, while Henry and Charles were in college,

the new mother went to bed weeping, but the father said, "Well, the Lord
always has taken care of me, and I am sure He always will," and was soon
fast asleep. The next morning, Sunday, a letter was handed in at the door,
containing a $100 bill, and no name. It was a thank-offering for the
conversion of a child.

Mr. Beecher, with all his poverty, could not help being generous. His wife,
by close economy, had saved twenty-five dollars to buy a new overcoat for
him. Handing him the roll of bills, he started out to purchase the garment,
but stopped on the way to attend a missionary meeting. His heart warmed as
he stayed, and when the contribution-box was passed, he put in the roll of
bills for the Sandwich Islanders, and went home with his threadbare coat!

Three years later, Mr. Beecher, who had now become widely known as a
revivalist and brilliant preacher, was called to Boston, where he remained
for six years. His six sermons on intemperance had stirred the whole
country.

Though he loved Boston, his heart often turned toward the great West, and
he longed to help save her young men. When, therefore, he was asked to go
to Ohio and become the president of Lane Theological Seminary at
Cincinnati, he accepted. Singularly dependent upon his family, Catharine
and Harriet must needs go with him to the new home. The journey was a
toilsome one, over the corduroy roads and across the mountains by
stagecoach. Finally they were settled in a pleasant house on Walnut Hills,
one of the suburbs of the city, and the sisters opened another school.

Four years later, in 1836, Harriet, now twenty-five, married the professor of
biblical criticism and Oriental literature in the seminary, Calvin E. Stowe, a
learned and able man.

Meantime the question of slavery had been agitating the minds of Christian
people. Cincinnati being near the border-line of Kentucky, was naturally the
battle-ground of ideas. Slaves fled into the free State and were helped into
Canada by means of the "Underground Railroad," which was in reality only
a friendly house about every ten miles, where the colored people could be

secreted during the day, and then carried in wagons to the next "station" in
the night.

Lane Seminary became a hot-bed of discussion. Many of the Southern
students freed their slaves, or helped to establish schools for colored
children in Cincinnati, and were disinherited by their fathers in
consequence. Dr. Bailey, a Christian man who attempted to carry on a fair
discussion of the question in his paper, had his presses broken twice and
thrown into the river. The feeling became so intense, that the houses of free
colored people were burned, some killed, and the seminary was in danger
from the mob. The members of Professor Stowe's family slept with
firearms, ready to defend their lives. Finally the trustees of the college
forbade all slavery discussion by the students, and as a result, nearly the
whole body left the institution.

Dr. Beecher, meantime, was absent at the East, having raised a large sum of
money for the seminary, and came back only to find his labor almost
hopeless. For several years, however, he and his children stayed and worked
on. Mrs. Stowe opened her house to colored children, whom she taught with
her own. One bright boy in her school was claimed by an estate in
Kentucky, arrested, and was to be sold at auction. The half-crazed mother
appealed to Mrs. Stowe, who raised the needed money among her friends,
and thus saved the lad.

Finally, worn out with the "irrepressible conflict," the Beecher family, with
the Stowes, came North in 1850, Mr. Stowe accepting a professorship at
Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. A few boarders were taken into the
family to eke out the limited salary, and Mrs. Stowe earned a little from a
sketch written now and then for the newspapers. She had even obtained a
prize of fifty dollars for a New England story. Her six brothers had fulfilled
their mother's dying wish, and were all in the ministry. She was now forty
years old, a devoted mother, with an infant; a hard-working teacher, with
her hands full to overflowing. It seemed improbable that she would ever do
other than this quiet, unceasing labor. Most women would have said, "I can
do no more than I am doing. My way is hedged up to any outside work."

But Mrs. Stowe's heart burned for those in bondage. The Fugitive Slave
Law was hunting colored people and sending them back into servitude and
death. The people of the North seemed indifferent. Could she not arouse
them by something she could write?

One Sunday, as she sat at the communion table in the little Brunswick
church, the pattern of Uncle Tom formed itself in her mind, and, almost
overcome by her feelings, she hastened home and wrote out the chapter on
his death. When she had finished, she read it to her two sons, ten and
twelve, who burst out sobbing, "Oh! mamma, slavery is the most cursed
thing in the world."

After two or three more chapters were ready, she wrote to Dr. Bailey, who
had moved his paper from Cincinnati to Washington, offering the
manuscript for the columns of the National Era, and it was accepted. Now
the matter must be prepared each week. She visited Boston, and at the Anti-
Slavery rooms borrowed several books to aid in furnishing facts. And then
the story wrote itself out of her full heart and brain. When it neared
completion, Mr. Jewett of Boston, through the influence of his wife, offered
to become the publisher, but feared if the serial were much longer, it would
be a failure. She wrote him that she could not stop till it was done.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was published March 20,1852. Then came the reaction
in her own mind. Would anybody read this book? The subject was
unpopular. It would indeed be a failure, she feared, but she would help the
story make its way if possible. She sent a copy of the book to Prince Albert,
knowing that both he and Queen Victoria were deeply interested in the
subject; another copy to Macaulay, whose father was a friend of
Wilberforce; one to Charles Dickens; and another to Charles Kingsley. And
then the busy mother, wife, teacher, housekeeper, and author waited in her
quiet Maine home to see what the busy world would say.

In ten days, ten thousand copies had been sold. Eight presses were run day
and night to supply the demand. Thirty different editions appeared in
London in six months. Six theatres in that great city were playing it at one
time. Over three hundred thousand copies were sold in less than a year.

Letters poured in upon Mrs. Stowe from all parts of the world. Prince Albert
sent his hearty thanks. Dickens said, "Your book is worthy of any head and
any heart that ever inspired a book." Kingsley wrote, "It is perfect." The
noble Earl of Shaftesbury wrote, "None but a Christian believer could have
produced such a book as yours, which has absolutely startled the whole
world.... I live in hope--God grant it may rise to faith!--that this system is
drawing to a close. It seems as though our Lord had sent out this book as
the messenger before His face to prepare His way before Him." He wrote
out an address of sympathy "From the women of England to the women of
America," to which were appended the signatures of 562,448 women. These
were in twenty-six folio volumes, bound in morocco, with the American
eagle on the back of each, the whole in a solid oak case, sent to the care of
Mrs. Stowe.

The learned reviews gave long notices of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Blackwood
said, "There are scenes and touches in this book which no living writer that
we know can surpass, and perhaps none can equal." George Eliot wrote her
beautiful letters.

How the heart of Lyman Beecher must have been gladdened by this
wonderful success of his daughter! How Roxana Beecher must have looked
down from heaven, and smiled that never-to-be-forgotten smile! How
Harriet Beecher Stowe herself must have thanked God for this unexpected
fulness of blessing! Thousands of dollars were soon paid to her as her share
of the profits from the sale of the book. How restful it must have seemed to
the tired, over-worked woman, to have more than enough for daily needs!

The following year, 1853, Professor Stowe and his now famous wife
decided to cross the ocean for needed rest. What was their astonishment, to
be welcomed by immense public meetings in Liverpool, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee; indeed, in every city which they visited.
People in the towns stopped her carriage, to fill it with flowers. Boys ran
along the streets, shouting, "That's her--see the courls!" A penny offering
was made her, given by people of all ranks, consisting of one thousand
golden sovereigns on a beautiful silver salver. When the committee having

the matter in charge visited one little cottage, they found only a blind
woman, and said, "She will feel no interest, as she cannot read the book."

"Indeed," said the old lady, "if I cannot read, my son has read it to me, and
I've got my penny saved to give."

The beautiful Duchess of Sutherland entertained Mrs. Stowe at her house,
where she met Lord Palmerston, the Duke of Argyle, Macaulay, Gladstone,
and others. The duchess gave her a solid gold bracelet in the form of a
slave's shackle, with the words, "We trust it is a memorial of a chain that is
soon to be broken." On one link was the date of the abolition of the slave
trade, March 25, 1807, and of slavery in the English territories, Aug. 1,
1834. On the other links are now engraved the dates of Emancipation in the
District of Columbia; President Lincoln's proclamation abolishing slavery
in the States in rebellion, Jan. 1, 1863; and finally, on the clasp, the date of
the Constitutional amendment, abolishing slavery forever in the United
States. Only a decade after Uncle Tom's Cabin was written, and nearly all
this accomplished! Who could have believed it possible?

On Mrs. Stowe's return from Europe, she wrote Sunny Memories of Foreign
Lands, which had a large sale. Her husband was now appointed to the
professorship of sacred literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover,
Mass., and here they made their home. The students found in her a warm-
hearted friend, and an inspiration to intellectual work. Other books followed
from her pen: Dred, a powerful anti-slavery story; The Minister's Wooing,
with lovely Mary Scudder as its heroine; Agnes of Sorrento, an Italian story;
the Pearl of Orr's Island, a tale of the New England coast; Old Town Folks;
House and Home Papers; My Wife and I; Pink and White Tyranny; and
some others, all of which have been widely read.

The sale of Uncle Tom's Cabin has not ceased. It is estimated that over one
and a half million copies have been sold in Great Britain and her colonies,
and probably an equal or greater number in this country. There have been
twelve French editions, eleven German, and six Spanish. It has been
published in nineteen different languages,--Russian, Hungarian, Armenian,
Modern Greek, Finnish, Welsh, Polish, and others. In Bengal the book is

very popular. A lady of high rank in the court of Siam, liberated her slaves,
one hundred and thirty in number, after reading this book, and said, "I am
wishful to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and never again to buy
human bodies, but only to let them go free once more." In France the sale of
the Bible was increased because the people wished to read the book Uncle
Tom loved so much.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Les Miseràbles, and a few other novels, will live,
because written with a purpose. No work of fiction is permanent without
some great underlying principle or object.

Soon after the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe bought a home among the orange
groves of Florida, and thither she goes each winter, with her family. She has
done much there for the colored people whom she helped to make free.
With the proceeds of some public readings at the North she built a church,
in which her husband preached as long as his health permitted. Her home at
Mandarin, with its great moss-covered oaks and profusion of flowers, is a
restful and happy place after these most fruitful years.

Her summer residence in Hartford, Conn., beautiful without, and artistic
within, has been visited by thousands, who honor the noble woman not less
than the gifted author.

Many of the Beecher family have died; Lyman Beecher at eighty-three, and
Catharine at seventy-eight. Some of Mrs. Stowe's own children are waiting
for her in the other country. She says, "I am more interested in the other side
of Jordan than this, though this still has its pleasures."

On Mrs. Stowe's seventy-first birthday, her publishers, Messrs. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., gave a garden party in her honor, at the hospitable home of
Governor Claflin and his wife, at Newton, Mass. Poets and artists,
statesmen and reformers, were invited to meet the famous author. On a
stage, under a great tent, she sat, while poems were read and speeches
made. The brown curls had become snowy white, and the bright eyes of
girlhood had grown deeper and more earnest. The manner was the same as
ever, unostentatious, courteous, kindly.

Her life is but another confirmation of the well-known fact, that the best
work of the world is done, not by the loiterers, but by those whose hearts
and hands are full of duties. Mrs. Stowe died about noon, July 1, 1896, of
paralysis, at Hartford, Conn., at the age of eighty-five. She passed away as
if to sleep, her son, the Rev. Charles Edward Stowe, and her daughters,
Eliza and Harriet, standing by her bedside. Since the death of her husband,
Professor Calvin E. Stowe, in 1886, Mrs. Stowe had gradually failed
physically and mentally. She was buried July 3 in the cemetery connected
with the Theological Seminary at Andover, Mass., between the graves of
her husband and her son, Henry. The latter was drowned in the Connecticut
River, while a member of Dartmouth College, July 19, 1857.

Helen Hunt Jackson.

Thousands were saddened when, Aug. 12, 1885, it was flashed across the
wires that Helen Hunt Jackson was dead. The Nation said, "The news will
probably carry a pang of regret into more American homes than similar
intelligence in regard to any other woman, with the possible exception of
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe."

How, with the simple initials, "H.H.," had she won this place in the hearts
of the people? Was it because she was a poet? Oh no! many persons of
genius have few friends. It was because an earnest life was back of her
gifted writings. A great book needs a great man or woman behind it to make
it a perfect work. Mrs. Jackson's literary work will be abiding, but her life,
with its dark shadow and bright sunlight, its deep affections and sympathy
with the oppressed, will furnish a rich setting for the gems of thought which
she gave to the world.

Born in the cultured town of Amherst, Mass., Oct. 18, 1831, she inherited
from her mother a sunny, buoyant nature, and from her father, Nathan W.
Fiske, professor of languages and philosophy in the college, a strong and
vigorous mind. Her own vivid description of the "naughtiest day in my
life," in St. Nicholas, September and October, 1880, shows the ardent,
wilful child who was one day to stand out fearlessly before the nation and
tell its statesmen the wrong they had done to "her Indians."

She and her younger sister Annie were allowed one April day, by their
mother, to go into the woods just before school hours, to gather
checkerberries. Helen, finding the woods very pleasant, determined to
spend the day in them, even though sure she would receive a whipping on
her return home. The sister could not be coaxed to do wrong, but a
neighbor's child, with the promise of seeing live snails with horns, was
induced to accompany the truant. They wandered from one forest to
another, till hunger compelled them to seek food at a stranger's home. The
kind farmer and his wife were going to a funeral, and wished to lock their
house; but they took pity on the little ones, and gave them some bread and
milk. "There," said the woman, "now, you just make yourselves
comfortable, and eat all you can; and when you're done, you push the bowls
in among them lilac-bushes, and nobody'll get 'em."

Urged on by Helen, she and her companion wandered into the village, to
ascertain where the funeral was to be held. It was in the meeting-house, and
thither they went, and seated themselves on the bier outside the door.
Becoming tired of this, they trudged on. One of them lost her shoe in the
mud, and stopping at a house to dry their stockings, they were captured by

two Amherst professors, who had come over to Hadley to attend the
funeral. The children had walked four miles, and nearly the whole town,
with the frightened mother, were in search of the runaways. Helen, greatly
displeased at being caught, jumped out of the carriage, but was soon
retaken. At ten o'clock at night they reached home, and the child walked in
as rosy and smiling as possible, saying, "Oh, mother! I've had a perfectly
splendid time!"

A few days passed, and then her father sent for her to come into his study,
and told her because she had not said she was sorry for running away, she
must go into the garret, and wait till he came to see her. Sullen at this
punishment, she took a nail and began to bore holes in the plastering. This
so angered the professor, that he gave her a severe whipping, and kept her
in the garret for a week. It is questionable whether she was more penitent at
the end of the week than she was at the beginning.

When Helen was twelve, both father and mother died, leaving her to the
care of a grandfather. She was soon placed in the school of the author, Rev.
J.S.C. Abbott, of New York, and here some of her happiest days were
passed. She grew to womanhood, frank, merry, impulsive, brilliant in
conversation, and fond of society.

At twenty-one she was married to a young army officer, Captain, afterward
Major, Edward B. Hunt, whom his friends called "Cupid" Hunt from his
beauty and his curling hair. He was a brother of Governor Hunt of New
York, an engineer of high rank, and a man of fine scientific attainments.
They lived much of their time at West Point and Newport, and the young
wife moved in a fashionable social circle, and won hosts of admiring
friends. Now and then, when he read a paper before some learned society,
he was proud to take his vivacious and attractive wife with him.

Their first baby died when he was eleven months old, but another beautiful
boy came to take his place, named after two friends, Warren Horsford, but
familiarly called "Rennie." He was an uncommonly bright child, and Mrs.
Hunt was passionately fond and proud of him. Life seemed full of

pleasures. She dressed handsomely, and no wish of her heart seemed
ungratified.

Suddenly, like a thunder-bolt from a clear sky, the happy life was shattered.
Major Hunt was killed Oct. 2, 1863, while experimenting in Brooklyn, with
a submarine gun of his own invention. The young widow still had her eight-
year-old boy, and to him she clung more tenderly than ever, but in less than
two years she stood by his dying bed. Seeing the agony of his mother, and
forgetting his own even in that dread destroyer, diphtheria, he said, almost
at the last moment, "Promise me, mamma, that you will not kill yourself."

She promised, and exacted from him also a pledge that if it were possible,
he would come back from the other world to talk with his mother. He never
came, and Mrs. Hunt could have no faith in spiritualism, because what
Rennie could not do, she believed to be impossible.

For months she shut herself into her own room, refusing to see her nearest
friends. "Any one who really loves me ought to pray that I may die, too,
like Rennie," she said. Her physician thought she would die of grief; but
when her strong, earnest nature had wrestled with itself and come off
conqueror, she came out of her seclusion, cheerful as of old. The pictures of
her husband and boy were ever beside her, and these doubtless spurred her
on to the work she was to accomplish.

Three months after Rennie's death, her first poem, Lifted Over, appeared in
the Nation:--
"As tender mothers, guiding baby steps,
When places come at which the tiny feet
Would trip, lift up the little ones in arms
Of love, and set them down beyond the harm,
So did our Father watch the precious boy,
Led o'er the stones by me, who stumbled oft
Myself, but strove to help my darling on:
He saw the sweet limbs faltering, and saw
Rough ways before us, where my arms would fail;
So reached from heaven, and lifting the dear child,
Who smiled in leaving me, He put him down
Beyond all hurt, beyond my sight, and bade

Him wait for me! Shall I not then be glad,
And, thanking God, press on to overtake!"

The poem was widely copied, and many mothers were comforted by it. The
kind letters she received in consequence were the first gleam of sunshine in
the darkened life. If she were doing even a little good, she could live and be
strong.

And then began, at thirty-four, absorbing, painstaking literary work. She
studied the best models of composition. She said to a friend, years after,
"Have you ever tested the advantages of an analytical reading of some
writer of finished style? There is a little book called Out-Door Papers, by
Wentworth Higginson, that is one of the most perfect specimens of literary
composition in the English language. It has been my model for years. I go
to it as a text-book, and have actually spent hours at a time, taking one
sentence after another, and experimenting upon them, trying to see if I
could take out a word or transpose a clause, and not destroy their
perfection." And again, "I shall never write a sentence, so long as I live,
without studying it over from the standpoint of whether you would think it
could be bettered."

Her first prose sketch, a walk up Mt. Washington from the Glen House,
appeared in the Independent, Sept. 13, 1866; and from this time she wrote
for that able journal three hundred and seventy-one articles. She worked
rapidly, writing usually with a lead-pencil, on large sheets of yellow paper,
but she pruned carefully. Her first poem in the Atlantic Monthly, entitled
Coronation, delicate and full of meaning, appeared in 1869, being taken to
Mr. Fields, the editor, by a friend.

At this time she spent a year abroad, principally in Germany and Italy,
writing home several sketches. In Rome she became so ill that her life was
despaired of. When she was partially recovered and went away to regain her
strength, her friends insisted that a professional nurse should go with her;
but she took a hard-working young Italian girl of sixteen, to whom this
vacation would be a blessing.

On her return, in 1870, a little book of Verses was published. Like most
beginners, she was obliged to pay for the stereotyped plates. The book was
well received. Emerson liked especially her sonnet, Thought. He ranked her
poetry above that of all American women, and most American men. Some
persons praised the "exquisite musical structure" of the Gondolieds, and
others read and re-read her beautiful Down to Sleep. But the world's favorite
was Spinning:--
"Like a blind spinner in the sun,
I tread my days;
I know that all the threads will run
Appointed ways;
I know each day will bring its task,
And, being blind, no more I ask.

* * * * *

"But listen, listen, day by day,
To hear their tread
Who bear the finished web away,
And cut the thread,
And bring God's message in the sun,
'Thou poor blind spinner, work is done."

After this came two other small books, Bits of Travel and Bits of Talk about
Home Matters. She paid for the plates of the former. Fame did not burst
upon Helen Hunt; it came after years of work, after it had been fully earned.
The road to authorship is a hard one, and only those should attempt it who
have courage and perseverance.

Again her health failed, but not her cheerful spirits. She travelled to
Colorado, and wrote a book in praise of it. Everywhere she made lasting
friends. Her German landlady in Munich thought her the kindest person in
the world. The newsboy, the little urchin on the street with a basket full of
wares, the guides over the mountain passes, all remembered her cheery
voice and helpful words. She used to say, "She is only half mother who
does not see her own child in every child. Oh, if the world could only stop
long enough for one generation of mothers to be made all right, what a
Millennium could be begun in thirty years!" Some one, in her childhood,

called her a "stupid child" before strangers, and she never forgot the sting of
it.

In Colorado, in 1876, eleven years after the death of Major Hunt, she
married Mr. William Sharpless Jackson, a Quaker and a cultured banker.
Her home, at Colorado Springs, became an ideal one, sheltered under the
great Manitou, and looking toward the Garden of the Gods, full of books
and magazines, of dainty rugs and dainty china gathered from many
countries, and richly colored Colorado flowers. Once, when Eastern guests
were invited to luncheon, twenty-three varieties of wildflowers, each
massed in its own color, adorned the home. A friend of hers says: "There is
not an artificial flower in the house, on embroidered table-cover or sofa
cushion or tidy; indeed, Mrs. Jackson holds that the manufacture of silken
poppies and crewel sun-flowers is a 'respectable industry,' intended only to
keep idle hands out of mischief."

Mrs. Jackson loved flowers almost as though they were children. She
writes: "I bore on this June day a sheaf of the white columbine,--one single
sheaf, one single root; but it was almost more than I could carry. In the open
spaces, I carried it on my shoulder; in the thickets, I bore it carefully in my
arms, like a baby.... There is a part of Cheyenne Mountain which I and one
other have come to call 'our garden.' When we drive down from 'our
garden,' there is seldom room for another flower in our carriage. The top
thrown back is filled, the space in front of the driver is filled, and our laps
and baskets are filled with the more delicate blossoms. We look as if we
were on our way to the ceremonies of Decoration Day. So we are. All June
days are decoration days in Colorado Springs, but it is the sacred joy of life
that we decorate,--not the sacred sadness of death." But Mrs. Jackson, with
her pleasant home, could not rest from her work. Two novels came from her
pen, Mercy Philbrick's Choice and Hetty's Strange History. It is probable
also that she helped to write the beautiful and tender Saxe Holm Stories. It
is said that Draxy Miller's Dowry and Esther Wynn's Love Letters were
written by another, while Mrs. Jackson added the lovely poems; and when a
request was made by the publishers for more stories from the same author,
Mrs. Jackson was prevailed upon to write them.

The time had now come for her to do her last and perhaps her best work.
She could not write without a definite purpose, and now the purpose that
settled down upon her heart was to help the defrauded Indians. She believed
they needed education and Christianization rather than extermination. She
left her home and spent three months in the Astor Library of New York,
writing her Century of Dishonor, showing how we have despoiled the
Indians and broken our treaties with them. She wrote to a friend, "I cannot
think of anything else from night to morning and from morning to night."
So untiringly did she work that she made herself ill, and was obliged to go
to Norway, leaving a literary ally to correct the proofs of her book.

At her own expense, she sent a copy to each member of Congress. Its plain
facts were not relished in some quarters, and she began to taste the cup that
all reformers have to drink; but the brave woman never flinched in her duty.
So much was the Government impressed by her earnestness and good
judgment, that she was appointed a Special Commissioner with her friend,
Abbott Kinney, to examine and report on the condition of the Mission
Indians in California.

Could an accomplished, tenderly reared woman go into their adobe villages
and listen to their wrongs? What would the world say of its poet? Mrs.
Jackson did not ask; she had a mission to perform, and the more culture, the
more responsibility. She brought cheer and hope to the red men and their
wives, and they called her "the Queen." She wrote able articles about them
in the Century.

The report made by Mr. Kinney and herself, which she prepared largely,
was clear and convincing. How different all this from her early life! Mrs.
Jackson had become more than poet and novelist; even the leader of an
oppressed people. At once, in the winter of 1883, she began to write her
wonderfully graphic and tender Ramona, and into this, she said, "I put my
heart and soul." The book was immediately reprinted in England, and has
had great popularity. She meant to do for the Indian what Mrs. Stowe did
for the slave, and she lived long enough to see the great work well in
progress.

This true missionary work had greatly deepened the earnestness of the
brilliant woman. Not always tender to other peoples' "hobbies," as she said,
she now had one of her own, into which she was putting her life. Her
horizon, with her great intellectual gifts, had now become as wide as the
universe. Had she lived, how many more great questions she would have
touched.

In June, 1884, falling on the staircase of her Colorado home, she severely
fractured her leg, and was confined to the house for several months. Then
she was taken to Los Angeles, Cal., for the winter. The broken limb mended
rapidly, but malarial fever set in, and she was carried to San Francisco. Her
first remark was, as she entered the house looking out upon the broad and
lovely bay, "I did not imagine it was so pleasant! What a beautiful place to
die in!"

To the last her letters to her friends were full of cheer. "You must not think
because I speak of not getting well that I am sad over it," she wrote. "On the
contrary, I am more and more relieved in my mind, as it seems to grow
more and more sure that I shall die. You see that I am growing old" (she
was but fifty-four), "and I do believe that my work is done. You have never
realized how, for the past five years, my whole soul has been centered on
the Indian question. Ramona was the outcome of those five years. The
Indian cause is on its feet now; powerful friends are at work."

To another she wrote, "I am heartily, honestly, and cheerfully ready to go. In
fact, I am glad to go. My Century of Dishonor and Ramona are the only
things I have done of which I am glad now. The rest is of no moment. They
will live, and they will bear fruit. They already have. The change in public
feeling on the Indian question in the last three years is marvellous; an
Indian Rights Association in every large city in the land."

She had no fear of death. She said, "It is only just passing from one country
to another.... My only regret is that I have not accomplished more work;
especially that it was so late in the day when I began to work in real earnest.
But I do not doubt we shall keep on working.... There isn't so much
difference, I fancy, between this life and the next as we think, nor so much

barrier.... I shall look in upon you in the new rooms some day; but you will
not see me. Good-bye. Yours affectionately forever, H.H." Four days before
her death she wrote to President Cleveland:--

"From my death-bed I send you a message of heart-felt thanks for
what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my
Century of Dishonor. I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is
your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting
this burden of infamy from our country, and righting the wrongs of the
Indian race.

"With respect and gratitude,

"HELEN JACKSON."

That same day she wrote her last touching poem:--
"Father, I scarcely dare to pray,
So clear I see, now it is done,
That I have wasted half my day,
And left my work but just begun;

"So clear I see that things I thought
Were right or harmless were a sin;
So clear I see that I have sought,
Unconscious, selfish aim to win

"So clear I see that I have hurt
The souls I might hare helped to save,
That I have slothful been, inert,
Deaf to the calls Thy leaders gave.

"In outskirts of Thy kingdoms vast,
Father, the humblest spot give me;
Set me the lowliest task Thou hast,
Let me repentant work for Thee!"

That evening, Aug. 8, after saying farewell, she placed her hand in her
husband's, and went to sleep. After four days, mostly unconscious ones, she
wakened in eternity.

On her coffin were laid a few simple clover-blossoms, flowers she loved in
life; and then, near the summit of Cheyenne Mountain, four miles from
Colorado Springs, in a spot of her own choosing, she was buried.
"Do not adorn with costly shrub or tree
Or flower the little grave which shelters me.
Let the wild wind-sown seeds grow up unharmed,
And back and forth all summer, unalarmed,
Let all the tiny, busy creatures creep;
Let the sweet grass its last year's tangles keep;
And when, remembering me, you come some day
And stand there, speak no praise, but only say,
'How she loved us! It was for that she was so dear.'
These are the only words that I shall smile to hear."

Many will stand by that Colorado grave in the years to come. Says a
California friend: "Above the chirp of the balm-cricket in the grass that
hides her grave, I seem to hear sweet songs of welcome from the little ones.
Among other thoughts of her come visions of a child and mother straying in
fields of light. And so I cannot make her dead, who lived so earnestly, who
wrought so unselfishly, and passed so trustfully into the mystery of the
unseen."

All honor to a woman who, with a happy home, was willing to leave it to
make other homes happy; who, having suffered, tried with a sympathetic
heart to forget herself and keep others from suffering; who, being famous,
gladly took time to help unknown authors to win fame; who, having means,
preferred a life of labor to a life of ease.

Mrs. Jackson's work is still going forward. Five editions of her Century of
Dishonor have been printed since her death. Ramona is in its thirtieth
thousand. Zeph, a touching story of frontier life in Colorado, which she
finished in her last illness, has been published. Her sketches of travel have
been gathered into Glimpses of Three Coasts, and a new volume of poems,
Sonnets and Lyrics, has appeared.

Lucretia Mott.

Years ago I attended, at some inconvenience, a large public meeting,
because I heard that Lucretia Mott was to speak. After several addresses, a
slight lady, with white cap and drab Quaker dress, came forward. Though
well in years, her eyes were bright; her smile was winsome, and I thought
her face one of the loveliest I had ever looked upon. The voice was
singularly sweet and clear, and the manner had such naturalness and grace
as a queen might envy. I have forgotten the words, forgotten even the
subject, but the benign presence and gracious smile I shall never forget.

Born among the quiet scenes of Nantucket, Jan. 3, 1793, Lucretia grew to
girlhood with habits of economy, neatness, and helpfulness in the home.
Her father, Thomas Coffin, was a sea-captain of staunch principle; her
mother, a woman of great energy, wit, and good sense. The children's
pleasures were such as a plain country home afforded. When Mrs. Coffin
went to visit her neighbors, she would say to her daughters, "Now after you
have finished knitting twenty bouts, you may go down cellar and pick out
as many as you want of the smallest potatoes,--the very smallest,--and roast
them in the ashes." Then the six little folks gathered about the big fireplace
and enjoyed a frolic.

When Lucretia was twelve years old, the family moved to Boston. At first
all the children attended a private school; but Captain Coffin, fearing this
would make them proud, removed them to a public school, where they
could "mingle with all classes without distinction." Years after Lucretia
said, "I am glad, because it gave me a feeling of sympathy for the patient
and struggling poor, which, but for this experience, I might never have
known."

A year later, she was sent to a Friends' boarding-school at Nine Partners,
N.Y. Both boys and girls attended this school, but were not permitted to
speak to each other unless they were near relatives; if so, they could talk a
little on certain days over a certain corner of the fence, between the
playgrounds! Such grave precautions did not entirely prevent the
acquaintance of the young people; for when a lad was shut up in a closet, on
bread and water, Lucretia and her sister supplied him with bread and butter
under the door. This boy was a cousin of the teacher, James Mott, who was
fond of the quick-witted school-girl, so that it is probable that no harm
came to her from breaking the rules.

At fifteen, Lucretia was appointed an assistant teacher, and she and Mr.
Mott, with a desire to know more of literature, and quite possibly more of
each other, began to study French together. He was tall, with light hair and
blue eyes, and shy in manner; she, petite, with dark hair and eyes, quick in
thought and action, and fond of mirth. When she was eighteen and James
twenty-one, the young teachers were married, and both went to her father's
home in Philadelphia to reside, he assisting in Mr. Coffin's business.

The war of 1812 brought financial failure to many, and young Mott soon
found himself with a wife and infant daughter to support, and no work.
Hoping that he could obtain a situation with an uncle in New York State, he
took his family thither, but came back disappointed. Finally he found work
in a plow store at a salary of six hundred dollars a year.

Captain Coffin meantime had died, leaving his family poor. James could do
so little for them all with his limited salary, that he determined to open a
small store; but the experiment proved a failure. His health began to be

affected by this ill success, when Lucretia, with her brave heart, said, "My
cousin and I will open a school; thee must not get discouraged, James."

The school was opened with four pupils, each paying seven dollars a
quarter. The young wife put so much good cheer and earnestness into her
work, that soon there were forty pupils in the school. Mr. Mott's prospects
now brightened, for he was earning one thousand dollars a year. The young
couple were happy in their hard work, for they loved each other, and love
lightens all care and labor.

But soon a sorrow worse than poverty came. Their only son, Thomas, a
most affectionate child, died, saying with his latest breath, "I love thee,
mother." It was a crushing blow; but it proved a blessing in the end, leading
her thoughts heavenward.

A few months afterwards her voice was heard for the first time in public, in
prayer, in one of the Friends' meetings. The words were simple, earnest,
eloquent. The good Quakers marvelled, and encouraged the "gift." They did
not ask whether man or woman brought the message, so it came from
heaven.

And now, at twenty-five, having resigned her position as teacher, she began
close study of the Bible and theological books. She had four children to
care for, did all her sewing, even cutting and making her own dresses; but
she learned what every one can learn,--to economize time. Her house was
kept scrupulously clean. She says: "I omitted much unnecessary stitching
and ornamental work in the sewing for my family, so that I might have
more time for the improvement of my mind. For novels and light reading I
never had much taste; the ladies' department in the periodicals of the day
had no attraction for me. "She would lay a copy of William Penn's
ponderous volumes open at the foot of her bed, and drawing her chair close
to it, with her baby on her lap, would study the book diligently. A woman of
less energy and less will-power than young Mrs. Mott would have given up
all hope of being a scholar. She read the best books in philosophy and
science. John Stuart Mill and Dean Stanley, though widely different, were
among her favorite authors.

James Mott was now prospering in the cotton business, so that they could
spare time to go in their carriage and speak at the Quaker meetings in the
surrounding country. Lucretia would be so absorbed in thought as not to
notice the beauties of the landscape, which her husband always greatly
enjoyed. Pointing out a fine view to her, she replied, "Yes, it is beautiful,
now that thou points it out, but I should not have noticed it. I have always
taken more interest in human nature." From a child she was deeply
interested for the slave. She had read in her school-books Clarkson's
description of the slave ships, and these left an impression never to be
effaced. When, Dec. 4, 1833, a convention met in Philadelphia for the
purpose of forming the American Anti-Slavery Society, Lucretia Mott was
one of the four women who braved the social obloquy, as friends of the
despised abolitionists. She spoke, and was listened to with attention.
Immediately the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society was formed, and
Mrs. Mott became its president and its inspiration. So unheard of a thing
was an association of women, and so unaccustomed were they to the
methods of organization, that they were obliged to call a colored man to the
chair to assist them.

The years of martyrdom which followed, we at this day can scarcely
realize. Anti-slavery lecturers were tarred and feathered. Mobs in New York
and Philadelphia swarmed the streets, burning houses and breaking church
windows. In the latter city they surrounded the hall of the Abolitionists,
where the women were holding a large convention, and Mrs. Mott was
addressing them. All day long they cursed and threw stones, and as soon as
the women left the building, they burned it to ashes. Then, wrought up to
fury, the mob started for the house of James and Lucretia Mott. Knowing
that they were coming, the calm woman sent her little children away, and
then in the parlor, with a few friends, peacefully awaited a probable death.

In the turbulent throng was a young man who, while he was no friend of the
colored man, could not see Lucretia Mott harmed. With skilful ruse, as they
neared the house, he rushed up another street, shouting at the top of his
voice, "On to Motts!" and the wild crowd blindly followed, wreaking their
vengeance in another quarter.

A year later, in Delaware, where Mrs. Mott was speaking, one of her party,
a defenceless old man, was dragged from the house, and tarred and
feathered. She followed, begging the men to desist, and saying that she was
the real offender, but no violent hands were laid upon her.

At another time, when the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in
New York was broken up by the mob, some of the speakers were roughly
handled. Perceiving that several ladies were timid, Mrs. Mott said to the
gentleman who was accompanying her, "Won't thee look after some of the
others?"

"But who will take care of you?" he said.

With great tact and a sweet smile, she answered, "This man," laying her
hand on the arm of one of the roughest of the mob; "he will see me safe
through."

The astonished man had, like others, a tender heart beneath the roughness,
and with respectful manner took her to a place of safety. The next day,
going into a restaurant, she saw the leader of the mob, and immediately sat
down by him, and began to converse. Her kindness and her sweet voice left
a deep impression. As he went out of the room, he asked at the door, "Who
is that lady?"

"Why, that is Lucretia Mott!"

For a second he was dumbfounded; but he added, "Well, she's a good,
sensible woman."

In 1839 a World's Convention was called at London to debate the slavery
question. Among the delegates chosen were James and Lucretia Mott,
Wendell Phillips and his wife, and others. Mrs. Mott was jubilant at the
thought of the world's interest in this great question, and glad for an
opportunity to cross the ocean and enjoy a little rest, and the pleasure of
meeting friends who had worked in the same cause.

When the party arrived, they were told, to their astonishment, that no
women were to be admitted to the Convention as delegates. They had faced
mobs and ostracism; they had given money and earnest labor, but they were
to be ignored. William Lloyd Garrison, hurt at such injustice, refused to
take part in the Convention, and sat in the gallery with the women.
Although Mrs. Mott did not speak in the assembly, the Dublin Herald said,
"Nobody doubts that she was the lioness of the Convention." She was
entertained at public breakfasts, and at these spoke with the greatest
acceptance to both men and women. The Duchess of Sutherland and Lady
Byron showed her great attention. Carlyle was "much pleased with the
Quaker lady, whose quiet manner had a soothing effect on him," wrote Mrs.
Carlyle to a friend. At Glasgow "she held a delighted audience for nearly
two hours in breathless attention," said the press.

After some months of devoted Christian work, along with sight-seeing, Mr.
and Mrs. Mott started homeward. He had spoken less frequently than his
wife, but always had been listened to with deep interest. Her heart was
moved toward a large number of Irish emigrants in the steerage, and she
desired to hold a religious meeting among them. When asked about it, they
said they would not hear a woman preacher, for women priests were not
allowed in their church. Then she asked that they would come together and
consider whether they would have a meeting. This seemed fair, and they
came. She explained to them that she did not intend to hold a church
service; that, as they were leaving their old homes and seeking new ones in
her country, she wanted to talk with them in such a way as would help them
in the land of strangers. And then, if they would listen,--they were all the
time listening very eagerly,--she would give an outline of what she had
intended to say, if the meeting had been held. At the close, when all had
departed, it dawned upon some of the quicker-witted ones that they "had got
the preachment from the woman preacher, after all."

The steamer arrived at the close of a twenty-nine days' voyage, and, after a
brief rest, Mrs. Mott began again her public work. She spoke before the
legislatures of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. She called on
President Tyler, and he talked with her cordially and freely about the slave.
In Kentucky, says one of the leading papers, "For an hour and a half she

enchained an ordinarily restless audience--many were standing--to a degree
never surpassed here by the most popular orators. She said some things that
were far from palatable, but said them with an air of sincerity that
commanded respect and attention."

Mrs. Mott was deeply interested in other questions besides slavery,--
suffrage for women, total abstinence, and national differences settled by
arbitration instead of war. Years before, when she began to teach school,
and found that while girls paid the same tuition as boys, "when they became
teachers, women received only half as much as men for their services," she
says: "The injustice of this distinction was so apparent, that I early resolved
to claim for myself all that an impartial Creator had bestowed."

In 1848, Mrs. Mott, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and some others, called
the first Woman's Suffrage Convention in this country, at Seneca Falls, N.Y.
There was much ridicule,--we had not learned, forty years ago, to treat with
courtesy those whose opinions are different from our own,--but the sweet
Quaker preacher went serenely forward, as though all the world were on her
side. When she conversed with those who differed, she listened so
courteously to objections, and stated her own views so delicately and
kindly, and often so wittily, that none could help liking her, even though
they did not agree with her. She realized that few can be driven, while many
can be won with gentleness and tact.

In all these years of public speaking, her home was not only a refuge for the
oppressed, but a delightful social centre, where prominent people gathered
from both Europe and America. At the table black and white were treated
with equal courtesy. One young man, a frequent visitor, finding himself
seated at dinner next to a colored man, resolved to keep away from the
house in future; but as he was in love with one of Mrs. Mott's pretty
daughters, he found that his "principles" gave way to his affections. He
renewed his visits, became a son-in-law, and, later, an ardent advocate of
equality for the colored people.

Now the guests at the hospitable home were a mother and seven children,
from England, who, meeting with disappointments, had become reduced to

poverty. Now it was an escaped slave, who had come from Richmond, Va.,
in a dry-goods box, by Adams Express. This poor man, whose wife and
three children had been sold from him, determined to seek his freedom,
even if he died in the effort. Weighing nearly two hundred pounds, he was
encased in a box two feet long, twenty-three inches wide, and three feet
high, in a sitting posture. He was provided with a few crackers, and a
bladder filled with water. With a small gimlet he bored holes in the box to
let in fresh air, and fanned himself with his hat, to keep the air in motion.
The box was covered with canvas, that no one might suspect its contents.
His sufferings were almost unbearable. As the box was tossed from one
place to another, he was badly bruised, and sometimes he rested for miles
on his head and shoulders, when it seemed as though his veins would burst.
Finally he reached the Mott home, and found shelter and comfort.

Their large house was always full. Mr. Mott had given up a prosperous
cotton business, because the cotton was the product of slave labor; but he
had been equally successful in the wool trade, so that the days of privation
had passed by long ago. Two of their six children, with their families, lived
at home, and the harmony was remarked by everybody. Mrs. Mott rose
early, and did much housework herself. She wrote to a friend: "I prepared
mince for forty pies, doing every part myself, even to meat-chopping;
picked over lots of apples, stewed a quantity, chopped some more, and
made apple pudding; all of which kept me on my feet till almost two
o'clock, having to come into the parlor every now and then to receive
guests." As a rule, those women are the best housekeepers whose lives are
varied by some outside interests.

In the broad hall of the house stood two armchairs, which the children
called "beggars' chairs," because they were in constant use for all sorts of
people, "waiting to see the missus." She never refused to see anybody.
When letters came from all over the country, asking for all sorts of favors,
bedding, silver spoons, a silk umbrella, or begging her to invest some
money in the manufacture of an article, warranted "to take the kink out of
the hair of the negro," she would always check the merriment of her family
by saying, "Don't laugh too much; the poor souls meant well."

Mrs. Mott was now sixty-three years of age. For forty years she had been
seen and loved by thousands. Strangers would stop her on the street and say,
"God bless you, Lucretia Mott!" Once, when a slave was being tried for
running away, Mrs. Mott sat near him in the court, her son-in-law, Mr.
Edward Hopper, defending his case. The opposing counsel asked that her
chair might be moved, as her face would influence the jury against him!
Benjamin H. Brewster, afterwards United States Attorney-General, also
counsel for the Southern master, said: "I have heard a great deal of your
mother-in-law, Hopper; but I never saw her before to-day. She is an angel."
Years after, when Mr. Brewster was asked how he dared to change his
political opinions, he replied, "Do you think there is anything I dare not do,
after facing Lucretia Mott in that court-room?"

It seemed best at this time, in 1856, as Mrs. Mott was much worn with care,
to sell the large house in town and move eight miles into the country, to a
quaint, roomy house which they called Roadside. Before they went,
however, at the last family gathering a long poem was read, ending with:--
"Who constantly will ring the bell,
And ask if they will please to tell
Where Mrs. Mott has gone to dwell?
The beggars.

"And who persistently will say,
'We cannot, cannot go away;
Here in the entry let us stay?'
Colored beggars.

"Who never, never, nevermore
Will see the 'lions' at the door
That they've so often seen before?
The neighbors.

"And who will miss, for months at least,
That place of rest for man and beast,
from North, and South, and West, and East?
Everybody."

Much of the shrubbery was cut down at Roadside, that Mrs. Mott might
have the full sunlight. So cheery a nature must have sunshine. Here life
went on quietly and happy. Many papers and books were on her table, and

she read carefully and widely. She loved especially Milton and Cowper.
Arnold's Light of Asia was a great favorite in later years. The papers were
sent to hospitals and infirmaries, that no good reading might be lost. She
liked to read aloud; and if others were busy, she would copy extracts to read
to them when they were at leisure. Who can measure the power of an
educated, intellectual mother in a home?

The golden wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Mott was celebrated in 1861, and a
joyous season it was. James, the prosperous merchant, was proud of his
gifted wife, and aided her in every way possible; while Lucretia loved and
honored the true-hearted husband. Though Mrs. Mott was now seventy, she
did not cease her benevolent work. Her carriage was always full of fruits,
vegetables, and gifts for the poor. In buying goods she traded usually with
the small stores, where things were dearer, but she knew that for many of
the proprietors it was a struggle to make ends meet. A woman so
considerate of others would of course be loved.

Once when riding on the street-cars in Philadelphia, when no black person
was allowed to ride inside, every fifth car being reserved for their use, she
saw a frail-looking and scantily-dressed colored woman, standing on the
platform in the rain. The day was bitter cold, and Mrs. Mott begged the
conductor to allow her to come inside. "The company's orders must be
obeyed," was the reply. Whereupon the slight Quaker lady of seventy
walked out and stood beside the colored woman. It would never do to have
the famous Mrs. Mott seen in the rain on his car; so the conductor, in his
turn, went out and begged her to come in.

"I cannot go in without this woman," said Mrs. Mott quietly. Nonplussed
for a moment, he looked at the kindly face, and said, "Oh, well, bring her in
then!" Soon the "company's orders" were changed in the interests of
humanity, and colored people as well as white enjoyed their civil rights, as
becomes a great nation.

With all this beauty of character, Lucretia Mott had her trials. Somewhat
early in life she and her husband had joined the so-called Unitarian branch
of Quakers, and for this they were persecuted. So deep was the sectarian

feeling, that once, when suffering from acute neuralgia, a physician who
knew her well, when called to attend her, said, "Lucretia, I am so deeply
afflicted by thy rebellious spirit, that I do not feel that I can prescribe for
thee," and he left her to her sufferings. Such lack of toleration reads very
strangely at this day.

In 1868, Mr. Mott and his wife, the one eighty, and the other seventy-five,
went to Brooklyn, N.Y., to visit their grandchildren. He was taken ill of
pneumonia, and expressed a wish to go home, but added, "I suppose I shall
die here, and then I shall be at home; it is just as well." Mrs. Mott watched
with him through the night, and at last, becoming weary, laid her head upon
his pillow and went to sleep. In the morning, the daughter coming in, found
the one resting from weariness, the other resting forever.

At the request of several colored men, who respected their benefactor, Mr.
Mott was borne to his grave by their hands. Thus ended, for this world,
what one who knew them well called "the most perfect wedded life to be
found on earth."

Mrs. Mott said, "James and I loved each other more than ever since we
worked together for a great cause." She carried out the old couplet:--
"And be this thy pride, what but few have done,
To hold fast the love thou hast early won."

After his death, she wrote to a friend, "I do not mourn, but rather remember
my blessings, and the blessing of his long life with me."

For twelve years more she lived and did her various duties. She had seen
the slave freed, and was thankful. The other reforms for which she labored
were progressing. At eighty-five she still spoke in the great meetings. Each
Christmas she carried turkeys, pies, and a gift for each man and woman at
the "Aged Colored Home," in Philadelphia, driving twenty miles, there and
back. Each year she sent a box of candy to each conductor and brakeman on
the North Pennsylvania Railroad, "Because," she said, "they never let me
lift out my bundles, but catch them up so quickly, and they all seem to know
me."

Finally the time came for her to go to meet James. As the end drew near,
she seemed to think that she was conducting her own funeral, and said, as
though addressing an audience, "If you resolve to follow the Lamb
wherever you may be led, you will find all the ways pleasant and the paths
peace. Let me go! Do take me!"

There was a large and almost silent funeral at the house, and at the cemetery
several thousand persons were gathered. When friends were standing by the
open grave, a low voice said, ""Will no one say anything?" and another
responded, "Who can speak? the preacher is dead!"

Memorial services were held in various cities. For such a woman as
Lucretia Mott, with cultured mind, noble heart, and holy purpose, there are
no sex limitations. Her field is the world.

Those who desire to know, more of this gifted woman will find it in a most
interesting volume, Lives of James and Lucretia Mott, written by their
grandaughter, Anna Davis Hallowell, West Medford, Mass.

Mary A. Livermore.

When a nation passes through a great struggle like our Civil War, great
leaders are developed. Had it not been for this, probably Mrs. Livermore,
like many other noble women, would be to-day living quietly in some
pleasant home, doing the common duties of every-day life. She would not
be the famous lecturer, the gifted writer, the leader of the Sanitary
Commission in the West; a brilliant illustration of the work a woman may
do in the world, and still retain the truest womanliness.

She was born in Boston, descended from ancestors who for six generations
had been Welsh preachers, and reared by parents of the strictest Calvinistic
faith. Mr. Rice, her father, was a man of honesty and integrity, while the
mother was a woman of remarkable judgment and common sense.

Mary was an eager scholar, and a great favorite in school, because she took
the part of all the poor children. If a little boy or girl was a cripple, or wore
shabby clothes, or had scanty dinners, or was ridiculed, he or she found an
earnest friend and defender in the courageous girl.

So fond was she of the five children in the home, younger than herself, and
so much did she take upon herself the responsibility of their conversion,
that when but ten years old, unable to sleep, she would rise from her bed
and waken her father and mother that they might pray for the sisters. "It's no
matter about me," she would say; "if they are saved, I can bear anything."

Mature in thought and care-taking beyond her years, she was still fond of
out-door sports and merry times. Sliding on the ice was her especial delight.
One day, after a full hour's fun in the bracing air, she rushed into the house,
the blood tingling in every vein, exclaiming, "It's splendid sliding!" "Yes,"
replied the father, "it's good fun, but wretched for shoes."

All at once the young girl saw how hard it was for her parents to buy shoes,
with their limited means; and from that day to this she never slid upon the
ice.

There were few playthings in the simple home, but her chief pastime was in
holding meetings in her father's woodshed, with the other children. Great
logs were laid out for benches, and split sticks were set upon them for
people. Mary was always the leader, both in praying and preaching, and the
others were good listeners. Mrs. Rice would be so much amused at the
queer scene, that a smile would creep over her face; but Mr. Rice would
look on reverently, and say, "I wish you had been a boy; you could have
been trained for the ministry."

When she was twelve years old she began to be eager to earn something.
She could not bear to see her father work so hard for her. Alas! how often
young women, twice twelve, allow their father's hair to grow white from
overwork, because they think society will look down upon them if they
labor. Is work more a disgrace to a girl than a boy? Not at all. Unfortunate
is the young man who marries a girl who is either afraid or ashamed to
work.

Though not fond of sewing, Mary decided to learn dressmaking, because
this would give her self-support. For three months she worked in a shop,
that she might learn the trade, and then she stayed three months longer and
earned thirty-seven cents a day. As this seemed meagre, she looked about
her for more work. Going to a clothing establishment, she asked for a dozen
red flannel shirts to make. The proprietor might have wondered who the
child was, but he trusted her honest face, and gave her the bundle. She was
to receive six and a quarter cents apiece, and to return them on a certain

day. Working night after night, sometimes till the early morning hours, she
was able to finish only half at the time specified.

On that day a man came to the door and asked, "Does Mary Rice live here?"

The mother had gone to the door, and answered in the affirmative.

"Well, she took a dozen red flannel shirts from my shop to make, and she
hain't returned 'em!"

"It can't be my daughter," said Mrs. Rice.

The man was sure he had the right number, but he looked perplexed. Just
then Mary, who was in the sitting-room, appeared on the scene.

"Yes, mother, I got these shirts of the man."

"You promised to get 'em done, Miss," he said, "and we are in a great
hurry."

"You shall have the shirts to-morrow night," said Mrs. Rice.

After the man left the house, the mother burst into tears, saying, "We are not
so poor as that. My dear child, what is to become of you if you take all the
cares of the world upon your shoulders?"

When the work was done, and the seventy-five cents received, Mary would
take only half of it, because she had earned but half.

A brighter day was dawning for Mary Rice. A little later, longing for an
education, Dr. Neale, their good minister, encouraged and assisted her to go
to the Charlestown Female Seminary. Before the term closed one of the
teachers died, and the bright, earnest pupil was asked to fill the vacancy.
She accepted, reciting out of school to fit herself for her classes, earning
enough by her teaching to pay her way, and taking the four years' course in
two years. Before she was twenty she taught two years on a Virginia

plantation as a governess, and came North with six hundred dollars and a
good supply of clothes. Probably she has never felt so rich since that day.

She was now asked to take charge of the Duxbury High School, where she
became an inspiration to her scholars. Even the dullest learned under her
enthusiasm. She took long walks to keep up her health and spirits, thus
making her body as vigorous as her heart was sympathetic.

It was not to be wondered at that the bright young teacher had many
admirers. Who ever knew an educated, genial girl who was not a favorite
with young men? It is a libel on the sex to think that they prefer ignorant or
idle girls.

Among those who saw the beauty of character and the mental power of
Miss Rice was a young minister, whose church was near her schoolhouse.
The first time she attended his services, he preached from the text, "And
thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins."
Her sister had died, and the family were in sorrow; but this gospel of love,
which he preached with no allusion to eternal punishment, was full of
comfort. What was the minister's surprise to have the young lady ask to take
home the sermon and read it, and afterwards, some of his theological books.
What was the teacher's surprise, a little later, to find that while she was
interested in his sermons and books, he had become interested in her. The
sequel can be guessed easily; she became the wife of Rev. D.P. Livermore
at twenty-three.

He had idolized his mother; very naturally, with deep reverence for woman,
he would make a devoted husband. For fifteen years the intelligent wife
aided him in editing The New Covenant, a religious paper published in
Chicago, in which city they had made their home. Her writings were always
clear, strong, and helpful. Three children had been born into their home, and
life, with its cares and its work, was a very happy one.

But the time came for the quiet life to be entirely changed. In 1861 the
nation found itself plunged into war. The slave question was to be settled
once for all at the point of the bayonet. Like every other true-hearted

woman, Mrs. Livermore had been deeply stirred by passing events. When
Abraham Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand men was eagerly
responded to, she was in Boston, and saw the troops, all unused to
hardships, start for the battle-fields. The streets were crowded with tens of
thousands. Bells rung, bands played, and women smiled and said good-bye,
when their hearts were breaking. After the train moved out of the station,
four women fainted; nature could no longer bear the terrible strain. Mrs.
Livermore helped restore the women to consciousness. She had no sons to
send; but when such partings were seen, and such sorrows were in the
future, she could not rest.

What could women do to help in the dreadful struggle? A meeting of New
York ladies was called, which resulted in the formation of an Aid Society,
pledging loyalty to the Government, and promising assistance to soldiers
and their families. Two gentlemen were sent to Washington to ask what
work could be done, but word came back that there was no place for women
at the front, nor no need for them in the hospitals. Such words were worse
than wasted on American women. Since the day when men and women
together breasted the storms of New England in the Mayflower, and
together planted a new civilization, together they have worked side by side
in all great matters. They were untiring in the Revolutionary War; they
worked faithfully in the dark days of anti-slavery agitation, taking their very
lives in their hands. And now their husbands and sons and brothers had
gone from their homes. They would die on battle-fields, and in lonely
camps untended, and the women simply said, "Some of us must follow our
best-beloved."

The United States Sanitary Commission was soon organized, for working in
hospitals, looking after camps, and providing comforts for the soldiers.
Branch associations were formed in ten large cities. The great Northwestern
Branch was put under the leadership of Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. A.H.
Hoge. Useful things began to pour in from all over the country,--fruits,
clothing, bedding, and all needed comforts for the army. Then Mrs.
Livermore, now a woman of forty, with great executive ability, warm heart,
courage, and perseverance, with a few others, went to Washington to talk
with President Lincoln.

"Can no women go to the front?" they asked.

"No civilian, either man or woman, is permitted by law," said Mr. Lincoln.
But the great heart of the greatest man in America was superior to the law,
and he placed not a straw in their way. He was in favor of anything which
helped the men who fought and bled for their country.

Mrs. Livermore's first broad experience in the war was after the battle of
Fort Donelson. There were no hospitals for the men, and the wounded were
hauled down the hillside in rough-board Tennessee wagons, most of them
dying before they reached St. Louis. Some poor fellows lay with the frozen
earth around them, chopped out after lying in the mud from Saturday
morning until Sunday evening.

One blue-eyed lad of nineteen, with both legs and both arms shattered,
when asked, "How did it happen that you were left so long?" said, "Why,
you see, they couldn't stop to bother with us, because they had to take the
fort. When they took it, we forgot our sufferings, and all over the battle-
field cheers went up from the wounded, and even from the dying."

At the rear of the battle-fields the Sanitary Commission now began to keep
its wagons with hot soup and hot coffee, women, fitly chosen, always
joining in this work, in the midst of danger. After the first repulse at
Vicksburg, there was great sickness and suffering. The Commission sent
Mrs. Hoge, two gentlemen accompanying her, with a boat-load of supplies
for the sick. One emaciated soldier, to whom she gave a little package of
white sugar, with a lemon, some green tea, two herrings, two onions, and
some pepper, said, "Is that all for me?" She bowed assent. She says: "He
covered his pinched face with his thin hands and burst into a low, sobbing
cry. I laid my hand upon his shoulder, and said, 'Why do you weep?' 'God
bless the women!' he sobbed out. 'What should we do but for them? I came
from father's farm, where all knew plenty; I've lain sick these three months;
I've seen no woman's face, nor heard her voice, nor felt her warm hand till
to-day, and it unmans me; but don't think I rue my bargain, for I don't. I've
suffered much and long, but don't let them know at home. Maybe I'll never

have a chance to tell them how much; but I'd go through it all for the old
flag.'"

Shortly after, accompanied by an officer, she went into the rifle-pits. The
heat was stifling, and the minie-balls were whizzing. "Why, madam, where
did you come from? Did you drop from heaven into these rifle-pits? You are
the first lady we have seen here;" and then the voice was choked with tears.

"I have come from your friends at home, and bring messages of love and
honor. I have come to bring you the comforts we owe you, and love to give.
I've come to see if you receive what they send you," she replied.

"Do they think as much of as as that? Why, boys, we can fight another year
on that, can't we?"

"Yes, yes!" they cried, and almost every hand was raised to brush away the
tears.

She made them a kindly talk, shook the hard, honest hands, and said good-
bye. "Madame," said the officer, "promise me that you'll visit my regiment
to-morrow; 'twould be worth a victory to them. You don't know what good a
lady's visit to the army does. These men whom you have seen to-day will
talk of your visit for six months to come. Around the fires, in the rifle-pits,
in the dark night, or on the march, they will repeat your words, describe
your looks, voice, size, and dress; and all agree in one respect,--that you
look like an angel, and exactly like each man's wife or mother. Ah! was
there no work for women to do?

The Sanitary and Christian Commissions expended about fifty million
dollars during the war, and of this, the women raised a generous portion.
Each battle cost the Sanitary Commission about seventy-five thousand
dollars, and the battle of Gettysburg, a half million dollars. Mrs. Livermore
was one of the most efficient helpers in raising this money. She went among
the people, and solicited funds and supplies of every kind.

One night it was arranged that she should speak in Dubuque, Iowa, that the
people of that State might hear directly from their soldiers at the front.

When she arrived, instead of finding a few women as she had expected, a
large church was packed with both men and women, eager to listen. The
governor of the State and other officials were present. She had never spoken
in a mixed assembly. Her conservative training made her shrink from it,
and, unfortunately, made her feel incapable of doing it.

"I cannot speak!" she said to the women who had asked her to come.

Disappointed and disheartened, they finally arranged with a prominent
statesman to jot down the facts from her lips; and then, as best he could, tell
to the audience the experiences of the woman who had been on battle-
fields, amid the wounded and dying. Just as they were about to go upon the
platform, the gentleman said, "Mrs. Livermore, I have heard you say at the
front, that you would give your all for the soldiers,--a foot, a hand, or a
voice. Now is the time to give your voice, if you wish to do good."

She meditated a moment, and then she said, "I will try."

When she arose to speak, the sea of faces before her seemed blurred. She
was talking into blank darkness. She could not even hear her own voice.
But as she went on, and the needs of the soldiers crowded upon her mind,
she forgot all fear, and for two hours held the audience spell-bound. Men
and women wept, and patriotism filled every heart. At eleven o'clock eight
thousand dollars were pledged, and then, at the suggestion of the presiding
officer, they remained until one o'clock to perfect plans for a fair, from
which they cleared sixty thousand dollars. After this, Mrs. Livermore spoke
in hundreds of towns, helping to organize many of the more than twelve
thousand five hundred aid societies formed during eighteen months.

As money became more and more needed, Mrs. Livermore decided to try a
sanitary commission fair in Chicago. The women said, "We will raise
twenty-five thousand dollars," but the men laughed at such an impossibility.
The farmers were visited, and solicited to give vegetables and grain, while
the cities were not forgotten. Fourteen of Chicago's largest halls were hired.
The women had gone into debt ten thousand dollars, and the men of the city
began to think they were crazy. The Board of Trade called upon them and

advised that the fair be given up; the debts should be paid, and the men
would give the twenty-five thousand, when, in their judgment, it was
needed! The women thanked them courteously, but pushed forward in the
work.

It had been arranged that the farmers should come on the opening day, in a
procession, with their gifts of vegetables. Of this plan the newspapers made
great sport, calling it the "potato procession." The day came. The school
children had a holiday, the bells were rung, one hundred guns were fired,
and the whole city gathered to see the "potato procession." Finally it
arrived,--great loads of cabbages, onions, and over four thousand bushels of
potatoes. The wagons each bore a motto, draped in black, with the words,
"We buried a son at Donelson," "Our father lies at Stone River," and other
similar ones. The flags on the horses' heads were bound with black; the
women who rode beside a husband or son, were dressed in deep mourning.
When the procession stopped before Mrs. Livermore's house, the jeers were
over, and the dense crowd wept like children.

Six of the public halls were filled with beautiful things for sale, while eight
were closed so that no other attractions might compete with the fair. Instead
of twenty-five thousand, the women cleared one hundred thousand dollars.

Then Cincinnati followed with a fair, making two hundred and twenty-five
thousand; Boston, three hundred and eighty thousand; New York, one
million; and Philadelphia, two hundred thousand more than New York. The
women had found that there was work enough for them to do.

Mrs. Livermore was finally ordered to make a tour of the hospitals and
military posts on the Mississippi River, and here her aid was invaluable. It
required a remarkable woman to undertake such a work. At one point she
found twenty-three men, sick and wounded, whose regiments had left them,
and who could not be discharged because they had no descriptive lists. She
went at once to General Grant, and said, "General, if you will give me
authority to do so, I will agree to take these twenty-three wounded men
home."

The officials respected the noble woman, and the red tape of army life was
broken for her sake.

When the desolate company arrived in Chicago, on Saturday, the last train
had left which could have taken a Wisconsin soldier home. She took him to
the hotel, had a fire made for him, and called a doctor.

"Pull him through till Monday, Doctor," she said, "and I'll get him home."
Then, to the lad, "You shall have a nurse, and Monday morning I will go
with you to your mother."

"Oh! don't go away," he pleaded; "I never shall see you again."

"Well, then, I'll go home and see my family, and come back in two hours.
The door shall be left open, and I'll put this bell beside you, so that the
chambermaid will come when you ring."

He consented, and Mrs. Livermore came back in two hours. The soldier's
face was turned toward the door, as though waiting for her, but he was dead.
He had gone home, but not to Wisconsin.

After the close of the war, so eager were the people to hear her, that she
entered the lecture field and has for years held the foremost place among
women as a public speaker. She lectures five nights a week, for five
months, travelling twenty-five thousand miles annually. Her fine voice,
womanly, dignified manner, and able thought have brought crowded houses
before her, year after year. She has earned money, and spent it generously
for others. The energy and conscientiousness of little Mary Rice have borne
their legitimate fruit.

Every year touching incidents came up concerning the war days. Once, after
she had spoken at Fabyan's American Institute of Instruction, a military
man, six feet tall, came up to her and said, "Do you remember at Memphis
coming over to the officers' hospital?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Livermore.

While the officers were paid salaries, very often the paymasters could not
find them when ill, and for months they would not have a penny, not even
receiving army rations. Mrs. Livermore found many in great need, and
carried them from the Sanitary Commission blankets, medicine, and food.
Milk was greatly desired, and almost impossible to be obtained. One day
she came into the wards, and said that a certain portion of the sick "could
have two goblets of milk for every meal."

"Do you remember," said the tall man, who was then a major, "that one man
cried bitterly and said, 'I want two glasses of milk,' and that you patted him
on the head, as he lay on his cot? And that the man said, as he thought of
the dear ones at home, whom he might not see again, 'Could you kiss me?'
and the noble woman bent down and kissed him? I am that man, and God
bless you for your kindness."

Mrs. Livermore wears on her third finger a plain gold ring which has a
touching history.

After lecturing recently at Albion, Mich., a woman came up, who had
driven eight miles, to thank her for a letter written for John, her son, as he
was dying in the hospital. The first four lines were dictated by the dying
soldier; then death came, and Mrs. Livermore finished the message. The
faded letter had been kept for twenty years, and copies made of it. "Annie,
my son's wife," said the mother, "never got over John's death. She kept
about and worked, but the life had gone out of her. Eight years ago she died.
One day she said, 'Mother, if you ever find Mrs. Livermore, or hear of her, I
wish you would give her my wedding ring, which has never been off my
finger since John put it there. Ask her to wear it for John's sake and mine,
and tell her this was my dying request.'"

With tears in the eyes of both giver and receiver, Mrs. Livermore held out
her hand, and the mother placed on the finger this memento of two precious
lives.

Mrs. Livermore has spent ten years in the temperance reform. While she has
shown the dreadful results of the liquor traffic, she has been kind both in

word and deed. Some time ago, passing along a Boston street, she saw a
man in the ditch, and a poor woman bending over him.

"Who is he?" she asked of the woman.

"He's my husband, ma'am. He's a good man when he is sober, and earns
four dollars a day in the foundry. I keep a saloon."

Mrs. Livermore called a hack. "Will you carry this man to number ----?"

"No, madam, he's too dirty. I won't soil my carriage."

"Oh!" pleaded the wife, "I'll clean it all up for ye, if ye'll take him," and
pulling off her dress-skirt, she tried to wrap it around her husband. Stepping
to a saloon near by, Mrs. Livermore asked the men to come out and help lift
him. At first they laughed, but were soon made ashamed, when they saw
that a lady was assisting. The drunken man was gotten upon his feet,
wrapped in his wife's clothing, put into the hack, and then Mrs. Livermore
and the wife got in beside him, and he was taken home. The next day the
good Samaritan called, and brought the priest, from whom the man took the
pledge. A changed family was the result.

Her life is filled with thousands of acts of kindness, on the cars, in poor
homes, and in various charitable institutions. She is the author of two or
more books, What shall we do with Our Daughters? and Reminiscences of
the War; but her especial power has been her eloquent words, spoken all
over the country, in pulpits, before colleges, in city and country, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. Like Abraham Lincoln, who said, "I go for all
sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens,-
-by no means excluding women," she has advocated the enfranchisement of
her sex, along with her other work.

Now, past sixty, her active, earnest life, in contact with the people, has kept
her young in heart and in looks.

"A great authority on what constitutes beauty complains that the majority of
women acquire a dull, vacant expression towards middle life, which makes

them positively plain. He attributes it to their neglect of all mental culture,
their lives having settled down to a monotonous routine of house-keeping,
visiting, gossip, and shopping. Their thoughts become monotonous, too, for,
though these things are all good enough in their way, they are powerless to
keep up any mental life or any activity of thought."

Mrs. Livermore has been an inspiration to girls to make the most of
themselves and their opportunities. She has been an ideal of womanhood,
not only to "the boys" on the battle-fields, but to tens of thousands who are
fighting the scarcely less heroic battles of every-day life. May it be many
years before she shall go out forever from her restful, happy home, at
Melrose, Mass.

*****

Mrs. Livermore died at her home, May 23, 1905, at 8 A.M., of bronchitis.
She was in her eighty-fourth year, and had survived her husband six years.
When her funeral services were held, the schools of Melrose closed,
business was suspended, bells were tolled, and flags floated at half-mast.
She was an active member of thirty-seven clubs. The degree of Doctor of
Laws was conferred upon her, in 1896, by Tufts College.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli.

Margaret Fuller, in some respects the most remarkable of American women,
lived a pathetic life and died a tragic death. Without money and without
beauty, she became the idol of an immense circle of friends; men and
women were alike her devotees. It is the old story: that the woman of brain
makes lasting conquests of hearts, while the pretty face holds its sway only
for a month or a year.

Margaret, born in Cambridgeport, Mass., May 23, 1810, was the oldest
child of a scholarly lawyer, Mr. Timothy Fuller, and of a sweet-tempered,
devoted mother. The father, with small means, had one absorbing purpose
in life,--to see that each of his children was finely educated. To do this, and
make ends meet, was a struggle. His daughter said, years after, in writing of
him: "His love for my mother was the green spot on which he stood apart
from the commonplaces of a mere bread-winning existence. She was one of
those fair and flower-like natures, which sometimes spring up even beside
the most dusty highways of life. Of all persons whom I have known, she
had in her most of the angelic,--of that spontaneous love for every living
thing, for man and beast and tree, which restores the Golden Age."

Very fond of his oldest child, Margaret, the father determined that she
should be as well educated as his boys. In those days there were no colleges
for girls, and none where they might enter with their brothers, so that Mr.
Fuller was obliged to teach his daughter after the wearing work of the day.
The bright child began to read Latin at six, but was necessarily kept up late

for the recitation. When a little later she was walking in her sleep, and
dreaming strange dreams, he did not see that he was overtaxing both her
body and brain. When the lessons had been learned, she would go into the
library, and read eagerly. One Sunday afternoon, when she was eight years
old, she took down Shakespeare from the shelves, opened at Romeo and
Juliet, and soon became fascinated with the story.

"What are you reading?" asked her father.

"Shakespeare," was the answer, not lifting her eyes from the page.

"That won't do--that's no book for Sunday; go put it away, and take
another."

Margaret did as she was bidden; but the temptation was too strong, and the
book was soon in her hands again.

"What is that child about, that she don't hear a word we say?" said an aunt.

Seeing what she was reading, the father said, angrily, "Give me the book,
and go directly to bed."

There could have been a wiser and gentler way of control, but he had not
learned that it is better to lead children than to drive them.

When not reading, Margaret enjoyed her mother's little garden of flowers. "I
loved," she says, "to gaze on the roses, the violets, the lilies, the pinks; my
mother's hand had planted them, and they bloomed for me. I kissed them,
and pressed them to my bosom with passionate emotions. An ambition
swelled my heart to be as beautiful, as perfect as they."

Margaret grew to fifteen with an exuberance of life and affection, which the
chilling atmosphere of that New England home somewhat suppressed, and
with an increasing love for books and cultured people. "I rise a little before
five," she writes, "walk an hour, and then practise on the piano till seven,
when we breakfast. Next, I read French--Sismondi's Literature of the South
of Europe--till eight; then two or three lectures in Brown's Philosophy.

About half past nine I go to Mr. Perkins's school, and study Greek till
twelve, when, the school being dismissed, I recite, go home, and practise
again till dinner, at two. Then, when I can, I read two hours in Italian."

And why all this hard work for a girl of fifteen? The "all-powerful motive
of ambition," she says. "I am determined on distinction, which formerly I
thought to win at an easy rate; but now I see that long years of labor must
be given."

She had learned the secret of most prominent lives. The majority in this
world will always be mediocre, because they lack high-minded ambition
and the willingness to work.

Two years after, at seventeen, she writes: "I am studying Madame de Staël,
Epictetus, Milton, Racine, and the Castilian ballads, with great delight.... I
am engrossed in reading the elder Italian poets, beginning with Berni, from
whom I shall proceed to Pulci and Politian." How almost infinitely above
"beaus and dresses" was such intellectual work as this!

It was impossible for such a girl not to influence the mind of every person
she met. At nineteen she became the warm friend of Rev. James Freeman
Clarke, "whose friendship," he says, "was to me a gift of the gods.... With
what eagerness did she seek for knowledge! What fire, what exuberance,
what reach, grasp, overflow of thought, shone in her conversation!... And
what she thus was to me, she was to many others. Inexhaustible in power of
insight, and with a good will 'broad as ether,' she could enter into the needs,
and sympathize with the various excellences, of the greatest variety of
characters. One thing only she demanded of all her friends, that they should
not be satisfied with the common routine of life,--that they should aspire to
something higher, better, holier, than had now attained."

Witty, learned, imaginative, she was conceded to be the best conversationist
in any circle. She possessed the charm that every woman may possess,--
appreciation of others, and interest in their welfare. This sympathy unlocked
every heart to her. She was made the confidante of thousands. All classes
loved her. Now it was a serving girl who told Margaret her troubles and her

cares; now it was a distinguished man of letters. She was always an
inspiration. Men never talked idle, commonplace talk with her; she could
appreciate the best of their minds and hearts, and they gave it. She was fond
of social life, and no party seemed complete without her.

At twenty-two she began to study German, and in three months was reading
with ease Goethe's Faust, Tasso and Iphigenia, Körner, Richter, and
Schiller. She greatly admired Goethe, desiring, like him, "always to have
some engrossing object of pursuit." Besides all this study she was teaching
six little children, to help bear the expenses of the household.

The family at this time moved to Groton, a great privation for Margaret,
who enjoyed and needed the culture of Boston society. But she says, "As,
sad or merry, I must always be learning, I laid down a course of study at the
beginning of the winter." This consisted of the history and geography of
modern Europe, and of America, architecture, and the works of Alfieri,
Goethe, and Schiller. The teaching was continued because her brothers must
be sent to Harvard College, and this required money; not the first nor the
last time that sisters have worked to give brothers an education superior to
their own.

At last the constitution, never robust, broke down, and for nine days
Margaret lay hovering between this world and the next. The tender mother
called her "dear lamb," and watched her constantly, while the stern father,
who never praised his children, lest it might harm them, said, "My dear, I
have been thinking of you in the night, and I cannot remember that you
have any faults. You have defects, of course, as all mortals have, but I do
not know that you have a single fault."

"While Margaret recovered, the father was taken suddenly with cholera, and
died after a two days' illness. He was sadly missed, for at heart he was
devoted to his family. When the estate was settled, there was little left for
each; so for Margaret life would be more laborious than ever. She had
expected to visit Europe with Harriet Martineau, who was just returning
home from a visit to this country, but the father's death crushed this long-

cherished and ardently-prayed-for journey. She must stay at home and work
for others.

Books were read now more eagerly than ever,--Sartor Resartus, Coleridge,
Wordsworth, and Heine. But money must be earned. Ah! if genius could
only develop in ease and prosperity. It rarely has the chance. The tree grows
best when the dirt is oftenest stirred about the roots; perhaps the best in us
comes only from such stirring.

Margaret now obtained a situation as teacher of French and Latin in
Bronson Alcott's school. Here she was appreciated by both master and
pupils. Mr. Alcott said, "I think her the most brilliant talker of the day. She
has a quick and comprehensive wit, a firm command of her thoughts, and a
speech to win the ear of the most cultivated." She taught advanced classes
in German and Italian, besides having several private pupils.

Before this time she had become a valued friend of the Emerson family. Mr.
Emerson says, "Sometimes she stayed a few days, often a week, more
seldom a month, and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to
catch the favorable hour in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this
joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles
with her.... The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory,
and I, who knew her intimately for ten years, never saw her without surprise
at her new powers."

She was passionately fond of music and of art, saying, "I have been very
happy with four hundred and seventy designs of Raphael in my possession
for a week." She loved nature like a friend, paying homage to rocks and
woods and flowers. She said, "I hate not to be beautiful when all around is
so."

After teaching with Mr. Alcott, she became the principal teacher in a school
at Providence, R.I. Here, as ever, she showed great wisdom both with
children and adults. The little folks in the house were allowed to look at the
gifts of many friends in her room, on condition that they would not touch
them. One day a young visitor came, and insisted on taking down a

microscope, and broke it. The child who belonged in the house was well-
nigh heart-broken over the affair, and, though protesting her innocence, was
suspected both of the deed and of falsehood. Miss Fuller took the weeping
child upon her knee, saying, "Now, my dear little girl, tell me all about it;
only remember that you must be careful, for I shall believe every word you
say." Investigation showed that the child thus confided in told the whole
truth.

After two years in Providence she returned to Boston, and in 1839 began a
series of parlor lectures, or "conversations," as they were called. This
seemed a strange thing for a woman, when public speaking by her sex was
almost unknown. These talks were given weekly, from eleven o'clock till
one, to twenty-five or thirty of the most cultivated women of the city. Now
the subject of discussion was Grecian mythology; now it was fine arts,
education, or the relations of woman to the family, the church, society, and
literature. These meetings were continued through five winters,
supplemented by evening "conversations," attended by both men and
women. In these gatherings Margaret was at her best,--brilliant, eloquent,
charming.

During this time a few gifted men, Emerson, Channing, and others, decided
to start a literary and philosophical magazine called the Dial. Probably no
woman in the country would have been chosen as the editor, save Margaret
Fuller. She accepted the position, and for four years managed the journal
ably, writing for it some valuable essays. Some of these were published
later in her book on Literature and Art. Her Woman in the Nineteenth
Century, a learned and vigorous essay on woman's place in the world, first
appeared in part in the Dial. Of this work, she said, in closing it, "After
taking a long walk, early one most exhilarating morning, I sat down to
work, and did not give it the last stroke till near nine in the evening. Then I
felt a delightful glow, as if I had put a good deal of my true life in it, and as
if, should I go away now, the measure of my footprint would be left on the
earth."

Miss Fuller had published, besides these works, two books of translations
from the German, and a sketch of travel called Summer on the Lakes. Her

experience was like that of most authors who are beginning,--some fame,
but no money realized. All this time she was frail in health, overworked,
struggling against odds to make a living for herself and those she loved. But
there were some compensations in this life of toil. One person wrote her,
"What I am I owe in large measure to the stimulus you imparted. You
roused my heart with high hopes; you raised my aims from paltry and vain
pursuits to those which lasted and fed the soul; you inspired me with a great
ambition, and made me see the worth and the meaning of life."

William Hunt, the renowned artist, was looking in a book that lay on the
table of a friend. It was Mrs. Jameson's Italian Painters. In describing
Correggio, she said he was "one of those superior beings of whom there are
so few." Margaret had written on the margin, "And yet all might be such."
Mr. Hunt said, "These words struck out a new strength in me. They revived
resolutions long fallen away, and made me set my face like a flint."

Margaret was now thirty-four. The sister was married, the brothers had
finished their college course, and she was about to accept an offer from the
New York Tribune to become one of its constant contributors, an honor that
few women would have received. Early in December, 1844, Margaret
moved to New York and became a member of Mr. Greeley's family. Her
literary work here was that of, says Mr. Higginson, "the best literary critic
whom America has yet seen."

Sometimes her reviews, like those on the poetry of Longfellow and Lowell,
were censured, but she was impartial and able. Society opened wide its
doors to her, as it had in Boston. Mrs. Greeley became her devoted friend,
and their little son "Pickie," five years old, the idol of Mr. Greeley, her
restful playmate.

A year and a half later an opportunity came for Margaret to go to Europe.
Now, at last, she would see the art-galleries of the old world, and places rich
in history, like Rome. Still there was the trouble of scanty means, and poor
health from overwork. She said, "A noble career is yet before me, if I can be
unimpeded by cares. If our family affairs could now be so arranged that I
might be tolerably tranquil for the next six or eight years, I should go out of

life better satisfied with the page I have turned in it than I shall if I must still
toil on."

After two weeks on the ocean, the party of friends arrived in London, and
Miss Fuller received a cordial welcome. Wordsworth, now seventy-six,
showed her the lovely scenery of Rydal Mount, pointing out as his especial
pride, his avenue of hollyhocks--crimson, straw-color, and white. De
Quincey showed her many courtesies. Dr. Chalmers talked eloquently,
while William and Mary Howitt seemed like old friends. Carlyle invited her
to his home. "To interrupt him," she said, "is a physical impossibility. If you
get a chance to remonstrate for a moment, he raises his voice and bears you
down."

In Paris, Margaret attended the Academy lectures, saw much of George
Sand, waded through melting snow at Avignon to see Laura's tomb, and at
last was in Italy, the country she had longed to see. Here Mrs. Jameson,
Powers, and Greenough, and the Brownings and Storys, were her warm
friends. Here she settled down to systematic work, trying to keep her
expenses for six months within four hundred dollars. Still, when most
cramped for means herself, she was always generous. Once, when living on
a mere pittance, she loaned fifty dollars to a needy artist. In New York she
gave an impecunious author five hundred dollars to publish his book, and,
of course, never received a dollar in return. Yet the race for life was wearing
her out. So tired was she that she said, "I should like to go to sleep, and be
born again into a state where my young life should not be prematurely
taxed."

Meantime the struggle for Italian unity was coming to its climax. Mazzini
and his followers were eager for a republic. Pius IX. had given promises to
the Liberal party, but afterwards abandoned it, and fled to Gaeta. Then
Mazzini turned for help to the President of the French Republic, Louis
Napoleon, who, in his heart, had no love for republics, but sent an army to
reinstate the Pope. Rome, when she found herself betrayed, fought like a
tiger. Men issued from the workshops with their tools for weapons, while
women from the housetops urged them on. One night over one hundred and
fifty bombs were thrown into the heart of the city.

Margaret was the friend of Mazzini, and enthusiastic for Roman liberty. All
those dreadful months she ministered to the wounded and dying in the
hospitals, and was their "saint," as they called her.

But there was another reason why Margaret Fuller loved Italy.

Soon after her arrival in Rome, as she was attending vespers at St. Peter's
with a party of friends, she became separated from them. Failing to find
them, seeing her anxious face, a young Italian came up to her, and politely
offered to assist her. Unable to regain her friends, Angelo Ossoli walked
with her to her home, though he could speak no English, and she almost no
Italian. She learned afterward that he was of a noble and refined family; that
his brothers were in the Papal army, and that he was highly respected.

After this he saw Margaret once or twice, when she left Rome for some
months. On her return, he renewed the acquaintance, shy and quiet though
he was, for her influence seemed great over him. His father, the Marquis
Ossoli, had just died, and Margaret, with her large heart, sympathized with
him, as she alone knew how to sympathize. He joined the Liberals, thus
separating himself from his family, and was made a captain of the Civic
Guard.

Finally he confessed to Margaret that he loved her, and that he "must marry
her or be miserable." She refused to listen to him as a lover, said he must
marry a younger woman,--she was thirty-seven, and he but thirty,--but she
would be his friend. For weeks he was dejected and unhappy. She debated
the matter with her own heart. Should she, who had had many admirers,
now marry a man her junior, and not of surpassing intellect, like her own? If
she married him, it must be kept a secret till his father's estate was settled,
for marriage with a Protestant would spoil all prospect of an equitable
division.

Love conquered, and she married the young Marquis Ossoli in December,
1847. He gave to Margaret the kind of love which lasts after marriage,
veneration of her ability and her goodness. "Such tender, unselfish love,"
writes Mrs. Story, "I have rarely before seen; it made green her days, and

gave her an expression of peace and serenity which before was a stranger to
her. When she was ill, he nursed and watched over her with the tenderness
of a woman. No service was too trivial, no sacrifice too great for him. 'How
sweet it is to do little things for you,' he would say."

To her mother, Margaret wrote, though she did not tell her secret, "I have
not been so happy since I was a child, as during the last six weeks."

But days of anxiety soon came, with all the horrors of war. Ossoli was
constantly exposed to death, in that dreadful siege of Rome. Then Rome
fell, and with it the hopes of Ossoli and his wife. There would be neither
fortune nor home for a Liberal now--only exile. Very sadly Margaret said
goodbye to the soldiers in the hospitals, brave fellows whom she honored,
who in the midst of death itself, would cry "Viva l' Italia!"

But before leaving Rome, a day's journey must be made to Rieta, at the foot
of the Umbrian Apennines. And for what? The most precious thing of
Margaret's life was there,--her baby. The fair child, with blue eyes and light
hair like her own, had already been named by the people in the house,
Angelino, from his beauty. She had always been fond of children.
Emerson's Waldo, for whom Threnody was written was an especial favorite;
then "Pickie," Mr. Greeley's beautiful boy, and now a new joy had come
into her heart, a child of her own. She wrote to her mother: "In him I find
satisfaction, for the first time, to the deep wants of my heart. Nothing but a
child can take the worst bitterness out of life, and break the spell of
loneliness. I shall not be alone in other worlds, whenever Eternity may call
me.... I wake in the night,--I look at him. He is so beautiful and good, I
could die for him!"

When Ossoli and Margaret reached Rieta, what was their horror to find
their child worn to a skeleton, half starved through the falsity of a nurse.
For four weeks the distressed parents coaxed him back to life, till the sweet
beauty of the rounded face came again, and then they carried him to
Florence, where, despite poverty and exile, they were happy.

"In the morning," she says, "as soon as dressed, he signs to come into our
room; then draws our curtain with his little dimpled hand, kisses me rather
violently, and pats my face.... I feel so refreshed by his young life, and
Ossoli diffuses such a power and sweetness over every day, that I cannot
endure to think yet of our future.... It is very sad we have no money, we
could be so quietly happy a while. I rejoice in all Ossoli did; but the results,
in this our earthly state, are disastrous, especially as my strength is now so
impaired. This much I hope--in life or death, to be no more separated from
Angelino."

Margaret's friends now urged her return to America. She had nearly finished
a history of Rome in this trying time, 1848, and could better attend to its
publication in this country. Ossoli, though coming to a land of strangers,
could find something to help, support the family.

To save expense, they started from Leghorn, May 17, 1850, in the
Elizabeth, a sailing vessel, though Margaret dreaded the two months'
voyage, and had premonitions of disaster. She wrote: "I have a vague
expectation of some crisis,--I know not what. But it has long seemed that, in
the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, when I
should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and
commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as
the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn.... I
shall embark, praying fervently that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at
sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that
Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief."

For a few days all went well on shipboard; and then the noble Captain
Hasty died of small-pox, and was buried at sea. Angelino took this dread
disease, and for a time his life was despaired of, but he finally recovered,
and became a great pet with the sailors. Margaret was putting the last
touches to her book. Ossoli and young Sumner, brother of Charles, gave
each other lessons in Italian and English, and thus the weeks went by.

On Thursday, July 18, after two months, the Elizabeth stood off the Jersey
coast, between Cape May and Barnegat. Trunks were packed, good nights

were spoken, and all were happy, for they would be in New York on the
morrow. At nine that night a gale arose; at midnight it was a hurricane; at
four o'clock, Friday morning, the ship struck Fire Island beach. The
passengers sprung from their berths. "We must die!" said Sumner to Mrs.
Hasty. "Let us die calmly, then!" was the response of the widow of the
captain.

At first, as the billows swept over the vessel, Angelino, wet and afraid,
began to cry; but his mother held him closely in her arms and sang him to
sleep. Noble courage on a sinking ship! The Italian girl who had come with
them was in terror; but after Ossoli prayed with her, she became calm. For
hours they waited anxiously for help from the shore. They could see the
life-boat, and the people collecting the spoils which had floated thither from
the ship, but no relief came. One sailor and another sprang into the waves
and saved themselves. Then Sumner jumped overboard, but sank.

One of the sailors suggested that if each passenger sit on a plank, holding
on by ropes, they would attempt to push him or her to land. Mrs. Hasty was
the first to venture, and after being twice washed off, half-drowned, reached
the shore. Then Margaret was urged, but she hesitated, unless all three could
be saved. Every moment the danger increased. The crew were finally
ordered "to save themselves," but four remained with the passengers. It was
useless to look longer to the people on shore for help, though it was now
past three o'clock,--twelve hours since the vessel struck.

Margaret had finally been induced to try the plank. The steward had taken
Angelino in his arms, promising to save him or die with him, when a strong
sea swept the forecastle, and all went down together. Ossoli caught the
rigging for a moment, but Margaret sank at once. When last seen, she was
seated at the foot of the foremast, still clad in her white nightdress, with her
hair fallen loose upon her shoulders. Angelino and the steward were washed
upon the beach twenty minutes later, both dead, though warm. Margaret's
prayer was answered,--that they "might go together, and that the anguish
might be brief."

The pretty boy of two years was dressed in a child's frock taken from his
mother's trunk, which had come to shore, laid in a seaman's chest, and
buried in the sand, while the sailors, who loved him, stood around, weeping.
His body was finally removed to Mt. Auburn, and buried in the family lot.
The bodies of Ossoli and Margaret were never recovered. The only papers
of value which came to shore were their love letters, now deeply prized.
The book ready for publication was never found.

When those on shore were asked why they did not launch the life-boat, they
replied, "Oh! if we had known there were any such persons of importance
on board, we should have tried to do our best!"

Thus, at forty, died one of the most gifted women in America, when her
work seemed just begun. To us, who see how the world needed her, her
death is a mystery; to Him who "worketh all things after the counsel of His
own will" there is no mystery. She filled her life with charities and her mind
with knowledge, and such are ready for the progress of Eternity.

Maria Mitchell.

In the quiet, picturesque island of Nantucket, in a simple home, lived
William and Lydia Mitchell with their family of ten children. William had
been a school-teacher, beginning when he was eighteen years of age, and
receiving two dollars a week in winter, while in summer he kept soul and
body together by working on a small farm, and fishing.

In this impecunious condition he had fallen in love with and married Lydia
Coleman, a true-hearted Quaker girl, a descendant of Benjamin Franklin,
one singularly fitted to help him make his way in life. She was quick,
intelligent, and attractive in her usual dress of white, and was the clerk of
the Friends' meeting where he attended. She was enthusiastic in reading,
becoming librarian successively of two circulating libraries, till she had
read every book upon the shelves, and then in the evenings repeating what
she had read to her associates, her young lover among them.

When they were married, they had nothing but warm hearts and willing
hands to work together. After a time William joined his father in converting
a ship-load of whale oil into soap, and then a little money was made; but at
the end of seven years he went back to school-teaching because he loved
the work. At first he had charge of a fine grammar school established at
Nantucket, and later, of a school of his own.

Into this school came his third child, Maria, shy and retiring, with all her
mother's love of reading. Faithful at home, with, as she says, "an endless
washing of dishes," not to be wondered at where there were ten little folks,
she was not less faithful at school. The teacher could not help seeing that
his little daughter had a mind which would well repay all the time he could
spend upon it.

While he was a good school-teacher, he was an equally good student of
nature, born with a love of the heavens above him. When eight years old,
his father called him to the door to look at the planet Saturn, and from that
time the boy calculated his age from the position of the planet, year by year.
Always striving to improve himself, when he became a man, he built a
small observatory upon his own land, that he might study the stars. He was
thus enabled to earn one hundred dollars a year in the work of the United

States Coast Survey. Teaching at two dollars a week, and fishing, could not
always cramp a man of such aspiring mind.

Brought up beside the sea, he was as broad as the sea in his thought and true
nobility of character. He could see no reason why his daughters should not
be just as well educated as his sons. He therefore taught Maria the same as
his boys, giving her especial drill in navigation. Perhaps it is not strange
that after such teaching, his daughter could have no taste for making
worsted work or Kensington stitches. She often says to this day, "A woman
might be learning seven languages while she is learning fancy work," and
there is little doubt that the seven languages would make her seven times
more valuable as a wife and mother. If teaching navigation to girls would
give us a thousand Maria Mitchells in this country, by all means let it be
taught.

Maria left the public school at sixteen, and for a year attended a private
school; then, loving mathematics, and being deeply interested in her father's
studies, she became at seventeen his helper in the work of the Coast Survey.
This astronomical labor brought Professors Agassiz, Bache, and other noted
men to the quiet Mitchell home, and thus the girl heard the stimulating
conversation of superior minds.

But the family needed more money. Though Mr. Mitchell wrote articles for
Silliman's Journal, and delivered an able course of lectures before a Boston
society of which Daniel Webster was president, scientific study did not put
many dollars in a man's pocket. An elder sister was earning three hundred
dollars yearly by teaching, and Maria felt that she too must help more
largely to share the family burdens. She was offered the position of librarian
at the Nantucket library, with a salary of sixty dollars the first year, and
seventy-five the second. While a dollar and twenty cents a week seemed
very little, there would be much time for study, for the small island did not
afford a continuous stream of readers. She accepted the position, and for
twenty years, till youth had been lost in middle life, Maria Mitchell worked
for one hundred dollars a year, studying on, that she might do her noble
work in the world.

Did not she who loved nature, long for the open air and the blue sky, and
for some days of leisure which so many girls thoughtlessly waste? Yes,
doubtless. However, the laws of life are as rigid as mathematics. A person
cannot idle away the hours and come to prominence. No great singer, no
great artist, no great scientist, comes to honor without continuous labor.
Society devotees are heard of only for a day or a year, while those who
develop minds and ennoble hearts have lasting remembrance.

Miss Mitchell says, "I was born of only ordinary capacity, but of
extraordinary persistency," and herein is the secret of a great life. She did
not dabble in French or music or painting and give it up; she went steadily
on to success. Did she neglect home duties? Never. She knit stockings a
yard long for her aged father till his death, usually studying while she knit.
To those who learn to be industrious early in life, idleness is never
enjoyable.

There was another secret of Miss Mitchell's success. She read good books
early in life. She says: "We always had books, and were bookish people.
There was a public library in Nantucket before I was born. It was not a free
library, but we always paid the subscription of one dollar per annum, and
always read and studied from it. I remember among its volumes Hannah
More's books and Rollin's Ancient History. I remember too that Charles
Folger, the present Secretary of the Treasury, and I had both read this latter
work through before we were ten years old, though neither of us spoke of it
to the other until a later period."

All this study had made Miss Mitchell a superior woman. It was not
strange, therefore, that fame should come to her. One autumn night,
October, 1847, she was gazing through the telescope, as usual, when, lo!
she was startled to perceive an unknown comet. She at once told her father,
who thus wrote to Professor William C. Bond, director of the Observatory
at Cambridge: --

MY DEAR FRIEND,--I write now merely to say that Maria
discovered a telescopic comet at half-past ten on the evening of the
first instant, at that hour nearly above Polaris five degrees. Last

evening it had advanced westerly; this evening still further, and
nearing the pole. It does not bear illumination. Maria has obtained its
right ascension and declination, and will not suffer me to announce it.
Pray tell me whether it is one of Georgi's, and whether it has been
seen by anybody. Maria supposes it may be an old story. If quite
convenient, just drop a line to her; it will oblige me much. I expect to
leave home in a day or two, and shall be in Boston next week, and I
would like to have her hear from you before I can meet you. I hope it
will not give thee much trouble amidst thy close engagements. Our
regards are to all of you most truly.

WILLIAM MITCHELL.

The answer showed that Miss Mitchell had indeed made a new discovery.
Frederick VI., King of Denmark, had, sixteen years before, offered a gold
medal of the value of twenty ducats to whoever should discover a telescopic
comet. That no mistake might be made as to the real discoverer, the
condition was made that word be sent at once to the Astronomer Royal of
England. This the Mitchells had not done, on account of their isolated
position. Hon. Edward Everett, then President of Harvard College, wrote to
the American Minister at the Danish Court, who in turn presented the
evidence to the King. "It would gratify me," said Mr. Mitchell, "that this
generous monarch should know that there is a love of science even in this,
to him, remote corner of the earth."

The medal was at last awarded, and the woman astronomer of Nantucket
found herself in the scientific journals and in the press as the discoverer of
"Miss Mitchell's Comet." Another had been added to the list of Mary
Somervilles and Caroline Herschels. Perhaps there was additional zest now
in the mathematical work in the Coast Survey. She also assisted in
compiling the American Nautical Almanac, and wrote for the scientific
periodicals. Did she break down from her unusual brain work? Oh, no!
Probably astronomical work was not nearly so hard as her mother's,--the
care of a house and ten children!

For ten years more Miss Mitchell worked in the library, and in studying the
heavens. But she had longed to see the observatories of Europe, and the
great minds outside their quiet island. Therefore, in 1857, she visited
England, and was at once welcomed to the most learned circles. Brains
always find open doors. Had she been rich or beautiful simply, Sir John
Herschel, and Lady Herschell as well, would not have reached out both
hands, and said, "You are always welcome at this house," and given her
some of his own calculations? and some of his Aunt Caroline's writing. Had
she been rich or handsome simply, Alexander Von Humboldt would not
have taken her to his home, and, seating himself beside her on the sofa,
talked, as she says, "on all manner of subjects, and on all varieties of
people. He spoke of Kansas, India, China, observatories; of Bache, Maury,
Gould, Ticknor, Buchanan, Jefferson, Hamilton, Brunow, Peters, Encke,
Airy, Leverrier, Mrs. Somerville, and a host of others."

What, if he had said these things to some women who go abroad! It is safe
for women who travel to read widely, for ignorance is quickly detected.
Miss Mitchell said of Humboldt: "He is handsome--his hair is thin and
white, his eyes very blue. He is a little deaf, and so is Mrs. Somerville. He
asked me what instruments I had, and what I was doing; and when I told
him that I was interested in the variable stars, he said I must go to Bonn and
see Agelander."

There was no end of courtesies to the scholarly woman. Professor Adams,
of Cambridge, who, with his charming wife, years afterward helped to
make our own visit to the University a delight, showed her the spot on
which he made his computations for Neptune, which he discovered at the
same time as Leverrier. Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal of England,
wrote to Leverrier in Paris to announce her coming. When they met, she
said, "His English was worse than my French."

Later she visited Florence, where she met, several times, Mrs. Somerville,
who, she says, "talks with all the readiness and clearness of a man," and is
still "very gentle and womanly, without the least pretence or the least
coldness." She gave Miss Mitchell two of her books, and desired a
photographed star sent to Florence. "She had never heard of its being done,

and saw at once the importance of such a step." She said with her Scotch
accent, "Miss Mitchell, ye have done yeself great credit."

In Rome she saw much of the Hawthornes, of Miss Bremer, who was
visiting there, and of the artists. From here she went to Venice, Vienna, and
Berlin, where she met Encke, the astronomer, who took her to see the
wedding presents of the Princess Royal.

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in an admirable sketch of Miss Mitchell, tells how
the practical woman, with her love of republican institutions, was
impressed. "The presents were in two rooms," says Miss Mitchell, "ticketed
and numbered, and a catalogue of them sold. All the manufacturing
companies availed themselves of the opportunity to advertise their
commodities, I suppose, as she had presents of all kinds. What she will do
with sixty albums I can't see, but I can understand the use of two clothes-
lines, because she can lend one to her mother, who must have a large
Monday's wash!"

After a year, Miss Mitchell returned to her simple Nantucket home, as
devoted to her parents and her scientific work as ever. Two years afterward,
in 1860, her good mother died, and a year later, desiring to be near Boston,
the family removed to Lynn. Here Miss Mitchell purchased a small house
for sixteen hundred and fifty dollars. From her yearly salary of one hundred
dollars, and what she could earn in her government work, she had saved
enough to buy a home for her father! The rule is that the fathers wear
themselves out for daughters; the rule was reversed in this case.

Miss Mitchell now earned five hundred dollars yearly for her government
computations, while her father received a pension of three hundred more for
his efficient services. Five years thus passed quietly and comfortably.

Meanwhile another life was carrying out its cherished plan, and Miss
Mitchell, unknowingly, was to have an important part in it. Soon after the
Revolutionary War there came to this country an English wool-grower and
his family, and settled on a little farm near the Hudson River. The mother, a
hard-working and intelligent woman, was eager in her help toward earning

a living, and would drive the farm-wagon to market, with butter and eggs,
and fowls, while her seven-year-old boy sat beside her. To increase the
income some English ale was brewed. The lad grew up with an aversion to
making beer, and when fourteen, his father insisting that he should enter the
business, his mother helped him to run away. Tying all his worldly
possessions, a shirt and pair of stockings, in a cotton handkerchief, the
mother and her boy walked eight miles below Poughkeepsie, when, giving
him all the money she had, seventy-five cents, she kissed him, and with
tears in her eyes saw him cross the ferry and land safely on the other side.
He trudged on till a place was found in a country store, and here, for five
years, he worked honestly and industriously, coming home to his now
reconciled father with one hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket.

Changes had taken place. The father's brewery had burned, the oldest son
had been killed in attempting to save something from the wreck, all were
poorer than ever, and there seemed nothing before the boy of nineteen but
to help support the parents, his two unmarried sisters, and two younger
brothers. Whether he had the old dislike for the ale business or not, he saw
therein a means of support, and adopted it. The world had not then thought
so much about the misery which intoxicants cause, and had not learned that
we are better off without stimulants than with them.

Every day the young man worked in his brewery, and in the evening till
midnight tended a small oyster house, which he had opened. Two years
later, an Englishman who had seen Matthew Vassar's untiring industry and
honesty, offered to furnish all the capital which he needed. The long, hard
road of poverty had opened at last into a field of plenty. Henceforward,
while there was to be work and economy, there was to be continued
prosperity, and finally, great wealth.

Realizing his lack of early education, he began to improve himself by
reading science, art, history, poetry, and the Bible. He travelled in Europe,
and being a close observer, was a constant learner.

One day, standing by the great London hospital, built by Thomas Guy, a
relative, and endowed by him with over a million dollars, Mr. Vassar read

these words on the pedestal of the bronze statue:--

SOLE FOUNDER OF THE HOSPITAL.
IN HIS LIFETIME.

The last three words left a deep impression on his mind. He had no
children. He desired to leave his money where it would be of permanent
value to the world. He debated many plans in his own mind. It is said that
his niece, a hard-working teacher, Lydia Booth, finally influenced him to
his grand decision.

There was no real college for women in the land. He talked the matter over
with his friends, but they were full of discouragements. "Women will never
desire college training," said some. "They will be ruined in health, if they
attempt it," said others. "Science is not needed by women; classical
education is not needed; they must have something appropriate to their
sphere," was constantly reiterated. Some wise heads thought they knew just
what that education should be, and just what were the limits of woman's
sphere; but Matthew Vassar had his own thoughts.

Calling together, Feb. 26, 1861, some twenty or thirty of the men in the
State most conversant with educational matters, the white-haired man, now
nearly seventy, laid his hand upon a round tin box, labelled "Vassar College
Papers," containing four hundred thousand dollars in bonds and securities,
and said: "It has long been my desire, after suitably providing for those of
my kindred who have claims upon me, to make such a disposition of my
means as should best honor God and benefit my fellow-men. At different
periods I have regarded various plans with favor; but these have all been
dismissed one after another, until the subject of erecting and endowing a
college for the education of young women was presented for my
consideration. The novelty, grandeur, and benignity of the idea arrested my
attention.

"It occurred to me that woman, having received from the Creator the same
intellectual constitution as man, has the same right as man to intellectual

culture and development.

"I considered that the mothers of a country mould its citizens, determine its
institutions, and shape its destiny.

"It has also seemed to me that if woman was properly educated, some new
avenues of useful and honorable employment, in entire harmony with the
gentleness and modesty of her sex, might be opened to her.

"It further appeared, there is not in our country, there is not in the world, so
far as known, a single fully endowed institution for the education of
women.... I have come to the conclusion that the establishment and
endowment of a COLLEGE FOR THE EDUCATION OF YOUNG
WOMEN is a work which will satisfy my highest aspirations, and will be,
under God, a rich blessing to this city and State, to our country and the
world.

"It is my hope to be the instrument in the hands of Providence, of founding
and perpetuating an institution which shall accomplish for young women
what our colleges are accomplishing for young men."

For four years Matthew Vassar watched the great buildings take form and
shape in the midst of two hundred acres of lake and river and green sward,
near Poughkeepsie; the main building, five hundred feet long, two hundred
broad, and five stories high; the museum of natural history, with school of
art and library; the great observatory, three stories high, furnished with the
then third largest telescope in the country.

In 1865 Vassar College was opened, and three hundred and fifty students
came pouring in from all parts of the land. Girls, after all, did desire an
education equal to that of young men. Matthew Vassar was right. His joy
seemed complete. He visited the college daily, and always received the
heartiest welcome. Each year his birthday was celebrated as "Founder's
Day." On one of these occasions he said: "This is almost more happiness
than I can bear. This one day more than repays me for all I have done." An
able and noble man, John Howard Raymond, was chosen president.

Mr. Vassar lived but three years after his beloved institution was opened.
June 23, 1868, the day before commencement, he had called the members
of the Board around him to listen to his customary address. Suddenly, when
he had nearly finished, his voice ceased, the paper dropped from his hand,
and--he was dead! His last gifts amounted to over five hundred thousand
dollars, making in all $989,122.00 for the college. The poor lad wrought as
he had hoped, a blessing "to the country and the world." His nephews,
Matthew Vassar, Jr., and John Guy Vassar, have given over one hundred and
forty thousand dollars.

After the observatory was completed, there was but one wish as to who
should occupy it; of course, the person desired was Maria Mitchell. She
hesitated to accept the position. Her father was seventy and needed her care,
but he said, "Go, and I will go with you." So she left her Lynn home for the
arduous position of a teacher. For four years Mr. Mitchell lived to enjoy the
enthusiastic work of his gifted daughter. He said, "Among the teachers and
pupils I have made acquaintances that a prince might covet."

Miss Mitchell makes the observatory her home. Here are her books, her
pictures, her great astronomical clock, and a bust of Mrs. Somerville, the
gift of Frances Power Cobbe. Here for twenty years she has helped to make
Vassar College known and honored both at home and abroad. Hundreds
have been drawn thither by her name and fame. A friend of mine who went,
intending to stay two years, remained five, for her admiration of and
enjoyment in Miss Mitchell. She says: "She is one of the few genuine
persons I have ever known. There is not one particle of deceit about her. For
girls who accomplish something, she has great respect; for idlers, none. She
has no sentimentality, but much wit and common sense. No one can be long
under her teaching without learning dignity of manner and self-reliance."

She dresses simply, in black or gray, somewhat after the fashion of her
Quaker ancestors. Once when urging economy upon the girls, she said, "All
the clothing I have on cost but seventeen dollars, and four suits would last
each of you a year." There was a quiet smile, but no audible expression of a
purpose to adopt Miss Mitchell's style of dress.

The pupils greatly honor and love the undemonstrative woman, who, they
well know, would make any sacrifices for their well-being. Each week the
informal gatherings at her rooms, where various useful topics are discussed,
are eagerly looked forward to. Chief of all, Miss Mitchell's own bright and
sensible talk is enjoyed. Her "dome parties," held yearly in June, under the
great dome of the observatory, with pupils coming back from all over the
country, original poems read and songs sung, are among the joys of college
life.

All these years the astronomer's fame has steadily increased. In 1868, in the
great meteoric shower, she and her pupils recorded the paths of four
thousand meteors, and gave valuable data of their height above the earth. In
the summer of 1869 she joined the astronomers who went to Burlington,
Iowa, to observe the total eclipse of the sun, Aug. 7. Her observations on
the transit of Venus were also valuable. She has written much on the
Satellites of Saturn, and has prepared a work on the Satellites of Jupiter.

In 1873 she again visited Europe, spending some time with the family of
the Russian astronomer, Professor Struve, at the Imperial Observatory at
Pultowa.

She is an honor to her sex, a striking example of what a quiet country girl
can accomplish without money or fortuitous circumstances.

*****

She resigned her position at Vassar in 1888. Miss Mitchell died on the
morning of June 28, 1889, at Lynn, Mass., at the age of seventy-one, and
was buried at Nantucket on Sunday afternoon, June 30.

Louisa M. Alcott.

A dozen of us sat about the dinner-table at the Hotel Bellevue, Boston. One
was the gifted wife of a gifted clergyman; one had written two or three
novels; one was a journalist; one was on the eve of a long journey abroad;
and one, whom we were all glad to honor, was the brilliant author of Little
Women. She had a womanly face, bright, gray eyes, that looked full of
merriment, and would not see the hard side of life, and an air of common
sense that made all defer to her judgment. She told witty stories of the many
who wrote her for advice or favors, and good-naturedly gave bits of her
own personal experience. Nearly twenty years before, I had seen her, just
after her Hospital Sketches were published, over which I, and thousands of
others, had shed tears. Though but thirty years old then, Miss Alcott looked
frail and tired. That was the day of her struggle with life. Now, at fifty, she
looked happy and comfortable. The desire of her heart had been realized,--
to do good to tens of thousands, and earn enough money to care for those
whom she loved.

Louisa Alcott's life, like that of so many famous women, has been full of
obstacles. She was born in Germantown, Pa., Nov. 29, 1832, in the home of
an extremely lovely mother and cultivated father, Amos Bronson Alcott.
Beginning life poor, his desire for knowledge led him to obtain an
education and become a teacher. In 1830 he married Miss May, a
descendant of the well-known Sewells and Quincys, of Boston. Louise
Chandler Moulton says, in her excellent sketch of Miss Alcott, "I have
heard that the May family were strongly opposed to the union of their

beautiful daughter with the penniless teacher and philosopher;" but he made
a devoted husband, though poverty was long their guest.

For eleven years, mostly in Boston, he was the earnest and successful
teacher. Margaret Fuller was one of his assistants. Everybody respected his
purity of life and his scholarship. His kindness of heart made him opposed
to corporal punishment, and in favor of self-government. The world had not
come then to his high ideal, but has been creeping toward it ever since, until
whipping, both in schools and homes, is fortunately becoming one of the
lost arts.

He believed in making studies interesting to pupils; not the dull, old-
fashioned method of learning by rote, whereby, when a hymn was taught,
such as, "A Charge to keep I have," the children went home to repeat to
their astonished mothers, "Eight yards to keep I have," having learned by
ear, with no knowledge of the meaning of the words. He had friendly talks
with his pupils on all great subjects; and some of these Miss Elizabeth
Peabody, the sister of Mrs. Hawthorne, so greatly enjoyed, that she took
notes, and compiled them in a book.

New England, always alive to any theological discussion, at once
pronounced the book unorthodox. Emerson had been through the same kind
of a storm, and bravely came to the defence of his friend. Another charge
was laid at Mr. Alcott's door: he was willing to admit colored children to his
school, and such a thing was not countenanced, except by a few fanatics(?)
like Whittier, and Phillips, and Garrison. The heated newspaper discussion
lessened the attendance at the school; and finally, in 1839, it was
discontinued, and the Alcott family moved to Concord.

Here were gifted men and women with whom the philosopher could feel at
home, and rest. Here lived Emerson, in the two-story drab house, with
horsechestnut-trees in front of it. Here lived Thoreau, near his beautiful
Walden Lake, a restful place, with no sound save, perchance, the dipping of
an oar or the note of a bird, which the lonely man loved so well. Here he
built his house, twelve feet square, and lived for two years and a half,
giving to the world what he desired others to give,--his inner self. Here was

his bean-field, where he "used to hoe from five o'clock in the morning till
noon," and made, as he said, an intimate acquaintance with weeds, and a
pecuniary profit of eight dollars seventy-one and one-half cents! Here, too,
was Hawthorne, "who," as Oliver Wendell Holmes says, "brooded himself
into a dream-peopled solitude."

Here Mr. Alcott could live with little expense and teach his four daughters.
Louisa, the eldest, was an active, enthusiastic child, getting into little
troubles from her frankness and lack of policy, but making friends with her
generous heart. Who can ever forget Jo in Little Women, who was really
Louisa, the girl who, when reproved for whistling by Amy, the art-loving
sister, says: "I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits! I'm not a young lady; and
if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty. I
hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns,
and look as prim as a china-aster! Its bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when
I like boy's games and work and manners!"

At fifteen, "Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt;
for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were
very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp,
gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce or
funny or thoughtful. Her long, thick hair was her one beauty, but it was
usually bundled into a net to be out of her way. Round shoulders had Jo,
and big hands and feet, a fly-away look to her clothes, and the
uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a
woman, and didn't like it."

The four sisters lived a merry life in the Concord haunts, notwithstanding
their scanty means. Now, at the dear mother's suggestion, they ate bread and
milk for breakfast, that they might carry their nicely prepared meal to a
poor woman, with six children, who called them Engel-kinder, much to
Louisa's delight. Now they improvised a stage, and produced real plays,
while the neighbors looked in and enjoyed the fun.

Louisa was especially fond of reading Shakespeare, Goethe, Emerson,
Margaret Fuller, Miss Edgeworth, and George Sand. As early as eight years

"A little kingdom I possess
Where thoughts and feelings dwell,
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well;
For passion tempts and troubles me,
A wayward will misleads,
And selfishness its shadow casts
On all my words and deeds.

"How can I learn to rule myself,
To be the child I should,
Honest and brave, and never tire
Of trying to be good?
How can I keep a sunny soul
To shine along life's way?
How can I tune my little heart
To sweetly sing all day?

"Dear Father, help me with the love
That casteth out my fear;
Teach me to lean on Thee, and feel
That Thou art very near:
That no temptation is unseen,
No childish grief too small,
Since Thou, with patience infinite,
Doth soothe and comfort all.

"I do not ask for any crown,
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within.
Be Thou my guide until I find,
Led by a tender hand,
Thy happy kingdom in myself,
And dare to take command."

Louisa was very imaginative, telling stories to her sisters and her mates, and
at sixteen wrote a book for Miss Ellen Emerson, entitled Flower Fables. It
was not published till six years later, and then, being florid in style, did not
bring her any fame. She was now anxious to earn her support. She was not
the person to sit down idly and wait for marriage, or for some rich relation
to care for her; but she determined to make a place in the world for herself.
She says in Little Women, "Jo's ambition was to do something very

splendid; what it was she had no idea, as yet, but left it for time to tell her,"
and at sixteen the time had come to make the attempt.

She began to teach school with twenty pupils. Instead of the theological
talks which her father gave his scholars, she told them stories, which she
says made the one pleasant hour in her school-day. Now the long years of
work had begun--fifteen of them--which should give the girl such rich yet
sometimes bitter experiences, that she could write the most fascinating
books from her own history. Into her volume called Work, published when
she had become famous, she put many of her own early sorrows in those of
"Christie."

Much of this time was spent in Boston. Sometimes she cared for an invalid
child; sometimes she was a governess; sometimes she did sewing, adding to
her slender means by writing late at night. Occasionally she went to the
house of Rev. Theodore Parker, where she met Emerson, Sumner, Garrison,
and Julia Ward Howe. Emerson always had a kind word for the girl whom
he had known in Concord, and Mr. Parker would take her by the hand and
say, "How goes it, my child? God bless you; keep your heart up, Louisa,"
and then she would go home to her lonely room, brave and encouraged.

At nineteen, one of her early stories was published in Gleason's Pictorial,
and for this she received five dollars. How welcome was this brain-money!
Some months later she sent a story to the Boston Saturday Gazette, entitled
The Rival Prima Donnas, and, to her great delight, received ten dollars; and
what was almost better still, a request from the editor for another story.
Miss Alcott made the Rival Prima Donnas into a drama, and it was
accepted by a theatre, and would have been put upon the stage but for some
disagreement among the actors. However, the young teacher received for
her work a pass to the theatre for forty nights. She even meditated going
upon the stage, but the manager quite opportunely broke his leg, and the
contract was annulled. What would the boys and girls of America have lost,
had their favorite turned actress!

A second story was, of course, written for the Saturday Evening Gazette.
And now Louisa was catching a glimpse of fame. She says, "One of the

memorial moments of my life is that in which, as I trudged to school on a
wintry day, my eye fell upon a large yellow poster with these delicious
words, 'Bertha, a new tale by the author of The Rival Prima Donnas, will
appear in the Saturday Evening Gazette.' I was late; it was bitter cold;
people jostled me; I was mortally afraid I should be recognized; but there I
stood, feasting my eyes on the fascinating poster, and saying proudly to
myself, in the words of the great Vincent Crummles, 'This, this is fame!'
That day my pupils had an indulgent teacher; for, while they struggled with
their pot-hooks, I was writing immortal works; and when they droned out
the multiplication table, I was counting up the noble fortune my pen was to
earn for me in the dim, delightful future. That afternoon my sisters made a
pilgrimage to behold this famous placard, and finding it torn by the wind,
boldly stole it, and came home to wave it like a triumphal banner in the
bosom of the excited family. The tattered paper still exists, folded away
with other relics of those early days, so hard and yet so sweet, when the first
small victories were won, and the enthusiasm of youth lent romance to life's
drudgery."

Finding that there was money in sensational stories, she set herself eagerly
to work, and soon could write ten or twelve a month. She says in Little
Women: "As long as The Spread Eagle paid her a dollar a column for her
'rubbish,' as she called it, Jo felt herself a woman of means, and spun her
little romances diligently. But great plans fermented in her busy brain and
ambitious mind, and the old tin kitchen in the garret held a slowly
increasing pile of blotted manuscript, which was one day to place the name
of March upon the roll of fame."

But sensational stories did not bring much fame, and the conscientious
Louisa tired of them. A novel, Moods, written at eighteen, shared nearly the
same fate as Flower Fables. Some critics praised, some condemned, but the
great world was indifferent. After this, she offered a story to Mr. James T.
Fields, at that time editor of the Atlantic Monthly, but it was declined, with
the kindly advice that she stick to her teaching. But Louisa Alcott had a
strong will and a brave heart, and would not be overcome by obstacles.

The Civil War had begun, and the school-teacher's heart was deeply moved.
She was now thirty, having had such experience as makes us very tender
toward suffering. The perfume of natures does not usually come forth
without bruising. She determined to go to Washington and offer herself as a
nurse at the hospital for soldiers. After much official red tape, she found
herself in the midst of scores of maimed and dying, just brought from the
defeat at Fredericksburg. She says: "Round the great stove was gathered the
dreariest group I ever saw,--ragged, gaunt, and pale, mud to the knees, with
bloody bandages untouched since put on days before; many bundled up in
blankets, coats being lost or useless, and all wearing that disheartened look
which proclaimed defeat more plainly than any telegram, of the Burnside
blunder. I pitied them so much, I dared not speak to them. I yearned to serve
the dreariest of them all.

"Presently there came an order, 'Tell them to take off socks, coats, and
shirts; scrub them well, put on clean shirts, and the attendants will finish
them off, and lay them in bed.'

"I chanced to light on a withered old Irishman," she says, "wounded in the
head, which caused that portion of his frame to be tastefully laid out like a
garden, the bandages being the walks, and his hair the shrubbery. He was so
overpowered by the honor of having a lady wash him, as he expressed it,
that he did nothing but roll up his eyes and bless me, in an irresistible style
which was too much for my sense of the ludicrous, so we laughed together;
and when I knelt down to take off his shoes, he wouldn't hear of my
touching 'them dirty craters.' Some of them took the performance like
sleepy children, leaning their tired heads against me as I worked; others
looked grimly scandalized, and several of the roughest colored like bashful
girls."

When food was brought, she fed one of the badly wounded men, and
offered the same help to his neighbor. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, "I don't
think I'll ever eat again, for I'm shot in the stomach. But I'd like a drink of
water, if you ain't too busy."

"I rushed away," she says; "but the water pails were gone to be refilled, and
it was some time before they reappeared. I did not forget my patient,
meanwhile, and, with the first mugful, hurried back to him. He seemed
asleep; but something in the tired white face caused me to listen at his lips
for a breath. None came. I touched his forehead; it was cold; and then I
knew that, while he waited, a better nurse than I had given him a cooler
draught, and healed him with a touch. I laid the sheet over the quiet sleeper,
whom no noise could now disturb; and, half an hour later, the bed was
empty."

With cheerful face and warm heart she went among the soldiers, now
writing letters, now washing faces, and now singing lullabies. One day a
tall, manly fellow was brought in. He seldom spoke, and uttered no
complaint. After a little, when his wounds were being dressed, Miss Alcott
observed the big tears roll down his cheeks and drop on the floor.

She says: "My heart opened wide and took him in, as, gathering the bent
head in my arms, as freely as if he had been a child, I said, 'Let me help you
bear it, John!' Never on any human countenance have I seen so swift and
beautiful a look of gratitude, surprise, and comfort as that which answered
me more eloquently than the whispered--

"'Thank you, ma'am; this is right good! this is what I wanted.'

"'Then why not ask for it before?'

"'I didn't like to be a trouble, you seemed so busy, and I could manage to get
on alone.'"

The doctors had told Miss Alcott that John must die, and she must take the
message to him; but she had not the heart to do it. One evening he asked her
to write a letter for him. "Shall it be addressed to wife or mother, John?"

"Neither, ma'am; I've got no wife, and will write to mother myself when I
get better. Mother's a widow; I'm the oldest child she has, and it wouldn't do
for me to marry until Lizzy has a home of her own, and Jack's learned his

trade; for we're not rich, and I must be father to the children and husband to
the dear old woman, if I can."

"No doubt you are both, John; yet how came you to go to war, if you felt
so?"

"I went because I couldn't help it. I didn't want the glory or the pay; I
wanted the right thing done, and people kept saying the men who were in
earnest ought to fight. I was in earnest, the Lord knows! but I held off as
long as I could, not knowing which was my duty. Mother saw the case, gave
me her ring to keep me steady, and said 'Go'; so I went."

"Do you ever regret that you came, when you lie here suffering so much?"

"Never, ma'am; I haven't helped a great deal, but I've shown I was willing to
give my life, and perhaps I've got to.... This is my first battle; do they think
it's going to be my last?"

"I'm afraid they do, John."

He seemed startled at first, but desired Miss Alcott to write the letter to
Jack, because he could best tell the sad news to the mother. With a sigh,
John said, "I hope the answer will come in time for me to see it."

Two days later Miss Alcott was sent for. John stretched out both hands as he
said, "I knew you'd come. I guess I'm moving on, ma'am." Then clasping
her hand so close that the death marks remained long upon it, he slept the
final sleep. An hour later John's letter came, and putting it in his hand, Miss
Alcott kissed the dead brow of the Virginia blacksmith, for his aged
mother's sake, and buried him in the government lot.

The noble teacher after a while became ill from overwork, and was obliged
to return home, soon writing her book, Hospital Sketches, published in
1865. This year, needing rest and change, she went to Europe as companion
to an invalid lady, spending a year in Germany, Switzerland, Paris, and
London. In the latter city she met Jean Ingelow, Frances Power Cobbe, John
Stuart Mill, George Lewes, and others, who had known of the brilliant

Concord coterie. Such persons did not ask if Miss Alcott were rich, nor did
they care.

In 1868 her father took several of her more recent stories to Roberts
Brothers to see about their publication in book form. Mr. Thomas Niles, a
member of the firm, a man of refinement and good judgment, said: "We do
not care just now for volumes of collected stories. Will not your daughter
write us a new book consisting of a single story for girls?"

Miss Alcott feared she could not do it, and set herself to write Little Women,
to show the publishers that she could not write a story for girls. But she did
not succeed in convincing them or the world of her inability. In two months
the first part was finished, and published October, 1868. It was a natural,
graphic story of her three sisters and herself in that simple Concord home.
How we, who are grown-up children, read with interest about the
"Lawrence boy," especially if we had boys of our own, and sympathized
with the little girl who wrote Miss Alcott, "I have cried quarts over Beth's
sickness. If you don't have her marry Laurie in the second part, I shall never
forgive you, and none of the girls in our school will ever read any more of
your books. Do! do! have her, please."

The second part appeared in April, 1869, and Miss Alcott found herself
famous. The "pile of blotted manuscript" had "placed the name of March
upon the roll of fame." Some of us could not be reconciled to dear Jo's
marriage with the German professor, and their school at Plumfield, when
Laurie loved her so tenderly. "We cried over Beth, and felt how strangely
like most young housekeepers was Meg. How the tired teacher, and tender-
hearted nurse for the soldiers must have rejoiced at her success! "This year,"
she wrote her publishers, "after toiling so many years along the uphill road,
always a hard one to women writers, it is peculiarly grateful to me to find
the way growing easier at last, with pleasant little surprises blossoming on
either side, and the rough places made smooth."

When Little Men was announced, fifty thousand copies were ordered in
advance of its publication! About this time Miss Alcott visited Rome with
her artist sister May, the "Amy" of Little Women, and on her return, wrote

Shawl-straps, a bright sketch of their journey, followed by an Old-
Fashioned Girl; that charming book Under the Lilacs, where your heart
goes out to Ben and his dog Sancho; six volumes of Aunt Jo's Scrap-bag;
Jack and Jill; and others. From these books Miss Alcott has already
received about one hundred thousand dollars.

She has ever been the most devoted of daughters. Till the mother went out
of life, in 1877, she provided for her every want. May, the gifted youngest
sister, who was married in Paris in 1878 to Ernst Nieriker, died a year and a
half later, leaving her infant daughter, Louisa May Nieriker, to Miss Alcott's
loving care. The father, who became paralyzed in 1882, now eighty-six
years old, has had her constant ministries. How proud he has been of his
Louisa! I heard him say, years ago, "I am riding in her golden chariot."

Miss Alcott now divides her time between Boston and Concord. "The
Orchards," the Alcott home for twenty-five years, set in its frame of grand
trees, its walls and doors daintily covered with May Alcott's sketches, has
become the home of the "Summer School of Philosophy," and Miss Alcott
and her father live in the house where Thoreau died.

Most of her stories have been written in Boston, where she finds more
inspiration than at Concord. "She never had a study," says Mrs. Moulton;
"any corner will answer to write in. She is not particular as to pens and
paper, and an old atlas on her knee is all the desk she cares for. She has the
wonderful power to carry a dozen plots in her head at a time, thinking them
over whenever she is in the mood. Often in the dead waste and middle of
the night she lies awake and plans whole chapters. In her hardest working
days she used to write fourteen hours in the twenty-four, sitting steadily at
her work, and scarcely tasting food till her daily task was done. When she
has a story to write, she goes to Boston, hires a quiet room, and shuts
herself up in it. In a month or so the book will be done, and its author comes
out 'tired, hungry, and cross,' and ready to go back to Concord and vegetate
for a time."

Miss Alcott, like Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, is an earnest advocate of woman's
suffrage, and temperance. When Meg in Little Women prevails upon Laurie

to take the pledge on her wedding-day, the delighted Jo beams her approval.
In 1883 she writes of the suffrage reform, "Every year gives me greater
faith in it, greater hope of its success, a larger charity for those who cannot
see its wisdom, and a more earnest wish to use what influence I possess for
its advancement."

Miss Alcott has done a noble work for her generation. Her books have been
translated into foreign languages, and expressions of affection have come to
her from both east and west. She says, "As I turn my face toward sunset, I
find so much to make the down-hill journey smooth and lovely, that, like
Christian, I go on my way rejoicing with a cheerful heart."

*****

Miss Alcott died March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-five, three days after the
death of her distinguished father, Bronson Alcott, eighty-eight years old.
She had been ill for some months, from care and overwork. On the Saturday
morning before she died, she wrote to a friend: "I am told that I must spend
another year in this 'Saint's Rest,' and then I am promised twenty years of
health. I don't want so many, and I have no idea I shall see them. But as I
don't live for myself, I will live on for others."

On the evening of the same day she became unconscious, and remained so
till her death, on Tuesday morning.

Mary Lyon.

There are two women whose memory the girls in this country should
especially revere,--Mary Lyon and Catharine Beecher. When it was
unfashionable for women to know more than to read, write, and cipher (the
"three R's," as reading, writing, and arithmetic were called), these two had
the courage to ask that women have an education equal to men, a thing
which was laughed at as impracticable and impossible. To these two
pioneers we are greatly indebted for the grand educational advantages for
women to-day in America.

Amid the mountains of Western Massachusetts, at Buckland, Feb. 28, 1797,
the fifth of seven children, Mary Lyon came into the world, in obscurity.
The little farm-house was but one story high, in the midst of rocks and
sturdy trees. The father, Aaron Lyon, was a godly man, beloved by all his
neighbors,--"the peacemaker," he was called,--who died at forty-five,
leaving his little family well-nigh helpless--no, not helpless, because the
mother was of the same material of which Eliza Garfields are made.

Such women are above circumstances. She saw to it that the farm yielded
its best. She worked early and late, always cheerful, always observing the
Sabbath most devotedly, always keeping the children clean and tidy. In her
little garden the May pinks were the sweetest and the peonies the reddest of
any in the neighborhood. One person begged to set a plant in the corner of
her garden, sure that if Mrs. Lyon tended it, it could never die. "How is it,"
said the hard-working wife of a farmer, "that the widow can do more for me
than any one else?" She had her trials, but she saw no use in telling them to

others, so with a brave heart she took up her daily tasks and performed
them.

Little Mary was an energetic, frank, warm-hearted child, full of desire to
help others. Her mind was eager in grasping new things, and curious in its
investigations. Once, when her mother had given her some work to do, she
climbed upon a chair to look at the hour-glass, and said, as she studied it, "I
know I have found a way to make more time."

At the village school she showed a remarkable memory and the power of
committing lessons easily. She was especially good in mathematics and
grammar. In four days she learned all of Alexander's Grammar, which
scholars were accustomed to commit, and recited it accurately to the
astonished teacher.

When Mary was thirteen, the mother married a second time, and soon after
removed to Ohio. The girl remained at the old homestead, keeping house
for the only brother, and so well did she do the work, that he gave her a
dollar a week for her services. This she used in buying books and clothes
for school. Besides, she found opportunities to spin and weave for some of
the neighbors, and thus added a little more to her purse.

After five years, the brother married and sought a home in New York State.
Mary, thus thrown upon herself, began to teach school for seventy-five
cents a week and her board. This amount would not buy many silks or
embroideries, but Mary did not care much for these. "She is all intellect,"
said a friend who knew her well; "she does not know that she has a body to
care for."

She had now saved enough money to enable her to spend one term at the
Sanderson Academy at Ashfield. What an important event in life that
seemed to the struggling country girl! The scholars watched her bright,
intellectual face, and when she began to recite, laid aside their books to hear
her. The teacher said, "I should like to see what she would make if she
could be sent to college." When the term ended, her little savings were all
spent, and now she must teach again. If she only could go forward with her

classmates! but the laws of poverty are inexorable. Just as she was leaving
the school, the trustees came and offered the advantages of the academy
free, for another term. Did ever such a gleam of sunshine come into a
cloudy day?

But how could she pay her board? She owned a, bed and some table linen,
and taking these to a boarding house, a bargain was made whereby she
could have a room and board in exchange for her household articles.

Her red-letter days had indeed come. She might never have a chance for
schooling again; so, without regard to health, she slept only four hours out
of the twenty-four, ate her meals hurriedly, and gave all her time to her
lessons. Not a scholar in the school could keep up with her. When the
teacher gave her Adams' Latin Grammar, telling her to commit such
portions as were usual in going over the book the first time, she learned
them all in three days!

When the term closed, she had no difficulty in finding a place to teach. All
the towns around had heard of the surprising scholar, Mary Lyon, and
probably hoped she could inspire the same scholarship in her pupils, a
matter in which she was most successful.

As soon as her schools were finished, she would spend the money in
obtaining instruction in some particular study, in which she thought herself
deficient. Now she would go into the family of Rev. Edward Hitchcock,
afterward president of Amherst College, and study natural science of him,
meantime taking lessons, of his wife in drawing and painting. Now she
would study penmanship, following the copy as closely as a child. Once
when a teacher, in deference to her reputation, wrote the copy in Latin, she
handed it back and asked him to write in English, lest when the books were
examined, she might be thought wiser than she really was. Thus
conscientious was the young school-teacher.

She was now twenty-four, and had laid up enough money to attend the
school of Rev. Joseph Emerson, at Byfield. He was an unusual man in his
gifts of teaching and broad views of life. He had been blest with a wife of

splendid talents, and as Miss Lyon was wont to say, "Men judge of the
whole sex by their own wives," so Mr. Emerson believed women could
understand metaphysics and theology as well as men. He discussed science
and religion with his pupils, and the result was a class of self-respecting,
self-reliant, thinking women.

Miss Lyon's friends discouraged her going to Byfield, because they thought
she knew enough already. "Why," said they, "you will never be a minister,
and what is the need of going to school?" She improved her time here. One
of her classmates wrote home, "Mary sends love to all; but time with her is
too precious to spend it in writing letters. She is gaining knowledge by
handfuls."

The next year, an assistant was wanted in the Sanderson Academy. The
principal thought a man must be engaged. "Try Mary Lyon," said one of her
friends, "and see if she is not sufficient," and he employed her, and found
her a host. But she could not long be retained, for she was wanted in a
larger field, at Derry, N.H. Miss Grant, one of the teachers at Mr. Emerson's
school, had sent for her former bright pupil. Mary was glad to be associated
with Miss Grant, for she was very fond of her; but before going, she must
attend some lectures in chemistry and natural history by Professor Eaton at
Amherst. Had she been a young man, how easily could she have secured a
scholarship, and thus worked her way through college; but for a young
woman, neither Amherst, nor Dartmouth, nor Williams, nor Harvard, nor
Yale, with all their wealth, had an open door. Very fond of chemistry, she
could only learn in the spare time which a busy professor could give.

Was the cheerful girl never despondent in these hard working years? Yes;
because naturally she was easily discouraged, and would have long fits of
weeping; but she came to the conclusion that such seasons of depression
were wrong, and that "there was too much to be done, for her to spend her
time in that manner." She used to tell her pupils that "if they were unhappy,
it was probably because they had so many thoughts about themselves, and
so few about the happiness of others." The friend who had recommended
her for the Sanderson Academy now became surety for her for forty dollars'
worth of clothing, and the earnest young woman started for Derry. The

school there numbered ninety pupils, and Mary Lyon was happy. She wrote
her mother, "I do not number it among the least of my blessings that I am
permitted to do something. Surely I ought to be thankful for an active life."

But the Derry school was held only in the summers, so Miss Lyon came
back to teach at Ashfield and Buckland, her birthplace, for the winters. The
first season she had twenty-five scholars; the last, one hundred. The
families in the neighborhood took the students into their homes to board,
charging them one dollar or one dollar and twenty-five cents per week,
while the tuition was twenty-five cents a week. No one would grow very
rich on such an income. So popular was Miss Lyon's teaching that a suitable
building was erected for her school, and the Ministerial Association passed
a resolution of praise, urging her to remain permanently in the western part
of Massachusetts.

However, Miss Grant had removed to Ipswich, and had urged Miss Lyon to
join her, which she did. For six years they taught a large and most
successful school. Miss Lyon was singularly happy in her intercourse with
the young ladies. She won them to her views, while they scarcely knew that
they were being controlled. She would say to them: "Now, young ladies,
you are here at great expense. Your board and tuition cost a great deal, and
your time ought to be worth more than both; but, in order to get an
equivalent for the money and time you are spending, you must be
systematic, and that is impossible, unless you have a regular hour for
rising.... Persons who run round all day after the half-hour they lost in the
morning never accomplish much. You may know them by a rip in the glove,
a string pinned to the bonnet, a shawl left on the balustrade, which they had
no time to hang up, they were in such a hurry to catch their lost thirty
minutes. You will see them opening their books and trying to study at the
time of general exercises in school; but it is a fruitless race; they never will
overtake their lost half-hour. Good men, from Abraham to Washington,
have been early risers." Again, she would say, "Mind, wherever it is found,
will secure respect.... Educate the women, and the men will be educated.
Let the ladies understand the great doctrine of seeking the greatest good, of
loving their neighbors as themselves; let them indoctrinate their children in
this fundamental truth, and we shall have wise legislators."

"You won't do so again, will you, dear?" was almost always sure to win a
tender response from a pupil.

She would never allow a scholar to be laughed at. If a teacher spoke
jestingly of a scholar's capacity, Miss Lyon would say, "Yes, I know she has
a small mind, but we must do the best we can for her."

For nearly sixteen years she had been giving her life to the education of
girls. She had saved no money for herself, giving it to her relatives or aiding
poor girls in going to school. She was simple in her tastes, the blue cloth
dress she generally wore having been spun and woven by herself. A friend
tells how, standing before the mirror to tie her bonnet, she said, "Well, I may
fail of Heaven, but I shall be very much disappointed if I do--very much
disappointed;" and there was no thought of what she was doing with the
ribbons.

Miss Lyon was now thirty-three years old. It would be strange indeed if a
woman with her bright mind and sunshiny face should not have offers of
marriage. One of her best opportunities came, as is often the case, when
about thirty, and Miss Lyon could have been made supremely happy by it,
but she had in her mind one great purpose, and she felt that she must
sacrifice home and love for it. This was the building of a high-grade school
or college for women. Had she decided otherwise, there probably would
have been no Mount Holyoke Seminary.

She had the tenderest sympathy for poor girls; they were the ones usually
most desirous of an education, and they struggled the hardest for it. For
them no educational societies were provided, and no scholarships. Could
she, who had no money, build "a seminary which should be so moderate in
its expenses as to be open to the daughters of farmers and artisans, and to
teachers who might be mainly dependent for their support on their own
exertions"?

In vain she tried to have the school at Ipswich established permanently by
buildings and endowments. In vain she talked with college presidents and
learned ministers. Nearly all were indifferent. They could see no need that

women should study science or the classics. That women would be happier
with knowledge, just as they themselves were made happier by it, seemed
never to have occurred to them. That women were soon to do nine-tenths of
the teaching in the schools of the country could not be foreseen. Oberlin
and Cornell, Vassar and Wellesley, belonged to a golden age as yet
undreamed of.

For two years she thought over it, and prayed over it, and when all seemed
hopeless, she would walk the floor, and say over and over again, "Commit
thy way unto the Lord. He will keep thee. Women must be educated; they
must be." Finally a meeting was called in Boston at the same time as one of
the religious anniversaries. She wrote to a friend, "Very few were present.
The meeting was adjourned; and the adjourned meeting utterly failed. There
were not enough present to organize, and there the business, in my view,
has come to an end."

Still she carried the burden on her heart. She writes, in 1834, "During the
past year my heart has so yearned over the adult female youth in the
common walks of life, that it has sometimes seemed as though a fire were
shut up in my bones." She conceived the idea of having the young women
do the work of the house, partly to lessen expenses, partly to teach them
useful things, and also because she says, "Might not this single feature do
away much of the prejudice against female education among common
people?"

At last the purpose in her heart became so strong that she resigned her
position as a teacher, and went from house to house in Ipswich collecting
funds. She wrote to her mother, "I hope and trust that this is of the Lord,
and that He will prosper it. In this movement I have thought much more
constantly, and have felt much more deeply, about doing that which shall be
for the honor of Christ, and for the good of souls, than I ever did in any step
in my life." She determined to raise her first thousand dollars from women.
She talked in her good-natured way with the father or the mother. She asked
if they wanted a new shawl or card-table or carpet, if they would not find a
way to procure it. Usually they gave five or ten dollars; some, only a half-
dollar. So interested did two ladies become that they gave one hundred

dollars apiece, and later, when their house was burned, and the man who
had their money in charge lost it, they worked with their own hands and
earned the two hundred, that their portion might not fail in the great work.

In less than two months she had raised the thousand; but she wrote Miss
Grant, "I do not recollect being so fatigued, even to prostration, as I have
been for a few weeks past." She often quoted a remark of Dr. Lyman
Beecher's, "The wear and tear of what I cannot do is a great deal more than
the wear and tear of what I do." When she became quite worn, her habit was
to sleep nearly all the time, for two or three days, till nature repaired the
system.

She next went to Amherst, where good Dr. Hitchcock felt as deeply
interested for girls as for the boys in his college. One January morning, with
the thermometer below zero, three or four hours before sunrise, he and Miss
Lyon started on the stage for Worcester. Each was wrapped in a buffalo
robe, so that the long ride was not unpleasant. A meeting was to be held,
and a decision made as to the location of the seminary, which, at last, was
actually to be built. After a long conference, South Hadley was chosen, ten
miles south of Amherst.

One by one, good men became interested in the matter, and one true-hearted
minister became an agent for the raising of funds. Miss Lyon was also
untiring in her solicitations. She spoke before ladies' meetings, and visited
those in high station and low. So troubled were her friends about this public
work for a woman, that they reasoned with her that it was in better taste to
stay at home, and let gentlemen do the work.

"What do I that is wrong?" she replied. "I ride in the stage coach or cars
without an escort. Other ladies do the same. I visit a family where I have
been previously invited, and the minister's wife, or some leading woman,
calls the ladies together to see me, and I lay our object before them. Is that
wrong? I go with Mr. Hawks [the agent], and call on a gentleman of known
liberality, at his own house, and converse with him about our enterprise.
What harm is there in that? My heart is sick, my soul is pained, with this
empty gentility, this genteel nothingness. I am doing a great work. I cannot

come down." Pitiful, that so noble a woman should have been hampered by
public opinion. How all this has changed! Now, the world and the church
gladly welcome the voice, the hand, and the heart of woman in their
philanthropic work.

At last, enough money was raised to begin the enterprise, and the corner-
stone of Mount Holyoke Seminary was laid, Oct. 3, 1836. "It was a day of
deep interest," writes Mary Lyon. "The stones and brick and mortar speak a
language which vibrates through my very soul."

"With thankful heart and busy hands she watched the progress of the work.
Every detail was under her careful eye. She said: "Had I a thousand lives, I
could sacrifice them all in suffering and hardship, for the sake of Mount
Holyoke Seminary. Did I possess the greatest fortune, I could readily
relinquish it all, and become poor, and more than poor, if its prosperity
should demand it."

Finally, in the autumn of 1837, the seminary was ready for pupils. The main
building, four stories high, had been erected. An admirable course of study
had been provided. For the forty weeks of the school year, the charges for
board and tuition were sixty dollars,--only one dollar and twenty-five cents
per week. Miss Lyon's own salary was but two hundred a year and she
never would receive anything higher. The accommodations were only for
eighty pupils, but one hundred and sixteen came the first year.

While Miss Lyon was heartily loved by her scholars, they yet respected her
good discipline. It was against the rules for any one to absent herself from
meals without permission to do so. One of the young ladies, not feeling
quite as fresh as usual, concluded not to go down stairs at tea time, and to
remain silent on the subject. Miss Lyon's quick eye detected her absence.
Calling the girl's room-mate to her, she asked, "Is Miss ---- ill?"

"Oh, no," was the reply, "only a little indisposed, and she commissioned me
to carry her a cup of tea and cracker."

"Very well, I will see to it."

After supper, the young lady ascended to her room, in the fourth story,
found her companion enjoying a glorious sunset, and seating herself beside
her, they began an animated conversation. Presently there was a knock.
"Come in!" both shouted gleefully, when lo! in walked Mary Lyon, with the
tea and cracker. She had come up four flights of stairs; but she said every
one was tired at night, and she could as well bring up the supper as
anybody. She inquired with great kindness about the young lady's health,
who, greatly abashed, had nothing to say. She was ever after present at meal
time, unless sick in bed.

The students never forgot Miss Lyon's plain, earnest words. When they
entered, they were told that they were expected to do right without formal
commands; if not, they better go to some smaller school, where they could
receive the peculiar training needed by little girls. She urged loose clothing
and thick shoes. "If you will persist in killing yourselves by reckless
exposure," she would say, "we are not willing to take the responsibility of
the act. We think, by all means, you better go home and die, in the arms of
your dear mothers."

Miss Lyon had come to her fiftieth birthday. Her seminary had prospered
beyond her fondest hopes. She had raised nearly seventy thousand dollars
for her beloved school, and it was out of debt. Nearly two thousand pupils
had been at South Hadley, of whom a large number had become
missionaries and teachers. Not a single year had passed without a revival,
and rarely did a girl leave the institution without professing Christianity.

She said to a friend shortly after this fiftieth birthday: "It was the most
solemn day of my life. I devoted it to reflection and prayer. Of my active
toils I then took leave. I was certain that before another fifty years should
have elapsed, I should wake up amid far different scenes, and far other
thoughts would fill my mind, and other employments would engage my
attention. I felt it. There seemed to be no ladder between me and the world
above. The gates were opened, and I seemed to stand on the threshold. I felt
that the evening of my days had come, and that I needed repose."

And the repose came soon. The last of February, 1849, a young lady in the
seminary died. Miss Lyon called the girls together and spoke tenderly to
them, urging them not to fear death, but to be ready to meet it. She said,
"There is nothing in the universe that I am afraid of, but that I shall not
know and do all my duty." Beautiful words! carved shortly after on her
monument.

A few days later, Mary Lyon lay upon her death-bed. The brain had been
congested, and she was often unconscious. In one of her lucid moments, her
pastor said, "Christ precious?" Summoning all her energies, she raised both
hands, clasped them, and said, "Yes." "Have you trusted Christ too much?"
he asked. Seeing that she made an effort to speak, he said, "God can be
glorified by silence." An indescribable smile lit up her face, and she was
gone.

On the seminary grounds the beloved teacher was buried, her pupils singing
about her open grave, "Why do we mourn departing friends?" A beautiful
monument of Italian marble, square, and resting upon a granite pedestal,
marks the spot. On the west side are the words:--

MARY LYON,
THE FOUNDER OF
MOUNT HOLYOKE FEMALE SEMINARY,

AND FOR TWELVE YEARS
ITS PRINCIPAL;
A TEACHER
FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS,

AND OF MORE THAN
THREE THOUSAND PUPILS.

BORN, FEBRUARY 28, 1797;
DIED, MARCH 5, 1849.

What a devoted, heroic life! and its results, who can estimate?

Her work has gone steadily on. The seminary grounds now cover twenty-
five acres. The main structure has two large wings, while a gymnasium; a
library building, with thirteen thousand volumes; the Lyman Williston Hall,
with laboratories and art gallery; and the new observatory, with fine
telescope, astronomical clock, and other appliances, afford such admirable
opportunities for higher education as noble Mary Lyon could hardly have
dared to hope for. The property is worth about three hundred thousand
dollars. How different from the days when half-dollars were given into Miss
Lyon's willing hands! Nearly six thousand students have been educated
here, three-fourths of whom have become teachers, and about two hundred
foreign missionaries. Many have married ministers, presidents of colleges,
and leading men in education and good works.

The board and tuition have become one hundred and seventy-five dollars a
year, only enough to cover the cost. The range of study has been constantly
increased and elevated to keep pace with the growing demand that women
shall be as fully educated as men. Even Miss Lyon, in those early days,
looked forward to the needs of the future, by placing in her course of study,
Sullivan's Political Class-Book, and Wayland's Political Economy. The four
years' course is solid and thorough, while the optional course in French,
German, and Greek is admirable. Eventually, when our preparatory schools
are higher, all our colleges for women will have as difficult entrance
examinations as Harvard and Yale.

The housework at Mount Holyoke Seminary requires but half an hour each
day for each of the two hundred and ninety-seven pupils. Much time is
spent wisely in the gymnasium, and in boating on the lake near by. Habits
of punctuality, thoroughness, and order are the outcome of life in this
institution. An endowment of twenty thousand dollars, called "the Mary
Lyon Fund," is now being raised by former students for the Chair of the

Principal. Schools like the Lake Erie Seminary at Painesville, Ohio, have
grown out of the school at South Hadley. Truly, Mary Lyon was doing a
great work, and she could not come down. Between such a life and the
ordinary social round there can be no comparison.

The English ivy grows thickly over Miss Lyon's grave, covering it like a
mantle, and sending out its wealth of green leaves in the spring. So each
year her own handiwork flourishes, sending out into the world its strongest
forces, the very foundation of the highest civilization,--educated and
Christian wives and mothers.

Harriet G. Hosmer.

Some years ago, in an art store in Boston, a crowd of persons stood gazing
intently upon a famous piece of statuary. The red curtains were drawn aside,
and the white marble seemed almost to speak. A group of girls stood
together, and looked on in rapt admiration. One of them said, "Just to think
that a woman did it!"

"It makes me proud and glad," said another.

"Who is Harriet Hosmer?" said a third. "I wish I knew about her."

And then one of us, who had stolen all the hours she could get from school
life to read art books from the Hartford Athenaeum, and kept crude statues,
made by herself from chalk and plaster, secreted in her room, told all she
had read about the brilliant author of "Zenobia."

The statue was seven feet high, queenly in pose and face, yet delicate and
beautiful, with the thoughts which genius had wrought in it. The left arm
supported the elegant drapery, while the right hung listlessly by her side,
both wrists chained; the captive of the Emperor Aurelian. Since that time, I
have looked upon other masterpieces in all the great galleries of Europe, but
perhaps none have ever made a stronger impression upon me than
"Zenobia," in those early years.

And who was the artist of whom we girls were so proud? Born in
Watertown, Mass., Oct. 9, 1830, Harriet Hosmer came into the welcome
home of a leading physician, and a delicate mother, who soon died of
consumption. Dr. Hosmer had also buried his only child besides Harriet,
with the same disease, and he determined that this girl should live in
sunshine and air, that he might save her if possible. He used to say, "There
is a whole life-time for the education of the mind, but the body develops in
a few years; and during that time nothing should be allowed to interfere
with its free and healthy growth."

As soon as the child was large enough, she was given a pet dog, which she
decked with ribbons and bells. Then, as the Charles River flowed past their
house, a boat was provided, and she was allowed to row at will. A Venetian
gondola was also built for her, with silver prow and velvet cushions. "Too
much spoiling--too much spoiling," said some of the neighbors; but Dr.
Hosmer knew that he was keeping his little daughter on the earth instead of
heaven.

A gun was now purchased, and the girl became an admirable marksman.
Her room was a perfect museum. Here were birds, bats, beetles, snakes, and

toads; some dissected, some preserved in spirits, and others stuffed, all
gathered and prepared by her own hands. Now she made an inkstand from
the egg of a sea-gull and the body of a kingfisher; now she climbed to the
top of a tree and brought down a crow's nest. She could walk miles upon
miles with no fatigue. She grew up like a boy, which is only another way of
saying that she grew up healthy and strong physically. Probably polite
society was shocked at Dr. Hosmer's methods. Would that there were many
such fathers and mothers, that we might have a vigorous race of women,
and consequently, a vigorous race of men!

When Harriet tired of books,--for she was an eager reader,--she found
delight in a clay-pit in the garden, where she molded horses and dogs to her
heart's content. Unused to restraint, she did not like the first school at which
she was placed, the principal, the brother-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
writing to her father that he "could do nothing with her."

She was then taken to Mrs. Sedgwick, who kept a famous school at Lenox,
Berkshire County. She received "happy Hatty," as she was called, with the
remark, "I have a reputation for training wild colts, and I will try this one."
And the wise woman succeeded. She won Harriet's confidence, not by the
ten thousand times repeated "don't," which so many children hear in home
and school, till life seems a prison-pen. She let her run wild, guiding her all
the time with so much tact, that the girl scarcely knew she was guided at all.
Blessed tact! How many thousands of young people are ruined for lack of
it!

She remained here three years. Mrs. Sedgwick says, "She was the most
difficult pupil to manage I ever had, but I think I never had one in whom I
took so deep an interest, and whom I learned to love so well." About this
time, not being quite as well as usual, Dr. Hosmer engaged a physician of,
large practice to visit his daughter. The busy man could not be regular,
which sadly interfered with Harriet's boating and driving. Complaining one
day that it spoiled her pleasure, he said, "If I am alive, I will be here,"
naming the day and hour.

"Then if you are not here, I am to conclude that you are dead," was the
reply.

As he did not come, Harriet drove to the newspaper offices in Boston that
afternoon, and the next morning the community was startled to read of Dr. -
---'s sudden death. Friends hastened to the house, and messages of
condolence came pouring in. It is probable that he was more punctual after
this.

On Harriet's return from Lenox, she began to take lessons in drawing,
modeling, and anatomical studies, in Boston, frequently walking from home
and back, a distance of fourteen miles. Feeling the need of a thorough
course in anatomy, she applied to the Boston Medical School for
admittance, and was refused because of her sex. The Medical College of St.
Louis proved itself broader, glad to encourage talent wherever found, and
received her.

Professor McDowell, under whom the artists Powers and Clevenger studied
anatomy, spared no pains to give her every advantage, while the students
were uniformly courteous. "I remember him," says Miss Hosmer, "with
great affection and gratitude as being a most thorough and patient teacher,
as well as at all times a good, kind friend." In testimony of her appreciation,
she cut, from a bust of Professor McDowell by Clevenger, a life-size
medallion in marble, now treasured in the college museum.

While in St. Louis she made her home with the family of Wayman Crow,
Esq., whose daughter had been her companion at Lenox. This gentleman
proved himself a constant and encouraging friend, ordering her first statue
from Rome, and helping in a thousand ways a girl who had chosen for
herself an unusual work in life.

After completing her studies she made a trip to New Orleans, and then
North to the Falls of St. Anthony, smoking the pipe of peace with the chief
of the Dakota Indians, exploring lead mines in Dubuque, and scaling a high
mountain that was soon after named for her. Did the wealthy girl go alone
on these journeys? Yes. As a rule, no harm comes to a young woman who

conducts herself with becoming reserve with men. Flirts usually are paid in
their own coin.

On her return home, Dr. Hosmer fitted up a studio for his daughter, and her
first work was to copy from the antique. Then she cut Canova's "Napoleon"
in marble for her father, doing all the work, that he might especially value
the gift. Her next statue was an ideal bust of Hesper, "with," said Lydia
Maria Child, "the face of a lovely maiden gently falling asleep with the
sound of distant music. Her hair is gracefully arranged, and intertwined
with capsules of the poppy. A star shines on her forehead, and under her
breast lies the crescent moon. The swell of the cheeks and the bust is like
pure, young, healthy flesh, and the muscles of the beautiful mouth so
delicately cut, it seems like a thing that breathes. She did every stroke of the
work with her own small hands, except knocking off the corners of the
block of marble. She employed a man to do that; but as he was unused to
work for sculptors, she did not venture to have him approach within several
inches of the surface she intended to cut. Slight girl as she was, she wielded
for eight or ten hours a day a leaden mallet weighing four pounds and a
half. Had it not been for the strength and flexibility of muscle acquired by
rowing and other athletic exercises, such arduous labor would have been
impossible."

After "Hesper" was completed, she said to her father, "I am ready to go to
Rome."

"You shall go, my child, this very autumn," was the response.

He would, of course, miss the genial companionship of his only child, but
her welfare was to be consulted rather than his own. When autumn came,
she rode on horseback to Wayland to say good-bye to Mrs. Child. "Shall
you never be homesick for your museum-parlor in Watertown? Can you be
contented in a foreign land?"

"I can be happy anywhere," said Miss Hosmer, "with good health and a bit
of marble."

Late in the fall Dr. Hosmer and his daughter started for Europe, reaching
Rome Nov. 12, 1852. She had greatly desired to study under John Gibson,
the leading English sculptor, but he had taken young women into his studio
who in a short time became discouraged or showed themselves afraid of
hard work, and he feared Miss Hosmer might be of the same useless type.

When the photographs of "Hesper" were placed before him by an artist
friend of the Hosmers, he looked at them carefully, and said, "Send the
young lady to me, and whatever I know, and can teach her, she shall learn."
He gave Miss Hosmer an upstairs room in his studio, and here for seven
years she worked with delight, honored and encouraged by her noble
teacher. She wrote to her friends: "The dearest wish of my heart is gratified
in that I am acknowledged by Gibson as a pupil. He has been resident in
Rome thirty-four years, and leads the van. I am greatly in luck. He has just
finished the model of the statue of the queen; and as his room is vacant, he
permits me to use it, and I am now in his own studio. I have also a little
room for work which was formerly occupied by Canova, and perhaps
inspiration may be drawn from the walls."

The first work which she copied, to show Gibson whether she had
correctness of eye and proper knowledge, was the Venus of Milo. When
nearly finished, the iron which supported the clay snapped, and the figure
lay spoiled upon the floor. She did not shrink nor cry, but immediately went
to work cheerfully to shape it over again. This conduct Mr. Gibson greatly
admired, and made up his mind to assist her all he could.

After this she copied the "Cupid" of Praxitiles and Tasso from the British
Museum. Her first original work was Daphne, the beautiful girl whom
Apollo loved, and who, rather than accept his addresses, was changed into
laurel by the gods. Apollo crowned his head with laurel, and made the
flower sacred to himself forever.

Next, Miss Hosmer produced "Medusa," famed for her beautiful hair, which
Minerva turned into serpents because Neptune loved her. According to
Grecian mythology, Perseus made himself immortal by conquering Medusa,
whose head he cut off, and the blood dripping from it filled Africa with

snakes. Miss Hosmer represents the beautiful maiden, when she finds, with
horror, that her hair is turning into serpents.

Needing a real snake for her work, Miss Hosmer sent a man into the
suburbs to bring her one alive. When it was obtained, she chloroformed it
till she had made a cast, keeping it in plaster for three hours and a half.
Then, instead of killing it, like a true-hearted woman, as she is, she sent it
back into the country, glad to regain its liberty.

"Daphne" and "Medusa" were both exhibited in Boston the following year,
1853, and were much praised. Mr. Gibson said: "The power of imitating the
roundness and softness of flesh, he had never seen surpassed." Rauch, the
great Prussian, whose mausoleum at Charlottenburg of the beautiful queen
Louise can never be forgotten, gave Miss Hosmer high praise.

Two years later she completed "Oenone," made for Mr. Crow of St. Louis.
It is the full-length figure of the beautiful nymph of Mount Ida. The story is
a familiar one. Before the birth of Paris, the son of Priam, it was foretold
that he by his imprudence should cause the destruction of Troy. His father
gave orders for him to be put to death, but possibly through the fondness of
his mother, he was spared, and carried to Mount Ida, where he was brought
up by the shepherds, and finally married Oenone. In time he became known
to his family, who forgot the prophecy and cordially received him. For a
decision in favor of Venus he was promised the most beautiful woman in
the world for his wife. Forgetting Oenone, he fell in love with the beautiful
Helen, already the wife of Menelaus, and persuaded her to fly with him to
Troy, to his father's court. War resulted. When he found himself dying of his
wounds, he fled to Oenone for help, but died just as he came into her
presence. She bathed the body with her tears, and stabbed herself to the
heart, a very foolish act for so faithless a man. Miss Hosmer represents her
as a beautiful shepherdess, bowed with grief from her desertion.

This work was so much liked in America, that the St. Louis Mercantile
Library made a liberal offer for some other statue. Accordingly, two years
after, "Beatrice Cenci" was sent. The noble girl lies asleep, the night before
her execution, after the terrible torture. "It was," says Mrs. Child, "the sleep

of a body worn out with the wretchedness of the soul. On that innocent face
suffering had left its traces. The arm that had been tossing in the grief
tempest, had fallen heavily, too weary to change itself into a more easy
position. Those large eyes, now so closely veiled by their swollen lids, had
evidently wept till the fountain of tears was dry. That lovely mouth was still
the open portal of a sigh, which the mastery of sleep had left no time to
close."

To make this natural, the sculptor caused several models to go to sleep in
her studio, that she might study them. Gibson is said to have remarked upon
seeing this, "I can teach her nothing." This was also exhibited in London
and in several American cities.

For three years she had worked continuously, not leaving Rome even in the
hot, unhealthy summers. She had said, "I will not be an amateur; I will
work as if I had to earn my daily bread." However, as her health seemed
somewhat impaired, at her father's earnest wish, she had decided to go to
England for the season. Her trunks were packed, and she was ready to start,
when lo! a message came that Dr. Hosmer had lost his property, that he
could send her no more money, and suggested that she return home at once.

At first she seemed overwhelmed; then she said firmly, "I cannot go back,
and give up my art." Her trunks were at once unpacked and a cheap room
rented. Her handsome horse and saddle were sold, and she was now to work
indeed "as if she earned her daily bread."

By a strange freak of human nature, by which we sometimes do our most
humorous work when we are saddest, Miss Hosmer produced now in her
sorrow her fun-loving "Puck." It represents a child about four years old
seated on a toadstool which breaks beneath him. The left hand confines a
lizard, while the right holds a beetle. The legs are crossed, and the great toe
of the right foot turns up. The whole is full of merriment. The Crown
Princess of Germany, on seeing it, exclaimed, "Oh, Miss Hosmer, you have
such a talent for toes!" Very true, for this statue, with the several copies
made from it, brought her thirty thousand dollars! The Prince of Wales has a

copy, the Duke of Hamilton also, and it has gone even to Australia and the
West Indies. A companion piece is the "Will-o'-the-wisp."

About this time the lovely sixteen-year-old daughter of Madam Falconnet
died at Rome, and for her monument in the Catholic church of San Andrea
del Fratte, Miss Hosmer produced an exquisite figure resting upon a
sarcophagus. Layard, the explorer of Babylon and Nineveh, wrote to
Madam Falconnet: "I scarcely remember to have seen a monument which
more completely commanded my sympathy and more deeply interested me.
I really know of none, of modern days, which I would rather have placed
over the remains of one who had been dear to me."

Miss Hosmer also modeled a fountain from the story of Hylas. The lower
basin contains dolphins spouting jets, while in the upper basin, supported by
swans, the youth Hylas stands, surrounded by the nymphs who admire his
beauty, and who eventually draw him into the water, where he is drowned.

Miss Hosmer returned to America in 1857, five years after her departure.
She was still young, twenty-seven, vivacious, hopeful, not wearied from her
hard work, and famous. While here she determined upon a statue of
Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, and read much concerning her and her times.
She had touched fiction and poetry; now she would attempt history. She
could scarcely have chosen a more heroic or pathetic subject. The brave
leader of a brave people, a skilful warrior, marching at the head of her
troops, now on foot, and now on horseback, beautiful in face, and cultured
in mind, acquainted with Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Egyptian, finally
captured by Aurelian, and borne through the streets of Rome, adorning his
triumphal procession.

After Miss Hosmer's return to Rome, she worked on "Zenobia" with energy
and enthusiasm, as she molded the clay, and then the plaster. When brought
to this country, it awakened the greatest interest; crowds gathered to see it.
In Chicago it was exhibited at the Sanitary Fair in behalf of the soldiers.
Whittier said: "It very fully expresses my conception of what historical
sculpture should be. It tells its whole proud and melancholy story. In
looking at it, I felt that the artist had been as truly serving her country while

working out her magnificent design abroad, as our soldiers in the field, and
our public officers in their departments." From its exhibition Miss Hosmer
received five thousand dollars. It was purchased by Mr. A.W. Griswold, of
New York. So great a work was the statue considered in London, that some
of the papers declared Gibson to be its author. Miss Hosmer at once began
suits for libel, and retractions were speedily made.

In 1860 Miss Hosmer again visited America, to see her father, who was
seriously ill. How proud Dr. Hosmer must have been of his gifted daughter
now that her fame was in two hemispheres! Surely he had not "spoiled" her.
She could now spend for him as he had spent for her in her childhood.
While here, she received a commission from St. Louis for a bronze portrait-
statue of Missouri's famous statesman, Thomas Hart Benton. The world
wondered if she could bring out of the marble a man with all his strength
and dignity, as she had a woman with all her grace and nobility.

She visited St. Louis, to examine portraits and mementos of Colonel
Benton, and then hastened across the ocean to her work. The next year a
photograph of the model was sent to the friends, and the likeness
pronounced good. The statue was cast at the great royal foundry at Munich,
and in due time shipped to this country. May 27, 1868, it was unveiled in
Lafayette Park, in the presence of an immense concourse of people, the
daughter, Mrs. John C. Fremont, removing the covering. The statue is ten
feet high, and weighs three and one-half tons. It rests on a granite pedestal,
ten feet square, the whole being twenty-two feet square. On the west side of
the pedestal are the words from Colonel Benton's famous speech on the
Pacific Railroad, "There is the East--there is India." Both press and people
were heartily pleased with this statue, for which Miss Hosmer received ten
thousand dollars, the whole costing thirty thousand.

She was now in the midst of busy and successful work. Orders crowded
upon her. Her "Sleeping Faun," which was exhibited at the Dublin
Exhibition in 1865, was sold on the day of opening for five thousand
dollars, to Sir Benjamin Guinness. Some discussion having arisen about the
sale, he offered ten thousand, saying, that if money could buy it, he would
possess it. Miss Hosmer, however, would receive only the five thousand.

The faun is represented reclining against the trunk of a tree, partly draped in
the spoils of a tiger. A little faun, with mischievous look, is binding the faun
to the tree with the tiger-skin. The newspapers were enthusiastic about the
work.

The London Times said: "In the groups of statues are many works of
exquisite beauty, but there is one which at once arrests attention and extorts
admiration. It is a curious fact that amid all the statues in this court,
contributed by the natives of lands in which the fine arts were naturalized
thousands of years ago, one of the finest should be the production of an
American artist." The French Galignani said, "The gem of the classical
school, in its nobler style of composition, is due to an American lady, Miss
Hosmer." The London Art Journal said, "The works of Miss Hosmer, Hiram
Powers, and others we might name, have placed American on a level with
the best modern sculptors of Europe." This work was repeated for the
Prince of Wales and for Lady Ashburton, of England.

Not long ago I visited the studio of Miss Hosmer in the Via Margutta, at
Rome, and saw her numerous works, many of them still unfinished. Here an
arm seemed just reaching out from the rough block of marble; here a sweet
face seemed like Pygmalion's statue, coming into life. In the centre of the
studio was the "Siren Fountain," executed for Lady Marion Alford. A siren
sits in the upper basin and sings to the music of her lute. Three little cupids
sit on dolphins, and listen to her music.

For some years Miss Hosmer has been preparing a golden gateway for an
art gallery at Ashridge Hall, England, ordered by Earl Brownlow. These
gates, seventeen feet high, are covered with bas-reliefs representing the Air,
Earth, and Sea. The twelve hours of the night show "Aeolus subduing the
Winds," the "Descent of the Zephyrs," "Iris descending with the Dew,"
"Night rising with the Stars," "The Rising Moon," "The Hour's Sleep," "The
Dreams Descend," "The Falling Star," "Phosphor and Hesper," "The Hours
Wake," "Aurora Veils the Stars," and "Morning." More than eighty figures
are in the nineteen bas-reliefs. Miss Hosmer has done other important
works, among them a statue of the beautiful Queen of Naples, who was a
frequent visitor to the artist's studio, and several well-known monuments.

With her girlish fondness for machinery, she has given much thought to
mechanics in these later years, striving to find, like many another, the secret
of producing perpetual motion. She spends much of her time now in
England. She is still passionately fond of riding, the Empress of Austria,
who owns more horses than any woman in the world, declaring "that there
was nothing she looked forward to with more interest in Rome, than to see
Miss Hosmer ride."

Many of the closing years of the sculptor's long life were spent in Rome,
where she had a wide circle of eminent American and English friends,
among whom were Hawthorne, Thackeray, George Eliot, and the
Brownings. She made several discoveries in her work, one of which was a
process of hardening limestone so that it resembled marble. She also wrote
both prose and poetry, and would have been successful as an author, if she
had not given the bulk of her time to her beloved sculpture.

After her long sojourn in Rome she spent several years in England,
executing important commissions, and then turned her face toward
America. In Watertown, where she was born, she again made her home; and
here she breathed her last, February 21, 1908, after an illness of three
weeks. She was in her seventy-eighth year. By her long life of earnest work
and self-reliant purpose, coupled with her high gift, she has made for
herself an abiding place in the history of art.

Madame de Staël.

It was the twentieth of September, 1881. The sun shone out mild and
beautiful upon Lake Geneva, as we sailed up to Coppet. The banks were
dotted with lovely homes, half hidden by the foliage, while brilliant flower-
beds came close to the water's edge. Snow-covered Mont Blanc looked
down upon the restful scene, which seemed as charming as anything in
Europe.

We alighted from the boat, and walked up from the landing, between great
rows of oaks, horsechestnuts, and sycamores, to the famous home we had
come to look upon,--that of Madame de Staël. It is a French chateau, two
stories high, drab, with green blinds, surrounding an open square; vines
clamber over the gate and the high walls, and lovely flowers blossom
everywhere. As you enter, you stand in a long hall, with green curtains, with
many busts, the finest of which is that of Monsieur Necker. The next room
is the large library, with furniture of blue and white; and the next, hung with
old Gobelin tapestry, is the room where Madame Recamier used to sit with
Madame de Staël, and look out upon the exquisite scenery, restful even in
their troubled lives. Here is the work-table of her whom Macaulay called
"the greatest woman of her times," and of whom Byron said, "She is a
woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them together,
intellectually; she ought to have been a man."

Next we enter the drawing-room, with carpet woven in a single piece; the
furniture red and white. We stop to look upon the picture of Monsieur
Necker, the father, a strong, noble-looking man; of the mother, in white silk

dress, with powdered hair, and very beautiful; and De Staël herself, in a
brownish yellow dress, with low neck and short sleeves, holding in her
hand the branch of flowers, which she always carried, or a leaf, that thus her
hands might be employed while she engaged in the conversation that
astonished Europe. Here also are the pictures of the Baron, her husband, in
white wig and military dress; here her idolized son and daughter, the latter
beautiful, with mild, sad face, and dark hair and eyes.

What brings thousands to this quiet retreat every year? Because here lived
and wrote and suffered the only person whom the great Napoleon feared,
whom Galiffe, of Geneva, declared "the most remarkable woman that
Europe has produced"; learned, rich, the author of Corinne and Allemagne,
whose "talents in conversation," says George Ticknor, "were perhaps the
most remarkable of any person that ever lived."

April 27, 1766, was the daughter of James Necker, Minister of Finance
under Louis XVI., a man of fine intellect, the author of fifteen volumes; and
Susanna, daughter of a Swiss pastor, beautiful, educated, and devotedly
Christian. Necker had become rich in early life through banking, and had
been made, by the republic of Geneva, her resident minister at the Court of
Versailles.

When the throne of Louis seemed crumbling, because the people were tired
of extravagance and heavy taxation, Necker was called to his aid, with the
hope that economy and retrenchment would save the nation. He also loaned
the government two million dollars. The home of the Neckers, in Paris,
naturally became a social centre, which the mother of the family was well
fitted to grace. Gibbon had been deeply in love with her.

He says: "I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure
in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was
fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance.... At
Crassier and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity; but on my return to
England I soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange
alliance, and that, without his consent, I was myself destitute and helpless.
After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate; I sighed as a lover; I obeyed

as a son." Gibbon never married, but retained his life-long friendship and
admiration for Madame Necker.

It was not strange, therefore, that Gibbon liked to be present in her salon,
where Buffon, Hume, Diderot, and D'Alembert were wont to gather. The
child of such parents could scarcely be other than intellectual, surrounded
by such gifted minds. Her mother, too, was a most systematic teacher, and
each day the girl was obliged to sit by her side, erect, on a wooden stool,
and learn difficult lessons.

"She stood in great awe of her mother," wrote Simond, the traveller, "but
was exceedingly familiar with and extravagantly fond of her father.
Madame Necker had no sooner left the room one day, after dinner, than the
young girl, till then timidly decorous, suddenly seized her napkin, and
threw it across the table at the head of her father, and then flying round to
him, hung upon his neck, suffocating all his reproofs by her kisses."
Whenever her mother returned to the room, she at once became silent and
restrained.

The child early began to show literary talent, writing dramas, and making
paper kings and queens to act her tragedies. This the mother thought to be
wrong, and it was discontinued. But when she was twelve, the mother
having somewhat relented, she wrote a play, which she and her companions
acted in the drawing-room. Grimm was so pleased with her attempts, that
he sent extracts to his correspondents throughout Europe. At fifteen she
wrote an essay on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and another upon
Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws.

Overtaxing the brain with her continuous study, she became ill, and the
physician, greatly to her delight, prescribed fresh air and sunshine. Here
often she roamed from morning till night on their estate at St. Ouen.
Madame Necker felt deeply the thwarting of her educational plans, and
years after, when her daughter had acquired distinction, said, "It is
absolutely nothing compared to what I would have made it."

Monsieur Necker's restriction of pensions and taxing of luxuries soon
aroused the opposition of the aristocracy, and the weak but good-hearted
King asked his minister to resign. Both wife and daughter felt the blow
keenly, for both idolized him, so much so that the mother feared lest she be
supplanted by her daughter. Madame de Staël says of her father, "From the
moment of their marriage to her death, the thought of my mother dominated
his life. He was not like other men in power, attentive to her by occasional
tokens of regard, but by continual expressions of most tender and most
delicate sentiment." Of herself she wrote, "Our destinies would have united
us forever, if fate had only made us contemporaries." At his death she said,
"If he could be restored to me, I would give all my remaining years for six
months." To the last he was her idol.

For the next few years the family travelled most of the time, Necker
bringing out a book on the Finances, which had a sale at once of a hundred
thousand copies. A previous book, the Compte Rendu au Roi, showing how
for years the moneys of France had been wasted, had also a large sale. For
these books, and especially for other correspondence, he was banished forty
leagues from Paris. The daughter's heart seemed well-nigh broken at this
intelligence. Loving Paris, saying she would rather live there on "one
hundred francs a year, and lodge in the fourth story," than anywhere else in
the world, how could she bear for years the isolation of the country? Joseph
II., King of Poland, and the King of Naples, offered Necker fine positions,
but he declined.

Mademoiselle Necker had come to womanhood, not beautiful, but with
wonderful fascination and tact. She could compliment persons without
flattery, was cordial and generous, and while the most brilliant talker, could
draw to herself the thoughts and confidences of others. She had also written
a book on Rousseau, which was much talked about. Pitt, of England, Count
Fersen, of Sweden, and others, sought her in marriage, but she loved no
person as well as her father. Her consent to marriage could be obtained only
by the promise that she should never be obliged to leave him.

Baron de Staël, a man of learning and fine social position, ambassador from
Sweden, and the warm friend of Gustavus, was ready to make any promises

for the rich daughter of the Minister Necker. He was thirty-seven, she only a
little more than half his age, twenty, but she accepted him because her
parents were pleased. Going to Paris, she was, of course, received at Court,
Marie Antoinette paying her much attention. Necker was soon recalled from
exile to his old position.

The funds rose thirty per cent, and he became the idol of the people. Soon
representative government was demanded, and then, though the King
granted it, the breach was widened. Necker, unpopular with the bad advisers
of the King, was again asked to leave Paris, and make no noise about it; but
the people, hearing of it, soon demanded his recall, and he was hastily
brought back from Brussels, riding through the streets like "the sovereign of
a nation," said his daughter. The people were wild with delight.

But matters had gone too far to prevent a bloody Revolution. Soon a mob
was marching toward Versailles; thousands of men, women, and even
children armed with pikes. They reached the palace, killed the guards, and
penetrated to the queen's apartments, while some filled the court-yard and
demanded bread. The brave Marie Antoinette appeared on the balcony
leading her two children, while Lafayette knelt by her side and kissed her
hand. But the people could not be appeased.

Necker finding himself unable to serve his king longer, fled to his Swiss
retreat at Coppet, and there remained till his death. Madame de Staël, as the
wife of the Swedish ambassador, continued in the turmoil, writing her
father daily, and taking an active interest in politics. "In England," she said,
"women are accustomed to be silent before men when political questions
are discussed. In France, they direct all conversation, and their minds
readily acquire the facility and talent which this privilege requires."
Lafayette, Narbonne, and Talleyrand consulted with her. She wrote the
principal part of Talleyrand's report on Public Instruction in 1790. She
procured the appointment of Narbonne to the ministry; and later, when
Talleyrand was in exile, obtained his appointment to the Department of
Foreign Affairs.

Matters had gone from bad to worse. In 1792 the Swedish government
suspended its embassy, and Madame de Staël prepared to fly, but stayed for
a time to save her friends. The seven prisons of Paris were all crowded
under the fearful reign of Danton and Marat. Great heaps of dead lay before
every prison door. During that Reign of Terror it is estimated that eighteen
thousand six hundred persons perished by the guillotine. Whole squares
were shot down. "When the police visited her house, where some of the
ministers were hidden, she met them graciously, urging that they must not
violate the privacy of an ambassador's house. When her friends were
arrested, she went to the barbarous leaders, and with her eloquence begged
for their safety, and thus saved the lives of many.

At last she must leave the terror-stricken city. Supposing that her rank as the
wife of a foreign ambassador would protect her, she started with a carriage
and six horses, her servants in livery. At once a crowd of half-famished and
haggard women crowded around, and threw themselves against the horses.
The carriage was stopped, and the occupants were taken to the Assembly.
She plead her case before the noted Robespierre, and then waited for six
hours for the decision of the Commune. Meantime she saw the hired
assassins pass beneath the windows, their bare arms covered with the blood
of the slain. The mob attempted to pillage her carriage, but a strong man
mounted the box and defended it. She learned afterward that it was the
notorious Santerre, the person who later superintended the execution of
Louis XVI., ordering his drummers to drown the last words of the dying
King. Santerre had seen Necker distribute corn to the poor of Paris in a time
of famine, and now he was befriending the daughter for this noble act.
Finally she was allowed to continue her journey, and reached Coppet with
her baby, Auguste, well-nigh exhausted after this terrible ordeal.

The Swiss home soon became a place of refuge for those who were flying
from the horrors of the Commune. She kept a faithful agent, who knew the
mountain passes, busy in this work of mercy.

The following year, 1793, longing for a change from these dreadful times,
she visited England, and received much attention from prominent persons,
among them Fanny Burny, the author of Evelina, who owned "that she had

never heard conversation before. The most animated eloquence, the keenest
observation, the most sparkling wit, the most courtly grace, were united to
charm her."

On Jan. 21 of this year, the unfortunate King had met his death on the
scaffold before an immense throng of people. Six men bound him to the
plank, and then his head was severed from his body amid the shouts and
waving of hats of the blood-thirsty crowd. Necker had begged to go before
the Convention and plead for his king, but was refused. Madame de Staël
wrote a vigorous appeal to the nation in behalf of the beautiful and
tenderhearted Marie Antoinette; but on Sept. 16, 1793, at four o'clock in the
morning, in an open cart, in the midst of thirty thousand troops and a noisy
rabble, she, too, was borne to the scaffold; and when her pale face was held
up bleeding before the crowd, they jeered and shouted themselves hoarse.

The next year 1794, Madame Necker died at Coppet, whispering to her
husband, "We shall see each other in Heaven." "She looked heavenward,"
said Necker in a most affecting manner, "listening while I prayed; then, in
dying, raised the finger of her left hand, which wore the ring I had given
her, to remind me of the pledge engraved upon it, to love her forever." His
devotion to her was beautiful. "No language," says his daughter, "can give
any adequate idea of it. Exhausted by wakefulness at night, she slept often
in the daytime, resting her head on his arm. I have seen him remain
immovable, for hours together, standing in the same position for fear of
awakening her by the least movement. Absent from her during a few hours
of sleep, he inquired, on his return, of her attendant, if she had asked for
him? She could no longer speak, but made an effort to say 'yes, yes.'"

When the Revolution was over, and France had become a republic, Sweden
sent back her ambassador, Baron de Staël, and his wife returned to him at
Paris. Again her salon became the centre for the great men of the time. She
loved liberty, and believed in the republican form of government. She had
written her book upon the Influence of the Passions on the Happiness of
Individuals and Nations, prompted by the horrors of the Revolution, and it
was considered "irresistible in energy and dazzling in thought."

She was also devoting much time to her child, Auguste, developing him
without punishment, thinking that there had been too much rigor in her own
childhood. He well repaid her for her gentleness and trust, and was
inseparable from her through life, becoming a noble Christian man, and the
helper of all good causes. Meantime Madame de Staël saw with alarm the
growing influence of the young Corsican officer, Bonaparte. The chief
executive power had been placed in the hands of the Directory, and he had
control of the army. He had won brilliant victories in Italy, and had been
made commander-in-chief of the expedition against Egypt He now returned
to Paris, turned out the Directory, drove out the Council of Five Hundred
from the hall of the Assembly at the point of the bayonet, made the
government into a consulate with three consuls, of whom he was the first,
and lived at the Tuileries in almost royal style.

All this time Madame de Staël felt the egotism and heartlessness of
Napoleon. Her salon became more crowded than ever with those who had
their fears for the future. "The most eloquent of the Republican orators were
those who borrowed from her most of their ideas and telling phrases. Most
of them went forth from her door with speeches ready for the next day, and
with resolution to pronounce them--a courage which was also derived from
her." Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte, the brothers of Napoleon, were proud of
her friendship, and often were guests at her house, until forbidden by their
brother.

When Benjamin Constant made a speech against the "rising tyranny,"
Napoleon suspected that she had prompted it, and denounced her heartily,
all the time declaring that he loved the Republic, and would always defend
it! He said persons always came away from De Staël's home "less his
friends than when they entered." About this time her book, Literature
considered in its Relation to Social Institutions, was published, and made a
surprising impression from its wealth of knowledge and power of thought.
Its analysis of Greek and Latin literature, and the chief works in Italian,
English, German, and French, astonished everybody, because written by a
woman!

Soon after Necker published his Last Views of Politics and Finance, in
which he wrote against the tyranny of a single man. At once Napoleon
caused a sharp letter to be written to Necker advising him to leave politics
to the First Consul, "who was alone able to govern France," and threatening
his daughter with exile for her supposed aid in his book. She saw the
wisdom of escaping from France, lest she be imprisoned, and immediately
hastened to Coppet. A few months later, in the winter of 1802, she returned
to Paris to bring home Baron de Staël, who was ill, and from whom she had
separated because he was spending all her fortune and that of her three
children. He died on the journey.

Virtually banished from France, she now wrote her Delphine, a brilliant
novel which was widely read. It received its name from a singular
circumstance.

"Desirous of meeting the First Consul for some urgent reason," says Dr.
Stevens in his charming biography of Madame de Staël, "she went to the
villa of Madame de Montessan, whither he frequently resorted. She was
alone in one of the salles when he arrived, accompanied by the consular
court of brilliant young women. The latter knew the growing hostility of
their master toward her, and passed, without noticing her, to the other end of
the salle, leaving her entirely alone. Her position was becoming extremely
painful, when a young lady, more courageous and more compassionate than
her companions, crossed the salle and took a seat by her side. Madame de
Staël was touched by this kindness, and asked for her Christian name.
'Delphine,' she responded. 'Ah, I will try to immortalize it,' exclaimed
Madame de Staël; and she kept her word. This sensible young lady was the
Comtesse de Custine."

Her home at Coppet became the home of many great people. Sismondi, the
author of the History of the Italian Republics, and Literature of Southern
Europe, encouraged by her, wrote here several of his famous works.
Bonstetten made his home here for years. Schlegel, the greatest critic of his
age, became the teacher of her children, and a most intimate friend.
Benjamin Constant, the author and statesman, was here. All repaired to their

rooms for work in the morning, and in the evening enjoyed philosophic,
literary, and political discussions.

Bonstetten said: "In seeing her, in hearing her, I feel myself electrified....
She daily becomes greater and better; but souls of great talent have great
sufferings: they are solitary in the world, like Mont Blanc."

In the autumn of 1803, longing for Paris, she ventured to within ten leagues
and hired a quiet home. Word was soon borne to Napoleon that the road to
her house was thronged with visitors. He at once sent an officer with a letter
signed by himself, exiling her to forty leagues from Paris, and commanding
her to leave within twenty-four hours.

At once she fled to Germany. At Frankfort her little daughter was
dangerously ill. "I knew no person in the city," she writes. "I did not know
the language; and the physician to whom I confided my child could not
speak French. But my father shared my trouble; he consulted physicians at
Geneva, and sent me their prescriptions. Oh, what would become of a
mother trembling for the life of her child, if it were not for prayer!"

Going to Weimar, she met Goethe, Wieland, Schiller, and other noted men.
At Berlin, the greatest attention was shown her. The beautiful Louise of
Prussia welcomed her heartily. During this exile her father died, with his
latest breath saying," She has loved me dearly! She has loved me dearly!"
On his death-bed he wrote a letter to Bonaparte telling him that his daughter
was in nowise responsible for his book, but it was never answered. It was
enough for Napoleon to know that she did not flatter him; therefore he
wished her out of the way.

Madame de Staël was for a time completely overcome by Necker's death.
She wore his picture on her person as long as she lived. Only once did she
part with it, and then she imagined it might console her daughter in her
illness. Giving it to her, she said, "Gaze upon it, gaze upon it, when you are
in pain."

She now sought repose in Italy, preparing those beautiful descriptions for
her Corinne, and finally returning to Coppet, spent a year in writing her

book. It was published in Paris, and, says Sainte-Beuve, "its success was
instantaneous and universal. As a work of art, as a poem, the romance of
Corinne is an immortal monument." Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review,
called the author the greatest writer in France since Voltaire and Rousseau,
and the greatest woman writer of any age or country. Napoleon, however, in
his official paper, caused a scathing criticism on Corinne to appear; indeed,
it was declared to be from his own pen. She was told by the Minister of
Police, that she had but to insert some praise of Napoleon in Corinne, and
she would be welcomed back to Paris. She could not, however, live a lie,
and she feared Napoleon had evil designs upon France.

Again she visited Germany with her children, Schlegel, and Sismondi. So
eager was everybody to see her and hear her talk, that Bettina von Arnim
says in her correspondence with Goethe: "The gentlemen stood around the
table and planted themselves behind us, elbowing one another. They leaned
quite over me, and I said in French, 'Your adorers quite suffocate me.'"

While in Germany, her eldest son, then seventeen, had an interview with
Bonaparte about the return of his mother. "Your mother," said Napoleon,
"could not be six months in Paris before I should be compelled to send her
to Bicêtre or the Temple. I should regret this necessity, for it would make a
noise and might injure me a little in public opinion. Say, therefore, to her
that as long as I live she cannot re-enter Paris. I see what you wish, but it
cannot be; she will commit follies; she will have the world about her."

On her return to Coppet, she spent two years in writing her Allemagne, for
which she had been making researches for four years. She wished it
published in Paris, as Corinne had been, and submitted it to the censors of
the Press. They crossed out whatever sentiments they thought might
displease Napoleon, and then ten thousand copies were at once printed, she
meantime removing to France, within her proscribed limits, that she might
correct the proof-sheets.

What was her astonishment to have Napoleon order the whole ten thousand
destroyed, and her to leave France in three days! Her two sons attempted to
see Bonaparte, who was at Fontainebleau, but were ordered to turn back, or

they would be arrested. The only reason given for destroying the work was
the fact that she had been silent about the great but egotistical Emperor.

Broken in spirit, she returned to Geneva. Amid all this darkness a new light
was about to beam upon her life. In the social gatherings made for her, she
observed a young army officer, Monsieur Rocca, broken in health from his
many wounds, but handsome and noble in face, and, as she learned, of
irreproachable life. Though only twenty-three and she forty-five, the young
officer was fascinated by her conversation, and refreshed in spirits by her
presence. She sympathized with his misfortunes in battle; she admired his
courage. He was lofty in sentiments, tender in heart, and gave her what she
had always needed, an unselfish and devoted love. When discouraged by
his friends, he replied, "I will love her so much that I will finish by making
her marry me."

They were married in 1811, and the marriage was a singularly happy one.
The reason for it is not difficult to perceive. A marriage that has not a pretty
face or a passing fancy for its foundation, but appreciation of a gifted mind
and noble heart,--such a marriage stands the test of time.

The marriage was kept secret from all save a few intimate friends, Madame
de Staël fearing that if the news reached Napoleon, Rocca would be ordered
back to France. Her fears were only too well founded. Schlegel, Madame
Recamier, all who had shown any sympathy for her, began to be exiled. She
was forbidden under any pretext whatever from travelling in Switzerland, or
entering any region annexed to France. She was advised not to go two
leagues from Coppet, lest she be imprisoned, and this with Napoleon
usually meant death.

The Emperor seemed about to conquer the whole world. Whither could she
fly to escape his persecution? She longed to reach England, but there was
an edict against any French subject entering that country without special
permit. Truly his heel was upon France. The only way to reach that country
was through Austria, Russia, and Sweden, two thousand leagues. But she
must attempt it. She passed an hour in prayer by her parent's tomb, kissed

his armchair and table, and took his cloak to wrap herself in should death
come.

May 23, 1812, she, with Rocca and two of her children, began their flight
by carriage, not telling the servants at the chateau, but that they should
return for the next meal.

They reached Vienna June 6, and were at once put under surveillance.
Everywhere she saw placards admonishing the officers to watch her
sharply. Rocca had to make his way alone, because Bonaparte had ordered
his arrest. They were permitted to remain only a few hours in any place.
Once Madame de Staël was so overcome by this brutal treatment that she
lost consciousness, and was obliged to be taken from her carriage to the
roadside till she recovered. Every hour she expected arrest and death.

Finally, worn in body, she reached Russia, and was cordially received by
Alexander and Empress Elizabeth. From here she went to Sweden, and had
an equally cordial welcome from Bernadotte, the general who became king.
Afterward she spent four months in England, bringing out Allemagne. Here
she received a perfect ovation. At Lord Lansdowne's the first ladies in the
kingdom mounted on chairs and tables to catch a glimpse of her. Sir James
Mackintosh said: "The whole fashionable and literary world is occupied
with Madame de Staël, the most celebrated woman of this, or perhaps of
any age." Very rare must be the case where a woman of fine mind does not
have many admirers among gentlemen.

Her Allemagne was published in 1813, the manuscript having been secretly
carried over Germany, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the Baltic Sea. The first
part treated of the manners of Germany; the second, its literature and art;
the third, its philosophy and morals; the fourth, its religion. The book had a
wonderful sale, and was soon translated into all the principal tongues of
Europe. Lamartine said: "Her style, without losing any of its youthful vigor
and splendor, seemed now to be illuminated with more lofty and eternal
lights as she approached the evening of life, and the diviner mysteries of
thought. This style no longer paints, no longer chants; it adores.... Her name
will live as long as literature, as long as the history of her country."

Meantime, great changes had taken place in France. Napoleon had been
defeated at Leipsic, leaving a quarter of a million murdered on his battle-
fields; he had abdicated, and was on his way to Elba. She immediately
returned to Paris, with much the same feeling as Victor Hugo, when he wept
as he came from his long exile under "Napoleon the Little." Again to her
salon came kings and generals, Alexander of Russia, Wellington, and
others.

But soon Napoleon returned, and she fled to Coppet. He sent her an
invitation to come to Paris, declaring he would now live for the peace of
Europe, but she could not trust him. She saw her daughter, lovely and
beautiful, married to the Duc de Broglie, a leading statesman, and was
happy in her happiness. Rocca's health was failing, and they repaired to
Italy for a time.

In 1816 they returned to Paris, Napoleon having gone from his final defeat
to St. Helena. But Madame de Staël was broken with her trials. She seemed
to grow more and more frail, till the end came. She said frequently, "My
father awaits me on the other shore." To Chateaubriand she said, "I have
loved God, my father, and my country." She could not and would not go to
sleep the last night, for fear she might never look upon Rocca again. He
begged her to sleep and he would awaken her often. "Good night," she said,
and it was forever. She never wakened. They buried her beside her father at
Coppet, under the grand old trees. Rocca died in seven months, at the age of
thirty-one. "I hoped," he said, "to have died in her arms."

Her little son, and Rocca's, five years old, was cared for by Auguste and
Albertine, her daughter. After Madame de Staël's death, her Considerations
on the French Revolution and Ten Years of Exile were published. Of the
former, Sainte-Beuve says: "Its publication was an event. It was the
splendid public obsequies of the authoress. Its politics were destined to long
and passionate discussions and a durable influence. She is perfect only from
this day; the full influence of her star is only at her tomb."

Chateaubriand said, "Her death made one of those breaches which the fall
of a superior intellect produces once in an age, and which can never be

closed."

As kind as she was great, loving deeply and receiving love in return, she
has left an imperishable name. No wonder that thousands visit that quiet
grave beside Lake Geneva.

Rosa Bonheur.

In a simple home in Paris could have been seen, in 1829, Raymond
Bonheur and his little family,--Rosa, seven years old, August, Isadore, and
Juliette. He was a man of fine talent in painting, but obliged to spend his
time in giving drawing-lessons to support his children. His wife, Sophie,
gave lessons on the piano, going from house to house all day long, and
sometimes sewing half the night, to earn a little more for the necessities of
life.

Hard work and poverty soon bore its usual fruit, and the tired young mother
died in 1833. The three oldest children were sent to board with a plain
woman, "La mère Cathérine," in the Champs Elysées, and the youngest was
placed with relatives. For two years this good woman cared for the children,

sending them to school, though she was greatly troubled because Rosa
persisted in playing in the woods of the Bois de Boulogne, gathering her
arms full of daisies and marigolds, rather than to be shut up in a
schoolroom. "I never spent an hour of fine weather indoors during the
whole of the two years," she has often said since those days.

Finally the father married again and brought the children home. The two
boys were placed in school, and M. Bonheur paid their way by giving
drawing lessons three times a week in the institution. If Rosa did not love
school, she must be taught something useful, and she was accordingly
placed in a sewing establishment to become a seamstress.

The child hated sewing, ran the needle into her fingers at every stitch, cried
for the fresh air and sunshine, and finally, becoming pale and sickly, was
taken back to the Bonheur home. The anxious painter would try his child
once more in school; so he arranged that she should attend, with
compensation met in the same way as for his boys. Rosa soon became a
favorite with the girls in the Fauborg St. Antoine School, especially because
she could draw such witty caricatures of the teachers, which she pasted
against the wall, with bread chewed into the consistency of putty. The
teachers were not pleased, but so struck were they with the vigor and
originality of the drawings, that they carefully preserved the sketches in an
album.

The girl was far from happy. Naturally sensitive--as what poet or painter
was ever born otherwise?--she could not bear to wear a calico dress and
coarse shoes, and eat with an iron spoon from a tin cup, when the other girls
wore handsome dresses, and had silver mugs and spoons. She grew
melancholy, neglected her books, and finally became so ill that she was
obliged to be taken home.

And now Raymond Bonheur very wisely decided not to make plans for his
child for a time, but see what was her natural tendency. It was well that he
made this decision in time, before she had been spoiled by his well-meant
but poor intentions.

Left to herself, she constantly hung about her father's studio, now drawing,
now modeling, copying whatever she saw him do. She seemed never to be
tired, but sang at her work all the day long.

Monsieur Bonheur suddenly awoke to the fact that his daughter had great
talent. He began to teach her carefully, to make her accurate in drawing, and
correct in perspective. Then he sent her to the Louvre to copy the works of
the old masters. Here she worked with the greatest industry and enthusiasm,
not observing anything that was going on around her. Said the director of
the Louvre, "I have never seen an example of such application and such
ardor for work."

One day an elderly English gentleman stopped beside her easel, and said:
"Your copy, my child, is superb, faultless. Persevere as you have begun, and
I prophesy that you will be a great artist." How glad those few words made
her! She went home thinking over to herself the determination she had
made in the school when she ate with her iron spoon, that sometime she
would be as famous as her schoolmates, and have some of the comforts of
life.

Her copies of the old masters were soon sold, and though they brought
small prices, she gladly gave the money to her father, who needed it now
more than ever. His second wife had two sons when he married her, and
now they had a third, Germain, and every cent that Rosa could earn was
needed to help support seven children. "La mamiche," as they called the
new mother, was an excellent manager of the meagre finances, and filled
her place well.

Rosa was now seventeen, loving landscape, historical, and genre painting,
perhaps equally; but happening to paint a goat, she was so pleased in the
work, that she determined to make animal painting a specialty. Having no
money to procure models, she must needs make long walks into the country
on foot to the farms. She would take a piece of bread in her pocket, and
generally forget to eat it. After working all day, she would come home tired,
often drenched with rain, and her shoes covered with mud.

She took other means to study animals. In the outskirts of Paris were great
abattoirs, or slaughter-pens. Though the girl tenderly loved animals, and
shrank from the sight of suffering, she forced herself to see the killing, that
she might know how to depict the death agony on canvas. Though obliged
to mingle more or less with drovers and butchers, no indignity was ever
offered her. As she sat on a bundle of hay, with her colors about her, they
would crowd around to look at the pictures, and regard her with honest
pride. The world soon learns whether a girl is in earnest about her work, and
treats her accordingly.

The Bonheur family had moved to the sixth story of a tenement house in the
Rue Rumfort, now the Rue Malesherbes. The sons, Auguste and Isadore,
had both become artists; the former a painter, the latter a sculptor. Even
little Juliette was learning to paint. Rosa was working hard all day at her
easel, and at night was illustrating books, or molding little groups of
animals for the figure-dealers. All the family were happy despite their
poverty, because they had congenial work.

On the roof, Rosa improvised a sort of garden, with honeysuckles, sweet-
peas, and nasturtiums, and here they kept a sheep, with long, silky wool, for
a model. Very often Isadore would take him on his back and carry him
down the six flights of stairs,--the day of elevators had not dawned,--and
after he had enjoyed grazing, would bring him back to his garden home. It
was a docile creature, and much loved by the whole family. For Rosa's
birds, the brothers constructed a net, which they hung outside the window,
and then opened the cage into it.

At nineteen Rosa was to test the world, and see what the critics would say.
She sent to the Fine Arts Exhibition two pictures, "Goats and Sheep" and
"Two Rabbits." The public was pleased, and the press gave kind notices.
The next year "Animals in a Pasture," a "Cow lying in a Meadow," and a
"Horse for sale," attracted still more attention. Two years later she exhibited
twelve pictures, some from her father and brother being hung on either side
of hers, the first time they had been admitted. More and more the critics
praised, and the pathway of the Bonheur family grew less thorny.

Then, in 1849, when she was twenty-seven, came the triumph. Her
magnificent picture, "Cantal Oxen," took the gold medal, and was
purchased by England. Horace Vernet, the president of the commission of
awards, in the midst of a brilliant assembly, proclaimed the new laureate,
and gave her, in behalf of the government, a superb Sèvres vase.

Raymond Bonheur seemed to become young again at this fame of his child.
It brought honors to him also, for he was at once made director of the
government school of design for girls. But the release from poverty and
anxiety came too late, and he died the same year, greatly lamented by his
family. "He had grand ideas," said his daughter, "and had he not been
obliged to give lessons for our support, he would have been more known,
and to-day acknowledged with other masters."

Rosa was made director in his place, and Juliette became a professor in the
school. This same year appeared her "Plowing Scene in the Nivernais," now
in the Luxembourg Gallery, thought to be her most important work after her
"Horse Fair." Orders now poured in upon her, so that she could not accede
to half the requests for work. A rich Hollander offered her one thousand
crowns for a painting which she could have wrought in two hours; but she
refused.

Four years later, after eighteen long months of preparatory studies, her
"Horse Fair" was painted. This created the greatest enthusiasm both in
England and America. It was sold to a gentleman in England for eight
thousand dollars, and was finally purchased by A. T. Stewart, of New York,
for his famous collection. No one who has seen this picture will ever forget
the action and vigor of these Normandy horses. In painting it, a petted
horse, it is said, stepped back upon the canvas, putting his hoof through it,
thus spoiling the work of months.

So greatly was this picture admired, that Napoleon III. was urged to bestow
upon her the Cross of the Legion of Honor, entitled her from French usage.
Though she was invited to the state dinner at the Tuileries, always given to
artists to whom the Academy of Fine Arts has awarded its highest honors,
Napoleon had not the courage to give it to her, lest public opinion might not

agree with him in conferring it upon a woman. Possibly he felt, more than
the world knew, the insecurity of his throne.

Henry Bacon, in the Century, thus describes the way in which Rosa
Bonheur finally received the badge of distinction. "The Emperor, leaving
Paris for a short summer excursion in 1865, left the Empress as Regent.
From the imperial residence at Fontainebleau it was only a short drive to By
(the home of Mademoiselle Bonheur). The countersign at the gate was
forced, and unannounced, the Empress entered the studio where
Mademoiselle Rosa was at work. She rose to receive the visitor, who threw
her arms about her neck and kissed her. It was only a short interview. The
imperial vision had departed, the rumble of the carriage and the crack of the
outriders' whips were lost in the distance. Then, and not till then, did the
artist discover that as the Empress had given the kiss, she had pinned upon
her blouse the Cross of the Legion of Honor." Since then she has received
the Leopold Cross of Honor from the King of Belgium, said to be the first
ever conferred upon a woman; also a decoration from the King of Spain.
Her brother Auguste, now dead, received the Cross of the Legion of Honor
in 1867, two years after Rosa.

In preparing to paint the "Horse Fair" and other similar pictures, which have
brought her much into the company of men, she has found it wise to dress
in male costume. A laughable incident is related of this mode of dress. One
day when she returned from the country, she found a messenger awaiting to
announce to her the sudden illness of one of her young friends. Rosa did not
wait to change her male attire, but hastened to the bedside of the young
lady. In a few minutes after her arrival, the doctor, who had been sent for,
entered, and seeing a young man, as he supposed, seated on the side of the
bed, with his arm round the neck of the sick girl, thought he was an
intruder, and retreated with all possible speed. "Oh! run after him! He thinks
you are my lover, and has gone and left me to die!" cried the sick girl. Rosa
flew down stairs, and soon returned with the modest doctor.

She also needs this mannish costume, for her long journeys over the
Pyrenees into Spain or in the Scottish Highlands. She is always
accompanied by her most intimate friend, Mademoiselle Micas, herself an

artist of repute, whose mother, a widow, superintends the home for the two
devoted friends.

Sometimes in the Pyrenees these two ladies see no one for six weeks but
muleteers with their mules. The people in these lonely mountain passes live
entirely upon the curdled milk of sheep. Once Rosa Bonheur and her friend
were nearly starving, when Mademoiselle Micas obtained a quantity of
frogs, and covering the hind legs with leaves, roasted them over a fire. On
these they lived for two days.

In Scotland she painted her exquisite "Denizens of the Mountains,"
"Morning in the Highlands," and "Crossing a Loch in the Highlands." In
England she was treated like a princess. Sir Edwin Landseer, whom some
persons thought she would marry, is reported to have said, when he first
looked upon her "Horse Fair," "It surpasses me, though it's a little hard to be
beaten by a woman." On her return to France she brought a skye-terrier,
named "Wasp," of which she is very fond, and for which she has learned
several English phrases. When she speaks to him in English, he wags his
tail most appreciatively.

Rosa Bonheur stands at the head of her profession, an acknowledged
master. Her pictures bring enormous sums, and have brought her wealth. A
"View in the Pyrenees" has been sold for ten thousand dollars, and some
others for twice that sum.

She gives away much of her income. She has been known to send to the
Mont de Pieté her gold medals to raise funds to assist poor artists. A woman
artist, who had been refused help by several wealthy painters, applied to
Rosa Bonheur, who at once took down from the wall a small but valuable
painting, and gave it to her, from which she received a goodly sum. A
young sculptor who greatly admired her work, enclosed twenty dollars,
asking her for a small drawing, and saying that this was all the money he
possessed. She immediately sent him a sketch worth at least two hundred
dollars. She has always provided most generously for her family, and for
servants who have grown old in her employ.

She dresses very simply, always wearing black, brown, or gray, with a close
fitting jacket over a plain skirt. When she accepts a social invitation, which
is very rare, she adorns her dress with a lace collar, but without other
ornament. Her working dress is usually a long gray linen or blue flannel
blouse, reaching nearly from head to foot. She has learned that the
conventional tight dress of women is not conducive to great mental or
physical power. She is small in stature, with dainty hands and feet, blue
eyes, and a noble and intelligent face.

She is an indefatigable worker, rising usually at six in the morning, and
painting throughout the day.

So busy is she that she seldom permits herself any amusements. On one
occasion she had tickets sent her for the theatre. She worked till the carriage
was announced. "Je suis prête," said Rosa, and went to the play in her
working dress. A daintily gloved man in the box next to hers looked over in
disdain, and finally went into the vestibule and found the manager.

"Who is this woman in the box next to mine?" he said, in a rage. "She's in
an old calico dress, covered with paint and oil. The odor is terrible. Turn her
out. If you do not, I will never enter your theatre again."

The manager went to the box, and returning, informed him that it was the
great painter.

"Rosa Bonheur!" he gasped. "Who'd have thought it? Make my apology to
her. I dare not enter her presence again."

She usually walks at the twilight, often thinking out new subjects for her
brush, at that quiet hour. She said to a friend: "I have been a faithful student
since I was ten years old. I have copied no master. I have studied Nature,
and expressed to the best of my ability the ideas and feelings with which
she has inspired me. Art is an absorbent--a tyrant. It demands heart, brain,
soul, body, the entireness of the votary. Nothing less will win its highest
favor. I wed art. It is my husband, my world, my life-dream, the air I
breathe. I know nothing else, feel nothing else, think nothing else, My soul
finds in it the most complete satisfaction.... I have no taste for general

society,--no interest in its frivolities. I only seek to be known through my
works. If the world feel and understand them, I have succeeded.... If I had
got up a convention to debate the question of my ability to paint 'Marché au
Chevaux' [The Horse Fair], for which England paid me forty thousand
francs, the decision would have been against me. I felt the power within me
to paint; I cultivated it, and have produced works that have won the
favorable verdicts of the great judges. I have no patience with women who
ask permission to think!"

For years she lived in Rue d'Assas, a retired street half made up of gardens.
Here she had one of the most beautiful studios of Paris, the room lighted
from the ceiling, the walls covered with paintings, with here and there old
armor, tapestry, hats, cloaks, sandals, and skins of tigers, leopards, foxes,
and oxen on the floor. One Friday, the day on which she received guests,
one of her friends, coming earlier than usual, found her fast asleep on her
favorite skin, that of a magnificent ox, with stuffed head and spreading
horns. She had come in tired from the School of Design, and had thrown
herself down to rest. Usually after greeting her friends she would say,
"Allow me to resume my brush; we can talk just as well together." For those
who have any great work to do in this worlds there is little time for visiting;
interruptions cannot be permitted. No wonder Carlyle groaned when some
person had taken two hours of his time. He could better have spared money
to the visitor.

For several years Rosa Bonheur has lived near Fontainebleau, in the
Chateau By. Henry Bacon says: "The chateau dates from the time of Louis
XV., and the garden is still laid out in the style of Le Notre. Since it has
been in the present proprietor's possession, a quaint, picturesque brick
building, containing the carriage house and coachman's lodge on the first
floor, and the studio on the second, has been added; the roof of the main
building has been raised, and the chapel changed into an orangery: beside
the main carriage-entrance, which is closed by iron gates and wooden
blinds, is a postern gate, with a small grated opening, like those found in
convents. The blinds to the gate and the slide to the grating are generally
closed, and the only communication with the outside world is by the bell-
wire, terminating in a ring beside the gate. Ring, and the jingle of the bell is

at once echoed by the barking of numerous dogs,--the hounds and bassets in
chorus, the grand Saint Bernard in slow measure, like the bass-drum in an
orchestra. After the first excitement among the dogs has begun to abate, a
remarkably small house-pet that has been somewhere in the interior arrives
upon the scene, and with his sharp, shrill voice again starts and leads the
canine chorus. By this time the eagle in his cage has awakened, and the
parrot, whose cage is built into the corner of the studio looking upon the
street, adds to the racket.

"Behind the house is a large park divided from the forest by a high wall; a
lawn and flower-beds are laid out near the buildings; and on the lawn, in
pleasant weather, graze a magnificent bull and cow, which are kept as
models. In a wire enclosure are two chamois from the Pyrenees, and further
removed from the house, in the wooded part of the park, are enclosures for
sheep and deer, each of which knows its mistress. Even the stag, bearing its
six-branched antlers, receives her caresses like a pet dog. At the end of one
of the linden avenues is a splendid bronze, by Isadore Bonheur, of a Gaul
attacking a lion.

"The studio is very large, with a huge chimney at one end, the supports of
which are life-size dogs, modeled by Isadore Bonheur. Portraits of the
father and mother in oval frames hang at each side, and a pair of gigantic
horns ornaments the centre. The room is decorated with stuffed heads of
animals of various kinds,--boars, bears, wolves, and oxen; and birds perch
in every convenient place."

When Prussia conquered France, and swept through this town, orders were
given that Rosa Bonheur's home and paintings be carefully preserved. Even
her servants went unmolested. The peasants idolized the great woman who
lived in the chateau, and were eager to serve her. She always talked to them
pleasantly. Rosa Bonheur died at her home at 11 P.M., Thursday, May 25,
1899.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Ever since I had received in my girlhood, from my best friend, the works of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in five volumes in blue and gold, I had read
and re-read the pages, till I knew scores by heart. I had longed to see the
face and home of her whom the English call "Shakespeare's daughter," and
whom Edmund Clarence Stedman names "the passion-flower of the
century."

I shall never forget that beautiful July morning spent in the Browning home
in London. The poet-wife had gone out from it, and lay buried in Florence,
but here were her books and her pictures. Here was a marble bust, the hair
clustering about the face, and a smile on the lips that showed happiness.
Near by was another bust of the idolized only child, of whom she wrote in
Casa Guidi Windows:--
"The sun strikes through the windows, up the floor:
Stand out in it, my own young Florentine,
Not two years old, and let me see thee more!
It grows along thy amber curls to shine
Brighter than elsewhere. Now look straight before
And fix thy brave blue English eyes on mine,
And from thy soul, which fronts the future so
With unabashed and unabated gaze,

Teach me to hope for what the Angels know
When they smile clear as thou dost!"

Here was the breakfast-table at which they three had often sat together.
Close beside it hung a picture of the room in Florence, where she lived so
many years in a wedded bliss as perfect as any known in history. Tears
gathered in the eyes of Robert Browning, as he pointed out her chair, and
sofa, and writing-table.

Of this room in Casa Guidi, Kate Field wrote in the Atlantic Monthly,
September, 1861: "They who have been so favored can never forget the
square ante-room, with its great picture and piano-forte, at which the boy
Browning passed many an hour; the little dining room covered with
tapestry, and where hung medallions of Tennyson, Carlyle, and Robert
Browning; the long room filled with plaster casts and studies, which was
Mr. Browning's retreat; and, dearest of all, the large drawing-room, where
she always sat. It opens upon a balcony filled with plants, and looks out
upon the old iron-gray church of Santa Felice. There was something about
this room that seemed to make it a proper and especial haunt for poets. The
dark shadows and subdued light gave it a dreamy look, which was enhanced
by the tapestry-covered walls, and the old pictures of saints that looked out
sadly from their carved frames of black wood. Large bookcases, constructed
of specimens of Florentine carving selected by Mr. Browning, were
brimming over with wise-looking books. Tables were covered with more
gayly bound volumes, the gifts of brother authors. Dante's grave profile, a
cast of Keats' face and brow taken after death, a pen-and-ink sketch of
Tennyson, the genial face of John Kenyon, Mrs. Browning's good friend
and relative, little paintings of the boy Browning, all attracted the eye in
turn, and gave rise to a thousand musings. But the glory of all, and that
which sanctified all, was seated in a low armchair near the door. A small
table, strewn with writing materials, books and newspapers, was always by
her side."

Then Mr. Browning, in the London home, showed us the room where he
writes, containing his library and hers. The books are on simple shelves,
choice, and many very old and rare. Here are her books, many in Greek and
Hebrew. In the Greek, I saw her notes on the margin in Hebrew, and in the

Hebrew she had written her marginal notes in Greek. Here also are the five
volumes of her writings, in blue and gold.

The small table at which she wrote still stands beside the larger where her
husband composes. His table is covered with letters and papers and books;
hers stands there unused, because it is a constant reminder of those
companionable years, when they worked together. Close by hangs a picture
of the "young Florentine," Robert Barrett Browning, now grown to
manhood, an artist already famed. He has a refined face, as he sits in artist
garb, before his easel, sketching in a peasant's house. The beloved poet who
wrote at the little table, is endeared to all the world. Born in 1809, in the
county of Durham, the daughter of wealthy parents, she passed her early
years partly in the country in Herefordshire, and partly in the city. That she
loved the country with its wild flowers and woods, her poem, The Lost
Bower, plainly shows.

"Green the land is where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played,
Dimpled close with hill and valley,
Dappled very close with shade;
Summer-snow of apple-blossoms running up from glade to glade.

* * * * *

"But the wood, all close and clenching
Bough in bough and root in root,--
No more sky (for overbranching)
At your head than at your foot,--
Oh, the wood drew me within it, by a glamour past dispute.

"But my childish heart beat stronger
Than those thickets dared to grow:
I could pierce them! I could longer
Travel on, methought, than so.
Sheep for sheep-paths! braver children climb and creep where
they would go.

* * * * *

"Tall the linden-tree, and near it
An old hawthorne also grew;
And wood-ivy like a spirit
Hovered dimly round the two,
Shaping thence that bower of beauty which I sing of thus to you.

"And the ivy veined and glossy
Was enwrought with eglantine;
And the wild hop fibred closely,
And the large-leaved columbine,
Arch of door and window mullion, did right sylvanly entwine.

* * * * *

"I have lost--oh, many a pleasure,
Many a hope, and many a power--
Studious health, and merry leisure,
The first dew on the first flower!
But the first of all my losses was the losing of the bower.

* * * * *

"Is the bower lost then? Who sayeth
That the bower indeed is lost?
Hark! my spirit in it prayeth
Through the sunshine and the frost,--
And the prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and uttermost.

"Till another open for me
In God's Eden-land unknown,
With an angel at the doorway,
White with gazing at His throne,
And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing, 'All is lost ...
and won!'"

Elizabeth Barrett wrote poems at ten, and when seventeen, published an
Essay on Mind, and Other Poems. The essay was after the manner of Pope,
and though showing good knowledge of Plato and Bacon, did not find favor
with the critics. It was dedicated to her father, who was proud of a daughter
who preferred Latin and Greek to the novels of the day.

Her teacher was the blind Hugh Stuart Boyd, whom she praises in her Wine
of Cyprus.
"Then, what golden hours were for us!--
While we sate together there;

* * * * *

"Oh, our Aeschylus, the thunderous!
How he drove the bolted breath
Through the cloud to wedge it ponderous
In the gnarlèd oak beneath.
Oh, our Sophocles, the royal,
Who was born to monarch's place,
And who made the whole world loyal,
Less by kingly power than grace.

"Our Euripides, the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touches of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres!
Our Theocritus, our Bion,
And our Pindar's shining goals!--
These were cup-bearers undying,
Of the wine that's meant for souls."

More fond of books than of social life, she was laying the necessary
foundation for a noble fame. The lives of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
George Eliot, and Margaret Fuller, emphasize the necessity of almost
unlimited knowledge, if woman would reach lasting fame. A great man or
woman of letters, without great scholarship, is well-nigh an impossible
thing.

Nine years after her first book, Prometheus Bound and Miscellaneous
Poems was published in 1835. She was now twenty-six. A translation from
the Greek of Aeschylus by a woman caused much comment, but like the
first book it received severe criticism. Several years afterward, when she
brought her collected poems before the world, she wrote: "One early
failure, a translation of the Prometheus of Aeschylus, which, though happily
free of the current of publication, may be remembered against me by a few
of my personal friends, I have replaced here by an entirely new version,
made for them and my conscience, in expiation of a sin of my youth, with
the sincerest application of my mature mind." "This latter version," says Mr.
Stedman, "of a most sublime tragedy is more poetical than any other of
equal correctness, and has the fire and vigor of a master-hand. No one has
succeeded better than its author in capturing with rhymed measures the
wilful rushing melody of the tragic chorus."

In 1835 Miss Barrett made the acquaintance of Mary Russell Mitford, and a
life-long friendship resulted. Miss Mitford says: "She was certainly one of
the most interesting persons I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her
said the same. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls
falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly
fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of
youthfulness, that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend, in whose
carriage we went together to Cheswick, that the translatress of the
Prometheus of Aeschylus, the authoress of the Essay on Mind, was old
enough to be introduced into company, in technical language, was out. We
met so constantly and so familiarly that, in spite of the difference of age,
intimacy ripened into friendship, and after my return into the country, we
corresponded freely and frequently, her letters being just what letters ought
to be,--her own talk put upon paper."

The next year Miss Barrett, never robust, broke a blood-vessel in the lungs.
For a year she was ill, and then with her eldest and favorite brother, was
carried to Torquay to try the effect of a warmer climate. After a year spent
here, she greatly improved, and seemed likely to recover her usual health.

One beautiful summer morning she went on the balcony to watch her
brother and two other young men who had gone out for a sail. Having had
much experience, and understanding the coast, they allowed the boatman to
return to land. Only a few minutes out, and in plain sight, as they were
crossing the bar, the boat went down, and the three friends perished. Their
bodies even were never recovered.

The whole town was in mourning. Posters were put upon every cliff and
public place, offering large rewards "for linen cast ashore marked with the
initials of the beloved dead; for it so chanced that all the three were of the
dearest and the best: one, an only son; the other, the son of a widow"; but
the sea was forever silent.

The sister, who had seen her brother sink before her eyes, was utterly
prostrated. She blamed herself for his death, because he came to Torquay
for her comfort. All winter long she heard the sound of waves ringing in her
ears like the moans of the dying. From this time forward she never
mentioned her brother's name, and later, exacted from Mr. Browning a
promise that the subject should never be broached between them.

The following year she was removed to London in an invalid carriage,
journeying twenty miles a day. And then for seven years, in a large
darkened room, lying much of the time upon her couch, and seeing only a
few most intimate friends, the frail woman lived and wrote. Books more
than ever became her solace and joy. Miss Mitford says, "She read almost
every book worth reading, in almost every language, and gave herself heart
and soul to that poetry of which she seem born to be the priestess." When
Dr. Barry urged that she read light books, she had a small edition of Plato
bound so as to resemble a novel, and the good man was satisfied. She
understood her own needs better than he.

When she was twenty-nine, she published The Seraphim and Other Poems.
The Seraphim was a reverential description of two angels watching the
Crucifixion. Though the critics saw much that was strikingly original, they
condemned the frequent obscurity of meaning and irregularity of rhyme.
The next year, The Romaunt of the Page and other ballads appeared, and in
1844, when she was thirty-five, a complete edition of her poems, opening
with the Drama of Exile. This was the expulsion of Adam and Eve from
Eden, the first scene representing "the outer side of the gate of Eden shut
fast with cloud, from the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-
moved. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance flying along the glare."

In one of her prefaces she said: "Poetry has been to me as serious a thing as
life itself,--and life has been a very serious thing; there has been no playing
at skittles for me in either. I never mistook pleasure for the final cause of
poetry, nor leisure for the hour of the poet. I have done my work, so far, as
work,--not as mere hand and head work, apart from the personal being, but
as the completest expression of that being to which I could attain,--and as
work I offer it to the public, feeling its shortcomings more deeply than any
of my readers, because measured from the height of my aspiration; but
feeling also that the reverence and sincerity with which the work was done
should give it some protection from the reverent and sincere."

While the Drama of Exile received some adverse criticism, the shorter
poems became the delight of thousands. Who has not held his breath in
reading the Rhyme of the Duchess May?--
"And her head was on his breast, where she smiled as one at
rest,--
Toll slowly.
'Ring,' she cried, 'O vesper-bell, in the beech-wood's old
chapelle!'
But the passing-bell rings best!

"They have caught out at the rein, which Sir Guy threw loose--in
vain,--
Toll slowly.
For the horse in stark despair, with his front hoofs poised in
air,
On the last verge rears amain.

"Now he hangs, he rocks between, and his nostrils curdle in!--
Toll slowly.
Now he shivers head and hoof, and the flakes of foam fall off,
And his face grows fierce and thin!

"And a look of human woe from his staring eyes did go,
Toll slowly.
And a sharp cry uttered he, in a foretold agony of the headlong
death below."

Who can ever forget that immortal Cry of the Children, which awoke all
England to the horrors of child-labor? That, and Hood's Song of the Shirt,
will never die.

Who has not read and loved one of the most tender poems in any language,
Bertha in the Lane?--
"Yes, and He too! let him stand
In thy thoughts, untouched by blame.
Could he help it, if my hand
He had claimed with hasty claim?
That was wrong perhaps--but then
Such things be--and will, again.
Women cannot judge for men.

* * * * *

"And, dear Bertha, let me keep
On this hand this little ring,
Which at night, when others sleep,
I can still see glittering.
Let me wear it out of sight,
In the grave,--where it will light
All the Dark up, day and night."

No woman has ever understood better the fulness of love, or described it
more purely and exquisitely.

One person among the many who had read Miss Barrett's poems, felt their
genius, because he had genius in his own soul, and that person was Robert
Browning. That she admired his poetic work was shown in Lady
Geraldine's Courtship, when Bertram reads to his lady-love:--

"Or at times a modern volume,--Wordsworth's solemn-thoughted
idyl,
Howitt's ballad verse, or Tennyson's enchanted reverie,
Or from Browning some Pomegranate, which, if cut deep down the
middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity."

Mr. Browning determined to meet the unknown singer. Years later he told
the story to Elizabeth C. Kinney, when she had gone with the happy
husband and wife on a day's excursion from Florence. She says: "Finding
that the invalid did not receive strangers, he wrote her a letter, intense with
his desire to see her. She reluctantly consented to an interview. He flew to
her apartment, was admitted by the nurse, in whose presence only could he
see the deity at whose shrine he had long worshipped. But the golden
opportunity was not to be lost; love became oblivious to any save the
presence of the real of its ideal. Then and there Robert Browning poured his
impassioned soul into hers; though his tale of love seemed only an
enthusiast's dream. Infirmity had hitherto so hedged her about, that she
deemed herself forever protected from all assaults of love. Indeed, she felt
only injured that a fellow-poet should take advantage, as it were, of her
indulgence in granting him an interview, and requested him to withdraw
from her presence, not attempting any response to his proposal, which she
could not believe in earnest. Of course, he withdrew from her sight, but not
to withdraw the offer of his heart and hand; on the contrary, to repeat it by
letter, and in such wise as to convince her how 'dead in earnest' he was. Her
own heart, touched already when she knew it not, was this time fain to
listen, be convinced, and overcome.

"As a filial daughter, Elizabeth told her father of the poet's love, and of the
poet's love in return, and asked a parent's blessing to crown their happiness.
At first he was incredulous of the strange story; but when the truth flashed
on him from the new fire in her eyes, he kindled with rage, and forbade her
ever seeing or communicating with her lover again, on the penalty of
disinheritance and banishment forever from a father's love. This decision
was founded on no dislike for Mr. Browning personally, or anything in him
or his family; it was simply arbitrary. But the new love was stronger than
the old in her,--it conquered." Mr. Barrett never forgave his daughter, and
died unreconciled, which to her was a great grief.

In 1846, Elizabeth Barrett arose from her sick-bed to marry the man of her
choice, who took her at once to Italy, where she spent fifteen happy years.
At once, love seemed to infuse new life into the delicate body and renew
the saddened heart. She was thirty-seven. She had wisely waited till she
found a person of congenial tastes and kindred pursuits. Had she married
earlier, it is possible that the cares of life might have deprived the world of
some of her noblest works.

The marriage was an ideal one. Both had a grand purpose in life. Neither
individual was merged in the other. George S. Hillard, in his Six Months in
Italy, when he visited the Brownings the year after their marriage, says, "A
happier home and a more perfect union than theirs it is not easy to imagine;
and this completeness arises not only from the rare qualities which each
possesses, but from their perfect adaptation to each other.... Nor is she more
remarkable for genius and learning, than for sweetness of temper and purity
of spirit. It is a privilege to know such beings singly and separately, but to
see their powers quickened, and their happiness rounded, by the sacred tie
of marriage, is a cause for peculiar and lasting gratitude. A union so
complete as theirs--in which the mind has nothing to crave nor the heart to
sigh for--is cordial to behold and soothing to remember."

"Mr. Browning," says one who knew him well, "did not fear to speak of his
wife's genius, which he did almost with awe, losing himself so entirely in
her glory that one could see that he did not feel worthy to unloose her shoe-
latchet, much less to call her his own."

When mothers teach their daughters to cultivate their minds as did Mrs.
Browning, as well as to emulate her sweetness of temper, then will men
venerate women for both mental and moral power. A love that has reverence
for its foundation knows no change.

"Mrs. Browning's conversation was most interesting. She never made an
insignificant remark. All that she said was always worth hearing; a greater
compliment could not be paid her. She was a most conscientious listener,
giving you her mind and heart, as well as her magnetic eyes. Persons were
never her theme, unless public characters were under discussion, or friends

were to be praised. One never dreamed of frivolities in Mrs. Browning's
presence, and gossip felt itself out of place. Yourself, not herself, was
always a pleasant subject to her, calling out all her best sympathies in joy,
and yet more in sorrow. Books and humanity, great deeds, and above all,
politics, which include all the grand questions of the day, were foremost in
her thoughts, and therefore oftenest on her lips. I speak not of religion, for
with her everything was religion.

"Thoughtful in the smallest things for others, she seemed to give little
thought to herself. The first to see merit, she was the last to censure faults,
and gave the praise that she felt with a generous hand. No one so heartily
rejoiced at the success of others, no one was so modest in her own
triumphs. She loved all who offered her affection, and would solace and
advise with any. Mrs. Browning belonged to no particular country; the
world was inscribed upon the banner under which she fought. Wrong was
her enemy; against this she wrestled, in whatever part of the globe it was to
be found."

Three years after her marriage her only son was born. The Italians ever after
called her "the mother of the beautiful child." And now some of her ablest
and strongest work was done. Her Casa Guidi Windows appeared in 1851.
It is the story of the struggle for Italian liberty. In the same volume were
published the Portuguese Sonnets, really her own love-life. It would be
difficult to find any thing more beautiful than these.
"First time he kissed me he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write,
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its 'Oh, list,'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half-missed
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, 'My love, my own!'

* * * * *

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right,
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life!--and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death."

Mrs. Browning's next great poem, in 1856, was Aurora Leigh, a novel in
blank verse, "the most mature," she says in the preface, "of my works, and
the one into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered."
Walter Savage Landor said of it: "In many pages there is the wild
imagination of Shakespeare. I had no idea that any one in this age was
capable of such poetry."

For fifteen years this happy wedded life, with its work of brain and hand,
had been lived, and now the bond was to be severed. In June, 1861, Mrs.
Browning took a severe cold, and was ill for nearly a week. No one thought
of danger, though Mr. Browning would not leave her bedside. On the night
of June 29, toward morning she seemed to be in a sort of ecstasy. She told
her husband of her love for him, gave him her blessing, and raised herself to
die in his arms. "It is beautiful," were her last words as she caught a glimpse
of some heavenly vision. On the evening of July 1, she was buried in the
English cemetery, in the midst of sobbing friends, for who could carry out
that request?--
"And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, 'Not a tear must o'er her fall,--
He giveth his beloved sleep!'"

The Italians, who loved her, placed on the doorway of Casa Guidi a white
marble tablet, with the words:--

"Here wrote and died E.B. Browning, who, in the heart of a woman, united
the science of a sage and the spirit of a poet, and made with her verse a
golden ring binding Italy and England.

"Grateful Florence placed this memorial, 1861."

For twenty-five years Robert Browning and his artist-son have done their
work, blessed with the memory of her whom Mr. Stedman calls "the most
inspired woman, so far as known, of all who have composed in ancient or
modern tongues, or flourished in any land or time."

George Eliot.

Going to the Exposition at New Orleans, I took for reading on the journey,
the life of George Eliot, by her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, written with great
delicacy and beauty. An accident delayed us, so that for three days I enjoyed
this insight into a wonderful life. I copied the amazing list of books she had

read, and transferred to my note-book many of her beautiful thoughts. To-
day I have been reading the book again; a clear, vivid picture of a very great
woman, whose works, says the Spectator, "are the best specimens of
powerful, simple English, since Shakespeare."

What made her a superior woman? Not wealthy parentage; not congenial
surroundings. She had a generous, sympathetic heart for a foundation, and
on this she built a scholarship that even few men can equal. She loved
science, and philosophy, and language, and mathematics, and grew broad
enough to discuss great questions and think great thoughts. And yet she was
affectionate, tender, and gentle.

Mary Ann Evans was born Nov. 22, 1819, at Arbury Farm, a mile from
Griff, in Warwickshire, England. When four months old the family moved
to Griff, where the girl lived till she was twenty-one, in a two-story, old-
fashioned, red brick house, the walls covered with ivy. Two Norway firs and
an old yew-tree shaded the lawn. The father, Robert Evans, a man of
intelligence and good sense, was bred a builder and carpenter, afterward
becoming a land-agent for one of the large estates. The mother was a
woman of sterling character, practical and capable.

For the three children, Christiana, Isaac, and Mary Ann, there was little
variety in the commonplace life at Griff. Twice a day the coach from
Birmingham to Stamford passed by the house, and the coachman and guard
in scarlet were a great diversion. She thus describes, the locality in Felix
Holt: "Here were powerful men walking queerly, with knees bent outward
from squatting in the mine, going home to throw themselves down in their
blackened flannel, and sleep through the daylight, then rise and spend much
of their high wages at the alehouse with their fellows of the Benefit Club;
here the pale, eager faces of handloom weavers, men and women, haggard
from sitting up late at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till the
Wednesday. Everywhere the cottages and the small children were dirty, for
the languid mothers gave their strength to the loom."

Mary Ann was an affectionate, sensitive child, fond of out-door sports,
imitating everything she saw her brother do, and early in life feeling in her

heart that she was to be "somebody." When but four years old, she would
seat herself at the piano and play, though she did not know one note from
another, that the servant might see that she was a distinguished person! Her
life was a happy one, as is shown in her Brother and Sister Sonnet:--
"But were another childhood's world my share,
I would be born a little sister there."

At five, the mother being in poor health, the child was sent to a boarding-
school with her sister, Chrissy, where she remained three or four years. The
older scholars petted her, calling her "little mamma." At eight she went to a
larger school, at Nuneaton, where one of the teachers, Miss Lewis, became
her life-long friend. The child had the greatest fondness for reading, her first
book, a Linnet's Life, being tenderly cared for all her days. Aesop's Fables
were read and re-read. At this time a neighbor had loaned one of the
Waverley novels to the older sister, who returned it before Mary Ann had
finished it. Distressed at this break in the story, she began to write out as
nearly as she could remember, the whole volume for herself. Her amazed
family re-borrowed the book, and the child was happy. The mother
sometimes protested against the use of so many candles for night reading,
and rightly feared that her eyes would be spoiled.

At the next school, at Coventry, Mary Ann so surpassed her comrades that
they stood in awe of her, but managed to overcome this when a basket of
dainties came in from the country home. In 1836 the excellent mother died.
Mary Ann wrote to a friend in after life, "I began at sixteen to be acquainted
with the unspeakable grief of a last parting, in the death of my mother." In
the following spring Chrissy was married, and after a good cry with her
brother over this breaking up of the home circle, Mary Ann took upon
herself the household duties, and became the care-taker instead of the
school-girl. Although so young she took a leading part in the benevolent
work of the neighborhood.

Her love for books increased. She engaged a well-known teacher to come
from Coventry and give her lessons in French, German, and Italian, while
another helped her in music, of which she was passionately fond. Later, she
studied Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Hebrew. Shut up in the farm-house,

hungering for knowledge, she applied herself with a persistency and
earnestness that by-and-by were to bear their legitimate fruit. That she felt
the privation of a collegiate course is undoubted. She says in Daniel
Deronda: "You may try, but you can never imagine what it is to have a
man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl."

She did not neglect her household duties. One of her hands, which were
noticeable for their beauty of shape, was broader than the other, which, she
used to say with some pride, was owing to the butter and cheese she had
made. At twenty she was reading the Life of Wilberforce, Josephus' History
of the Jews, Spenser's Faery Queen, Don Quixote, Milton, Bacon, Mrs.
Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, and Wordsworth. The
latter was always an especial favorite, and his life, by Frederick Myers in
the Men of Letters series, was one of the last books she ever read.

Already she was learning the illimitableness of knowledge. "For my part,"
she says, "I am ready to sit down and weep at the impossibility of my
understanding or barely knowing a fraction of the sum of objects that
present themselves for our contemplation in books and in life."

About this time Mr. Evans left the farm, and moved to Foleshill, near
Coventry. The poor people at Griff were very sorry, and said, "We shall
never have another Mary Ann Evans." Marian, as she was now called,
found at Foleshill a few intellectual and companionable friends, Mr. and
Mrs. Bray, both authors, and Miss Hennell, their sister.

Through the influence of these friends she gave up some of her evangelical
views, but she never ceased to be a devoted student and lover of the Bible.
She was happy in her communing with nature. "Delicious autumn," she
said. "My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird, I would fly about
the earth, seeking the successive autumns.... I have been revelling in
Nichol's Architecture, of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System,
and have been in imagination winging my flight from system to system,
from universe to universe."

In 1844, when Miss Evans was twenty-five years old, she began the
translation of Strauss' Life of Jesus. The lady who was to marry Miss
Hennell's brother had partially done the work, and asked Miss Evans to
finish it. For nearly three years she gave it all the time at her command,
receiving only one hundred dollars for the labor.

It was a difficult and weary work. "When I can work fast," she said, "I am
never weary, nor do I regret either that the work has been begun or that I
have undertaken it. I am only inclined to vow that I will never translate
again, if I live to correct the sheets for Strauss." When the book was
finished, it was declared to be "A faithful, elegant, and scholarlike
translation ... word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for
sentence." Strauss himself was delighted with it.

The days passed as usual in the quiet home. Now she and her father, the
latter in failing health, visited the Isle of Wight, and saw beautiful Alum
Bay, with its "high precipice, the strata upheaved perpendicularly in
rainbow,--like streaks of the brightest maize, violet, pink, blue, red, brown,
and brilliant white,--worn by the weather into fantastic fretwork, the deep
blue sky above, and the glorious sea below." Who of us has not felt this
same delight in looking upon this picture, painted by nature?

Now Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as other famous people, visited the
Bray family. Miss Evans writes: "I have seen Emerson,--the first man I have
ever seen." High praise indeed from our "great, calm soul," as he called
Miss Evans. "I am grateful for the Carlyle eulogium (on Emerson). I have
shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is a world worth abiding in
while one man can thus venerate and love another."

Each evening she played on the piano to her admiring father, and finally,
through months of illness, carried him down tenderly to the grave. He died
May 31, 1849.

Worn with care, Miss Evans went upon the Continent with the Brays,
visiting Paris, Milan, the Italian lakes, and finally resting for some months
at Geneva'. As her means were limited, she tried to sell her Encyclopaedia

Britannica at half-price, so that she could have money for music lessons,
and to attend a course of lectures on experimental physics, by the renowned
Professor de la Rive. She was also carefully reading socialistic themes,
Proudhon, Rousseau, and others. She wrote to friends: "The days are really
only two hours long, and I have so many things to do that I go to bed every
night miserable because I have left out something I meant to do.... I take a
dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite
soft."

On her return to England, she visited the Brays, and met Mr. Chapman, the
editor of the Westminster Review, and Mr. Mackay, upon whose Progress of
the Intellect she had just written a review. Mr. Chapman must have been
deeply impressed with the learning and ability of Miss Evans, for he offered
her the position of assistant editor of the magazine,--a most unusual
position for a woman, since its contributors were Froude, Carlyle, John
Stuart Mill, and other able men.

Miss Evans accepted, and went to board with Mr. Chapman's family in
London. How different this from the quiet life at Foleshill! The best society,
that is, the greatest in mind, opened wide its doors to her. Herbert Spencer,
who had just published Social Statics, became one of her best friends.
Harriet Martineau came often to see her. Grote was very friendly.

The woman-editor was now thirty-two; her massive head covered with
brown curls, blue-gray eyes, mobile, sympathetic mouth, strong chin, pale
face, and soft, low voice, like Dorothea's in Middlemarch,--"the voice of a
soul that has once lived in an Aeolian harp." Mr. Bray thought that Miss
Evans' head, after that of Napoleon, showed the largest development from
brow to ear of any person's recorded.

She had extraordinary power of expression, and extraordinary
psychological powers, but her chief attraction was her universal sympathy.
"She essentially resembled Socrates," says Mathilde Blind, "in her manner
of eliciting whatsoever capacity for thought might be latent in the people
she came in contact with; were it only a shoemaker or day-laborer, she
would never rest till she had found out in what points that particular man

differed from other men of his class. She always rather educed what was in
others than impressed herself on them; showing much kindliness of heart in
drawing out people who were shy. Sympathy was the keynote of her nature,
the source of her iridescent humor, of her subtle knowledge of character, of
her dramatic genius." No person attains to permanent fame without
sympathy.

Miss Evans now found her heart and hands full of work. Her first article
was a review of Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. She was fond of biography.
She said: "We have often wished that genius would incline itself more
frequently to the task of the biographer, that when some great or good
person dies, instead of the dreary three-or-five volume compilation of letter
and diary and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds of the public
have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could
have a real 'life,' setting forth briefly and vividly the man's inward and
outward struggles, aims, and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning
which his experience has for his fellows.

"A few such lives (chiefly autobiographies) the world possesses, and they
have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any
other kind of reading.... It is a help to read such a life as Margaret Fuller's.
How inexpressibly touching that passage from her journal, 'I shall always
reign through the intellect, but the life! the life! O my God! shall that never
be sweet?' I am thankful, as if for myself, that it was sweet at last."

The great minds which Miss Evans met made life a constant joy, though she
was frail in health. Now Herbert Spencer took her to hear William Tell or
the Creation. She wrote of him: "We have agreed that we are not in love
with each other, and that there is no reason why we should not have as
much of each other's society as we like. He is a good, delightful creature,
and I always feel better for being with him.... My brightest spot, next to my
love of old friends, is the deliciously calm, new friendship that Herbert
Spencer gives me. We see each other every day, and have a delightful
camaraderie in everything. But for him my life would be desolate enough."

There is no telling what this happy friendship might have resulted in, if Mr.
Spencer had not introduced to Miss Evans, George Henry Lewes, a man of
brilliant conversational powers, who had written a History of Philosophy,
two novels, Ranthorpe, and Rose, Blanche, and Violet, and was a
contributor to several reviews. Mr. Lewes was a witty and versatile man, a
dramatic critic, an actor for a short time, unsuccessful as an editor of a
newspaper, and unsuccessful in his domestic relations.

That he loved Miss Evans is not strange; that she admired him, while she
pitied him and his three sons in their broken home-life, is perhaps not
strange. At first she did not like him, nor did Margaret Fuller, but Miss
Evans says: "Mr. Lewes is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard,
after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in
the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience
wearing a mask of flippancy."

Miss Evans tired of her hard work, as who does not in this working world?
"I am bothered to death," she writes, "with article-reading and scrap-work
of all sorts; it is clear my poor head will never produce anything under these
circumstances; but I am patient.... I had a long call from George Combe
yesterday. He says he thinks the Westminster under my management the
most important means of enlightenment of a literary nature in existence; the
Edinburgh, under Jeffrey, nothing to it, etc. I wish I thought so too."

Sick with continued headaches, she went up to the English lakes to visit
Miss Martineau. The coach, at half-past six in the evening, stopped at "The
Knoll," and a beaming face came to welcome her. During the evening, she
says, "Miss Martineau came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed
me in the prettiest way, telling me she was so glad she had got me here."

Meantime Miss Evans was writing learned and valuable articles on
Taxation, Woman in France, Evangelical Teaching, etc. She received five
hundred dollars yearly from her father's estate, but she lived simply, that she
might spend much of this for poor relations.

In 1854 she resigned her position on the Westminster, and went with Mr.
Lewes to Germany, forming a union which thousands who love her must
regard as the great mistake of a very great life.

Mr. Lewes was collecting materials for his Life of Goethe. This took them
to Goethe's home at Weimar. "By the side of the bed," she says, "stands a
stuffed chair where he used to sit and read while he drank his coffee in the
morning. It was not until very late in his life that he adopted the luxury of
an armchair. From the other side of the study one enters the library, which is
fitted up in a very make-shift fashion, with rough deal shelves, and bits of
paper, with Philosophy, History, etc., written on them, to mark the
classification of the books. Among such memorials one breathes deeply,
and the tears rush to one's eyes."

George Eliot met Liszt, and "for the first time in her life beheld real
inspiration,--for the first time heard the true tones of the piano." Rauch, the
great sculptor, called upon them, and "won our hearts by his beautiful
person and the benignant and intelligent charm of his conversation."

Both writers were hard at work. George Eliot was writing an article on
Weimar for Fraser, on Cumming for Westminster, and translating Spinoza's
Ethics. No name was signed to these productions, as it would not do to have
it known that a woman wrote them. The education of most women was so
meagre that the articles would have been considered of little value. Happily
Girton and Newnham colleges are changing this estimate of the sex.
Women do not like to be regarded as inferior; then they must educate
themselves as thoroughly as the best men are educated.

Mr. Lewes was not well. "This is a terrible trial to us poor scribblers," she
writes, "to whom health is money, as well as all other things worth having."
They had but one sitting-room between them, and the scratching of another
pen so affected her nerves, as to drive her nearly wild. Pecuniarily, life was
a harder struggle than ever, for there were four more mouths to be fed,--Mr.
Lewes' three sons and their mother.

"Our life is intensely occupied, and the days are far too short," she writes.
They were reading in every spare moment, twelve plays of Shakespeare,
Goethe's works, Wilhelm Meister, Götz von Berlichingen, Hermann and
Dorothea, Iphigenia, Wanderjahre, Italianische Reise, and others; Heine's
poems; Lessing's Laocoön and Nathan the Wise; Macaulay's History of
England; Moore's Life of Sheridan; Brougham's Lives of Men of Letters;
White's History of Selborne; Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences;
Boswell; Carpenter's Comparative Physiology; Jones' Animal Kingdom;
Alison's History of Europe; Kahnis' History of German Protestantism;
Schrader's German Mythology; Kingsley's Greek Heroes; and the Iliad and
Odyssey in the original. She says, "If you want delightful reading, get
Lowell's My Study Windows, and read the essays called My Garden
Acquaintances and Winter." No wonder they were busy.

On their return from Germany they went to the sea-shore, that Mr. Lewes
might perfect his Sea-side Studies. George Eliot entered heartily into the
work. "We were immensely excited," she says, "by the discovery of this
little red mesembryanthemum. It was a crescendo of delight when we found
a 'strawberry,' and a fortissimo when I, for the first time, saw the pale, fawn-
colored tentacles of an Anthea cereus viciously waving like little serpents in
a low-tide pool." They read here Gosse's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast,
Edward's Zoology, Harvey's sea-side book, and other scientific works.

And now at thirty-seven George Eliot was to begin her creative work. Mr.
Lewes had often said to her, "You have wit, description, and philosophy--
those go a good way towards the production of a novel." "It had always
been a vague dream of mine," she says, "that sometime or other I might
write a novel ... but I never went further toward the actual writing than an
introductory chapter, describing a Staffordshire village, and the life of the
neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that. I
should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about everything
else in my future life. I always thought I was deficient in dramatic power,
both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the
descriptive parts."

After she had written a portion of Amos Barton in her Scenes of Clerical
Life, she read it to Mr. Lewes, who told her that now he was sure she could
write good dialogue, but not as yet sure about her pathos. One evening, in
his absence, she wrote the scene describing Milly's death, and read it to Mr.
Lewes, on his return. "We both cried over it," she says, "and then he came
up to me and kissed me, saying, 'I think your pathos is better than your
fun!'"

Mr. Lewes sent the story to Blackwood, with the signature of "George
Eliot,"--the first name chosen because it was his own name, and the last
because it pleased her fancy. Mr. Lewes wrote that this story by a friend of
his, showed, according to his judgment, "such humor, pathos, vivid
presentation, and nice observation as have not been exhibited, in this style,
since the Vicar of Wakefield."

Mr. John Blackwood accepted the story, but made some comments which
discouraged the author from trying another. Mr. Lewes wrote him the
effects of his words, which he hastened to withdraw, as there was so much
to be said in praise that he really desired more stories from the same pen,
and sent her a check for two hundred and fifty dollars.

This was evidently soothing, as Mr. Gilfil's Love Story and Janet's
Repentance were at once written. Much interest began to be expressed
about the author. Some said Bulwer wrote the sketches. Thackeray praised
them, and Arthur Helps said, "He is a great writer." Copies of the stories
bound together, with the title Scenes of Clerical Life, were sent to Froude,
Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, and Faraday. Dickens praised the
humor and the pathos, and thought the author was a woman.

Jane Welch Carlyle thought it "a human book, written out of the heart of a
live man, not merely out of the brain of an author, full of tenderness and
pathos, without a scrap of sentimentality, of sense without dogmatism, of
earnestness without twaddle--a book that makes one feel friends at once and
for always with the man or woman who wrote it." She guessed the author
was "a man of middle age, with a wife, from whom he has got those

beautiful feminine touches in his book, a good many children, and a dog
that he has as much fondness for as I have for my little Nero."

Mr. Lewes was delighted, and said, "Her fame is beginning." George Eliot
was growing happier, for her nature had been somewhat despondent. She
used to say, "Expecting disappointments is the only form of hope with
which I am familiar." She said, "I feel a deep satisfaction in having done a
bit of faithful work that will perhaps remain, like a primrose-root in the
hedgerow, and gladden and chasten human hearts in years to come."
"'Conscience goes to the hammering in of nails' is my gospel," she would
say. "Writing is part of my religion, and I can write no word that is not
prompted from within. At the same time I believe that almost all the best
books in the world have been written with the hope of getting money for
them."

"My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater
capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my
deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming
duties."

For Scenes of Clerical Life she received six hundred dollars for the first
edition, and much more after her other books appeared.

And now another work, a longer one, was growing in her mind, Adam Bede,
the germ of which, she says, was an anecdote told her by her aunt, Elizabeth
Evans, the Dinah Morris of the book. A very ignorant girl had murdered her
child, and refused to confess it. Mrs. Evans, who was a Methodist preacher,
stayed with her all night, praying with her, and at last she burst into tears
and confessed her crime. Mrs. Evans went with her in the cart to the place
of execution, and ministered to the unhappy girl till death came.

When the first pages of Adam Bede were shown to Mr. Blackwood, he said,
"That will do." George Eliot and Mr. Lewes went to Munich, Dresden, and
Vienna for rest and change, and she prepared much of the book in this time.
When it was finished, she wrote on the manuscript, Jubilate. "To my dear
husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the Ms. of a work which would never

have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my
life."

For this novel she received four thousand dollars for the copyright for four
years. Fame had actually come. All the literary world were talking about it.
John Murray said there had never been such a book. Charles Reade said,
putting his finger on Lisbeth's account of her coming home with her
husband from their marriage, "the finest thing since Shakespeare." A
workingman wrote: "Forgive me, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to
give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get
plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it." Mr. Charles Buxton
said, in the House of Commons: "As the farmer's wife says in Adam Bede,
'It wants to be hatched over again and hatched different.'" This of course
greatly helped to popularize the book.

To George Eliot all this was cause for the deepest gratitude. They were able
now to rent a home at Wandworth, and move to it at once. The poverty and
the drudgery of life seemed over. She said: "I sing my magnificat in a quiet
way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy; but few authors, I suppose,
who have had a real success, have known less of the flush and the
sensations of triumph that are talked of as the accompaniments of success. I
often think of my dreams when I was four or five and twenty. I thought then
how happy fame would make me.... I am assured now that Adam Bede was
worth writing,--worth living through those long years to write. But now it
seems impossible that I shall ever write anything so good and true again."
Up to this time the world did not know who George Eliot was; but as a man
by the name of Liggins laid claim to the authorship, and tried to borrow
money for his needs because Blackwood would not pay him, the real name
of the author had to be divulged.

Five thousand copies of Adam Bede were sold the first two weeks, and
sixteen thousand the first year. So excellent was the sale that Mr.
Blackwood sent her four thousand dollars in addition to the first four. The
work was soon translated into French, German, and Hungarian. Mr. Lewes'
Physiology of Common Life was now published, but it brought little
pecuniary return.

The reading was carried on as usual by the two students. The Life of George
Stephenson; the Electra of Sophocles; the Agamemnon of Aeschylus,
Harriet Martineau's British Empire in India; and History of the Thirty Years'
Peace; Béranger, Modern Painters, containing some of the finest writing of
the age; Overbech on Greek art; Anna Mary Howitt's book on Munich;
Carlyle's Life of Frederick the Great; Darwin's Origin of Species; Emerson's
Man the Reformer, "which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning";
Buckle's History of Civilization; Plato and Aristotle.

An American publisher now offered her six thousand dollars for a book, but
she was obliged to decline, for she was writing the Mill on the Floss, in
1860, for which Blackwood gave her ten thousand dollars for the first
edition of four thousand copies, and Harper & Brothers fifteen hundred
dollars for using it also. Tauchnitz paid her five hundred for the German
reprint.

She said: "I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished; sad that I shall
live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But it is time that I
should go, and absorb some new life and gather fresh ideas." They went at
once to Italy, where they spent several months in Florence, Venice, and
Rome.

In the former city she made her studies for her great novel, Romola. She
read Sismondi's History of the Italian Republics, Tenneman's History of
Philosophy, T.A. Trollope's Beata, Hallam on the Study of Roman Law in
the Middle Ages, Gibbon on the Revival of Greek Learning, Burlamachi's
Life of Savonarola; also Villari's life of the great preacher, Mrs. Jameson's
Sacred and Legendary Art, Machiavelli's works, Petrarch's Letters, Casa
Guidi Windows, Buhle's History of Modern Philosophy, Story's Roba di
Roma, Liddell's Rome, Gibbon, Mosheim, and one might almost say the
whole range of Italian literature in the original. Of Mommsen's History of
Rome she said, "It is so fine that I count all minds graceless who read it
without the deepest stirrings."

The study necessary to make one familiar with fifteenth century times was
almost limitless. No wonder she told Mr. Cross, years afterward, "I began

Romola a young woman, I finished it an old woman"; but that, with Adam
Bede and Middlemarch, will be her monument. "What courage and
patience," she says, "are wanted for every life that aims to produce
anything!" "In authorship I hold carelessness to be a mortal sin." "I took
unspeakable pains in preparing to write Romola."

For this one book, on which she spent a year and a half, Cornhill Magazine
paid her the small fortune of thirty-five thousand dollars. She purchased a
pleasant home, "The Priory," Regent's Park, where she made her friends
welcome, though she never made calls upon any, for lack of time. She had
found, like Victor Hugo, that time is a very precious thing for those who
wish to succeed in life. Browning, Huxley, and Herbert Spencer often came
to dine.

Says Mr. Cross, in his admirable life: "The entertainment was frequently
varied by music when any good performer happened to be present. I think,
however, that the majority of visitors delighted chiefly to come for the
chance of a few words with George Eliot alone. When the drawing-room
door of the Priory opened, a first glance revealed her always in the same
low arm-chair on the left-hand side of the fire. On entering, a visitor's eye
was at once arrested by the massive head. The abundant hair, streaked with
gray now, was draped with lace, arranged mantilla fashion, coming to a
point at the top of the forehead. If she were engaged in conversation, her
body was usually bent forward with eager, anxious desire to get as close as
possible to the person with whom she talked. She had a great dislike to
raising her voice, and often became so wholly absorbed in conversation that
the announcement of an in-coming visitor failed to attract her attention; but
the moment the eyes were lifted up, and recognized a friend, they smiled a
rare welcome--sincere, cordial, grave--a welcome that was felt to come
straight from the heart, not graduated according to any social distinction."

After much reading of Fawcett, Mill, and other writers on political
economy, Felix Holt was written, in 1866, and for this she received from
Blackwood twenty-five thousand dollars.

Very much worn with her work, though Mr. Lewes relieved her in every
way possible, by writing letters and looking over all criticisms of her books,
which she never read, she was obliged to go to Germany for rest.

In 1868 she published her long poem, The Spanish Gypsy, reading Spanish
literature carefully, and finally passing some time in Spain, that she might
be the better able to make a lasting work. Had she given her life to poetry,
doubtless she would have been a great poet.

Silas Marner, written before Romola, in 1861, had been well received, and
Middlemarch, in 1872, made a great sensation. It was translated into several
languages. George Bancroft wrote her from Berlin that everybody was
reading it. For this she received a much larger sum than the thirty-five
thousand which she was paid for Romola.

A home was now purchased in Surrey, with eight or nine acres of pleasure
grounds, for George Eliot had always longed for trees and flowers about her
house. "Sunlight and sweet air," she said, "make a new creature of me."
Daniel Deronda followed in 1876, for which, it is said, she read nearly a
thousand volumes. Whether this be true or not, the list of books given in her
life, of her reading in these later years, is as astonishing as it is helpful for
any who desire real knowledge.

At Witley, in Surrey, they lived a quiet life, seeing only a few friends like
the Tennysons, the Du Mauriers, and Sir Henry and Lady Holland. Both
were growing older, and Mr. Lewes was in very poor health. Finally, after a
ten days' illness, he died, Nov. 28, 1878.

To George Eliot this loss was immeasurable. She needed his help and his
affection. She said, "I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am
loved," and he had idolized her. He said: "I owe Spencer a debt of gratitude.
It was through him that I learned to know Marian,--to know her was to love
her, and since then, my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my
prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her!"

Mr. John Walter Cross, for some time a wealthy banker in New York, had
long been a friend of the family, and though many years younger than

George Eliot, became her helper in these days of need. A George Henry
Lewes studentship, of the value of one thousand dollars yearly, was to be
given to Cambridge for some worthy student of either sex, in memory of
the man she had loved. "I want to live a little time that I may do certain
things for his sake," she said. She grew despondent, and the Cross family
used every means to win her away from her sorrow.

Mr. Cross' mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, had also died, and
the loneliness of both made their companionship more comforting. They
read Dante together in the original, and gradually the younger man found
that his heart was deeply interested. It was the higher kind of love, the
honor of mind for mind and soul for soul.

"I shall be," she said, "a better, more loving creature than I could have been
in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for this gift of a perfect love
is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be
in store for man on this troublous little planet."

Mr. Cross and George Eliot were married, May 6, 1880, a year and a half
after Mr. Lewes' death, his son Charles giving her away, and went at once to
Italy. She wrote: "Marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self.... To
feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is
the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure." Having passed through a
severe illness, she wrote to a friend: "I have been cared for by something
much better than angelic tenderness.... If it is any good for me that my life
has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous
affection that has chosen to watch over me."

She did not forget Mr. Lewes. In looking upon the Grande Chartreuse, she
said, "I would still give up my own life willingly, if he could have the
happiness instead of me."

On their return to London, they made their winter home at 4 Cheyne Walk,
Chelsea, a plain brick house. The days were gliding by happily. George
Eliot was interested as ever in all great subjects, giving five hundred dollars
for woman's higher education at Girton College, and helping many a

struggling author, or providing for some poor friend of early times who was
proud to be remembered.

She and Mr. Cross began their reading for the day with the Bible, she
especially enjoying Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. Then they read
Max Muller's works, Shakespeare, Milton, Scott, and whatever was best in
English, French, and German literature. Milton she called her demigod. Her
husband says she had "a limitless persistency in application." Her health
was better, and she gave promise of doing more great work. When urged to
write her autobiography, she said, half sighing and half smiling: "The only
thing I should care much to dwell on would be the absolute despair I
suffered from, of ever being able to achieve anything. No one could ever
have felt greater despair, and a knowledge of this might be a help to some
other struggler."

Friday afternoon, Dec. 17, she went to see Agamemnon performed in Greek
by Oxford students, and the next afternoon to a concert at St. James Hall.
She took cold, and on Monday was treated for sore throat. On Wednesday
evening the doctors came, and she whispered to her husband, "Tell them I
have great pain in the left side." This was the last word. She died with every
faculty bright, and her heart responsive to all noble things.

She loved knowledge to the end. She said, "My constant groan is that I must
leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for
me, unread for want of time."

She had the broadest charity for those whose views differed from hers. She
said, "The best lesson of tolerance we have to learn, is to tolerate
intolerance." She hoped for and "looked forward to the time when the
impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and as irresistible as that
which I feel to grasp something firm if I am falling."

One Sunday afternoon I went to her grave in Highgate Cemetery, London.
A gray granite shaft, about twenty-five feet high, stands above it, with these
beautiful words from her great poem:--

"O may I join the choir invisible,
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence."

HERE LIES THE BODY
OF
GEORGE ELIOT,
MARY ANN CROSS.

BORN, 22d NOVEMBER, 1819;
DIED, 22d DECEMBER, 1880.

A stone coping is around this grave, and bouquets of yellow crocuses and
hyacinths lie upon it. Next to her grave is a horizontal slab, with the name
of George Henry Lewes upon the stone.

Elizabeth Fry.

When a woman of beauty, great wealth, and the highest social position,
devotes her life to the lifting of the lowly and the criminal, and preaches the

Gospel from the north of Scotland to the south of France, it is not strange
that the world admires, and that books are written in praise of her.
Unselfishness makes a rare and radiant life, and this was the crowning
beauty of the life of Elizabeth Fry.

Born in Norwich, England, May 21, 1780, Elizabeth was the third daughter
of Mr. John Gurney, a wealthy London merchant. Mrs. Gurney, the mother,
a descendant of the Barclays of Ury, was a woman of much personal beauty,
singularly intellectual for those times, making her home a place where
literary and scientific people loved to gather.

Elizabeth wellnigh idolized her mother, and used often to cry after going to
bed, lest death should take away the precious parent. In the daytime, when
the mother, not very robust, would sometimes lie down to rest, the child
would creep to the bedside and watch tenderly and anxiously, to see if she
were breathing. Well might Mrs. Gurney say,

"My dove-like Betsy scarcely ever offends, and is, in every sense of
the word, truly engaging."

Mrs. Fry wrote years afterward: "My mother was most dear to me, and the
walks she took with me in the old-fashioned garden are as fresh with me as
if only just passed, and her telling me about Adam and Eve being driven out
of Paradise. I always considered it must be just like our garden.... I
remember with pleasure my mother's beds of wild flowers, which, with
delight, I used as a child to attend with her; it gave me that pleasure in
observing their beauties and varieties that, though I never have had time to
become a botanist, few can imagine, in my many journeys, how I have been
pleased and refreshed by observing and enjoying the wild flowers on my
way."

The home, Earlham Hall, was one of much beauty and elegance, a seat of
the Bacon family. The large house stood in the centre of a well-wooded
park, the river Wensum flowing through it. On the south front of the house
was a large lawn, flanked by great trees, underneath which wild flowers

grew in profusion. The views about the house were so artistic that artists
often came there to sketch.

In this restful and happy home, after a brief illness, Mrs. Gurney died in
early womanhood, leaving eleven children, all young, the smallest but two
years old. Elizabeth was twelve, old enough to feel the irreparable loss. To
the day of her death the memory of this time was extremely sad.

She was a nervous and sensitive child, afraid of the dark, begging that a
light be left in her room, and equally afraid to bathe in the sea. Her feelings
were regarded as the whims of a child, and her nervous system was injured
in consequence. She always felt the lack of wisdom in "hardening" children,
and said, "I am now of opinion that my fear would have been much more
subdued, and great suffering spared, by its having been still more yielded
to: by having a light left in my room, not being long left alone, and never
forced to bathe."

After her marriage she guided her children rather than attempt "to break
their wills," and lived to see happy results from the good sense and
Christian principle involved in such guiding. In her prison work she used
the least possible governing, winning control by kindness and gentleness.

Elizabeth grew to young womanhood, with pleasing manners, slight and
graceful in body, with a profusion of soft flaxen hair, and a bright,
intelligent face. Her mind was quick, penetrating, and original. She was a
skilful rider on horseback, and made a fine impression in her scarlet riding-
habit, for, while her family were Quakers, they did not adopt the gray dress.

She was attractive in society and much admired. She writes in her journal:
"Company at dinner; I must beware of not being a flirt, it is an abominable
character; I hope I shall never be one, and yet I fear I am one now a little....
I think I am by degrees losing many excellent qualities. I lay it to my great
love of gayety, and the world.... I am now seventeen, and if some kind and
great circumstance does not happen to me, I shall have my talents devoured
by moth and rust. They will lose their brightness, and one day they will
prove a curse instead of a blessing."

Before she was eighteen, William Savery, an American friend, came to
England to spend two years in the British Isles, preaching. The seven
beautiful Gurney sisters went to hear him, and sat on the front seat,
Elizabeth, "with her smart boots, purple, laced with scarlet."

As the preacher proceeded, she was greatly moved, weeping during the
service, and nearly all the way home. She had been thrown much among
those who were Deists in thought, and this gospel-message seemed a
revelation to her.

The next morning Mr. Savery came to Earlham Hall to breakfast. "From
this day," say her daughters, in their interesting memoir of their mother,
"her love of pleasure and the world seemed gone." She, herself, said, in her
last illness, "Since my heart was touched, at the age of seventeen, I believe I
never have awakened from sleep, in sickness or in health, by day or by
night, without my first waking thought being, how best I might serve my
Lord."

Soon after she visited London, that she might, as she said, "try all things"
and choose for herself what appeared to her "to be good." She wrote:

"I went to Drury Lane in the evening. I must own I was extremely
disappointed; to be sure, the house is grand and dazzling; but I had no
other feeling whilst there than that of wishing it over.... I called on
Mrs. Siddons, who was not at home; then on Mrs. Twiss, who gave
me some paint for the evening. I was painted a little, I had my hair
dressed, and did look pretty for me."

On her return to Earlham Hall she found that the London pleasure had not
been satisfying. She says, "I wholly gave up on my own ground, attending
all places of public amusement; I saw they tended to promote evil;
therefore, if I could attend them without being hurt myself, I felt in entering
them I lent my aid to promote that which I was sure from what I saw hurt
others."

She was also much exercised about dancing, thinking, while "in a family, it
may be of use by the bodily exercise," that "the more the pleasures of life
are given up, the less we love the world, and our hearts will be set upon
better things."

The heretofore fashionable young girl began to visit the poor and the sick in
the neighborhood, and at last decided to open a school for poor children.
Only one boy came at first; but soon she had seventy. She lost none of her
good cheer and charming manner, but rather grew more charming. She
cultivated her mind as well, reading logic,--Watts on Judgment, Lavater,
etc.

The rules of life which she wrote for herself at eighteen are worth copying:
"First,--Never lose any time; I do not think that lost which is spent in
amusement or recreation some time every day; but always be in the habit of
being employed. Second,--Never err the least in truth. Third,--Never say an
ill thing of a person when I can say a good thing of him; not only speak
charitably, but feel so. Fourth,--Never be irritable or unkind to anybody.
Fifth,--Never indulge myself in luxuries that are not necessary. Sixth,--Do
all things with consideration, and when my path to act right is most
difficult, put confidence in that Power alone which is able to assist me, and
exert my own powers as far as they go."

Gradually she laid aside all jewelry, then began to dress in quiet colors, and
finally adopted the Quaker garb, feeling that she could do more good in it.
At first her course did not altogether please her family, but they lived to
idolize and bless her for her doings, and to thankfully enjoy her worldwide
fame.

At twenty she received an offer of marriage from a wealthy London
merchant, Mr. Joseph Fry. She hesitated for some time, lest her active duties
in the church should conflict with the cares of a home of her own. She said,
"My most anxious wish is, that I may not hinder my spiritual welfare,
which I have so much feared as to make me often doubt if marriage were a
desirable thing for me at this time, or even the thoughts of it."

However, she was soon married, and a happy life resulted. For most women
this marriage, which made her the mother of eleven children, would have
made all public work impossible; but to a woman of Elizabeth Fry's strong
character nothing seemed impossible. Whether she would have
accomplished more for the world had she remained unmarried, no one can
tell.

Her husband's parents were "plain, consistent friends," and his sister
became especially congenial to the young bride. A large and airy house was
taken in London, St. Mildred's Court, which became a centre for "Friends"
in both Great Britain and America.

With all her wealth and her fondness for her family, she wrote in her
journal, "I have been married eight years yesterday; various trials of faith
and patience have been permitted me; my course has been very different to
what I had expected; instead of being, as I had hoped, a useful instrument in
the Church Militant, here I am a careworn wife and mother outwardly,
nearly devoted to the things of this life; though at times this difference in
my destination has been trying to me, yet I believe those trials (which have
certainly been very pinching) that I have had to go through have been very
useful, and have brought me to a feeling sense of what I am; and at the
same time have taught me where power is, and in what we are to glory; not
in ourselves nor in anything we can be or do, but we are alone to desire that
He may be glorified, either through us or others, in our being something or
nothing, as He may see best for us."

After eleven years the Fry family moved to a beautiful home in the country
at Plashet. Changes had come in those eleven years. The father had died;
one sister had married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, and she herself had been
made a "minister" by the Society of Friends. While her hands were very full
with the care of her seven children, she had yet found time to do much
outside Christian work.

Naturally shrinking, she says, "I find it an awful thing to rise amongst a
large assembly, and, unless much covered with love and power, hardly
know how to venture." But she seemed always to be "covered with love and

power," for she prayed much and studied her Bible closely, and her
preaching seemed to melt alike crowned heads and criminals in chains.

Opposite the Plashet House, with its great trees and flowers, was a
dilapidated building occupied by an aged man and his sister. They had once
been well-to-do, but were now very poor, earning a pittance by selling
rabbits. The sister, shy and sorrowful from their reduced circumstances, was
nearly inaccessible, but Mrs. Fry won her way to her heart. Then she asked
how they would like to have a girls' school in a big room attached to the
building. They consented, and soon seventy poor girls were in attendance.

"She had," says a friend, "the gentlest touch with children. She would win
their hearts, if they had never seen her before, almost at the first glance, and
by the first sound of her musical voice."

Then the young wife, now thirty-one, established a depot of calicoes and
flannels for the poor, with a room full of drugs, and another department
where good soup was prepared all through the hard winters. She would go
into the "Irish Colony," taking her two older daughters with her, that they
might learn the sweetness of benevolence, "threading her way through
children and pigs, up broken staircases, and by narrow passages; then she
would listen to their tales of want and woe."

Now she would find a young mother dead, with a paper cross pinned upon
her breast; now she visited a Gypsy camp to care for a sick child, and give
them Bibles. Each year when the camp returned to Plashet, their chief
pleasure was the visits of the lovely Quaker. Blessings on thee, beautiful
Elizabeth Fry!

She now began to assist in the public meetings near London, but with some
hesitation, as it took her from home; but after an absence of two weeks, she
found her household "in very comfortable order; and so far from having
suffered in my absence, it appears as if a better blessing had attended them
than common."

She did not forget her home interests. One of her servants being ill, she
watched by his bedside till he died. When she talked with him of the world

to come, he said, "God bless you, ma'am." She said, "There is no set of
people I feel so much about as servants, as I do not think they have
generally justice done to them; they are too much considered as another
race of beings, and we are apt to forget that the holy injunction holds good
with them, 'Do as thou wouldst be done unto.'"

She who could dine with kings and queens, felt as regards servants, "that in
the best sense we are all one, and though our paths here may be different,
we have all souls equally valuable, and have all the same work to do;
which, if properly considered, should lead us to great sympathy and love,
and also to a constant care for their welfare, both here and hereafter."

When she was thirty-three, having moved to London for the winter, she
began her remarkable work in Newgate prison. The condition of prisoners
was pitiable in the extreme. She found three hundred women, with their
numerous children, huddled together, with no classification between the
most and least depraved, without employment, in rags and dirt, and sleeping
on the floor with no bedding, the boards simply being raised for a sort of
pillow. Liquors were purchased openly at a bar in the prison; and swearing,
gambling, obscenity, and pulling each other's hair were common. The walls,
both in the men's and women's departments, were hung with chains and
fetters.

When Mrs. Fry and two or three friends first visited the prison, the
superintendent advised that they lay aside their watches before entering,
which they declined to do. Mrs. Fry did not fear, nor need she, with her
benign presence.

On her second visit she asked to be left alone with the women, and read to
them the tenth chapter of Matthew, making a few observations on Christ's
having come to save sinners. Some of the women asked who Christ was.
Who shall forgive us for such ignorance in our very midst?

The children were almost naked, and ill from want of food, air, and
exercise. Mrs. Fry told them that she would start a school for their children,
which announcement was received with tears of joy. She asked that they

select one from their own number for a governess. Mary Conner was
chosen, a girl who had been put in prison for stealing a watch. So changed
did the girl become under this new responsibility, that she was never known
to infringe a rule of the prison. After fifteen months she was released, but
died soon after of consumption.

When the school was opened for all under twenty-five, "the railing was
crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front
situations, with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost
vociferation."

Mrs. Fry saw at once the need of these women being occupied, but the idea
that these people could be induced to work was laughed at, as visionary, by
the officials. They said the work would be destroyed or stolen at once. But
the good woman did not rest till an association of twelve persons was
formed for the "Improvement of the Female Prisoners of Newgate"; "to
provide for the clothing, the instruction, and the employment of the women;
to introduce them to a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures; and to form in
them, as much as possible, those habits of order, sobriety, and industry,
which may render them docile and peaceable whilst in prison, and
respectable when they leave it."

It was decided that Botany Bay could be supplied with stockings, and
indeed with all the articles needed by convicts, through the work of these
women. A room was at once made ready, and matrons were appointed. A
portion of the earnings was to be given the women for themselves and their
children. In ten months they made twenty thousand articles of wearing
apparel, and knit from sixty to one hundred pairs of stockings every month.
The Bible was read to them twice each day. They received marks for good
behavior, and were as pleased as children with the small prizes given them.

One of the girls who received a prize of clothing came to Mrs. Fry, and
"hoped she would excuse her for being so forward, but if she might say it,
she felt exceedingly disappointed; she little thought of having clothing
given to her, but she had hoped I would have given her a Bible, that she
might read the Scriptures herself."

No woman was ever punished under Mrs. Fry's management. They said, "it
would be more terrible to be brought up before her than before the judge."
When she told them she hoped they would not play cards, five packs were
at once brought to her and burned.

The place was now so orderly and quiet, that "Newgate had become almost
a show; the statesman and the noble, the city functionary and the foreign
traveller, the high-bred gentlewoman, the clergyman and the dissenting
minister, flocked to witness the extraordinary change," and to listen to Mrs.
Fry's beautiful Bible readings.

Letters poured in from all parts of the country, asking her to come to their
prisons for a similar work, or to teach others how to work. A committee of
the House of Commons summoned her before them to learn her
suggestions, and to hear of her methods; and later the House of Lords.

Of course the name of Elizabeth Fry became known everywhere. Queen
Victoria gave her audience, and when she appeared in public, everybody
was eager to look at her. The newspapers spoke of her in the highest praise.
Yet with a beautiful spirit she writes in her journal, "I am ready to say in the
fulness of my heart, surely 'it is the Lord's doing, and marvellous in our
eyes'; so many are the providential openings of various kinds. Oh! if good
should result, may the praise and glory of the whole be entirely given where
it is due by us, and by all, in deep humiliation and prostration of spirit."

Mrs. Fry's heart was constantly burdened with the scenes she witnessed.
The penal laws were a caricature on justice. Men and women were hanged
for theft, forgery, passing counterfeit money, and for almost every kind of
fraud. One young woman, with a babe in her arms, was hanged for stealing
a piece of cloth worth one dollar and twenty-five cents! Another was
hanged for taking food to keep herself and little child from starving. It was
no uncommon thing to see women hanging from the gibbet at Newgate,
because they had passed a forged one-pound note (five dollars).

George Cruikshank in 1818 was so moved at one of these executions that he
made a picture which represented eight men and three women hanging from

the gallows, and a rope coiled around the faces of twelve others. Across the
picture were the words, "I promise to perform during the issue of Bank-
notes easily imitated ... for the Governors and Company of the Bank of
England."

He called the picture a "Bank-note, not to be imitated." It at once created a
great sensation. Crowds blocked the street in front of the shop where it was
hung. The pictures were in such demand that Cruikshank sat up all night to
etch another plate. The Gurneys, Wilberforce, Sir Samuel Romilly, Sir
James Mackintosh, all worked vigorously against capital punishment, save,
possibly, for murder.

Among those who were to be executed was Harriet Skelton, who, for the
man she loved, had passed forged notes. She was singularly open in face
and manner, confiding, and well-behaved. When she was condemned to
death, it was a surprise and horror to all who knew her. Mrs. Fry was deeply
interested. Noblemen went to see her in her damp, dark cell, which was
guarded by a heavy iron door. The Duke of Gloucester went with Mrs. Fry
to the Directors of the Bank of England, and to Lord Sidmouth, to plead for
her, but their hearts were not to be moved, and the poor young girl was
hanged. The public was enthusiastic in its applause for Mrs. Fry, and
unsparing in its denunciation of Sidmouth. At last the obnoxious laws were
changed.

Mrs. Fry was heartily opposed to capital punishment. She said, "It hardens
the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them"; it does
not lead to reformation, and "does not deter others from crime, because the
crimes subject to capital punishment are gradually increasing."

When the world is more civilized than it is to-day, when we have closed the
open saloon, that is the direct cause of nearly all the murders, then we shall
probably do away with hanging; or, if men and women must be killed for
the safety of society, a thing not easily proven, it will be done in the most
humane manner, by chloroform.

Mrs. Fry was likewise strongly opposed to solitary confinement, which
usually makes the subject a mental wreck, and, as regards moral action, an
imbecile. How wonderfully in advance of her age was this gifted woman!

Mrs. Fry's thoughts now turned to another evil. When the women prisoners
were transported to New South Wales, they were carried to the ships in
open carts, the crowd jeering. She prevailed upon government to have them
carried in coaches, and promised that she would go with them. When on
board the ship, she knelt on the deck and prayed with them as they were
going into banishment, and then bade them a tender good by. Truly woman
can be an angel of light.

Says Captain Martin, "Who could resist this beautiful, persuasive, and
heavenly-minded woman? To see her was to love her; to hear her was to
feel as if a guardian angel had bid you follow that teaching which could
alone subdue the temptations and evils of this life, and secure a Redeemer's
love in eternity."

At this time Mrs. Fry and her brother Joseph visited Scotland and the north
of England to ascertain the condition of the prisons. They found much that
was inhuman; insane persons in prison, eighteen months in dungeons!
Debtors confined night and day in dark, filthy cells, and never leaving
them; men chained to the walls of their cells, or to rings in the floor, or with
their limbs stretched apart till they fainted in agony; women with chains on
hands, and feet, and body, while they slept on bundles of straw. On their
return a book was published, which did much to arouse England.

Mrs. Fry was not yet forty, but her work was known round the world. The
authorities of Russia, at the desire of the Empress, wrote Mrs. Fry as to the
best plans for the St. Petersburg lunatic asylum and treatment of the
inmates, and her suggestions were carried out to the letter.

Letters came from Amsterdam, Denmark, Paris, and elsewhere, asking
counsel. The correspondence became so great that two of her daughters
were obliged to attend to it.

Again she travelled all over England, forming "Ladies' Prison
Associations," which should not only look after the inmates of prisons, but
aid them to obtain work when they were discharged, or "so provide for
them that stealing should not seem a necessity."

About this time, 1828, one of the houses in which her husband was a
partner failed, "which involved Elizabeth Fry and her family in a train of
sorrows and perplexities which tinged the remaining years of her life."

They sold the house at Plashet, and moved again to Mildred Court, now the
home of one of their sons. Her wealthy brothers and her children soon re-
established the parents in comfort.

She now became deeply interested in the five hundred Coast-Guard stations
in the United Kingdom, where the men and their families led a lonely life.
Partly by private contributions and partly through the aid of government,
she obtained enough money to buy more than twenty-five thousand
volumes for libraries at these stations. The letters of gratitude were a
sufficient reward for the hard work. She also obtained small libraries for all
the packets that sailed from Falmouth.

In 1837, with some friends, she visited Paris, making a detailed
examination of its prisons. Guizot entertained her, the Duchess de Broglie,
M. de Pressensé, and others paid her much attention. The King and Queen
sent for her, and had an earnest talk. At Nismes, where there were twelve
hundred prisoners, she visited the cells, and when five armed soldiers
wished to protect her and her friends, she requested that they be allowed to
go without guard. In one dungeon she found two men, chained hand and
foot. She told them she would plead for their liberation if they would
promise good behavior. They promised, and kept it, praying every night for
their benefactor thereafter. When she held a meeting in the prison, hundreds
shed tears, and the good effects of her work were visible long after.

The next journey was made to Germany. At Brussels, the King held out
both hands to receive her. In Denmark, the King and Queen invited her to

dine, and she sat between them. At Berlin, the royal family treated her like a
sister, and all stood about her while she knelt and prayed for them.

The new penitentiaries were built after her suggestions, so perfect was
thought to be her system. The royal family never forget her. When the King
of Prussia visited England, to stand sponsor for the infant Prince of Wales,
in 1842, he dined with her at her home. She presented to him her eight
daughters and daughters-in-law, her seven sons and eldest grandson, and
then their twenty-five grandchildren.

Finally, the great meetings, and the earnest plans, with their wonderful
execution, were coming to an end for Elizabeth Fry.

There had been many breaks in the home circle. Her beloved son William,
and his two children, had just died. Some years before she had buried a very
precious child, Elizabeth, at the age of five, who shortly before her death
said, "Mamma, I love everybody better than myself, and I love thee better
than everybody, and I love Almighty much better than thee, and I hope thee
loves Almighty much better than me." This was a severe stroke, Mrs. Fry
saying, "My much-loved husband and I have drank this cup together, in
close sympathy and unity of feeling. It has at times been very bitter to us
both, but we have been in measure each other's joy and helpers in the Lord."

During her last sickness she said, "I believe this is not death, but it is as
passing through the valley of the shadow of death, and perhaps with more
suffering, from more sensitiveness; but the 'rock is here'; the distress is
awful, but He has been with me."

The last morning came, Oct. 13, 1845. About nine o'clock, one of her
daughters, sitting by her bedside, read from Isaiah: "I, the Lord thy God,
will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, thou worm of Jacob,
and ye men of Israel, I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel." The mother said slowly, "Oh! my dear Lord, help and
keep thy servant!" and never spoke afterward.

She was buried in the Friends' burying-ground at Barking, by the side of her
little Elizabeth, a deep silence prevailing among the multitudes gathered

there, broken only by the solemn prayer of her brother, Joseph John Gurney.

Thus closed one of the most beautiful lives among women. To the last she
was doing good deeds. When she was wheeled along the beach in her chair,
she gave books and counsel to the passers-by. When she stayed at hotels,
she usually arranged a meeting for the servants. She was sent for, from far
and near, to pray with the sick, and comfort the dying, who often begged to
kiss her hand; no home was too desolate for her lovely and cheerful
presence. No wonder Alexander of Russia called her "one of the wonders of
the age."

Her only surviving son gives this interesting testimony of her home life: "I
never recollect seeing her out of temper or hearing her speak a harsh word,
yet still her word was law, but always the law of love."

Naturally timid, always in frail health, sometimes misunderstood, even with
the highest motives, she lived a heroic life in the best sense, and died the
death of a Christian. What grander sphere for woman than such
philanthropy as this! And the needs of humanity are as great as ever,
waiting for the ministration of such noble souls.

Elizabeth Thompson Butler.

While woman has not achieved such brilliant success in art, perhaps, as in
literature, many names stand high on the lists. Early history has its noted
women: Propersia di Rossi, of Bologna, whose romantic history Mrs.
Hemans has immortalized; Elisabetta Sirani, painter, sculptor, and engraver
on copper, herself called a "miracle of art," the honored of popes and
princes, dying at twenty-six; Marietta Tintoretta, who was invited to be the
artist at the courts of emperors and kings, dying at thirty, leaving her father
inconsolable; Sophonisba Lomellini, invited by Philip II. of Spain to
Madrid, to paint his portrait, and that of the Queen, concerning whom,

though blind, Vandyck said he had received more instruction from a blind
woman than from all his study of the old masters; and many more.

The first woman artist in England was Susannah Hornebolt, daughter of the
principal painter who immediately preceded Hans Holbein, Gerard
Hornebolt, a native of Ghent. Albrecht Dürer said of her, in 1521: "She has
made a colored drawing of our Saviour, for which I gave her a florin [forty
cents]. It is wonderful that a female should be able to do such work." Her
brother Luke received a larger salary from King Henry VIII. than he ever
gave to Holbein,--$13.87 per month. Susannah married an English sculptor,
named Whorstly, and lived many years in great honor and esteem with all
the court.

Arts flourished under Charles I. To Vandyck and Anne Carlisle he gave
ultra-marine to the value of twenty-five hundred dollars. Artemisia
Gentileschi, from Rome, realized a splendid income from her work; and,
although forty-five years old when she came to England, she was greatly
admired, and history says made many conquests. This may be possible, as
George IV. said a woman never reaches her highest powers of fascination
till she is forty. Guido was her instructor, and one of her warmest
eulogizers. She was an intimate friend of Domenichino and of Guercino,
who gave all his wealth to philanthropies, and when in England was the
warm friend of Vandyck. Some of her works are in the Pitti Palace, at
Florence, and some at Madrid, in Spain.

Of Maria Varelst, the historical painter, the following story is told: At the
theatre she sat next to six German gentlemen of high rank, who were so
impressed with her beauty and manner that they expressed great admiration
for her among each other. The young lady spoke to them in German, saying
that such extravagant praise in the presence of a lady was no real
compliment. One of the party immediately repeated what he had said in
Latin. She replied in the same tongue "that it was unjust to endeavor to
deprive the fair sex of the knowledge of that tongue which was the vehicle
of true learning." The gentlemen begged to call upon her. Each sat for his
portrait, and she was thus brought into great prominence.

The artist around whose beauty and talent romance adds a special charm,
was Angelica Kauffman, the only child of Joseph Kauffman, born near
Lake Constance, about 1741. At nine years of age she made wonderful
pastel pictures. Removing to Lombardy, it is asserted that her father dressed
her in boy's clothing, and smuggled her into the academy, that she might be
improved in drawing. At eleven she went to Como, where the charming
scenery had a great impression upon the young girl. No one who wishes to
grow in taste and art can afford to live away from nature's best work. The
Bishop of Como became interested in her, and asked her to paint his
portrait. This was well done in crayon, and soon the wealthy patronized her.
Years after, she wrote: "Como is ever in my thoughts. It was at Como, in
my most happy youth, that I tasted the first real enjoyment of life."

When she went to Milan, to study the great masters, the Duke of Modena
was attracted by her beauty and devotion to her work. He introduced her to
the Duchess of Massa Carrara, whose portrait she painted, as also that of the
Austrian governor, and soon those of many of the nobility. When all seemed
at its brightest, her mother, one of the best of women, died. Her father,
broken-hearted, accepted the offer to decorate the church of his native town,
and Angelica joined him in the frescoing. After much hard work, they
returned to Milan. The constant work had worn on the delicate girl. She
gave herself no time for rest. When not painting, she was making chalk and
crayon drawings, mastering the harpsichord, or lost in the pages of French,
German, or Italian. For a time she thought of becoming a singer; but finally
gave herself wholly to art. After this she went to Florence, where she
worked from sunrise to sunset, and in the evening at her crayons. In Rome,
with her youth, beauty, fascinating manners, and varied reading, she gained
a wide circle of friends. Her face was a Greek oval, her complexion fresh
and clear, her eyes deep blue, her mouth pretty and always smiling. She was
accused of being a coquette, and quite likely was such.

For three months she painted in the Royal Gallery at Naples, and then
returned to Rome to study the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo. From
thence she went to Bologna and beautiful Venice. Here she met Lady
Wentworth, who took her to London, where she was introduced at once to
the highest circles. Sir Joshua Reynolds had the greatest admiration for her,

and, indeed, was said to have offered her his hand and heart. The whole
world of art and letters united in her praise. Often she found laudatory
verses pinned on her canvas. The great people of the land crowded her
studio for sittings. She lived in Golden Square, now a rather dilapidated
place back of Regent Street. She was called the most fascinating woman in
England. Sir Joshua painted her as "Design Listening to Poetry," and she, in
turn, painted him. She was the pet of Buckingham House and Windsor
Castle.

In the midst of all this unlimited attention, a man calling himself the
Swedish Count, Frederic de Horn, with fine manners and handsome person,
offered himself to Angelica. He represented that he was calumniated by his
enemies and that the Swedish Government was about to demand his person.
He assured her, if she were his wife, she could intercede with the Queen and
save him. She blindly consented to the marriage, privately. At last, she
confessed it to her father, who took steps at once to see if the man were
true, and found that he was the vilest impostor. He had a young wife already
in Germany, and would have been condemned to a felon's death if Angelica
had been willing. She said, "He has betrayed me; but God will judge him."

She received several offers of marriage after this, but would accept no one.
Years after, when her father, to whom she was deeply devoted, was about to
die, he prevailed upon her to marry a friend of his, Antonio Zucchi, thirteen
years her senior, with whom she went to Rome, and there died. He was a
man of ability, and perhaps made her life happy. At her burial, one hundred
priests accompanied the coffin, the pall being held by four young girls,
dressed in white, the four tassels held by four members of the Academy.
Two of her pictures were carried in triumph immediately after her coffin.
Then followed a grand procession of illustrious persons, each bearing a
lighted taper.

Goethe was one of her chosen friends. He said of her: "She has a most
remarkable and, for a woman, really an unheard-of talent. No living painter
excels her in dignity, or in the delicate taste with which she handles the
pencil."

Miss Ellen C. Clayton, in her interesting volumes, English Female Artists,
says, "No lady artist, from the days of Angelica Kauffman, ever created
such a vivid interest as Elizabeth Thompson Butler. None had ever stepped
into the front rank in so short a time, or had in England ever attained high
celebrity at so early an age."

She was born in the Villa Clermont, Lausanne, Switzerland, a country
beautiful enough to inspire artistic sentiments in all its inhabitants. Her
father, Thomas James Thompson, a man of great culture and refinement,
educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, was a warm friend of Charles
Dickens, Lord Lytton, and their literary associates. Somewhat frail in
health, he travelled much of the time, collecting pictures, of which he was
extremely fond, and studying with the eye of an artist the beauties of each
country, whether America, Italy, or France.

His first wife died early, leaving one son and daughter. The second wife was
an enthusiastic, artistic girl, especially musical, a friend of Dickens, and
every way fitted to be the intelligent companion of her husband.

After the birth of Elizabeth, the family resided in various parts of Southern
Europe. Now they lived, says Mrs. Alice Meynell, her only sister, in the
January, 1883, St. Nicholas, "within sight of the snow-capped peaks of the
Apennines, in an old palace, the Villa de Franchi, immediately overlooking
the Mediterranean, with olive-clad hills at the back; on the left, the great
promontory of Porto Fino; on the right, the Bay of Genoa, some twelve
miles away, and the long line of the Apennines sloping down into the sea.
The palace garden descended, terrace by terrace, to the rocks, being, indeed,
less a garden than what is called a villa in the Liguria, and a podere in
Tuscany,--a fascinating mixture of vine, olive, maize, flowers, and corn. A
fountain in marble, lined with maiden-hair, played at the junction of each
flight of steps. A great billiard-room on the first floor, hung with Chinese
designs, was Elizabeth Thompson's first school-room; and there Charles
Dickens, upon one of his Italian visits, burst in upon a lesson in
multiplication.

"The two children never went to school, and had no other teacher than their
father,--except their mother for music, and the usual professors for
'accomplishments' in later years. And whether living happily in their
beautiful Genoese home, or farther north among the picturesque Italian
lakes, or in Switzerland, or among the Kentish hop-gardens and the parks of
Surrey, Elizabeth's one central occupation of drawing was never
abandoned,--literally not for a day."

She was a close observer of nature, and especially fond of animals. When
not out of doors sketching landscapes, she would sit in the house and draw,
while her father read to her, as he believed the two things could be carried
on beneficially.

She loved to draw horses running, soldiers, and everything which showed
animation and energy. Her educated parents had the good sense not to curb
her in these perhaps unusual tastes for a girl. They saw the sure hand and
broad thought of their child, and, no doubt, had expectations of her future
fame.

At fifteen, as the family had removed to England, Elizabeth joined the
South Kensington School of Design, and, later, took lessons in oil painting,
for a year, of Mr. Standish. Thus from the years of five to sixteen she had
studied drawing carefully, so that now she was ready to touch oil-painting
for the first time. How few young ladies would have been willing to study
drawing for eleven years, before trying to paint in oil!

The Thompson family now moved to Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, staying
for three years at Bonchurch, one of the loveliest places in the world. Ivy
grows over walls and houses, roses and clematis bloom luxuriantly, and the
balmy air and beautiful sea make the place as restful as it is beautiful. Here
Elizabeth received lessons in water-color and landscape from Mr. Gray.

After another visit abroad the family returned to London, and the artist
daughter attended the National Art School at South Kensington, studying in
the life-class. The head master, Mr. Richard Burchett, saw her talent, and
helped her in all ways possible.

Naturally anxious to test the world's opinion of her work, she sent some
water-colors to the Society of British Artists for exhibition, and they were
rejected. There is very little encouragement for beginners in any profession.
However, "Bavarian Artillery going into Action" was exhibited at the
Dudley Gallery, and received favorable notice from Mr. Tom Taylor, art
critic of the Times.

Between two long courses at South Kensington Elizabeth spent a summer in
Florence and a winter at Rome, studying in both places. At Florence she
entered the studio of Signor Guiseppe Bellucci, an eminent historical
painter and consummate draughtsman, a fellow-student of Sir Frederick
Leighton at the Academy.

Here the girlish student was intensely interested in her work. She rose early,
before the other members of the family, taking her breakfast alone, that she
might hasten to her beloved labor. "On the day when she did not work with
him," says Mrs. Meynell, "she copied passages from the frescoes in the
cloisters of the Annunziata, masterpieces of Andrea del Sarto and
Franciabigio, making a special study of the drapery of the last-named
painter. The sacristans of the old church--the most popular church in
Florence--knew and welcomed the young English girl, who sat for hours so
intently at her work in the cloister, unheeding the coming and going of the
long procession of congregations passing through the gates.

"Her studies in the galleries were also full of delight and profit, though she
made no other copies, and she was wont to say that of all the influences of
the Florentine school which stood her in good stead in her after-work, that
of Andrea del Sarto was the most valuable and the most important. The
intense heat of a midsummer, which, day after day, showed a hundred
degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, could not make her relax work, and her
master, Florentine as he was, was obliged to beg her to spare him, at least
for a week, if she would not spare herself. It was toward the end of October
that artist and pupil parted, his confidence in her future being as unbounded
as her gratitude for his admirable skill and minute carefulness."

During her seven months in Rome she painted, in 1870, for an ecclesiastical
art exhibition, opened by Pope Pius IX., in the cloisters of the Carthusian
Monastery, the "Visitation of the Blessed Virgin to St. Elizabeth," and the
picture gained honorable mention.

On her return to England the painting was offered to the Royal Academy
and rejected. And what was worse still, a large hole had been torn in the
canvas, in the sky of the picture. Had she not been very persevering, and
believed in her heart that she had talent, perhaps she would not have dared
to try again, but she had worked steadily for too many years to fail now.
Those only win who can bear refusal a thousand times if need be.

The next year, being at the Isle of Wight, she sent another picture to the
Academy, and it was rejected. Merit does not always win the first, nor the
second, nor the third time. It must have been a little consolation to Elizabeth
Thompson, to know that each year the judges were reminded that a person
by that name lived, and was painting pictures!

The next year a subject from the Franco-Prussian War was taken, as that
was fresh in the minds of the people. The title was "Missing." "Two French
officers, old and young, both wounded, and with one wounded horse
between them, have lost their way after a disastrous defeat; their names will
appear in the sad roll as missing, and the manner of their death will never
be known."

The picture was received, but was "skyed," that is, placed so high that
nobody could well see it. During this year she received a commission from
a wealthy art patron to paint a picture. What should it be? A battle scene,
because into that she could put her heart.

A studio was taken in London, and the "Roll-Call" (calling the roll after an
engagement,--Crimea) was begun. She put life into the faces and the
attitudes of the men, as she worked with eager heart and careful labor. In
the spring of 1874 it was sent to the Royal Academy, with, we may suppose,
not very enthusiastic hopes.

The stirring battle piece pleased the committee, and they cheered when it
was received. Then it began to be talked at the clubs that a woman had
painted a battle scene! Some had even heard that it was a great picture.
When the Academy banquet was held, prior to the opening, the speeches of
the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, both gave high praise to
the "Roll-Call."

Such an honor was unusual. Everybody was eager to see the painting. It was
the talk at the clubs, on the railway trains, and on the crowded
thoroughfares. All day long crowds gathered before it, a policeman keeping
guard over the painting, that it be not injured by its eager admirers. The
Queen sent for it, and it was carried, for a few hours, to Buckingham
Palace, for her to gaze upon. So much was she pleased that she desired to
purchase it, and the person who had ordered it gave way to Her Majesty.
The copyright was bought for fifteen times the original sum agreed upon as
its value, and a steel-plate engraving made from it at a cost of nearly ten
thousand dollars. After thirty-five hundred impressions, the plate was
destroyed, that there might be no inferior engravings of the picture. The
"Roll-Call" was for some time retained by the Fine Art Society, where it
was seen by a quarter of a million persons. Besides this, it was shown in all
the large towns of England. It is now at Windsor Castle.

Elizabeth Thompson had become famous in a day, but she was not elated
over it; for, young as she was, she did not forget that she had been working
diligently for twenty years. The newspapers teemed with descriptions of
her, and incidents of her life, many of which were, of course, purely
imaginative. Whenever she appeared in society, people crowded to look at
her.

Many a head would have been turned by all this praise; not so the well-bred
student. She at once set to work on a more difficult subject, "The Twenty-
eighth Regiment at Quatre Bras." When this appeared, in 1875, it drew an
enormous crowd. The true critics praised heartily, but there were some
persons who thought a woman could not possibly know about the smoke of
a battle, or how men would act under fire. That she studied every detail of
her work is shown by Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams, in his Woman's Work

and Worth. "The choice of subject," he says, "though some people called it
a 'very shocking one for a young lady,' engaged the sympathy of military
men, and she was generously aided in obtaining material and all kinds of
data for the work. Infantry officers sent her photographs of 'squares.' But
these would not do, the men were not in earnest; they would kneel in such
positions as they found easiest for themselves; indeed, but for the help of a
worthy sergeant-major, who saw that each individual assumed and
maintained the attitude proper for the situation at whatever inconvenience,
the artist could not possibly have impressed upon her picture that
verisimilitude which it now presents.

"Through the kindness of the authorities, an amount of gunpowder was
expended at Chatham, to make her see, as she said, how 'the men's faces
looked through the smoke,' that would have justified the criticisms of a rigid
parliamentary economist. Not satisfied with seeing how men looked in
square, she desired to secure some faint idea of how they felt in square
while 'receiving cavalry.' And accordingly she repaired frequently to the
Knightsbridge Barracks, where she would kneel to 'receive' the riding-
master and a mounted sergeant of the Blues, while they thundered down
upon her the full length of the riding-school, deftly pulling up, of course, to
avoid accident. The fallen horse presented with such truth and vigor in
'Quatre Bras' was drawn from a Russian horse belonging to Hengler's
Circus, the only one in England that could be trusted to remain for a
sufficient time in the required position. A sore trial of patience was this to
artist, to model, to Mr. Hengler, who held him down, and to the artist's
father, who was present as spectator. Finally the rye,--the 'particularly tall
rye' in which, as Colonel Siborne says, the action was fought,--was
conscientiously sought for, and found, after much trouble, at Henly-on-
Thames."

I saw this beautiful and stirring picture, as well as several others of Mrs.
Butler's, while in England. Mr. Ruskin says of "Quatre Bras": "I never
approached a picture with more iniquitous prejudice against it than I did
Miss Thompson's; partly because I have always said that no woman could
paint, and secondly, because I thought what the public made such a fuss
about must be good for nothing. But it is Amazon's work, this, no doubt of

it, and the first fine pre-raphaelite picture of battle we have had, profoundly
interesting, and showing all manner of illustrative and realistic faculty. The
sky is most tenderly painted, and with the truest outline of cloud of all in
the exhibition; and the terrific piece of gallant wrath and ruin on the
extreme left, where the cuirassier is catching round the neck of his horse as
he falls, and the convulsed fallen horse, seen through the smoke below, is
wrought through all the truth of its frantic passions with gradations of color
and shade which I have not seen the like of since Turner's death."

This year, 1875, a figure from the picture, the "Tenth Bengal Lancers at
Tent-pegging," was published as a supplement to the Christmas number of
London Graphic, with the title "Missed." In 1876, "The Return from
Balaklava" was painted, and in 1877, "The Return from Inkerman," for
which latter work the Fine Art Society paid her fifteen thousand dollars.

This year, 1877, on June 11, Miss Thompson was married to Major, now
Colonel, William Francis Butler, K.C.B. He was then thirty-nine years of
age, born in Ireland, educated in Dublin, and had received many honors. He
served on the Red River expedition, was sent on a special mission to the
Saskatchewan territories in 1870-71, and served on the Ashantee expedition
in 1873. He has been honorably mentioned several times in the House of
Lords by the Field-Marshal-Commanding-in-Chief. He wrote The Great
Lone Land in 1872, The Wild North Land in 1873, and A Kimfoo in 1875.

After the marriage they spent much time in Ireland, where Mrs. Butler
painted "Listed for the Connaught Rangers" in 1879. Her later works are
"The Remnant of an Army," showing the arrival at Jellalabad, in 1842, of
Dr. Brydon, the sole survivor of the sixteen thousand men under General
Elphinstone, in the unfortunate Afghan campaign; the "Scots Greys
Advancing," "The Defence of Rorke's Drift," an incident of the Zulu War,
painted at the desire of the Queen and some others.

Still a young and very attractive woman, she has before her a bright future.
She will have exceptional opportunities for battle studies in her husband's
army life. She will probably spend much time in Africa, India, and other

places where the English army will be stationed. Her husband now holds a
prominent position in Africa.

In her studio, says her sister, "the walls are hung with old uniforms--the tall
shako, the little coatee, and the stiff stock--which the visitor's imagination
may stuff out with the form of the British soldier as he fought in the days of
Waterloo. These are objects of use, not ornament; so are the relics from the
fields of France in 1871, and the assegais and spears and little sharp
wooden maces from Zululand."

Mrs. Butler has perseverance, faithfulness in her work, and courage. She
has won remarkable fame, but has proved herself deserving by her constant
labor, and attention to details. Mrs. Butler's mother has also exhibited some
fine paintings. The artist herself has illustrated a volume of poems, the work
of her sister, Mrs. Meynell. A cultivated and artistic family have, of course,
been an invaluable aid in Mrs. Butler's development.

Florence Nightingale.

One of the most interesting places in the whole of London, is St. Thomas'
Hospital, an immense four-story structure of brick with stone trimmings.
Here is the Nightingale Training School for nurses, established through the
gift to Miss Nightingale of $250,000 by the government, for her wonderful
work in the Crimean War. She would not take a cent for herself, but was
glad to have this institution opened, that girls through her training might
become valuable to the world as nurses, as she has been.

Here is the "Nightingale Home." The dining-room, with its three long
tables, is an inviting apartment. The colors of wall and ceiling are in red and
light shades. Here is a Swiss clock presented by the Grand Duchess of
Baden; here a harpsichord, also a gift. Here is the marble face and figure I
have come especially to see, that of lovely Florence Nightingale. It is a face
full of sweetness and refinement, having withal an earnest look, as though
life were well worth living.

What better work than to direct these girls how to be useful? Some are here
from the highest social circles. The "probationers," or nurse pupils, must
remain three years before they can become Protestant "sisters." Each ward
is in charge of a sister; now it is Leopold, because the ward bears that name;
and now Victoria in respect to the Queen, who opened the institution.

The sisters look sunny and healthy, though they work hard. They have
regular hours for being off duty, and exercise in the open air. The patients
tell me how "homelike it seems to have women in the wards, and what a
comfort it is in their agony, to be handled by their careful hands." Here are
four hundred persons in all phases of suffering, in neat, cheerful wards,
brightened by pots of flowers, and the faces of kind, devoted women.

And who is this woman to whom the government of Great Britain felt that it
owed so much, and whom the whole world delights to honor?

Florence Nightingale, born in 1820, in the beautiful Italian city of that
name, is the younger of two daughters of William Shore Nightingale, a
wealthy land-owner, who inherited both the name and fortune of his

granduncle, Peter Nightingale. The mother was the daughter of the eminent
philanthropist and member of Parliament, William Smith.

Most of Miss Nightingale's life has been spent on their beautiful estate, Lea
Hurst, in Derbyshire, a lovely home in the midst of picturesque scenery. In
her youth her father instructed her carefully in the classics and higher
mathematics; a few years later, partly through extensive travel, she became
proficient in French, German, and Italian.

Rich, pretty, and well-educated, what was there more that she could wish
for? Her heart, however, did not turn toward a fashionable life. Very early
she began to visit the poor and the sick near Lea Hurst, and her father's
other estate at Embly Park, Hampshire. Perhaps the mantle of the mother's
father had fallen upon the young girl.

She had also the greatest tenderness toward dumb animals, and never could
bear to see them injured. Miss Alldridge, in an interesting sketch of Miss
Nightingale, quotes the following story from Little Folks:--

"Some years ago, when the celebrated Florence Nightingale was a little girl,
living at her father's home, a large, old Elizabethan house, with great woods
about it, in Hampshire, there was one thing that struck everybody who
knew her. It was that she seemed to be always thinking what she could do to
please or help any one who needed either help or comfort. She was very
fond, too, of animals, and she was so gentle in her way, that even the shyest
of them would come quite close to her, and pick up whatever she flung
down for them to eat.

"There was, in the garden behind the house, a long walk with trees on each
side, the abode of many squirrels; and when Florence came down the walk,
dropping nuts as she went along, the squirrels would run down the trunks of
their trees, and, hardly waiting until she passed by, would pick up the prize
and dart away, with their little bushy tails curled over their backs, and their
black eyes looking about as if terrified at the least noise, though they did
not seem to be afraid of Florence.

"Then there was an old gray pony named Peggy, past work, living in a
paddock, with nothing to do all day long but to amuse herself. Whenever
Florence appeared at the gate, Peggy would come trotting up and put her
nose into the dress pocket of her little mistress, and pick it of the apple or
the roll of bread that she knew she would always find there, for this was a
trick Florence had taught the pony. Florence was fond of riding, and her
father's old friend, the clergyman of the parish, used often to come and take
her for a ride with him when he went to the farm cottages at a distance. He
was a good man and very kind to the poor.

"As he had studied medicine when a young man, he was able to tell the
people what would do them good when they were ill, or had met with an
accident. Little Florence took great delight in helping to nurse those who
were ill; and whenever she went on these long rides, she had a small basket
fastened to her saddle, filled with something nice which she saved from her
breakfast or dinner, or carried for her mother, who was very good to the
poor.

"There lived in one of two or three solitary cottages in the wood an old
shepherd of her father's, named Roger, who had a favorite sheep-dog called
Cap. Roger had neither wife nor child, and Cap lived with him and kept
him, and kept him company at night after he had penned his flock. Cap was
a very sensible dog; indeed, people used to say he could do everything but
speak. He kept the sheep in wonderfully good order, and thus saved his
master a great deal of trouble. One day, as Florence and her old friend were
out for a ride, they came to a field where they found the shepherd giving his
sheep their night feed; but he was without the dog, and the sheep knew it,
for they were scampering in every direction. Florence and her friend
noticed that the old shepherd looked very sad, and they stopped to ask what
was the matter, and what had become of his dog.

"'Oh,' said Roger, 'Cap will never be of any more use to me; I'll have to
hang him, poor fellow, as soon as I go home to-night.'

"'Hang him!' said Florence. 'Oh, Roger, how wicked of you! What has dear
old Cap done?'

"'He has done nothing,' replied Roger; 'but he will never be of any more use
to me, and I cannot afford to keep him for nothing; one of the mischievous
school-boys throwed a stone at him yesterday, and broke one of his legs.'
And the old shepherd's eyes filled with tears, which he wiped away with his
shirt-sleeve; then he drove his spade deep in the ground to hide what he felt,
for he did not like to be seen crying.

"'Poor Cap!' he sighed; 'he was as knowing almost as a human being.'

"'But are you sure his leg is broken?' asked Florence.

"'Oh, yes, miss, it is broken safe enough; he has not put his foot to the
ground since.'

"Florence and her friend rode on without saying anything more to Roger.

"'We will go and see poor Cap,' said the vicar; 'I don't believe the leg is
really broken. It would take a big stone and a hard blow to break the leg of
a big dog like Cap.'

"'Oh, if you could but cure him, how glad Roger would be!' replied
Florence.

"They soon reached the shepherd's cottage, but the door was fastened; and
when they moved the latch, such a furious barking was heard that they drew
back, startled. However, a little boy came out of the next cottage, and asked
if they wanted to go in, as Roger had left the key with his mother. So the
key was got, and the door opened; and there on the bare brick floor lay the
dog, his hair dishevelled, and his eyes sparkling with anger at the intruders.
But when he saw the little boy he grew peaceful, and when he looked at
Florence, and heard her call him 'poor Cap,' he began to wag his short tail;
and then crept from under the table, and lay down at her feet. She took hold
of one of his paws, patted his old rough head, and talked to him, whilst her
friend examined the injured leg. It was dreadfully swollen, and hurt very
much to have it examined; but the dog knew it was meant kindly, and
though he moaned and winced with pain, he licked the hands that were
hurting him.

"'It's only a bad bruise; no bones are broken,' said her old friend; 'rest is all
Cap needs; he will soon be well again.'

"'I am so glad,' said Florence; 'but can we do nothing for him? he seems in
such pain.'

"'There is one thing that would ease the pain and heal the leg all the sooner,
and that is plenty of hot water to foment the part.'

"Florence struck a light with the tinder-box, and lighted the fire, which was
already laid. She then set off to the other cottage to get something to bathe
the leg with. She found an old flannel petticoat hanging up to dry, and this
she carried off, and tore up into slips, which she wrung out in warm water,
and laid them tenderly on Cap's swollen leg. It was not long before the poor
dog felt the benefit of the application, and he looked grateful, wagging his
little stump of a tail in thanks. On their way home they met the shepherd
coming slowly along, with a piece of rope in his hand.

"'Oh, Roger,' cried Florence, 'you are not to hang poor old Cap; his leg is
not broken at all.'

"'No, he will serve you yet,' said the vicar.

"'Well, I be main glad to hear it,' said the shepherd, 'and many thanks to you
for going to see him.'

"On the next morning Florence was up early, and the first thing she did was
to take two flannel petticoats to give to the poor woman whose skirt she had
torn up to bathe Cap. Then she went to the dog, and was delighted to find
the swelling of his leg much less. She bathed it again, and Cap was as
grateful as before.

"Two or three days afterwards Florence and her friend were riding together,
when they came up to Roger and his sheep. This time Cap was watching the
sheep, though he was lying quite still, and pretending to be asleep. When he
heard the voice of Florence speaking to his master, who was portioning out
the usual food, his tail wagged and his eyes sparkled, but he did not get up,

for he was on duty. The shepherd stopped his work, and as he glanced at the
dog with a merry laugh, said, 'Do look at the dog, Miss; he be so pleased to
hear your voice.' Cap's tail went faster and faster. 'I be glad,' continued the
old man, 'I did not hang him. I be greatly obliged to you, Miss, and the
vicar, for what you did. But for you I would have hanged the best dog I ever
had in my life.'"

A girl who was made so happy in saving the life of an animal would
naturally be interested to save human beings. Occasionally her family
passed a season in London, and here, instead of giving much time to
concerts or parties, she would visit hospitals and benevolent institutions.
When the family travelled in Egypt, she attended several sick Arabs, who
recovered under her hands. They doubtless thought the English girl was a
saint sent down from heaven.

The more she felt drawn toward the sick, the more she felt the need of
study, and the more she saw the work that refined women could do in the
hospitals. The Sisters of Charity were standing by sick-beds; why could
there not be Protestant sisters? When they travelled in Germany, France,
and Italy, she visited infirmaries, asylums, and hospitals, carefully noting
the treatment given in each.

Finally she determined to spend some months at Kaiserwerth, near
Dusseldorf, on the Rhine, in Pastor Fliedner's great Lutheran hospital. He
had been a poor clergyman, the leader of a scanty flock, whose church was
badly in debt. A man of much enterprise and warm heart, he could not see
his work fail for lack of means; so he set out among the provinces, to tell
the needs of his little parish. He collected funds, learned much about the
poverty and ignorance of cities, preached in some of the prisons, because
interested in criminals, and went back to his loyal people.

But so poor were they that they could not meet the yearly expenses, so he
determined to raise an endowment fund. He visited Holland and Great
Britain, and secured the needed money.

In England, in 1832, he became acquainted with Elizabeth Fry. How one
good life influences another to the end of time! When he went back to
Germany his heart was aglow with a desire to help humanity.

He at once opened an asylum for discharged prison-women. He saw how
almost impossible it was for those who had been in prison to obtain
situations. Then he opened a school for the children of such as worked in
factories, for he realized how unfit for citizenship are those who grow up in
ignorance. He did not have much money, but he seemed able to obtain what
he really needed. Then he opened a hospital; a home for insane women; a
home of rest for his nurses, or for those who needed a place to live after
their work was done. Soon the "Deaconesses" at Kaiserwerth became
known the country over. Among the wildest Norwegian mountains we met
some of these Kaiserwerth nurses, refined, educated ladies, getting in
summer a new lease of life for their noble labors.

This Protestant sisterhood consists now of about seven hundred sisters, at
about two hundred stations, the annual expense being about $150,000. What
a grand work for one man, with no money, the pastor of a very humble
church!

Into this work of Pastor Fliedner, Florence Nightingale heartily entered.
Was it strange taste for a pretty and wealthy young woman, whose life had
been one of sunshine and happiness? It was a saintlike taste, and the world
is rendered a little like Paradise by the presence of such women. Back in
London the papers were full of the great exhibition of 1851, but she was
more interested in her Kaiserwerth work than to be at home. When she had
finished her course of instruction, Pastor Fliedner said, since he had been
director of that institution no one had ever passed so distinguished an
examination, or shown herself so thoroughly mistress of all she had learned.

On her return to Lea Hurst, she could not rest very long, while there was so
much work to be done in the world. In London, a hospital for sick
governesses was about to fail, from lack of means and poor management.
Nobody seemed very deeply interested for these overworked teachers. But
Miss Nightingale was interested, and leaving her lovely home, she came to

the dreary house in Harley Street, where she gave her time and her fortune
for several years. Her own frail health sank for a time from the close
confinement, but she had seen the institution placed on a sure foundation,
and prosperous.

The Crimean War had begun. England had sent out ship-loads of men to the
Black Sea, to engage in war with Russia. Little thought seemed to have
been taken, in the hurry and enthusiasm of war, to provide proper clothing
or food for the men in that changing climate. In the desolate country there
was almost no means of transportation, and men and animals suffered from
hunger. After the first winter cholera broke out, and in one camp twenty
men died in twenty-four hours.

Matters grew from bad to worse. William Howard Russell, the Times
correspondent, wrote home to England: "It is now pouring rain,--the skies
are black as ink,--the wind is howling over the staggering tents,--the
trenches are turned into dykes,--in the tents the water is sometimes a foot
deep,--our men have not either warm or waterproof clothing,--they are out
for twelve hours at a time in the trenches,--they are plunged into the
inevitable miseries of a winter campaign,--and not a soul seems to care for
their comfort, or even for their lives. These are hard truths, but the people of
England must hear them. They must know that the wretched beggar who
wanders about the streets of London in the rain, leads the life of a prince,
compared with the British soldiers who are fighting out here for their
country.

"The commonest accessories of a hospital are wanting; there is not the least
attention paid to decency or cleanliness; the stench is appalling; the fetid air
can barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, save through the chinks in
the walls and roofs; and, for all I can observe, these men die without the
least effort being made to save them. There they lie, just as they were let
gently down on the ground by the poor fellows, their comrades, who
brought them on their backs from the camp with the greatest tenderness, but
who are not allowed to remain with them. The sick appear to be tended by
the sick, and the dying by the dying."

During the rigorous winter of 1854, with snow three feet thick, many were
frozen in their tents. Out of nearly forty-five thousand, over eighteen
thousand were reported in the hospitals. The English nation became aroused
at this state of things, and in less than two weeks seventy-five thousand
dollars poured into the Times office for the suffering soldiers. A special
commissioner, Mr. Macdonald, was sent to the Crimea with shirts, sheets,
flannels, and necessary food.

But one of the greatest of all needs was woman's hand and brain, in the
dreadful suffering and the confusion. The testimony of the world thus far
has been that men everywhere need the help of women, and women
everywhere need the help of men. Right Honorable Sydney Herbert, the
Secretary of War, knew of but one woman who could bring order and
comfort to those far-away hospitals, and that woman was Miss Nightingale.
She had made herself ready at Kaiserwerth for a great work, and now a
great work was ready for her.

But she was frail in health, and was it probable that a rich and refined lady
would go thousands of miles from her kindred, to live in feverish wards
where there were only men? A true woman dares do anything that helps the
world.

Mr. Herbert wrote her, Oct. 15: "There is, as far as I know, only one person
in England capable of organizing and directing such a plan, and I have been
several times on the point of asking you if you would be disposed to make
the attempt. That it will be difficult to form a corps of nurses, no one knows
better than yourself.... I have this simple question to put to you: Could you
go out yourself, and take charge of everything? It is, of course, understood
that you will have absolute authority over all the nurses, unlimited power to
draw on the government for all you judge necessary to the success of your
mission; and I think I may assure you of the co-operation of the medical
staff. Your personal qualities, your knowledge, and your authority in
administrative affairs, all fit you for this position."

It was a strange coincidence that on that same day, Oct. 15, Miss
Nightingale, her heart stirred for the suffering soldiers, had written a letter

to Mr. Herbert, offering her services to the government. A few days later the
world read, with moistened eyes, this letter from the war office: "Miss
Nightingale, accompanied by thirty-four nurses, will leave this evening.
Miss Nightingale, who has, I believe, greater practical experience of
hospital administration and treatment than any other lady in this country,
has, with a self-devotion for which I have no words to express my gratitude,
undertaken this noble but arduous work."

The heart of the English nation followed the heroic woman. Mrs. Jameson
wrote: "It is an undertaking wholly new to our English customs, much at
variance with the usual education given to women in this country. If it
succeeds, it will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and
her band of devoted assistants, that they have broken down a Chinese wall
of prejudices,--religious, social, professional,--and have established a
precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to all time." She did
succeed, and the results can scarcely be overestimated.

As the band of nurses passed through France, hotel-keepers would take no
pay for their accommodation; poor fisherwomen at Boulogne struggled for
the honor of carrying their baggage to the railway station. They sailed in the
Vectis across the Mediterranean, reaching Scutari, Nov. 5, the day of the
battle of Inkerman.

They found in the great Barrack Hospital, which had been lent to the British
by the Turkish government, and in another large hospital near by, about four
thousand men. The corridors were filled with two rows of mattresses, so
close that two persons could scarcely walk between them. There was work
to be done at once.

One of the nurses wrote home, "The whole of yesterday one could only
forget one's own existence, for it was spent, first in sewing the men's
mattresses together, and then in washing them, and assisting the surgeons,
when we could, in dressing their ghastly wounds after their five days'
confinement on board ship, during which space their wounds had not been
dressed. Hundreds of men with fever, dysentery, and cholera (the wounded

were the smaller portion) filled the wards in succession from the
overcrowded transports."

Miss Nightingale, calm and unobtrusive, went quietly among the men,
always with a smile of sympathy for the suffering. The soldiers often wept,
as for the first time in months, even years, a woman's hand adjusted their
pillows, and a woman's voice soothed their sorrows.

Miss Nightingale's pathway was not an easy one. Her coming did not meet
the general approval of military or medical officials. Some thought women
would be in the way; others felt that their coming was an interference.
Possibly some did not like to have persons about who would be apt to tell
the truth on their return to England. But with good sense and much tact she
was able to overcome the disaffection, using her almost unlimited power
with discretion.

As soon as the wounded were attended to, she established an invalid's
kitchen, where appetizing food could be prepared,--one of the essentials in
convalescence. Here she overlooked the proper cooking for eight hundred
men who could not eat ordinary food. Then she established a laundry. The
beds and shirts of the men were in a filthy condition, some wearing the
ragged clothing in which they were brought down from the Crimea. It was
difficult to obtain either food or clothing, partly from the immense amount
of "red tape" in official life.

Miss Nightingale seemed to be everywhere. Dr. Pincoffs said: "I believe
that there never was a severe case of any kind that escaped her notice; and
sometimes it was wonderful to see her at the bedside of a patient who had
been admitted perhaps but an hour before, and of whose arrival one would
hardly have supposed it possible she could already be cognizant."

She aided the senior chaplain in establishing a library and school-room, and
in getting up evening lectures for the men. She supplied books and games,
wrote letters for the sick, and forwarded their little savings to their home-
friends.

For a year and a half, till the close of the war, she did a wonderful work,
reducing the death-rate in the Barrack Hospital from sixty per cent to a little
above one per cent. Said the Times correspondent: "Wherever there is
disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly
nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant
presence is an influence for good comfort even amid the struggles of
expiring nature. She is a 'ministering angel,' without any exaggeration, in
these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor,
every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all
the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness
have settled down upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed,
alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.

"With the heart of a true woman and the manner of a lady, accomplished
and refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of
judgment and promptitude and decision of character. The popular instinct
was not mistaken, which, when she set out from England on her mission of
mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust she may not earn her title to a higher,
though sadder, appellation. No one who has observed her fragile figure and
delicate health can avoid misgivings lest these should fail."

One of the soldiers wrote home: "She would speak to one and another, and
nod and smile to many more; but she could not do it to all, you know, for
we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay
our heads on our pillows again content." Another wrote home: "Before she
came there was such cussin' and swearin', and after that it was as holy as a
church." No wonder she was called the "Angel of the Crimea." Once she
was prostrated with fever, but recovered after a few weeks.

Finally the war came to an end. London was preparing to give Miss
Nightingale a royal welcome, when, lo! she took passage by design on a
French steamer, and reached Lea Hurst, Aug. 15, 1856, unbeknown to any
one. There was a murmur of disappointment at first, but the people could
only honor all the more the woman who wished no blare of trumpets for her
humane acts.

Queen Victoria sent for her to visit her at Balmoral, and presented her with
a valuable jewel; a ruby-red enamel cross on a white field, encircled by a
black band with the words, "Blessed are the merciful." The letters V. R.,
surmounted by a crown in diamonds, are impressed upon the centre of the
cross. Green enamel branches of palm, tipped with gold, form the
framework of the shield, while around their stems is a riband of the blue
enamel with the single word "Crimea." On the top are three brilliant stars of
diamonds. On the back is an inscription written by the Queen. The Sultan
sent her a magnificent bracelet, and the government, $250,000, to found the
school for nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital.

Since the war, Miss Nightingale has never been in strong health, but she has
written several valuable books. Her Hospital Notes, published in 1859, have
furnished plans for scores of new hospitals. Her Notes on Nursing,
published in 1860, of which over one hundred thousand have been sold,
deserve to be in every home. She is the most earnest advocate of sunlight
and fresh air.

She says: "An extraordinary fallacy is the dread of night air. What air can
we breathe at night but night air? The choice is between pure night air from
without, and foul night air from within. Most people prefer the latter,--an
unaccountable choice. What will they say if it be proved true that fully one-
half of all the disease we suffer from, is occasioned by people sleeping with
their windows shut? An open window most nights of the year can never hurt
any one. In great cities night air is often the best and purest to be had in the
twenty-four hours.

"The five essentials, for healthy houses," she says, are "pure air, pure water,
efficient drainage, cleanliness, and light.... I have known whole houses and
hospitals smell of the sink. I have met just as strong a stream of sewer air
coming up the back staircase of a grand London house, from the sink, as I
have ever met at Scutari; and I have seen the rooms in that house all
ventilated by the open doors, and the passages all unventilated by the close
windows, in order that as much of the sewer air as possible might be
conducted into and retained in the bed-rooms. It is wonderful!"

Miss Nightingale has much humor, and she shows it in her writings. She is
opposed to dark houses; says they promote scrofula; to old papered walls,
and to carpets full of dust. An uninhabited room becomes full of foul air
soon, and needs to have the windows opened often. She would keep sick
people, or well, forever in the sunlight if possible, for sunlight is the
greatest possible purifier of the atmosphere. "In the unsunned sides of
narrow streets, there is degeneracy and weakliness of the human race,--
mind and body equally degenerating." Of the ruin wrought by bad air, she
says: "Oh, the crowded national school, where so many children's
epidemics have their origin, what a tale its air-test would tell! We should
have parents saying, and saying rightly, 'I will not send my child to that
school; the air-test stands at "horrid."' And the dormitories of our great
boarding-schools! Scarlet fever would be no more ascribed to contagion,
but to its right cause, the air-test standing at 'Foul.' We should hear no
longer of 'Mysterious Dispensations' and of 'Plague and Pestilence' being in
'God's hands,' when, so far as we know, He has put them into our own." She
urges much rubbing of the body, washing with warm water and soap. "The
only way I know to remove dust, is to wipe everything with a damp cloth....
If you must have a carpet, the only safety is to take it up two or three times
a year, instead of once.... The best wall now extant is oil paint."

"Nursing is an art; and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a
devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what
is the having to do with dead canvas or cold marble compared with having
to do with the living body, the temple of God's Spirit? Nursing is one of the
fine arts; I had almost said, the finest of the fine arts."

Miss Nightingale has also written Observations on the Sanitary State of the
Army in India, 1863; Life or Death in India, read before the National
Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1873, with an appendix on
Life or Death by Irrigation, 1874.

She is constantly doing deeds of kindness. With a subscription sent recently
by her to the Gordon Memorial Fund, she said: "Might but the example of
this great and pure hero be made to tell, in that self no longer existed to

him, but only God and duty, on the soldiers who have died to save him, and
on boys who should live to follow him."

Miss Nightingale has helped to dignify labor and to elevate humanity, and
has thus made her name immortal.

Florence Nightingale died August 13, 1910, at 2 P.M., of heart failure, at the
age of ninety. She had received many distinguished honors: the freedom of
the city of London in 1908, and from King Edward VII, a year previously, a
membership in the Order of Merit, given only to a select few men; such as
Field Marshal Roberts, Lord Kitchener, Alma Tadema, James Bryce,
George Meredith, Lords Kelvin and Lister, and Admiral Togo.

Her funeral was a quiet one, according to her wishes.

Lady Brassey.

One of my pleasantest days in England was spent at old Battle Abbey, the
scene of the ever-memorable Battle of Hastings, where William of

Normandy conquered the Saxon Harold.

The abbey was built by William as a thank-offering for the victory, on the
spot where Harold set up his standard. The old gateway is one of the finest
in England. Part of the ancient church remains, flowers and ivy growing out
of the beautiful gothic arches.

As one stands upon the walls and looks out upon the sea, that great battle
comes up before him. The Norman hosts disembark; first come the archers
in short tunics, with bows as tall as themselves and quivers full of arrows;
then the knights in coats of mail, with long lances and two-edged swords;
Duke William steps out last from the ship, and falls foremost on both hands.
His men gather about him in alarm, but he says, "See, my lords, I have
taken possession of England with both my hands. It is now mine, and what
is mine is yours."

Word is sent to Harold to surrender the throne, but he returns answer as
haughty as is sent. Brave and noble, he plants his standard, a warrior
sparkling with gold and precious stones, and thus addresses his men:--

"The Normans are good knights, and well used to war. If they pierce
our ranks, we are lost. Cleave, and do not spare!" Then they build up a
breastwork of shields, which no man can pass alive. William of
Normandy is ready for action. He in turn addresses his men: "Spare
not, and strike hard. There will be booty for all. It will be in vain to
ask for peace; the English will not give it. Flight is impossible; at the
sea you will find neither ship nor bridge; the English would overtake
and annihilate you there. The victory is in our hands."

From nine till three the battle rages. The case becomes desperate. William
orders the archers to fire into the air, as they cannot pierce English armor,
and arrows fall down like rain upon the Saxons. Harold is pierced in the
eye. He is soon overcome and trampled to death by the enemy, dying, it is
said, with the words "Holy Cross" upon his lips.

Ten thousand are killed on either side, and the Saxons pass forever under
foreign rule. Harold's mother comes and begs the body of her son, and pays
for it, some historians say, its weight in gold.

Every foot of ground at Battle Abbey is historic, and all the country round
most interesting. We drive over the smoothest of roads to a palace in the
distance,--Normanhurst, the home of Lady Brassey, the distinguished author
and traveller. Towers are at either corner and in the centre, and ivy climbs
over the spacious vestibule to the roof. Great buildings for waterworks,
conservatories, and the like, are adjoining, in the midst of flower-gardens
and acres of lawn and forest. It is a place fit for the abode of royalty itself.

In no home have I seen so much that is beautiful gathered from all parts of
the world. The hall, as you enter, square and hung with crimson velvet, is
adorned with valuable paintings. Two easy-chairs before the fireplace are
made from ostriches, their backs forming the seats. These birds were gifts to
Lady Brassey in her travels. In the rooms beyond are treasures from Japan,
the South Sea Islands, South America, indeed from everywhere; cases of
pottery, works in marble, Dresden candelabra, ancient armor, furs, silks, all
arrayed with exquisite taste.

One room, called the Marie Antoinette room, has the curtains and furniture,
in yellow, of this unfortunate queen. Here are pictures by Sir Frederick
Leighton, Landseer, and others; stuffed birds and fishes and animals from
every clime, with flowers in profusion. In the dining-room, with its gray
walls and red furniture, is a large painting of the mistress of this superb
home, with her favorite horse and dogs. The views from the windows are
beautiful, Battle Abbey ruin in the distance, and rivers flowing to the sea.
The house is rich in color, one room being blue, another red, a third yellow,
while large mirrors seem to repeat the apartments again and again. As we
leave the home, not the least of its attractions come up the grounds,--a load
of merry children, all in sailor hats; the Mabelle and Muriel and Marie
whom we have learned to know in Lady Brassey's books.

The well-known author is the daughter of the late Mr. John Alnutt of
Berkley Square, London, who, as well as his father, was a patron of art,

having made large collections of paintings. Reared in wealth and culture, it
was but natural that the daughter, Annie, should find in the wealthy and
cultured Sir Thomas Brassey a man worthy of her affections. In 1860, while
both were quite young, they were married, and together they have travelled,
written books, aided working men and women, and made for themselves a
noble and lasting fame.

Sir Thomas is the eldest son of the late Mr. Brassey, "the leviathan
contractor, the employer of untold thousands of navvies, the genie of the
spade and pick, and almost the pioneer of railway builders, not only in his
own country, but from one end of the continent to the other." Of superior
education, having been at Rugby and University College, Oxford, Sir
Thomas was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1864, and was elected to
Parliament from Devonport the following year, and from Hastings three
years later, in 1868, which position he has filled ever since.

Exceedingly fond of the sea, he determined to be a practical sailor, and
qualified himself as a master-marine, by passing the requisite Board of
Trade examination, and receiving a certificate as a seaman and navigator. In
1869 he was made Honorary Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve.

Besides his parliamentary work, he has been an able and voluminous writer.
His Foreign Work and English Wages I purchased in England, and have
found it valuable in facts and helpful in spirit. The statement in the preface
that he "has had under consideration the expediency of retiring from
Parliament, with the view of devoting an undivided attention to the
elucidation of industrial problems, and the improvement of the relations
between capital and labor," shows the heart of the man. In 1880 he was
made Civil Lord of the Admiralty, and in 1881 was created by the Queen a
Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, for his important services in
connection with the organization of the Naval Reserve forces of the country.

In 1869, after Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey had been nine years married,
they determined to take a sea-voyage in his yacht, and between this time
and 1872 they made two cruises in the Mediterranean and the East. From
her childhood the wife had kept a journal, and from fine powers of

observation and much general knowledge was well fitted to see whatever
was to be seen, and describe it graphically. She wrote long, journal-like
letters to her father, and on her return The Flight of the Meteor was prepared
for distribution among relatives and intimate friends.

In the year last mentioned, 1872, they took a trip to Canada and the United
States, sailing up several of the long rivers, and on her return, A Cruise in
the Eothen was published for friends.

Four years later they decided to go round the world, and for this purpose the
beautiful yacht Sunbeam was built. The children, the animal pets, two dogs,
three birds, and a Persian kitten for the baby, were all taken, and the happy
family left England July 1, 1876. With the crew, the whole number of
persons on board was forty-three. Almost at the beginning of the voyage
they encountered a severe storm. Captain Lecky would have been lost but
for the presence of mind of Mabelle Brassey, the oldest daughter, who has
her mother's courage and calmness. When asked if she thought she was
going overboard, she answered, "I did not think at all, mamma, but felt sure
we were gone."

"Soon after this adventure," says Lady Brassey, "we all went to bed, full of
thanksgiving that it had ended as well as it did; but, alas, not, so far as I was
concerned, to rest in peace. In about two hours I was awakened by a
tremendous weight of water suddenly descending upon me and flooding the
bed. I immediately sprang out, only to find myself in another pool on the
floor. It was pitch dark, and I could not think what had happened; so I
rushed on deck, and found that the weather having moderated a little, some
kind sailor, knowing my love of fresh air, had opened the skylight rather too
soon, and one of the angry waves had popped on board, deluging the cabin.

"I got a light, and proceeded to mop up, as best I could, and then
endeavored to find a dry place to sleep in. This, however, was no easy task,
for my own bed was drenched, and every other berth occupied. The deck,
too, was ankle-deep in water, as I found when I tried to get across to the
deck-house sofa. At last I lay down on the floor, wrapped in my ulster, and
wedged between the foot stanchion of our swing bed and the wardrobe

athwart-ship; so that as the yacht rolled heavily, my feet were often higher
than my head."

No wonder that a woman who could make the best of such circumstances
could make a year's trip on the Sunbeam a delight to all on board. Their first
visits were to the Madeira, Teneriffe, and Cape de Verde Islands, off the
coast of Africa. With simplicity, the charm of all writing, and naturalness,
Lady Brassey describes the people, the bathing where the sharks were
plentiful, and the masses of wild geranium, hydrangea, and fuchsia. They
climb to the top of the lava Peak of Teneriffe, over twelve thousand feet
high; they rise at five o'clock to see the beautiful sunrises; they watch the
slaves at coffee-raising at Rio de Janeiro, in South America, and Lady
Brassey is attracted toward the nineteen tiny babies by the side of their
mothers; "the youngest, a dear, little woolly-headed thing, as black as jet,
and only three weeks old."

In Belgrano, she says: "We saw for the first time the holes of the bizcachas,
or prairie-dogs, outside which the little prairie-owls keep guard. There
appeared to be always one, and generally two, of these birds, standing like
sentinels, at the entrance to each hole, with their wise-looking heads on one
side, pictures of prudence and watchfulness. The bird and the beast are great
friends, and are seldom to be found apart." And then Lady Brassey, who
understands photography as well as how to write several languages,
photographs this pretty scene of prairie-dogs guarded by owls, and puts it in
her book.

On their way to the Straits of Magellan, they see a ship on fire. They send
out a boat to her, and bring in the suffering crew of fifteen men, almost wild
with joy to be rescued. Their cargo of coal had been on fire for four days.
The men were exhausted, the fires beneath their feet were constantly
growing hotter, and finally they gave up in despair and lay down to die. But
the captain said, "There is One above who looks after us all," and again they
took courage. They lashed the two apprentice boys in one of the little boats,
for fear they would be washed overboard, for one was the "only son of his
mother, and she a widow."

"The captain," says Lady Brassey, "drowned his favorite dog, a splendid
Newfoundland, just before leaving the ship; for although a capital watchdog
and very faithful, he was rather large and fierce; and when it was known
that the Sunbeam was a yacht with ladies and children on board, he feared
to introduce him. Poor fellow! I wish I had known about it in time to save
his life!"

They "steamed past the low sandy coast of Patagonia and the rugged
mountains of Tierra del Fuego, literally, Land of Fire, so called from the
custom the inhabitants have of lighting fires on prominent points as signals
of assembly." The people are cannibals, and naked. "Their food is of the
most meagre description, and consists mainly of shell-fish, sea-eggs, for
which the women dive with much dexterity, and fish, which they train their
dogs to assist them in catching. These dogs are sent into the water at the
entrance of a narrow creek or small bay, and they then bark and flounder
about and drive the fish before them into shallow water, where they are
caught."

Three of these Fuegians, a man, woman, and lad, come out to the yacht in a
craft made of planks rudely tied together with the sinews of animals, and
give otter skins for "tobáco and galléta" (biscuit), for which they call. When
Lady Brassey gives the lad and his mother some strings of blue, red, and
green glass beads, they laugh and jabber most enthusiastically. Their
paddles are "split branches of trees, with wider pieces tied on at one end,
with the sinews of birds or beasts." At the various places where they land,
all go armed, Lady Brassey herself being well skilled in their use.

She never forgets to do a kindness. In Chili she hears that a poor engine-
driver, an Englishman, has met with a serious accident, and at once hastens
to see him. He is delighted to hear about the trip of the Sunbeam, and
forgets for a time his intense suffering in his joy at seeing her.

In Santiago she describes a visit to the ruin of the Jesuit church, where, Dec.
8, 1863, at the Feast of the Virgin, two thousand persons, mostly women
and children, were burned to death. A few were drawn up through a hole in
the roof and thus saved.

Their visit to the South Sea Islands is full of interest. At Bow Island Lady
Brassey buys two tame pigs for twenty-five cents each, which are so docile
that they follow her about the yacht with the dogs, to whom they took a
decided fancy. She calls one Agag, because he walks so delicately on his
toes. The native women break cocoanuts and offer them the milk to drink.
At Maitea the natives are puzzled to know why the island is visited. "No
sell brandy?" they ask. "No." "No stealy men?" "No." "No do what then?"
The chief receives most courteously, cutting down a banana-tree for them,
when they express a wish for bananas. He would receive no money for his
presents to them.

In Tahiti a feast is given in their honor, in a house seemingly made of
banana-trees, "the floor covered with the finest mats, and the centre strewn
with broad green plantain leaves, to form the table-cloth.... Before each
guest was placed a half-cocoanut full of salt water, another full of chopped
cocoanut, a third full of fresh water, and another full of milk, two pieces of
bamboo, a basket of poi, half a breadfruit, and a platter of green leaves, the
latter being changed with each course. We took our seats on the ground
round the green table. The first operation was to mix the salt water and the
chopped cocoanut together, so as to make an appetizing sauce, into which
we were supposed to dip each morsel we ate. We were tolerably successful
in the use of our fingers as substitutes for knives and forks."

At the Sandwich Islands, in Hilo, they visit the volcano of Kilauea. They
descend the precipice, three hundred feet, which forms the wall of the old
crater. They ascend the present crater, and stand on the "edge of a precipice,
overhanging a lake of molten fire, a hundred feet below us, and nearly a
mile across. Dashing against the cliffs on the opposite side, with a noise like
the roar of a stormy ocean, waves of blood-red, fiery liquid lava hurled their
billows upon an iron-bound headland, and then rushed up the face of the
cliffs to toss their gory spray high in the air."

They pass the island of Molokai, where the poor lepers end their days away
from home and kindred. At Honolulu they are entertained by the Prince, and
then sail for Japan, China, Ceylon, through Suez, stopping in Egypt, and
then home. On their arrival, Lady Brassey says, "How can I describe the

warm greetings that met us everywhere, or the crowd that surrounded us;
how, along the whole ten miles from Hastings to Battle, people were
standing by the roadside and at the cottage doors to welcome us; how the
Battle bell-ringers never stopped ringing except during service time; or how
the warmest of welcomes ended our delightful year of travel and made us
feel we were home at last, with thankful hearts for the providential care
which had watched over us whithersoever we roamed!"

The trip had been one of continued ovation. Crowds had gathered in every
place to see the Sunbeam, and often trim her with flowers from stem to
stern. Presents of parrots, and kittens, and pigs abounded, and Lady Brassey
had cared tenderly for them all. Christmas was observed on ship-board with
gifts for everybody; thoughtfulness and kindness had made the trip a delight
to the crew as well as the passengers.

The letters sent home from the Sunbeam were so thoroughly enjoyed by her
father and friends, that they prevailed upon her to publish a book, which she
did in 1878. It was found to be as full of interest to the world as it had been
to the intimate friends, and it passed rapidly through four editions. An
abridged edition appeared in the following year; then the call for it was so
great that an edition was prepared for reading in schools, in 1880, and
finally, in 1881, a twelve-cent edition, that the poor as well as the rich might
have an opportunity of reading this fascinating book, Around the World in
the Yacht Sunbeam. And now Lady Brassey found herself not only the
accomplished and benevolent wife of a member of Parliament, but a famous
author as well.

This year, July, 1881, the King of the Sandwich Islands, who had been
greatly pleased with her description of his kingdom, was entertained at
Normanhurst Castle, and invested Lady Brassey with the Order of
Kapiolani.

The next trip made was to the far East, and a book followed in 1880,
entitled, Sunshine and Storm in the East; or, Cruises to Cyprus and
Constantinople, dedicated "to the brave, true-hearted sailors of England, of
all ranks and services."

The book is intensely interesting. Now she describes the Sultan going to the
mosque, which he does every Friday at twelve o'clock. "He appeared in a
sort of undress uniform, with a flowing cloak over it, and with two or three
large diamond stars on his breast. He was mounted on a superb white Arab
charger, thirty-three years old, whose saddle-cloths and trappings blazed
with gold and diamonds. The following of officers on foot was enormous;
and then came two hundred of the fat blue and gold pashas, with their white
horses and brilliant trappings, the rear being brought up by some troops and
a few carriages.... Nobody dares address the Sultan, even if he speaks to
them, except in monosyllables, with their foreheads almost touching the
floor, the only exception being the grand vizier, who dares not look up, but
stands almost bent double. He is entirely governed by his mother, who,
having been a slave of the very lowest description, to whom his father,
Mahmoud II., took a fancy as she was carrying wood to the bath, is
naturally bigoted and ignorant.... The Sultan is not allowed to marry, but the
slaves who become mothers of his children are called sultanas, and not
allowed to do any more work. They have a separate suite of apartments, a
retinue of servants, besides carriages and horses, and each hopes some day
to be the mother of the future Sultan, and therefore the most prominent
woman in Turkey. The sultanas may not sit at table with their own children,
on account of their having been slaves, while the children are princes and
princesses in right of their father."

Lady Brassey tells the amusing story of a visit of Eugenie to the Sultan's
mother, when the Empress of the French saluted her on the cheek. The
Turkish woman was furious, and said she had never been so insulted in her
life. "She retired to bed at once, was bled, and had several Turkish baths, to
purify her from the pollution. Fancy the Empress' feelings when, after
having so far condescended as to kiss the old woman, born one of the
lowest of slaves, she had her embrace received in such a manner."

The habits and customs of the people are described by Lady Brassey with
all the interest of a novel. On their return home, "again the Battle bells rang
out a merry peal of gladness; again everybody rushed out to welcome us. At
home once again, the servants and the animals seemed equally glad to see
us back; the former looked the picture of happiness, while the dogs jumped

and barked; the horses and ponies neighed and whinnied; the monkeys
chattered; the cockatoos and parrots screamed; the birds chirped; the
bullfinches piped their little paean of welcome.... Our old Sussex cowman
says that even the cows eat their food 'kind of kinder like' when the family
are at home. The deer and the ostriches too, the swans and the call ducks, all
came running to meet us, as we drove round the place to see them."
Kindness to both man and beast bears its legitimate fruit.

Two years later she prepared the letter-press to Tahiti: a Series of
Photographs, taken by Colonel Stuart Wortley. He also is a gentleman of
much culture and noble work, in whose home we saw beautiful things
gathered from many lands.

The last long trip of Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey was made in the fall of
1883, and resulted in a charming book, In the Trades, the Tropics, and the
Roaring Forties, with about three hundred illustrations. The route lay
through Madeira, Trinidad, Venezuela, the Bahamas, and home by way of
the Azores. The resources of the various islands, their history, and their
natural formation, are ably told, showing much study as well as intelligent
observation. The maps and charts are also valuable. At Trinidad they visit
the fine Botanic Gardens, and see bamboos, mangoes, peach-palms, and
cocoa-plants, from whose seeds chocolate is made. The quantity exported
annually is 13,000,000 pounds.

They also visit great coffee plantations. "The leaves of the coffee-shrub,"
says Lady Brassey, "are of a rich, dark, glossy green; the flowers, which
grow in dense white clusters, when in full bloom, giving the bushes the
appearance of being covered with snow. The berries vary in color from pale
green to reddish orange or dark red, according to their ripeness, and bear a
strong resemblance to cherries. Each contains two seeds, which, when
properly dried, become what is known to us as 'raw' coffee."

At Caracas they view with interest the place which, on March 26, 1812, was
nearly destroyed by an earthquake, twelve thousand persons perishing,
thousands of whom were buried alive by the opening of the ground. They
study the formation of coral-reefs, and witness the gathering of sponges in

the Bahamas. "These are brought to the surface by hooked poles, or
sometimes by diving. When first drawn from the water they are covered
with a soft gelatinous substance, as black as tar and full of organic life, the
sponge, as we know, being only the skeleton of the organism."

While all this travelling was being enjoyed, and made most useful as well,
to hundreds of thousands of readers, Lady Brassey was not forgetting her
works of philanthropy. For years she has been a leading spirit in the St.
John's Ambulance Association. Last October she gave a valuable address to
the members of the "Workingmen's Club and Institute Union," composed of
several hundred societies of workingmen. Her desire was that each society
take up the work of teaching its members how to care for the body in case
of accidents. The association, now numbering over one hundred thousand
persons, is an offshoot of the ancient order of St. John of Jerusalem,
founded eight hundred years ago, to maintain a hospital for Christian
pilgrims. She says: "The method of arresting bleeding from an artery is so
easy that a child may learn it; yet thousands of lives have been lost through
ignorance, the life-blood ebbing away in the presence of sorrowing
spectators, perfectly helpless, because none among them had been taught
one of the first rudiments of instruction of an ambulance pupil,--the
application of an extemporized tourniquet. Again, how frequent is the loss
of life by drowning; yet how few persons, comparatively, understand the
way to treat properly the apparently drowned." Lectures are given by this
association on, first, aid to the injured; also on the general management of
the sick-room.

Lady Brassey, with the assistance of medical men, has held classes in all the
outlying villages about her home, and has arranged that simple but useful
medical appliances, like plasters, bandages, and the like, be kept at some
convenient centres.

At Trindad, and Bahamas, and Bermudas, when they stayed there in their
travels, she caused to be held large meetings among the most influential
residents; also at Madeira and in the Azores. A class was organized on board
the Sunbeam, and lectures were delivered by a physician. In the Shetland
Islands she has also organized these societies, and thus many lives have

been saved. When the soldiers went to the Soudan, she arranged for these
helpful lectures to them on their voyage East, and among much other
reading-matter which she obtained for them, sent them books and papers on
this essential medical knowledge.

She carries on correspondence with India, Australia, and New Zealand,
where ambulance associations have been formed. For her valued services
she was elected in 1881 a Dame Chevaliere of the Order of St. John of
Jerusalem.

Her work among the poor in the East End of London is admirable. Too
much of this cannot be done by those who are blessed with wealth and
culture. She is also interested in all that helps to educate the people, as is
shown by her Museum of Natural History and Ethnological Specimens,
open for inspection in the School of Fine Art at Hastings. How valuable is
such a life compared with one that uses its time and money for personal
gratification alone.

In August, 1885, Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey took Mr. and Mrs.
Gladstone, and a few other friends, in the Sunbeam, up the coast of Norway.
When they landed at Stavanger, a quaint, clean little town, she says, in the
October Contemporary Review: "The reception which we met in this
comparatively out-of-the-way place, where our visit had been totally
unexpected, was very striking. From early morning little groups of
townspeople had been hovering about the quays, trying to get a distant
glimpse of the world-renowned statesman who was among our passengers."
When they walked through the town, "every window and doorway was
filled with on-lookers, several flags had been hoisted in honor of the
occasion, and the church bells were set ringing. It was interesting and
touching to see the ex-minister walking up the narrow street, his hat almost
constantly raised in response to the salutations of the townspeople."

They sail up the fiords, they ride in stolkjoerres over the country, they climb
mountains, they visit old churches, and they dine with the Prince of Wales
on board the royal yacht Osborne. Before landing, Mr. Gladstone addresses
the crew, thanking them that "the voyage has been made pleasant and safe

by their high sense of duty, constant watchfulness, and arduous exertion."
While he admires the "rare knowledge of practical seamanship of Sir
Thomas Brassey," and thanks both him and his wife for their "genial and
generous hospitality," he does not forget the sailors, for whom he "wishes
health and happiness," and "prays that God may speed you in all you
undertake." Lady Brassey is living a useful and noble as well as intellectual
life. In London, Sir Thomas and herself recently gave a reception to over a
thousand workingmen in the South Kensington Museum. Devoted to her
family, she does not forget the best interests of her country, nor the welfare
of those less fortunate than herself. Successful in authorship, she is equally
successful in good works; loved at home and honored abroad.

*****

Lady Brassey's last voyage was made in the yacht she loved: the Sunbeam.
Three or four years before, her health had received a serious shock through
an attack of typhoid fever, and it was hoped that travel would restore her. A
trip was made in 1887 to Ceylon, Rangoon, North Borneo and Australia, in
company with Lord Brassey, a son, and three daughters. While in mid-
ocean, on their way to Mauritius, Lady Brassey died of malarial fever, and
was buried at sea, September 14, 1887.

Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

We hear, with comparative frequency, of great gifts made by men: George
Peabody and Johns Hopkins, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar,
Commodore Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford. But gifts of millions have
been rare from women. Perhaps this is because they have not, as often as
men, had the control of immense wealth.

It is estimated that Baroness Burdett-Coutts has already given away from
fifteen to twenty million dollars, and is constantly dispensing her fortune.
She is feeling, in her lifetime, the real joy of giving. How many benevolent
persons lose all this joy, by waiting till death before they bestow their gifts.

This remarkable woman comes from a remarkable family. Her father, Sir
Francis Burdett, was one of England's most prominent members of
Parliament. So earnest and eloquent was he that Canning placed him "very
nearly, if not quite, at the head of the orators of the day." His colleague from
Westminster, Hobhouse, said, "Sir Francis Burdett was endowed with
qualities rarely united. A manly understanding and a tender heart gave a
charm to his society such as I have never derived in any other instance from

a man whose principal pursuit was politics. He was the delight both of
young and old."

He was of fine presence, with great command of language, natural, sincere,
and impressive. After being educated at Oxford, he spent some time in Paris
during the early part of the French Revolution, and came home with
enlarged ideas of liberty. With as much courage as eloquence, he advocated
liberty of the press in England, and many Parliamentary reforms. Whenever
there were misdeeds to be exposed, he exposed them. The abuses of Cold
Bath Fields and other prisons were corrected through his searching public
inquiries.

When one of his friends was shut up in Newgate for impugning the conduct
of the House of Commons, Sir Francis took his part, and for this it was
ordered that he too be arrested. Believing in free speech as he did, he denied
the right of the House of Commons to arrest him, and for nearly three days
barricaded his house, till the police forcibly entered, and carried him to the
Tower. A riot resulted, the people assaulting the police and the soldiers, for
the statesman was extremely popular. Several persons were killed in the
tumult.

Nine years later, in 1819, because he condemned the proceedings of the
Lancashire magistrates in a massacre case, he was again arrested for libel
(?). His sentence was three months' imprisonment, and a fine of five
thousand dollars. The banknote with which the money was paid is still
preserved in the Bank of England, "with an inscription in Burdett's own
writing, that to save his life, which further imprisonment threatened to
destroy, he submitted to be robbed."

For thirty years he represented Westminster, fearless in what he considered
right; strenuous for the abolition of slavery, and in all other reforms.
Napoleon said at St. Helena, if he had invaded England as he had intended,
he would have made it a republic, with Sir Francis Burdett, the popular idol,
at its head.