" ' " '- ' V -/C. .-\.__^\^J 

 
 sir*. 
 
 -
 
 MISS ALICE E. FREEMAN.
 
 ^SUCCESSFUL WOMEN 
 
 BY 
 
 SARAH K BOLTON 
 
 Author of 
 
 How Success is Won 
 Social Studies in England 
 
 and others 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 BOSTON 
 D LOTHROP COMPANY 
 
 FRANKLIN AND HAWLEY STREETS 

 
 COPYRIGHT, 1888 
 
 BY 
 
 D. LOTHROP COMPANY.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JULIET CORSON 9 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH ...... 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD 51 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY ") 72 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE (" MARION HARLAND ") . 90 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARGARET IIO 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL* 127 
 
 * We take pleasure in saying here that the autobiographical portions of 
 this sketch are from an article which appeared in the A merican Garden.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. (By a Friend) . . 149 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 CANDACE WHEELER 175 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 CLARA BARTON 198 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. (By a Friend} . . . 223
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Alice E. Freeman Frontis. 
 
 Juliet Corson n 
 
 Mary L. Booth 37 
 
 Frances E. Willard 55 
 
 Mrs. G. R. Alden (" Pansy ") 75 
 
 Mary Virginia Terhune (" Marion Harland ") . . 95 
 
 The Statue to "Margaret of New Orleans" . . in 
 
 Margaret 119 
 
 Ella Grant Campbell 129 
 
 Dr. Rachel Littler Bodley 151 
 
 Mrs. Candace Wheeler 177 
 
 Miss Dora Wheeler ....... 187 
 
 Clara Barton ........ 199 
 
 Orders and Decorations received by Miss Barton . 215
 
 SUCCESSFUL WOMEN: 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 IN the winter of 1884, the Cleveland Educational 
 Bureau, which was organized to give the best 
 entertainment and instruction to the people at the 
 lowest possible prices, decided to have a series of 
 lectures on cooking, in addition to its regular course. 
 We hoped that some of the women of the city, 
 especially the wives of workingmen, would appre- 
 ciate and appropriate this special instruction. 
 
 Who should be engaged to give the lessons ? 
 Naturally we turned to Miss Juliet Corson, Super- 
 intendent of the New York School of Cookery. 
 
 At the hour appointed, on Saturday afternoon, 
 what was our amazement to find three thousand 
 9
 
 10 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 persons present! On the platform a gas stove 
 had been arranged, while a man in white apron 
 stood before a butcher's block ready to cut his 
 quarter of beef as the teacher might direct. 
 
 Miss Corson, with sunny face and pleasant voice, 
 mixed her bread or prepared her meat as she talked. 
 A dozen newspaper reporters were at their tables, 
 while ladies all over the vast audience were taking 
 notes, or writing receipts, as she gave them. The 
 men among her listeners seemed equally interested 
 with the women ; and why not, since good food, 
 like good air, is vital to one who would do able and 
 telling work in the world ? 
 
 Women were present from the most elegant 
 homes of the city, and from the plainest, all equally 
 interested. Each newspaper gave from one to three 
 columns daily of Miss Corson's sensible talks about 
 food and health and of her directions for making 
 soup, tea and coffee, bread and pastry; and we 
 trust that the city was helped considerably in the 
 matters of digestion, economy, comfort, and good 
 sense. I became myself deeply interested in Miss 
 Corson ; I found her highly educated, refined in
 
 JULIET CORSON.
 
 JULIET CORSON. 13 
 
 manner, one who dignified and elevated labor, and 
 who had gained her success by her own exertions. 
 
 Born in 1842, in a Boston suburb, Mt. Pleasant, 
 she lived and played in that shady retreat till the 
 family moved to New York, when she was six years 
 old. The mother was a quiet, cultivated woman ; 
 the father was absorbed in his wholesale commis- 
 sion business. 
 
 The child spent most of her time with the family 
 of her uncle, Dr. Alfred Upham, brother of the 
 writer on Mental Philosophy. Under the loving 
 care of two of her mother's sisters, and her uncle's 
 guidance, she studied Latin and Greek history and 
 classical poetry. She read daily in Mr. Upham's 
 large library, and was quite content to be his little 
 companion book-worm ; for until she was almost 
 twelve years of age, nearly ten months of every 
 year were spent on the sofa or the bed ; neverthe- 
 less the little invalid was amassing great riches 
 from her books, and doubtless this early study pre- 
 pared her mind for her broad work in the future. 
 
 But she grew neither unhappy nor morbid from 
 her sickness ; and finally she grew stronger, and
 
 14 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 to her great joy she was often able to join her broth- 
 ers' sports ; to learn to row, and fish, and shoot 
 with them, and enter heartily into their pursuits. 
 
 When Juliet was eighteen, the gentle mother 
 died, and, after a time, the father brought a new 
 wife to the home. As he was a man of comfortable 
 means, there was enough for all, but as the brothers 
 had gone out into life for themselves, the new in- 
 mate requested the daughter to do the same. Un- 
 used to labor, still frail in health, what could she 
 find to do? Yet do not commiserate her. But 
 for being forced to earn her living, Miss Corson 
 would probably have done little for the world. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth Power, a member of the editorial 
 staff of the New York Times, then under the man- 
 agement of Henry Raymond, had been instrumen- 
 tal in founding a library for working-girls, in a large 
 room in the New York University building. Young 
 Mrs. Upham was interested in this work. Could 
 not her cousin be useful here as librarian ? Only 
 a small salary could be paid, four dollars a week, 
 but this the eager Boston girl was glad to obtain. 
 
 " It seemed a gold mine," she once said to me ;
 
 JULIET CORSON. 15 
 
 but she little knew how quickly four dollars would 
 vanish when room-rent, board-bills and washing- 
 bills were to be paid out of it. Often by the time 
 the week was half through, she was out of money, 
 and then she lived by means of pitiful economies. 
 She says laughingly now that she would often have 
 been glad of one of the fifteen-cent dinners she 
 devised later. Finally it was arranged by the kind- 
 hearted founder of the Woman's Library that she 
 should sleep there on a sofa in the library, and 
 thus save a portion of her expenses ; the library's 
 finances did not warrant an increase of salary. 
 She made a little money, too, now and then, by a 
 poem or a sketch in the newspapers. 
 
 At last she became acquainted with several of 
 the staff of the Leader, of which Oakey Hall and 
 Harry Clapp were then editors, and the arrange- 
 ment was made that she should write one first-page 
 article each week, upon the new books, pictures, 
 music, and matters of interest to women ; for this 
 column she received five dollars. This seemed 
 another "gold mine," and life actually looked lux- 
 urious with nine dollars a week ; four hundred
 
 1 6 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 sixty-eight a year ! Presently Dr. Sears, editor of 
 the National Quarterly Review, wished a half-yearly 
 index made, and this she did for him accurately. 
 Then he gave her points of articles he desired, 
 told her to make researches and write, "and he 
 would see what sort of stuff there was in her." 
 The young librarian was tired and worn, but glad 
 enough to earn the money and, moreover, very 
 proud of writing for the Quarterly, on the staff of 
 which she was the only woman-writer. 
 
 Now she wrote an article on the resources and 
 future of Australia, and now she sketched the 
 progress from early times, and the present position 
 of women in art. 
 
 Meantime, her brothers never ceased to insist 
 that the place for their only sister was in her 
 father's house, and thither she did at last return. 
 But she soon became very ill from the effect of 
 unhappiness there, and her hard life of the year 
 past; recovering, she was made to feel the advisa- 
 bility of going back to self-support. 
 
 In 1873 some ladies in New York started a 
 noble charity. There were thousands of young
 
 JULIET CORSON. 17 
 
 women who needed to earn a living, but, unlike 
 their brothers, they had been taught neither profes- 
 sion nor trade. Probably their mothers reasoned 
 that they would marry early, and therefore a trade 
 would be useless ; but knowledge never remains use- 
 less to man or woman, married or unmarried. The 
 free training-schools for these young women, first 
 opened in Miss Corson's own home, were soon lo- 
 cated in a large room in Wheeler and Wilson's sew- 
 ing-machine building, and this company, and others, 
 loaned scores of machines, free of charge, for ap- 
 plicants to learn upon. In nine months over one 
 thousand women had been taught thus to sew, and 
 situations had been obtained for three fourths of 
 them. Book-keeping, proof-reading, and short- 
 hand, with which Miss Corson's avocations had 
 made her familiar, were also taught free of 
 charge. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1874, it was decided to 
 also teach domestic service. A larger house was 
 taken, where the basement could be used for a 
 cooking-school, and meals could be provided at 
 cost, to working-girls employed in neighboring
 
 1 8 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 stores. The upper rooms were turned into a dor- 
 mitory, for many young women came hither with 
 no money to pay for either shelter or food. A 
 laundry was soon added. 
 
 When this cooking-school was started, being the 
 first in the country, no one knew just what was spe- 
 cially best to be done. As Juliet Corson was the 
 secretary of the society no wonder she was in- 
 terested in working-girls from her own trying 
 experiences she wrote to the South Kensington 
 Cooking-School in London ; but it proved that they 
 too were just beginning and could give little assist- 
 ance. However, it was clear to all that the school 
 must at once have a teacher. The ladies inter- 
 ested were all busy with their own home-cares. 
 As for Miss Corson herself, she knew how to make 
 coffee, and broil a beefsteak, possibly, but she could 
 read French and German much better than she 
 could do either. Paul du Chaillu, the traveller, 
 had been one of her teachers at the Raymond In- 
 stitute. However, the old adage, "Where there 
 is a will, there is a way,"once more found an illustra- 
 tion in her. She then decided to obtain the best
 
 JULIET CORSON. 19 
 
 books on cookery, in the French and German lan- 
 guages, and the result was, that admiring the thor- 
 oughness of the German and the delicacy of the 
 French, she combined the ideas and reasons of 
 their methods into a philosophy of her own. Next 
 a trained French cook was employed who could 
 carefully carry out Miss Corson's directions as 
 she gave the lesson before the class. At first she 
 was nervous as she stood before her pupils; but 
 this timidity was overcome as her interest in her 
 work increased. For several years she carried 
 forward this department. Fortunately she had 
 early known some of the most cultivated people of 
 New York, and these remained her warm friends, 
 as well as her comrades of the press, to whose un- 
 varying kindness and encouragement Miss Corson 
 largely attributes her success. 
 
 In 1875 requests came that she would write 
 articles for the press on cookery. How strange it 
 sometimes seemed to her that her ideas and opin- 
 ions should be sought, and that she should be at 
 the head of a cooking-school the last work she 
 could ever have thought possible in her giiihood.
 
 20 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 Still if she could make articles on books and 
 pictures interesting, why not upon cooking ? The 
 ignorance on this subject was lamentable among 
 both rich and poor, and as she had made the com- 
 position of foods and their nutritive properties a 
 study, she felt that she was as well fitted as any 
 one for this work. 
 
 In 1876 several wealthy ladies said to her, 
 " Miss Corson, can't you open a cookery school at 
 your home ? We wish to come and learn, as well 
 as the cooks." 
 
 So, in St. Mark's Place, near Cooper Institute, 
 the famous New York Cooking-School was opened. 
 From the first it was a success ; over one thousand 
 persons came each year for a course of lessons. 
 Those in good circumstances paid ten dollars for 
 twelve lessons ; wives and daughters of working- 
 men, fifty cents a lesson ; while, says Miss Corson, 
 " I never have let a person go who wanted to learn, 
 and had no money. I gave to all what I could 
 teach." But how different these bright years of 
 well-paid work from the four-dollars-a-week life in 
 the library!
 
 JULIET CORSON. 21 
 
 In 1877, on account of the railroad strikes and 
 the unsettled condition of business, there was much 
 suffering. Miss Corson well knew what poverty 
 brought to women and children, especially when 
 poverty came because husbands and fathers were 
 out of work. She believed rightly that if she could 
 show the poor how to live comfortably on a small 
 income, she would be conferring a blessing. 
 
 It was then that she prepared that little book 
 called Fifteen-Cent Dinners for Worktngmen's fam- 
 ilies. She had tested the receipts in her own 
 family of five adults, and found that while delica- 
 cies could not be provided, plain substantial food 
 could be, if the teachings of the book were implic- 
 itly followed. Upon its completion, she offered 
 the book to any Charitable Society which would 
 print and give away fifty thousand copies, but no 
 organization was found willing to undertake this 
 beneficence. Then Miss Corson said, " I will do 
 it myself," though she did not know where the 
 money that was necessary for the work, would 
 come from. When the book was ready, she an- 
 nounced through the leading papers that all per-
 
 22 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 sons who called at her house could have the book 
 free. Before seven o'clock the next morning, her 
 hall was rilled with people waiting to receive the 
 little pamphlet. 
 
 So wide-spread was the demand for it, that calls 
 came even from India, China, Australia and South 
 America. Countless letters have reached her from 
 all parts of the world concerning this book. Some 
 Socialists ardently blamed her for writing it, be- 
 cause, they said, " If capitalists think we can live 
 on fifteen-cent dinners, they will lower our wages ; " 
 but generally the poor felt grateful for this assist- 
 ance in making a dollar go as far as possible. 
 
 The six thousand dollars eventually spent in cir- 
 culating the book, came from Miss Corson's own 
 hard work, with the exception of one hundred dol- 
 lars, which was given to her one day at the school, 
 by Mrs. Robert L. Stuart, with the remark, " Do 
 what you wish with this, Miss Corson." As all 
 that came then was grist for Fifteen-Cent Dinners, 
 this hundred dollars went.into the mill. 
 
 Almost immediately, all over the country, the 
 press and people were talking about the novel little
 
 JULIET CORSON. 23 
 
 dinner-book. The Baltimore Daily Neivs gave out 
 over its counters one thousand copies in less than 
 a week to meet the individual calls of working- 
 people. The Philadelphia Record re-published it 
 entire in its columns. The New York Herald said. : 
 
 When we consider that the breakfast of many a laboring 
 man's family in these times (of the railroad strikes in 1877) 
 frequently consists of bread alone, we cannot give too much 
 praise to the book that teaches how to make savory and 
 healthful dishes at a cost of from ten to fifteen cents. . . . 
 There is no use in extending our arguments : the book speaks 
 for itself and needs no vindication : for its earnest author, 
 she has nothing to make : indeed, for charity's sake, she is a 
 great loser. The interest we have is in the pamphlet, which 
 has secured wide attention, and which is valuable for the 
 very poor. Economy is not a crime. If a poor man can get 
 more from ten cents than he is used to getting he is better 
 off. 
 
 The Workingmari's Advocate, a labor paper pub- 
 lished in Albany, said : 
 
 If we could have our own way about every thing every 
 workingman's family in the land should feed on roast beef 
 every day if they wanted it. But this cannot be. In many, 
 many a home it is not a question of choice food, but a ques- 
 tion whether there is any food at all, or at most whether 
 there is food enough each day to go round. To such fami- 
 lies we believe the advice given in Miss Corson's little book
 
 24 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 will be found invaluable. It is the most practical work of 
 the day. 
 
 The letters of the working-people themselves 
 were pathetic, because they testified how the poor 
 struggle to live, and how warm their hearts are 
 toward those who aid them. One person wrote : 
 
 If I understand the papers that you help the poor by let- 
 ting them have a cook-book free of charge, that they may 
 learn the way to cook for themselves and live cheap by the 
 good advice therein, pray send one to me, for I am greatly 
 in need of something of that sort. If I was to write for all 
 
 the poor people in E that would be glad of a chance 
 
 to get a book it would take two dozen to supply them, for 
 we are in hard luck for the last four years. Very little 
 money. Very little work at any price. And what is worse 
 than all, winter is coming. Then all work stops. And the 
 store-keepers stop trusting us. So you see we are very much 
 in need of a book to teach us how to cook what little we can 
 get in a proper way. 
 
 Another wrote : 
 
 
 
 Having just finished a piece in the paper of your book 
 teaching economy I would say I would be very thankful if you 
 would send one to me. I am a working man, and under small 
 pay, and I have a wife and two children, and I can but just 
 make a living. I feel as if one of your little books would bring 
 light and happiness into my home again, and if so I could 
 never thank you enough.
 
 JULIET CORSON. 35 
 
 Still another : 
 
 Please send me a book for people of refinement and edu- 
 cation reduced almost to starvation. God will reward you 
 tenfold for the noble impulse of heart that has made you 
 remember the poor and needy, and I earnestly pray that the 
 good work you are engaged in may go forward until many 
 rise up and call you blessed. 
 
 And here are others : 
 
 Please send me copies of the pamphlet you have for work- 
 ingmen, to produce a hearty meal for 15 cents. We eat but 
 little meat. Are not able, and anything that will help a poor 
 man will be gratefully received. 
 
 Kind friend Juliet, for the last six months I have not 
 earned $1.50 a day. Times are very hard. There are plenty 
 in our factory no better off than myself, with five to seven 
 in a family. Please send us books. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAM : I read in the Sunday papers some- 
 thing of more importance than I ever read in my life, under 
 the head of " The Food Question." My wife read it, and was 
 verv anxious to know how it could be done. I work in a 
 shop where we are getting 80 cents to $1.44 a day ; there are 
 about 90 men working there. I would suggest that you send 
 us each a copy, that we may learn to feed ourselves economi- 
 cally. If any person with an intelligent eye would walk 
 through our shops and take notice of our lean, haggard, 
 worn-out faces and bodies, he would come to the conclusion 
 we need some advice.
 
 26 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 There is five of us women and a little boy, and I earn a dol- 
 lar a day. I sew lace. But my eyes are poor, and it is hard. 
 We don't have much to eat many days. We want your book 
 so bad. 
 
 I have received your little book, and am very grateful to 
 you for it. It is a great help to me, and I only wish I might 
 have had it years ago. You are doing a noble work and I 
 pray that God may bless you. 
 
 Besides this little book for the poor, Miss Cor- 
 son has given lessons to the workingwomen of the 
 Five Pdints House of Industry, the yth Ave. 
 Chapel, the Episcopal Orphan Home, the Alexan- 
 der, the Holy Trinity, and Olivet Chapels, New 
 York, Dr. Vincent's Mission, Dr. Hall's Mission 
 Class, the Wilson Mission, the Sheltering Arms, 
 Cooper Institute, the Workingmen's School, the 
 Brooklyn Industrial Restaurant, the Soldiers Or- 
 phan's Home, and latest at St. Augustine's Chapel 
 of Trinity Parish, New York. She was often told 
 at these places that 
 
 husbands were willing to stay home in the evening and take 
 care of the children so that their wives could attend ; even 
 experienced housekeepers, who had said that "no one could 
 teach them much about cooking," were among the most at- 
 tentive and interested auditors.
 
 JULIET CORSON. 27 
 
 When giving a course of lessons in East Hous- 
 ton Street, New York, among the poor, one young 
 girl said, " I will never forget you, Miss Corson, 
 as long as I have any bread to make ; " to which 
 Miss Corson replied, " Very well, May, then I shall 
 be quite satisfied, for as long as you live you will 
 need to make good bread for yourself or your 
 family." 
 
 Miss Corson loves this philanthropic work better 
 than any other sfle has done. She says : 
 
 I hope to live to see the time when workingmen can earn 
 enough to supply all their wants. Until then my duty is to 
 show them how to make the best of what they have. And 
 1 hold that in doing so I am proving myself a better friend 
 to them than those who try to make them still more discon- 
 tented with the lot that is already almost too hard to bear. 
 
 She had now become so widely known that re- 
 quests came from many cities asking her to give 
 courses of cooking-lessons and to help open cook- 
 ing-schools. In Montreal she gave the first les- 
 sons in cooking ever given in public schools, to 
 the girls in the high school ; she also gave a 
 course before the Ladies' Educational Association, 
 and evening classes to the wives of artisans. In
 
 28 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 Concord, Northampton, Hartford, Pittsfield, Peo- 
 ria, Minneapolis, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, 
 Syracuse, Plainfield, Brooklyn, where she gave 
 courses, the working-people had free lessons. 
 Nurses were taught cookery for the sick at the 
 State Charity Hospital, the Brooklyn City and 
 Maternity Hospitals, and at the New York, Brook- 
 lyn and Washington Training Schools for Nurses. 
 
 Before 1878 she had prepared a Text-book and 
 Housekeepers Guide, which has now gone through 
 six editions; and this was at once used in the 
 Montreal Cooking-School. This book also con- 
 tains a " Dietary for Schools," showing what food 
 and beverages students need, and most useful 
 suggestions are given about early breakfasts and 
 mid-day dinners. This " Dietary " was prepared 
 at the request of Hon. John Eaton, U. S. Com- 
 missioner of Education, and ordered published by 
 the Secretary of the Interior. 
 
 Says Miss Corson : 
 
 Studying before breakfast is not conducive to general 
 good health. If the rising hour is about six in the morning, 
 the breakfast should not be later than seven ; if the meal is 
 likely to be delayed beyond that hour a cup of milk and a
 
 JULIET CORSON. 29 
 
 slice of bread should be taken after dressing. . . . Equally 
 important with a hearty breakfast is a full and wholesome 
 early dinner of freshly cooked warm meat and vegetables, 
 plenty of bread and some plain pudding or fruit; these 
 should be will masticated, and accompanied by about half a 
 pint of fresh, cool water as a drink. 
 
 Before going to Montreal, Miss Corson sent 
 word for the ladies to have the usual French 
 cook in readiness to assist her. She arrived late 
 on Saturday, and asked if all was ready. Yes ; 
 only the French cook was lacking. But the ladies 
 said they knew Miss Corson could cook and lect- 
 ure at the same time. It was then too late to do 
 otherwise ; so she " began with fear and trembling, 
 and got through it alive." It was much more en- 
 joyable to see her own skilful hands beating the 
 eggs, or mixing the dough, and thenceforward she 
 dispensed with her French cook. 
 
 In 1878 Miss Corson's well-known Cooking Man- 
 ual \v &.<> published. It is one of the best books 
 possible to put into the hands of a young house- 
 keeper. Over eight thousand copies have been 
 sold. Meals for the Million, a small book for 
 twenty and thirty cents, has had an immense sale.
 
 30 JULIET CORSON. 
 
 After this her Family Cook Book was published in 
 one of the cheap libraries, and has gone into thou- 
 sands of homes. She has recently completed Prac- 
 tical American Cookery and Hoiisehold Management, 
 and is also preparing two books to be published by 
 the Harpers, one of which is upon Sanitary Living. 
 This she means to make "the work of her life." 
 These later books are more carefully written than 
 were the others in time stolen from her work as 
 teacher and lecturer, often after midnight, to meet 
 demands for copy. 
 
 She is also, at the time of writing, preparing 
 a cook-book for working-people, to be sold at 
 about the cost of publication. 
 
 All this time she has been writing useful arti- 
 cles for the New York World, Express, Times, 
 Daily News, Star, Evening Post, Christian Union, 
 and other papers. She has published a series 
 of most admirable articles in Harper's Bazar, 
 notably those upon " Health and Comfort for 
 Girls," and "Family Living on $500 a Year." 
 Miss Corson believes that, to a great extent, a 
 man is what his food makes him.
 
 JULIET CORSON. 31 
 
 Diet can make him strong or weak, intelligent or stupid, 
 chaste or profligate, sober or drunken, and she writes ear- 
 nestly to help make the world healthier and happier. 
 
 Her articles on " Diet in Diseases of the Nerv- 
 ous System," and her words about sewer-gas in 
 homes, ought to be read by everybody. 
 
 Has not this been a busy life ? And nearly all 
 her important public work has been done in the last 
 ten years, done, too, with frail health, and often 
 in much pain of body, and literally under the 
 doctors' sentence of death. 
 
 Miss Corson's work has been appreciated abroad 
 as well as at home. The Consul-General of France 
 wrote her : 
 
 I have the honor to inform you that the French govern- 
 ment, very much interested by the great success of your 
 cooking-school, and wishing to help the creating of the 
 same in some of our principal cities, writes to know thor- 
 oughly the rules, organization and management of your 
 establishment. 
 
 Similar requests also come from Germany, 
 Holland, Switzerland and other countries. A 
 prominent lady writes her : 
 
 You have done a great work to help people with small
 
 32 jtJLIET CORSON. 
 
 incomes to live better than they would have done if you had 
 never been a missionary in the world. And you have 
 brought intelligence in cooking to the homes of the wealthy 
 too, and new ideas as to living, every way. 
 
 In these days of industrial education, Miss Cor- 
 son attaches much importance to the teaching of 
 cookery in the public schools. She has been en- 
 gaged in every attempt made in that direction 
 since the initial step was taken in Montreal under 
 her supervision, and favorable results are already 
 reported of the lessons given in several localities. 
 
 The lesson of this life is for all women. Miss 
 Corson would undoubtedly have succeeded in other 
 directions, with the putting forth of the same en- 
 ergy and ability. 
 
 A Christmas story of hers, written for one of 
 her child favorites, the daughter of a neighbor of 
 Thomas Nast, has been promised illustration by 
 that versatile genius. She is somewhat of an artist 
 herself, an enthusiastic lover of music, and an 
 ardent student of the harmonic mysteries of 
 Wagner. 
 
 Better felt even than Miss Corson's admirable
 
 JULIET CORSON. 33 
 
 and essential work, is the influence of her refined, 
 gentle nature and earnest personal life. Always 
 a student, she has been the friend of the cultured ; 
 poor at one period, she has been the friend and 
 helper of the poor. Her cheerful home with her 
 pets, her great St. Bernard dog, " Teddy " her 
 Angora cat, and Prince Aladdin her white Persian, 
 is an inviting place, where friends from all over 
 the country are made welcome. 
 
 And now, unable to lecture on account of ill 
 health, her physical inactivity tends to mental ac- 
 tivity, and permits her to put her experience into 
 written words which can reach thousands, where her 
 spoken words could reach but hundreds. " This is 
 the silver lining, I suppose," she says cheerfully, 
 and she adds : 
 
 If I am laying up any reward for myself I hope it may 
 come in the shape of strength to complete my work, as yet 
 only outlined.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 TALENT does not always make a home de- 
 lightful, nor a character lovable. No one, 
 save Boswell, thought the great Johnson attractive 
 for daily companionship, and Jane Welsh Carlyle 
 found Craiggenputtoch cheerless. But where tal- 
 ent and taste combine, where sweetness and 
 strength round out a character, where the grace 
 of love and the dignity of mind unite, there one 
 obtains rest and companionship. 
 
 In the upper part of New York, there is one of 
 those ideal homes, well-known these many years 
 to those who follow literature and art. Its owner, 
 Miss Mary L. Booth, is a woman in middle life, 
 who, though in independent circumstances, is proud 
 to labor, and believes in so doing like all sensible 
 Americans. Does she remain in her dainty and 
 34
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 35 
 
 beautiful parlors through the day, doing fancy-work, 
 or reading the latest novel, or receiving calls, or 
 driving in Central Park ? She goes regularly to a 
 down-town office, where from morning till night she 
 superintends every detail of the work on a large 
 and popular newspaper Harper's Bazar, 
 
 At night she is found in her home with her 
 friends about her, happy because her life is full 
 of noble effort. A beautiful woman, indeed, with 
 gray hair, gentle manners, and a generous heart. 
 Eminently successful herself, like Whittier she 
 delights to help others, her kindly face showing 
 how genuine is her helpful spirit. 
 
 Miss Booth was born in the little village of 
 Yaphank, N. Y. Her family removed to Brooklyn 
 when she was thirteen. Her father, a man of 
 education and nobility of nature, organized the 
 first public school ever established in that city. 
 
 The parents were both deeply interested in 
 their little girl who at five years of age had read 
 the Bible through, and Plutarch's Lives, and at 
 seven. Racine in the original. At this age, seven, 
 she was also taking lessons in Latin from her
 
 36 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 father. So eager for books was she that before 
 she was ten she had read Hume, Gibbon, Alison 
 and other historians. 
 
 It was not probable that such a girl would grow 
 up frivolous and useless, fit only to exhibit fine 
 gowns upon. Rather such a girl would become 
 the companion of educated men ; a noble mem- 
 ber of society. It was fortunate her parents saw 
 that a woman must be very considerably educated 
 if she would accomplish anything important and 
 noteworthy ; that the education of the usual board- 
 ing-school would not answer : she must be given 
 such as a young man receives at our best colleges. 
 
 Her tastes inclined her toward the study of 
 the languages and the natural sciences, and in 
 these directions she worked earnestly, in con- 
 nection with general training. 
 
 It was not at all strange that she began to write 
 early for publication. With a father able to sud- 
 port her, she yet enjoyed earning money for 
 herself. What girl possessing both force and 
 independence of character does not enjoy money 
 that has come to her from her own effort ?
 
 MARY L. BOOTH.
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 39 
 
 With a remarkable knowledge of French and 
 German, such as a lover of those tongues would 
 gain in enthusiastic and diligent study, from seven 
 years of age to womanhood, Miss Booth naturally 
 turned to the congenial work of making transla- 
 tions of the finer literature of both languages 
 thus putting her readiest knowledge to use first. 
 Among her earliest translations were Me'ry's 
 Andre" Chenier, Victor Cousin's Life and Times of 
 Madame de Chevreuse, Marmier's Russian Tales, 
 and Edmond About's Germaine, and King of the 
 Mountains. 
 
 All this was close hard work for a young 
 woman, but Miss Booth never sought nor wished 
 for easy or trifling tasks. Light labor never 
 develops character, and the development of thought 
 and character is surely the great purpose of both 
 literature and life. 
 
 One day a friend suggested to her that a history 
 of New York City would be of great use and ben- 
 efit in schools, and as a complete one had never 
 been written, it might be wise for her to attempt 
 it. Many a trained literary man would have been
 
 40 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 deterred by the necessary labor ; but an energetic, 
 educated girl, what could deter her? She was 
 thorough, by all her habits, also accurate, patient 
 and persevering; an essential equipment if one 
 would write history. 
 
 Turner said he had "never known any genius 
 but that of hard work," a statement that most suc- 
 cessful workers have found to be true. Miss 
 Booth not only had no dread of toil, but she was 
 possessed of a will and a wish to do only noble 
 and important work. Still, would she not tire of 
 this task when she should find how long, how 
 slow, was even the preparation for doing it ? 
 Well, she did not tire, though she worked for 
 years at gathering together her materials ; search- 
 ing public and private libraries, talking with lit- 
 erarians about books, talking with specialists and 
 antiquarians about events, dates and localities, 
 talking with statesmen and public-minded men 
 about the significance of this act, that policy, and 
 a multitude of occurrences and enterprises. To 
 be sure her pleasant manners and her scholarly de- 
 votion made this comparatively pleasurable work.
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 41 
 
 Those who possessed the knowledge she sought 
 helped her gladly, appreciating her intention to do 
 thorough work, and, above all, her patient and 
 careful preparation for it. Then followed the 
 slow toils of sifting, of comparing and collating. 
 All this before she wrote the first page of her 
 manuscript. 
 
 At the publisher's suggestion the small school- 
 history first projected was laid aside, and only 
 served as the preliminary study for a large octavo 
 volume of about a thousand pages, which was the 
 first complete History of New York City ever pub- 
 lished. The reception of the book everywhere 
 was cordial. The style was clear, graphic ; simple 
 as is all good writing. Second and third editions 
 soon appeared ; the last one, in 1880, brought 
 down to date. A large paper edition of one hun- 
 dred autograph copies was also published, so 
 popular was the work, and book-collectors en- 
 larged their copies with portraits and autograph 
 on interleaved pages. 
 
 One copy, extended to nine volumes of several 
 thousand maps, letters, and illustrations, is owned
 
 42 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 in New York. A collector in Chicago has ex- 
 tended his to twenty-two volumes. Miss Booth 
 has in her library a large paper copy presented 
 to her by an eminent bibliopfcilist, which con- 
 tains over two thousand illustrations on inserted 
 leaves. 
 
 What should she do next? for such a young 
 woman has no thought of stopping her work with 
 one great success. Her publishers proposed that 
 she should go abroad and write popular histories 
 of London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna, but the 
 Civil War came, and its matters soon filled her 
 mind. 
 
 She was most earnestly opposed to all the ideas 
 and outcomes of slavery. Her brother, a mere 
 youth, had entered the army. Could she not help 
 also, in the cause of liberty? 
 
 Just at this time she received an advance copy 
 of Count Agdnorde Gasparin's Uprising of a Great 
 People. She took it at once to Mr. Scribner and 
 urged him to publish a translation ; but he told her 
 the war would probably be over before there was 
 time to bring it out. Finally he said that if the
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 43 
 
 manuscript could be ready in a week, he would 
 publish it. 
 
 She hurried home; and writing twenty hours 
 out of twenty-four, in a few hours less than a 
 week the book was ready for the press. This 
 work was read from one end of the country to the 
 other. Charles Sumner wrote her, " It is worth 
 a whole phalanx in the cause of human freedom; " 
 in a large and famous collection of autographs 
 in Miss Booth's library are the grateful letters 
 of Abraham Lincoln, Edouard Laboulaye, Henri 
 Martin, Edmond de Pressense, Galusha A. Grow, 
 with scores of others, both from America and Eu- 
 rope, thanking her for this and subsequent books. 
 
 From the most prominent European authors 
 she now received pamphlets on the questions of 
 the day, which with advance sheets of their books 
 she translated and published without asking or 
 wishing remuneration. This work she was doing 
 to serve her country in its great work of regenera- 
 tion. 
 
 She soon translated Gasparin's America before 
 Europe, Laboulaye 's Paris in America and two
 
 44 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 volumes by Augustin Cochin, Results of Emancipa- 
 tion, and Results of Slavery. Later, she translated 
 Laboulaye's Fairy Tales, Jean Mace's Fairy Book, 
 which were published by Harper & Brothers, 
 and several of the books of the Countess de Gas- 
 parin, including Camille, Vesper, and Human Sor- 
 rows. One book-case in her large library contains 
 some forty volumes of her own translating. What 
 an amount of work from a single pen ! More 
 recently she has translated Laboulaye's later fairy 
 tales, beautifully illustrated. 
 
 After the close of the war, her next great task 
 was to translate six volumes of Henri Martin's 
 Unabridged History of France, and then in con- 
 nection with Miss Alger, the historian's abridg- 
 ment of the large history. On the library walls 
 of Miss Booth's home are the kind faces of these 
 Frenchmen, Henri Martin, Gasparin, and Labou- 
 laye, in company with Julia Cameron's beautiful 
 autotype of Tennyson, and the portraits of Dick- 
 ens, Alice Gary and other celebrities. 
 
 In 1867 the Harpers desired to start a new 
 family journal, and they asked Miss Booth to
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 45 
 
 become the editor. She hesitated to assume so 
 great a responsibility, also involving daily and sys- 
 tematic labor throughout the year ; but, accepting, 
 she proved her fitness for the work. Harper's 
 Bazar soon reached an immense circulation, paying 
 its way from the first, a thing unusual in journalism. 
 For more than nineteen years Miss Booth has made 
 this paper bright, fresh, pure, reliable, sensible, and 
 a great success. Its corps of contributors has in- 
 cluded the leading writers of Europe and America. 
 Meantime her home has been a literary centre 
 for cultured people. Every Saturday evening one 
 may meet in her parlors, authors, statesmen, ar- 
 tists, the gifted from all the professions. The 
 rooms are cheerful and light in color, and the 
 hostess and her adopted sister, Mrs. Anne W. 
 Wright, are as cheery as the home they brighten. 
 Here are countless tokens of friendship : vases 
 from Japan, old silver from Norway ; jewels from 
 the neck of the Queen of Montezuma ; unique 
 things from Mexico and the Indies ; and the hair 
 of Shelley, of Keats, fine and brown, of Byron, 
 dark, and of Leigh Hunt, in the same case. The
 
 46 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 pictures on the walls are the gifts of famous 
 friends. 
 
 As we sit in the back parlor looking through 
 the handsomest album I have ever seen, Russia 
 leather with silver clasps, a birthday gift to Miss 
 Booth from the friends who attend her Saturday 
 evening receptions, " Muff," a great Maltese cat, 
 walks in, and apparently enjoys the faces with us. 
 This seems like a bit of English home-life where 
 a cat is always a petted member of the family, 
 either in high life or among the lowly. In this 
 album one sees refined Harriet Prescott Spof- 
 lord, merry Grace Greenwood, artistic Richard 
 Watson Gilder, handsome Whitelaw Reid, bril- 
 liant Mary Mapes Dodge, and scores of others, 
 each contributing an original poem, or words of 
 appreciation. A great cage of canaries, and a 
 mocking-bird, in the window, help to make this 
 New York stone house like a bit of country life, 
 in its kinship with nature. Flowers, too, tell that 
 Miss Booth is as refined as she is scholarly. 
 
 Miss Booth receives a large salary, proving that 
 a woman besides making friends and fame can
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 47 
 
 make money, and this brings her into striking 
 contrast with the helpless women who are obliged 
 to depend upon relatives, largely because they 
 were not educated in early life to be self-depend- 
 ent, and were not brought up to have a special 
 pursuit or some definite and engrossing aim. 
 
 Miss Booth, notwithstanding her constant work 
 within daily confines of "office hours," notwith- 
 standing the many-sided superintendency devolv- 
 ing on her, notwithstanding the outgoes of vitality 
 into the work of originating, criticising, deciding 
 upon and bringing into symmetry the plans and 
 details of a great, bright weekly journal, has 
 excellent health. Probably her daily and syste- 
 matic labor is one secret of this health. For it is 
 now admitted that where the mind is fully and 
 regularly occupied and exercised, the body is in 
 far better condition. She has had but one serious 
 illness since she was a child, a rheumatic fever 
 which she thinks she could have avoided with 
 a little care and less confidence in her impreg- 
 nable good health. Her mother is still living in 
 superb health, a handsome old lady with spark-
 
 48 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 ling black eyes and unwrinkled face, in her eighty- 
 sixth year, residing in Brooklyn, with Mrs. King, 
 Miss Booth's only sister. This mother comes from 
 a long-lived family. Her grandmother was born 
 in 1744 and died in 1844, a century old, retain- 
 ing her faculties to the end. " I remember when 
 a child," says Miss Booth, "hearing her tell of 
 the days when the country was covered with for- 
 ests, swarming with wild beasts and game, and 
 thickly populated with Indians, for she was grown 
 at the time of the French and Indian war, and 
 married at the Revolutionary epoch. How young 
 it makes our country seem thus to stretch hands 
 to the middle of the eighteenth century, and to 
 have stood face to face with those who knew the 
 primeval forest ! " 
 
 It is easy to desire Miss Booth's success for 
 one's self, is it not? But how many women 
 would be willing to start upon the years of un- 
 tiring toil that has gained it? How many would 
 serve her apprenticeship ? Let us review the 
 details of her work simply as an editor : 
 
 For nineteen years Miss Booth has been habit-
 
 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 49 
 
 ually at the Bazar office from 9 A. M. to 4 p. M. 
 daily, usually taking a light lunch in the office ; 
 permitting herself only a brief vacation at mid- 
 summer. Every line of manuscript in the paper, 
 and its proof, is read by her. Every illustration 
 is scrutinized by her. You can see that she can 
 have had few playtimes, and that her work must 
 be thoroughly systematized ; no time wasted in 
 looking up what has been done or what remains 
 to do. "Editorial work," she says, "like woman's, 
 is never done ; and the planning of which it 
 largely consists goes on day and night without 
 interruption. It is not what the editor writes, but 
 what he chooses for his paper, that makes or 
 mars his success. It is the judicial capacity that 
 marks the true editor." She has shown herself 
 to possess the rare talents that go to make suc- 
 cessful editorship : a comprehensive outlook as to 
 the needs of a cultivated people, variety of method, 
 well-nigh unerring judgment, and a capacity for 
 hard labor. 
 
 To work for the world and not to become 
 soured by its indifference, to have strong convic-
 
 $0 MARY LOUISE BOOTH. 
 
 tions and yet be charitable toward those who 
 think differently, to correct the faults of humanity 
 without bitterness or personality, to keep a sub- 
 lime hope in one's heart, to be as unostentatious 
 as though she were unknown to fame, and to do her 
 work as thoroughly and regularly as though she 
 depended on her labor for her daily bread all 
 these lessons belong with Miss Booth's public 
 work. 
 
 To show other women that a woman may have 
 consummate ability, and yet be gentle and refined 
 and warm-hearted, that she can be accurate, 
 prompt, and thorough, and yet think out beyond 
 the thousand details of everyday life, reaching for 
 all beauty and grace, and that if one woman can 
 stand at the head of a great journal it must be 
 logically true that other trained women may come 
 to stand at the head of the business they select 
 these, too, are public lessons of a life and a char- 
 acter worthy of study by our noblest girls.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 A LITTLE way out of Chicago, in a pretty 
 home called " Rest Cottage," at Evanston, 
 lives Frances E. Willard, one of the best-known 
 and best-loved women of our country. 
 
 Another woman lives in the cottage, Miss Wil- 
 lard's mother. In her eighty-second year she is 
 still the inspiration of those who are much with 
 her; still a reader of the best poetry and prose, 
 and interested in the leading questions of the day. 
 On January 3, 1885, this venerable woman had a 
 charming birthday celebration. The cottage was 
 fragrant with flowers, the South sending japonicas 
 and hanging moss ; the North, white carnations 
 and roses. Some four hundred friends gathered 
 to do her honor, and messages and gifts came 
 from all over the country. President Fairchild 
 S 1
 
 52 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 sent sprigs of evergreen from the old tree in front 
 of the early Willard home in Oberlin. Joseph 
 Cook sent " Congratulations to the mother on the 
 daughter's life, and to the daughter on the 
 mother's." Mr. Moody, Roswell Smith of the 
 Century Magazine, Dr. Vincent, Maria Mitchell, 
 and hundreds of others, sent cheering words. 
 
 No one of all the company was so proud and 
 glad as Frances. No one knew, so well as she, 
 how this good mother who had toiled for her three 
 children, was deserving of this honor. And yet 
 it come because the noble daughter, by her own 
 life, had made the mother known to the world. 
 
 Miss Willard has had the rich blessing of Chris- 
 tian parentage. Not all who gain success are so 
 fortunate, and yet it is rare to find eminence 
 where there has not been at least an able mother 
 and of high principles. Her ancestry enrolls 
 names of many who have toiled for the public 
 good. One of the Willards was a president of 
 Harvard College, another a pastor of the Old 
 South Church in Boston, and still another the 
 well-known educator, Emma Willard of Troy,
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 53 
 
 N. Y. Miss Willard's great-grandfather was a 
 minister at Keene, N. H., for forty years, and 
 a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. 
 
 Her father, a native of Vermont, and a promis- 
 ing young business man, after marrying an intelli- 
 gent girl, also a teacher, started Westward to found 
 a home. The daughter, Frances Elizabeth, was 
 born at Churchville, near Rochester, N. Y. When 
 she was two years old, the young parents moved 
 to Oberlin, Ohio, where for five years they both 
 devoted themselves to study, and then bought a 
 large farm at Janesville, Wis., called "Forest 
 Home." Here for twelve years the girl basked 
 in the sunshine of nature and health. She says 
 of herself: 
 
 " Reared in the country, on a Western farm, I 
 was absolutely ignorant of tight shoes, corsets or 
 extinguisher bonnets. Clad during three fourths 
 of the year in flannel suits, not unlike those worn 
 at gymnastics now by young lady collegians, and 
 spending most of my time in the open air, the 
 companion in work as well as in sport of my only 
 brother, I knew much more about handling rake
 
 54 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 and hoe than I did of frying-pan and needle ; 
 knew the name and use of every implement han- 
 dled by carpenter and joiner ; could herd the sheep 
 all day and never tire ; was an enthusiastic poultry 
 raiser ; and by means of this natural out-door life, 
 eight or nine hours sleep in twenty-four, a sensible 
 manner of dress, and the plain fare of bread and 
 butter, vegetables, eggs, milk, fruit and fowl, was 
 enabled to store up electricity for the time to 
 come. 
 
 " We three children were each promised a library 
 to cost one hundred dollars apiece if we would 
 not touch tea or coffee till we became of age. 
 Subsequently I used both for years, very moder- 
 ately, but have now entirely discarded them. A 
 physician was almost an unknown visitant to our 
 home." 
 
 The common-sense mother said, " Let a girl 
 grow as a tree grows according to its own sweet 
 will." 
 
 " Forest Home," says Frances, " was a queer 
 old cottage with rambling roof, gables, dormer- 
 windows, and little porches, crannies, and out-of-
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 57 
 
 the-way nooks, scattered here and there. The 
 bluffs, so characteristic of Wisconsin, rose about 
 it on the right and left. The beautiful Rock 
 River flowed at the west side ; to the east a prairie 
 stretched away to meet the horizon, yellow with 
 grain in summer, fleecy with snow in the winter." 
 
 But there were all sorts of intellectual feasts in 
 this plain home. Frances, and her lovely sister, 
 Mary, each not far from twelve years of age, 
 organized an "Artist's Club" of two. They would 
 lead up the willing goat, put panniers on his back, 
 packed with lunch and a bottle of spring water, 
 and then with two shepherd dogs in the proces- 
 sion, wander off to the river bank where they 
 would sketch the whole day long. Sometimes 
 the frolicsome girls tried "to train a calf into a 
 riding-horse," but were not rewarded with great 
 success in this novel undertaking. At other times 
 they caught Jack, a favorite horse, among the 
 hazel bushes and enjoyed a horseback ride. 
 
 At fourteen when a new schoolhouse was built 
 in their locality, Frances went to school for the 
 first time, the parents and a bright young lady in
 
 $ FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 the family having been her teachers heretofore. 
 She writes in her journal : 
 
 " Sister and I got up long before light to pre- 
 pare for the first day at school. We put all our 
 books in mother's satchel ; had a nice tin pail full 
 of dinner. Stood next to Pat O'Donahue in spell- 
 ing, and Pat stood at the head." 
 
 Next the girls started a newpaper, with poems, 
 essays and stories. The " news " must have been 
 meagre, but such as it was it was greatly enjoyed 
 by the public ; which public consisted of the 
 father and mother ! At sixteen Frances received 
 a prize from the Illinois Agricultural Society for 
 an essay on " Country Homes." Mr. Willard was 
 deeply interested in agriculture, having been pres- 
 ident of the State Society, as well as a member of 
 the State Legislature, and was of course pleased 
 at his daughter's work and success in this field. 
 
 On her seventeenth birthday she says in her 
 journal : " This is the date of my martyrdom. 
 Mother insists that at last I must have my hair 
 'done up woman fashion.' She says she can 
 hardly forgive herself for letting me ' run wild ' so
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 59 
 
 long. My 'back hair' is twisted up like a cork- 
 screw ; I carry eighteen hair-pins ; my head aches, 
 my feet are entangled in the skirt of my new 
 gown; I can never jump over a fence again so 
 long as I live. As for chasing the sheep down in 
 the shady pasture, it's out of the question, and to 
 climb to my 'Eagle's Nest' seat in the big burr- 
 oak would ruin this new frock beyond repair. 
 Altogether, I recognize the fact that 'my occu- 
 pation's gone.' " 
 
 A year later she was sent to Milwaukee Col- 
 lege, founded by Catharine Beecher. The Wil- 
 lards now saw the necessity of going to some 
 town where the children could be more fully edu- 
 cated. The farm was therefore sold, with a 
 reluctant good-by to the goat and the poultry, and 
 the family moved to Evanston, the seat of the 
 Northwestern University, where Mr. Willard be- 
 came a partner in the Chicago banking-firm of 
 Preston, Willard & Kean. 
 
 Both daughters entered the Woman's College, 
 and graduated with honor. For a girl with Fran- 
 ces's energy, the ending of school was but the
 
 60 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 beginning of a career of work. She had a pleas- 
 ant home, and a father able to support her, but 
 why need she be dependent upon him? Should 
 she stay at home and wait for marriage ? No ; she 
 would earn money for herself, and marry or not, 
 as her heart prompted. 
 
 A country school was found near Chicago, in 
 which the young teacher began her labors. Then 
 a position was offered her in Evanston, as teacher 
 of natural science in the college whence she had 
 graduated. After this, she was called to the 
 Female College at Pittsburg, Pa., and later on 
 became Preceptress in Genesee Wesleyan Semi- 
 nary at Lima, N. Y. 
 
 Meantime a great sorrow had come into her 
 life the death of the beautiful and gifted sister 
 Mary ; and a few years later, the father and only 
 brother, Oliver, died, and Frances and her mother 
 were left alone. 
 
 While teaching in Pittsburg, Miss Willard wrote 
 her first book, a memoir of Mary, called Nine- 
 teen Beautiful Years, which was published by the 
 Harpers in 1864. This book has made thou-
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 6 1 
 
 sands better from reading it, and will continue to 
 do its elevating work in the years to come. A new 
 edition has lately been brought out with an intro- 
 duction by the poet Whittier. 
 
 In 1868, a great blessing came to Miss Willard. 
 Her friend, Kate A. Jackson, took her abroad for 
 three years as her guest. They travelled in 
 nearly every European country. In Greece and 
 Palestine and Asia Minor they found much to 
 study and enjoy. They climbed the pyramids 
 and visited the treasures of art in Italy and Ger- 
 many. While absent Miss Willard devoted more 
 than a year to study in the College de France 
 and the Petit Sorboune, attending the lectures of 
 Guizot, the historian, and other famous men ; she 
 also studied in Berlin and Rome. Her training 
 went constantly on. Whenever she could com- 
 mand time she wrote articles for the New York 
 Independent, Harper's Monthly, Christian Union and 
 the Chicago journals. It was probable, of course, 
 that a girl who thus preferred work to pleasure, 
 would become a successful woman. 
 
 On her return home, a new point of departure
 
 62 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 almost immediately confronted her. She spoke 
 before a Woman's Missionary Meeting upon the 
 Christian work done abroad, and so impressed 
 was a prominent gentleman with her ability as a 
 speaker, that he proposed to her that she should 
 give a lecture, promising her a large and appre- 
 ciative audience. Hesitating much to try her 
 powers, she laid the matter before her mother, 
 asking if she should accept. "By all means, my 
 child," said she ; " enter every open door." 
 
 "At the expiration of three weeks, and with 
 no manuscript visible," says Miss Willard, " I ap- 
 peared before an elegant audience in Centenary 
 Church, Chicago. The manuscript was with me 
 in portfolio, ready for reference in case of failure, 
 but I didn't fail" So pleased were the people 
 and the newspapers, that she at once received invi- 
 tations to lecture from all parts of the Northwest. 
 
 Honors now came fast and thick. In 1871 she 
 was made President of the Woman's College at 
 Evanston, her Alma Mater, and two years later, 
 when the college became a part of the University, 
 she was made Dean of this college, and Professor
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 63 
 
 of ^Esthetics in the University. She adopted a 
 plan of self-government for the pupils, novel then, 
 but since used, substantially, at Amherst College 
 and elsewhere. When any girl had shown herself 
 worthy, she entered a " Roll of Honor Society," 
 and if her record was good for a specified time, 
 she joined the " corps of the self-governed " with 
 a pledge to act her best. Miss Willard, the 
 teacher, has proved an inspiration to more than 
 two thousand pupils ; her always recurring ques- 
 tion to them being , " What are you going to be in 
 the world, and what are you going to do?" 
 
 In the winter of 1873 there was a remarkable 
 uprising of the Christian women of the land, 
 known and remembered as the Temperance Cru- 
 sade. Tens of thousands, in praying-bands, vis- 
 ited the saloons, and awoke the whole country to 
 the peril of a drinking habit well-nigh universal, 
 and to the sin of the liquor traffic. 
 
 Miss Willard was asked to join the movement. 
 She was already a successful teacher, author and 
 lecturer. Would she now please give up literary 
 and educational reputation, and the brilliant pros-
 
 64 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 pects of her life, and enter upon a lowly and un- 
 popular work ? Better than art or literature she 
 had always loved to see a human being helped 
 upward. She once had said, " The deepest thought 
 and desire of my life would have been met, if my 
 dear old Mother Church had permitted me to be 
 a minister." Yes, she was immediately and wholly 
 ready to aid the temperance women. 
 
 She was made the National Corresponding 
 Secretary of the movement, and at once began 
 the work that has been an astonishment in its 
 breadth and a blessing to hundreds of thousands. 
 Her grand faculty for organization developed and 
 made itself manifest. She determined to herself 
 to visit and speak in every town in the United 
 States which numbered ten thousand inhabitants 
 she afterward included many of five thousand, 
 in order to organize a Woman's Christian Tem- 
 perance Union in each if it had not one already. 
 
 Was this a possibility? She had little money 
 and a constitution not robust. But she had what 
 was better, a heroic purpose, and great faith in 
 God working with man.
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 65 
 
 For ten years she spoke, on an average, once a 
 day, staying at " Rest Cottage " only three weeks 
 during each year; sent out in the later years 
 twenty or thirty thousand letters ; travelled some 
 years, from twenty-five thousand to thirty thou- 
 sand miles, accompanied by her invaluable private 
 secretary, Miss Anna Gordon, whom she truly 
 calls her "right arm," writing nearly all her 
 speeches and articles for the press on the cars. 
 The wonder is that she is not a broken-down 
 woman, which indeed she doubtless would be 
 were it not for her sunny disposition, her common 
 sense, her power of holding herself at an even 
 pace, and nature's early gifts and endowments in 
 the free life at Forest Home. 
 
 She herself says : " The chief wonder of my 
 life is that I dare to have so good a time, physi- 
 cally, mentally and religiously. I have swung 
 like a pendulum through my years ' without haste, 
 without rest.' What it would be to have an idle 
 hour I find it hard to fancy. With no headache 
 why should I not think right straight ahead ? " 
 
 It is largely through Miss Willard's efforts that
 
 66 FEANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 in the whole thirty-eight States and nine Terri- 
 tories, W. C. T. U.'s have been organized. In ten 
 thousand towns and cities a great body of women 
 are at work to make liquor-selling and liquor- 
 drinking, with their consequent ruin to men and 
 their families, hateful and disreputable before the 
 world. Especially have the people of the South 
 become enthusiastic over the settlement of the 
 temperance question. Miss Willard has made 
 four campaigns in that great section of our coun- 
 try since 1880 and has been welcomed into the 
 most important pulpits, and sustained by those in 
 the highest positions. 
 
 The Woman's National Organization has now 
 over thirty departments. It has for its organ the 
 Union Signal, a bright sixteen-page weekly paper, 
 with a large subscription list. In twenty States, 
 temperance text-books have been introduced into 
 the public-schools by law. The press department 
 reaches over one thousand papers, and sends out 
 annually over five million pages of printed matter. 
 The W. C. T. U. has commissioned Mrs. Mary C. 
 Leavitt, of Boston, to journey round the world
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 67 
 
 perfecting kindred organizations in India, China, 
 Russia, Scandinavia, and other countries. Many 
 of the States are working for Constitutional 
 Prohibition already obtained in Maine, Kansas, 
 Iowa and Rhode Island, and for the ballot for 
 woman, in the power of which Miss Willard 
 heartily believes, since the liquor-power would 
 thus be met by the " force of numbers." Miss 
 Willard has now been the President of the National 
 Association for seven years. 
 
 For the next ten years, Miss Willard hopes, if 
 she lives, to use her pen even more than her 
 voice, remaining much of the time at " Rest Cot- 
 tage." Here she has fitted up a great workshop ; 
 and to a friend who asks what she is doing now, 
 she replies, " I have the care of four departments 
 of the National W. C. T. U., and the general super- 
 vision of the whole, viz.: the World's W. C. T. U., 
 National Literature, White Cross League, and the 
 extension of the organization. Each would be too 
 much for seven women ; I only make a dash at 
 each." But those who know Miss \Villard, know 
 her thoroughness. She is usually at her desk from
 
 68 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 nine till six, with a half-hour for dinner, and another 
 half-hour for exercise in the open air. 
 
 A well-known lady in Evanston, Miss Willard's 
 home, writes me concerning her : " To human ob- 
 servation, here, Frances Willard is without fault. 
 Her liberality is unbounded, or would be if her 
 purse were as big as her heart. Her own private 
 expenditures she reduces to a minimum, going 
 without what she actually needs, in order that 
 those in want may never be refused. . . . 
 In her immense and ever-increasing correspon- 
 dence, there are the usual number of cranks and 
 bores. But every letter is answered, and cour- 
 teously. When remonstrated with on account of 
 the time and strength it takes, she replies, ' I like 
 to have them write to me. I want to get at the 
 temperance work in every possible way, and at 
 the hearts of people. Perhaps it cheers some 
 poor soul to write to me and get a reply. Let us 
 comfort one another all we can.' " 
 
 Another prominent lady writes : " Miss Willard's 
 life will bear the closest scrutiny. So conscien- 
 tious is she in her correspondence for the National
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 69 
 
 Society that altogether she sometimes has ten 
 secretaries at work ; even an envelope or a sheet 
 of paper is never wasted. This cannot always be 
 said of men in the Government or Church or Mis- 
 sionary employ ! ... She is heart and 
 soul and body, given, a living sacrifice, to the 
 work of saving men. She invites to her home 
 those who have been overcome by temptation. 
 Rarely is a social invitation accepted, although 
 invited by the best and the greatest, unless it be 
 where she can do some work. She is a marvellous 
 woman, great, and will be greater." She receives 
 no remuneration from the Society except that it 
 furnishes postage and stationery. 
 
 Already, thanks to the energy of Mrs. T. B. 
 Carse, largely, a building is in prospect in Chicago 
 with lecture hall, Training School for women in 
 the temperance work and National headquarters 
 for the W. C. T. U. A million dollars is needed, 
 and some person will yet give this gift. The Tem- 
 perance Hospital was opened April 8, 1886, oppo- 
 site Chicago University. Both sexes and all 
 classes are to be treated without the use of alco-
 
 7<5 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 hol, the statistics of the large London Temper- 
 ance Hospital proving that a much larger per 
 cent, of patients recover without alcohol than with 
 it. One woman, Mrs. R. G. Peters of Michigan, 
 gave fifty thousand dollars to this work. A medi- 
 cal college and free dispensary are to be opened 
 in connection with it. Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett 
 is president of the Board of Trustees. 
 
 The White Cross League, instituted by the 
 Bishop of Durham, in England, pledging equal 
 purity for man and woman, bids fair to be one of 
 Miss Willard's grandest lines of work. She has, 
 with all her other labors, been writing some excel- 
 lent articles to girls, in the Chautauquan, on the 
 subject, "How to Win." She says: 
 
 " Keep to your specialty, whether it is raising turnips or 
 tunes ; painting screens or battle pieces ; studying political 
 economy or domestic receipts. . . . Have in place of 
 aimless reverie, a resolute aim. The first one in the idle 
 stream of my life was the purpose, lodged there by my life's 
 best friend, my mother, to have an education. . . . Mar- 
 garet Fuller Ossoli was another fixed point shall I not 
 rather say a fixed star? in the sky of my thought, while 
 Arnold of Rugby, to one who meant to make teaching a 
 profession, was chief of all.
 
 FRANCES E. WILLARD. 71 
 
 " If my dear mother did me one crowning kindness it 
 was in making me believe that next to being an angel, the 
 greatest bestowment of God is to make one a woman. . . 
 . If I were asked the mission of the ideal woman, I would 
 reply, It is to make the whole -world homelike. . . . She 
 came into the college and elevated it, into literature and 
 hallowed it, into the business world and ennobled it. She 
 will come into government and purify it, for woman will 
 make homelike every place she enters, and she will enter 
 every place on this round earth." 
 
 Miss Willard has come to her grand success 
 chiefly because of a high purpose. Life has been 
 for her a constant work-day since she sketched 
 with Mary by the riverside at Forest Home, and 
 every day has told upon the future of our people. 
 For constantly working in advance of all party- 
 lines, she has helped more than any other woman 
 first to make a great issue and then to hasten it 
 into national consideration.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 I AM going to write a sketch of ' Pansy/ " I said 
 to one of the young ladies in our Public 
 Library, " and I would like to take several of her 
 books home, to look them over." 
 
 "There are none in," she replied. 
 
 " None in, when I see by your catalogues you 
 have several of each of her more than fifty vol- 
 umes ? " 
 
 "Oh! there is one in Mrs. Harry Harper's 
 Awakening, but that will probably be taken out 
 during the day." 
 
 " What is the reason ' Pansy's ' books are al- 
 ways in demand ? " 
 
 " Because they are bright reading for young 
 people, and as pure as they are bright, and we 
 like to specially recommend them. When hun- 
 72
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 73 
 
 dreds come to us, and ask what they shall read, 
 among those of the few unexceptionable writers we 
 can always speak well of the ' Pansy books,' and 
 the boys and girls always come back pleased, and 
 ask for others by that author." 
 
 What is true of " the Pansy books," in the Pub- 
 lic Library of Cleveland, I doubt not to be true of 
 them in the libraries of other cities. 
 
 I have just been reading Mrs. Alden's One Com- 
 monplace Day. I have been with poor Kate Hart- 
 zell to the picnic, and felt ashamed of Fannie 
 Copeland, or any other girl who is too proud to 
 associate with a noble-hearted young woman be- 
 cause she helps to wash dishes and make bread. 
 I have felt a great liking for Mildred Powers, who, 
 though her father was a judge at Washington, 
 put on no airs, and was thoroughly kind to every- 
 body. I have followed Kate to the home of the 
 drunken father and drunken college-brother, and 
 have seen how a girl really can be a ministering 
 angel. I understand, I think, the reasons for the 
 perennial popularity of the " Pansy books." They 
 waken the music of the noble chords of the soul.
 
 74 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 In their influence, as compared with that of the 
 usual Sunday-school book, or work of light fiction, 
 lies the difference that exists between waltz and 
 oratorio. 
 
 It was years ago that I read Ester Ried, and 
 cried over Ester's death, as I suppose thousands 
 of others have done. After that I was always 
 wondering how the author of that most magical 
 book talked and looked and if I should like her if 
 I ever saw her. 
 
 One day I heard that " Pansy " was to conduct 
 the primary department of the Sunday-school 
 Assembly at Framingham, Mass. So I went out 
 from Boston to hear her. 
 
 When I arrived, I found a crowded house lis- 
 tening to a sweet-faced woman, in early life, much 
 younger than I had supposed, with a rich, pleasant 
 voice, heard in every part of the house, and with 
 a most attractive and womanly manner. She was 
 natural, interesting and earnest. It is unneces- 
 sary to add that I liked her. 
 
 And now what has been the history of this very 
 successful woman ?
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN ("PANSY").
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 77 
 
 Born in Rochester, N. Y., in 1842, she had two 
 blessings, perhaps the greatest earthly gifts : a 
 father and mother who were wise, patient, tender, 
 helpful under all circumstances. The father held 
 wonderfully pronounced convictions on all the great 
 questions of the day ; he was a strong temperance 
 man, a strong anti-slavery man, a leader in every 
 moral reform, and pressing forward alone often- 
 times, for public opinion was not educated up to 
 his standard, whereas now he would have hosts of 
 co-laborers. The noble man standing solitary upon 
 advanced positions, upon high lonely look-outs, 
 lived half a century ahead of his time. The 
 mother was a sunny-hearted, self-forgetful woman, 
 devoted to all that was pure and " of good report." 
 
 Their little girl, Isabella, received her now 
 famous name of " Pansy," from an incident in her 
 baby-life. The mother had a choice bed of great 
 purple and yellow pansy blossoms, which she was 
 treasuring for a special occasion. One morning 
 the wee child, being in a helpful, loving mood, 
 sallied out, and picked them every one, and bring- 
 ing the treasures in her arms showered them in
 
 78 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 her mother's lap, with the generous statement 
 that they were " every one for her." 
 
 They were to have been used on the evening 
 following, and the good mother was much dis- 
 turbed ; but the father mounted his baby in tri- 
 umph on his shoulders, and called her his own 
 little pansy-blossom ; and from that time the sweet 
 name clung to her. 
 
 Thus gentle was the man of strong thought, 
 over a thing that could not be helped, and which 
 was done in innocency. A less thoughtful parent 
 might have punished the child, and then wondered 
 as she grew older that she did not develop lovelier 
 traits ! How often we spoil the flowers in our 
 home gardens! 
 
 A little incident which I have heard Mrs. Alden 
 relate, shows not only the love within that early 
 home, but the skill of the father in the character- 
 forming of his child. "I recall," said she, "a 
 certain rainy day, when I hovered aimlessly from 
 sitting-room to kitchen, alternately watching my 
 father at his writing, and my mother at her cake- 
 making. She was baking, I remember, a certain
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 79 
 
 sort known among us as 'patty-cakes,' with scal- 
 loped edges, and raisins peeping out all over their 
 puffy sides. I put in an earnest plea for one of 
 the 'patties' as it came from the oven, and was 
 refused. Disconsolately I wandered back to 
 father's side. He was busy with his annual ac- 
 counts. 
 
 " Our home was in a manufacturing town, where 
 the system of exchange, known as 'due-bills,' 
 was in vogue. Something caught my eye which 
 suggested the term to me, and I asked an expla- 
 nation. 
 
 " Father gave it briefly. Then I wanted to 
 know whether people always earned the amount 
 mentioned in the due-bill, and my father replied 
 that of course one had the right to issue a due- 
 bill to a man who had earned nothing, if for any 
 reason he desired to favor him, and that then the 
 sum would become that man's due, because of the 
 name signed. 
 
 " I remember the doleful tone in which I said, 
 ' I wish I had a due-bill.' My father laughed, tore 
 a bit of paper from his note-book, and printed on
 
 8o MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 it in letters which his six-year-old daughter could 
 read, the words: 
 
 DEAR MOTHER: 
 
 PLEASE GIVE OUR LITTLE GIRL A PATTY- 
 CAKE FOR MY SAKE. FATHER. 
 
 " I carried my due-bill in some doubt to my 
 mother, for she was not given to changing her 
 mind, but I can seem to see the smile on her face 
 as she read the note, and feel again the pressure 
 of the plump warm cake which was promptly 
 placed in my hand. 
 
 " The incident took on special significance from 
 the fact that I gave it another application, as chil- 
 dren are so apt to do. As I knelt that evening, 
 repeating my usual prayer: ' Now Hay me down to 
 sleep? a d closed it with the familiar words : ' And 
 this I ask for Jesus' sake, there flashed over my mind 
 the conviction that this petition was like the ' due- 
 bill ' which my father had made me to be claimed 
 because of the mighty name signed. I do not 
 know that any teaching of my life gave me a 
 stronger sense of assurance in prayer than this 
 apparently trivial incident."
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY"). 8l 
 
 " Pansy " began to write little papers very early 
 in life, which she called "compositions," and which 
 were intended for her parents only. From her 
 babyhood she kept a journal where the various 
 events of the day were detailed for the benefit of 
 these same watchful parents. There could have 
 been little that was exciting or novel in this girlish 
 life, but the child was thus trained to express her 
 thoughts, and to be observing two good aids in 
 her after-life. She was also encouraged to send 
 long printed letters each week to her absent sister, 
 telling her of the home-life, and describing per- 
 sons and places. " Pansy " was very happy in all 
 this work, stimulated by gentle appreciation and 
 criticism. 
 
 When " Pansy " was perhaps ten years old, one 
 morning the old clock, which she "really and 
 truly " supposed regulated the sun, suddenly 
 stopped. Such an event had never before oc- 
 curred. She considered it worthy of a special 
 chronicle, and forthwith wrote the story of its 
 hitherto useful life, and the disasters which might 
 have resulted from its failure in duty. This clock
 
 82 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 was very dear to the father and mother, being as- 
 sociated with the beginning of their early married 
 life. When " Pansy's " story was read, she was star- 
 tled, almost frightened, over this discovery that 
 it drew tears to her father's eyes. He said he 
 would like to have the story in print, the better to 
 preserve it, and that she might sign to it the name 
 of "Pansy," both because that was his pet name 
 for her, and because the language of the flower 
 was "tender and pleasant thoughts," and these 
 she had given him by her story. 
 
 How pleased the little girl was that she had 
 made him happy, and that when a real story of 
 hers was in black-and-white where the world 
 could read it, none would know the real author 
 except the family. How her heart beat when the 
 little ten-year-old author looked upon her first 
 printed article, all those know who have ever 
 written for the press. 
 
 Her first book, Helen Lester, was not published 
 until ten years later. She wrote it in competition 
 for a prize, and was so fortunate as to gain it. 
 This greatly encouraged her, though her best
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 83 
 
 encouragement was, as she says, " the satisfaction 
 which the little printed volume bearing the pet- 
 name, ' Pansy,' gave to my father and mother." 
 
 Following upon that first little book, " Pansy's " 
 literary work has been constant and most success- 
 ful. She has written between fifty and sixty vol- 
 umes, of which over one hundred thousand copies 
 are sold annually. They are in every Sunday- 
 school, and in well-nigh every home. It is be- 
 lieved that Ester Ried has had the largest sale, 
 and has exerted the most beneficent influence 
 of all her works. Of this book, Mrs. Alden says : 
 " The closing chapters were written while I was 
 watching the going out of my blessed father's life. 
 To the last he maintained his deep interest in it, 
 and expressed his strong conviction that it would 
 do good work. It went out hallowed with his 
 prayers, and is still bearing fruit which will add 
 to his joy, I believe, in heaven. The last chapter 
 was written in the summer of 1870 with the tears 
 dropping on my father's new-made grave." 
 
 The titles of Mrs. Alden's books are familiar in 
 all households : Four Girls at Chautauqua, with
 
 84 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY"). 
 
 its charming sequel, Chaulauqua Girls at Home, 
 Tip Lewis and his Lamp, Three People, Links in 
 Rebecca's Life, Julia Ried, Ruth ErskinJs Crosses, 
 The King's Daughter, The Browning Boys, From 
 Different Standpoints, Mrs. Harry Harper's Awaken- 
 ing, The Pocket-Measure, Spun From Fact, etc. 
 titles familiar in all Public Libraries, and to 
 Sunday-school librarians in all denominations. 
 Though she is an adept in the arts and peculiar 
 fascinations of the novelist, a master-analyst of 
 the subtler workings of the human heart, she has 
 from the outset dedicated her work to the advance- 
 ment of the Christian religion in the home-life and 
 in the business-life ; to making alive and impor- 
 tant and binding and "altogether lovely," the laws 
 of the Bible. The glittering prospects of other 
 fields in literature have not allured her aside. 
 
 "But Mrs. Alden's books are only a portion of 
 her life-work. Her husband, Rev. G. R. Alden, 
 is the pastor of a large church, and she works 
 faithfully at his side, having a high ideal of the 
 duties and peculiar opportunities of a minister's 
 wife. She is president of the missionary soci-
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY"). 85 
 
 eties, organizer and manager of a young people's 
 branch, superintendent of the primary department 
 of the Sunday-school, and the private counsellor 
 of hundreds of young people. While she enjoys 
 her literary work, she makes it subservient to her 
 church and Sunday-school work. 
 
 She says, " My rule has been to write when I 
 can get a chance, subject to the interruptions 
 which come to a mother, a housekeeper, and a 
 pastor's wife." 
 
 Yet for seventeen years Mrs. Alden has been 
 under contract (never broken) to keep a serial 
 story running in the Herald and Presbyter, through 
 the winter; and for ten years she has given her 
 summers largely to normal-class work at all the 
 principal Sunday-school assemblies, having been 
 several times at Chautauqua, Framingham and 
 Florida, and is under engagement to do the same 
 work in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Ten- 
 nessee. 
 
 One would suppose that with all this work, 
 "Pansy's" hands would be full to overflowing. 
 But she finds time to do more than this. For twelve
 
 86 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 years she has prepared the Sunday-school lessons 
 for the primary department of the Westminster 
 Teacher, the organ of the Presbyterian Board, and 
 has been for two or more years the editor of their 
 Primary Quarterly. 
 
 And there is more to tell. For eleven years 
 she has edited the Pansy, the well-known Sunday 
 magazine for boys and girls, and there is always 
 in this a serial story from her pen and a continued 
 Golden-Text story, besides innumerable short 
 stories, which now, collected, make a complete 
 Primary Sunday-school Library of about forty 
 volumes. 
 
 One of the most interesting things in connec- 
 tion with this magazine, is the " Pansy Society," 
 composed of those children who are subscribers, 
 and who are pledged to try to overcome some 
 besetting fault, and who take a whisper-motto: 
 " I will do it for Jesus' sake." All who join, have 
 a badge, a beautiful pansy painted on white satin, 
 and fastened at the top by a silver pin. 
 
 The members of this society from Maine to 
 Louisiana, write to " Pansy," and mother-fashion,
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 87 
 
 she answers them, a hundred or more a week. 
 Already there are thousands of members, who are 
 trying to stop fretting, to obey parents, to be pa- 
 tient, to say only kind words of others, to over- 
 come carelessness, and to make somebody happy. 
 The amount of good done by this beautiful, simple 
 means to form correct habits in early life, is sim- 
 ply incalculable. 
 
 The letters from the little ones among the mem- 
 bers are full of naive interest, many written with a 
 hand just beginning to do its first work with the pen. 
 
 One older child writes : 
 
 Mamma says I ought to tell you at the commencement that 
 I am eleven years old, but a poor penman, and she is afraid 
 you cannot read my letter, but I will try and do my best. I 
 have taken The Pansy for two years and enjoy it very much. 
 After reading it I send it in a mission barrel to the children 
 in Utah. I had rather keep them, but mamma thinks I 
 onght to let some one else enjoy them. I have read all 
 your books except one or two of the last. From reading 
 Pocket Measure I learned how nice it was to give. Mamma 
 especially likes Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking On. I would 
 like to become a member of the Pansy Society. I have 
 tried for a week to find the fault that I want most to over- 
 come, but I do not know which one it is, I have so many ; 
 it seems to me as if everyone else had but one fault. One
 
 88 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 
 
 is my not obeying quickly when mamma speaks. I had 
 rather read your books and magazine than do what I ought. 
 I do like to read very much. Another is my temper which 
 is very quick ; when anything is said which irritates me I 
 speak quick even to my dear mamma. I pray over it and 
 work hard to overcome it. . . I have a picture of you 
 which papa is going to have framed and hung up in my 
 chamber, so that I can look at it and think of you. 
 
 Letters come, too, from mothers and teachers, 
 telling of the beautiful work of the Pansy Socie- 
 ties. One mother writes of her own home club 
 formed of her six children. She says : 
 
 We are trying to make its influence for good extend far 
 and near. At Christmas we got together a large lot of old 
 toys, picture-books, etc., with boxes of cake and bon-bons, 
 and sent them to some poor children in our community who 
 were not able to buy new ones. We also sent a box of 
 Christmas goodies to each of the real old ladies and gen- 
 tlemen living near us, who were likely to be overlooked in 
 the overflow of young life surrounding them. Also sent 
 out some suitable presents and eatables to needy colored 
 families. 
 
 For St. Valentine's Day some valentines were prepared 
 and sent to such children as would be likely to be forgotten 
 on this festive occasion. The Pansy has been a regular 
 visitor here for the past four or five years, and we would 
 feel very much as if one of the family were gone, if we were 
 deprived of it.
 
 MRS. G. R. ALDEN (" PANSY "). 89 
 
 Mrs. Alden is still in the fresh prime of her 
 strength. She carries her work with quick step 
 and sunny uplook. She is so wise and so friendly, 
 so good an interpreter let us be glad that the 
 eloquent pen is a swift one and tireless.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 
 
 TO be a successful writer of novels and of 
 cookery books, the helpful wife of an emi- 
 nent pastor, a leader in all the benevolent work 
 and social life of a city parish, and a most careful 
 and responsible mother, show, to say the least, great 
 versatility of talent and great executive ability. 
 Such a woman is " Marion Harland." 
 
 Born in Amelia County, Virginia, of a father 
 descended from Puritan stock, Samuel Hawes of 
 Dorchester, Mass., and of an equally intelligent 
 and refined mother, whose ancestor was the brother 
 of Captain John Smith, the young girl came natu- 
 rally into an inheritance of marked traits and tal- 
 ents, energies and convictions. 
 
 At ten years of age the little Mary Virginia 
 was absorbed in Rollin's Ancient History, having 
 90
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). QI 
 
 read to the fifth volume. The faithful, thoughtful 
 mother encouraged her children to read to her 
 while she sewed, and thus Virginia and her sister 
 went through Pollock's Course of Time, Pilgrim's 
 Progress and Plutarch's Lives, and knew by heart 
 whole pages of Paradise Lost, Cowper's Task, and 
 Thomson's Seasons. For light reading they in- 
 dulged in Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's Mag- 
 azine. 
 
 Beginning to write for the press at fourteen, 
 Virginia had a story accepted at Godey's when 
 she was sixteen, called " Marrying Through Pru- 
 dential Motives." This story was copied into an 
 English paper, translated into French for a Paris- 
 ian journal, re-translated into an English periodi- 
 cal, and finally copied in America as an English 
 tale. About this time, too, she won a fifty-dollar 
 prize for a story ; and so pleased were the editors 
 that they advertised to learn the real name of their 
 anonymous contributor. 
 
 Thus encouraged, the young Southern girl de- 
 termined to write a novel. When it was finished, 
 she broke the astounding news to her father.
 
 92 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND"). 
 
 " How long have you been writing it ? " he asked. 
 
 "I wrote the rough draught three years ago. 
 Within a year I have written it out in full. I 
 should like to publish it." 
 
 So the manuscript of Alone, a very famous novel 
 in its day, was taken to a Richmond publisher for 
 examination. The young author waited for days 
 and weeks and months. Finally, the father asked 
 that the manuscript be returned, and with it came 
 this note : 
 
 " I regret that the young author's impatience to 
 regain possession of her bantling has rendered it 
 impossible for me to read more than three pages 
 of the story. From what I have read, however, I 
 judge that it would not be safe to publish it on 
 speculation." 
 
 Mr. Hawes believed in the ability of his daugh- 
 ter, however, and at once assumed the expense of 
 publishing. " Bring it out in good style, printing 
 and binding," he said ; " advertise it properly, and 
 send bills to me." 
 
 Alone was published when Virginia was twenty- 
 one, and at once made a genuine and wide sensa-
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 93 
 
 tion. It was a pure and beautiful story, and it 
 was written in clear, fine English. "Marion Har- 
 land," for thus she signed her literary work, sud- 
 denly found herself famous. In less than two 
 years a Tauchnitz edition appeared, and in these 
 thirty years since over one hundred thousand 
 copies of Alone have been sold, a record attach- 
 ing to very few books. 
 
 The following year, 1855, a second novel, The 
 Hidden Path, came from her pen, and that also 
 met with a large sale. 
 
 Meantime another great happiness had come 
 into her life. Edward Payson Terhune, the son 
 of Judge John Terhiuie of New Brunswick, N. J., 
 had been licensed to preach by the Presbytery, 
 and had accepted a call to Charlotte Court House, 
 Va. This is a place abounding with historical 
 associations. Here Patrick Henry made his last 
 public speech and John Randolph his maiden ad- 
 dress. Both these statesmen are buried in the 
 neighborhood. Here, when " Marion Harland " 
 was twenty-three, she came as a bride. The mar- 
 riage was a love-match, and has brought her a do-
 
 94 MARY V. TERHUNE (" MARION HARLAND "). 
 
 mestic life of unusual happiness. It is said, in 
 proof, that for nearly thirty years, whenever Dr. 
 and Mrs. Terhune have been absent from each 
 other, they have never failed to write daily 
 letters. 
 
 " Marion Harland " did not lay down her liter- 
 ary work when she assumed her household and 
 church duties. She merely "economized time," 
 and found hours for each. In 1857, a year after 
 her marriage, Moss- Side was published. 
 
 The next year Dr. Terhune was called to the 
 First Reformed Church in Newark, N. J., where 
 he and his family spent eighteen happy and useful 
 years their home a centre of delightful influences. 
 
 The pretty children, of whom there were six 
 finally, evidently did not hinder the mother's liter- 
 ary work. The writing of Nemesis, a novel which 
 appeared in 1860, was attended by amusing cir- 
 cumstances. Mrs. Terhune's writing-table stood 
 near a favorite window ; and to the leg of this table 
 she tied one end of a string, the other end being 
 attached to the railing of a cradle, set in a dark- 
 ened corner where Baby Christine took her long
 
 MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNK ('-.MARION HARLANU").
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE (" MARION HARLAND "). 97 
 
 forenoon naps. When Baby moved, the mother, 
 without distraction of thought, touched the 
 string. 
 
 In 1863 Husks was published; in 1865 Hus- 
 bands and Homes ; in 1867 Sunny bank and Christ- 
 mas Holly; in 1868 Ruby's Husband, dedicated 
 " To him who for many years has been to me adviser, 
 co-worker and best earthly friend" ; in 1869 Phemie's 
 Temptation; in 1870 At Last ; in 1871 The Empty 
 Heart; in ^^-^ Jessamine ; seventeen novels in all, 
 pure, and elevating books which have had a wide 
 reading. 
 
 When " Marion Harland " was married, friends 
 thoughtfully bestowed upon her five different cook- 
 books. Each was unlike the others, and often 
 contradictory ; and the more the young house- 
 keeper experimented, the more perplexed she be- 
 came. At last, however, as good receipts proved 
 themselves, she laid them aside for future use. 
 
 These choice and reliable receipts in fifteen 
 years had grown into a useful collection. Think- 
 ing she might benefit young housekeepers, in 1870, 
 she visited Scribner & Co. and offered to them
 
 98 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND"). 
 
 the MS. of her now world-famous Common Sense in 
 the Household. 
 
 They hesitated about accepting. " It will not 
 amount to much," remarked Mr. Scribner to his 
 partners, it is said, " but perhaps by taking it we 
 can obtain a friendly hold upon her and so be 
 given the publishing of her other books." 
 
 But " Marion Harland " was already known to 
 the women of the land as a true-minded Christian 
 woman, and they said, "We can depend upon 
 what she states." It followed that the sale of the 
 book was an astonishment to the publishers, and 
 probably to the author as well. Since its publication 
 one hundred and fifty thousand copies have been 
 sold in America, and half that number abroad. It 
 has been translated into Arabic, French and Ger- 
 man, and a special translation is soon to be issued 
 for the use of German residents in America. This 
 Mrs. Terhune considers a worthy and precious 
 success. 
 
 Other kindred books have since come from 
 her pen, constituting a " Common Sense " series : 
 Breakfast, Luncheon and Tea, and the Dinner
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE (" MARION HARLAND"). 99 
 
 Year-Book. The first is made up of entirely 
 fresh instructions, with some admirable "Familiar 
 Talks " on the need of every woman to have a 
 trade or profession, and on various other home- 
 topics. " How many women," she asks, " could, 
 if bereft of fortune or support to-morrow or next 
 week, or next year, earn a living for themselves, 
 to say nothing of their children?" The latter 
 book contains a bill-of-fare for the dinner of every 
 day in the year, besides twelve company dinners. 
 In 1883 The Cottage Kitchen, composed of inex- 
 pensive receipts, was published ; in 1885 Cookery 
 for Beginners (D. Lothrop & Co.), and a Common 
 Sense Calendar, with a" receipt for each working- 
 day in the year, and some helpful words of 
 counsel. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this practical work with her 
 pen, " Marion Harland's " benevolent and church- 
 work has yearly grown more extensive. During 
 her husband's pastorate in Newark, Mrs. Terhune 
 became the President of the Women's Christian 
 Association, holding the office until her removal 
 from the city. The Society had five different
 
 100 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND"). 
 
 branches of labor. One " hard winter " they gave 
 work to more than three hundred sewing-women, 
 opening and conducting a store for the sale of gar- 
 ments made. So skilful was the management 
 that while thousands of dollars were paid out, and 
 thousands of articles sold, in the spring a small 
 balance remained in the treasury, even after all 
 their generous giving of money. 
 
 One incident will perhaps illustrate " Marion 
 Harland's " force of character as well as nobility. 
 In January, 1874, she buried one of the most 
 gifted of her children, the " Ailsie " of her book 
 entitled My Little Love. A month before this she 
 had ruptured a blood-vessel in her right lung. 
 The grief and excitement of the child's sudden 
 death resulted in a hemorrhage, and she was con- 
 fined to her bed. Two days after the funeral the 
 chairman of the " cutting-out committee " of the 
 Association, called and desired to see Mrs. Ter- 
 hune on pressing business. Two hundred women 
 were at the work-rooms waiting to return home 
 with work. The treasury was empty. There was 
 not a yard of material to be cut up. The women
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). IOI 
 
 were depending upon this work for bread. What 
 could be done ? 
 
 Mrs. Terhune, ill as she was, determined to see 
 her; and she has often said that she thinks this 
 visit saved her reason, and perhaps her life. She 
 was obliged to forget her darling child and think 
 and act for others. She sent her friend to a store 
 where she had previously made purchases, and 
 asked that a number of pieces of cloth be deliv- 
 ered immediately at the work-rooms. 
 
 Then she arose, dressed herself, took her car- 
 riage and drove to the office of a kind-hearted 
 merchant. He came to the curb-stone and she 
 stated the case briefly. He cast one look at her 
 pale face and her mourning dress, and his eyes 
 filled with tears. 
 
 "Wait a minute," he said, as he turned back 
 into the office. 
 
 Re-appearing, he handed her a check for a large 
 amount, and notes to half a dozen wealthy men 
 which would, he said, " save her voice from the 
 strain of telling the story." 
 
 Within an hour, Mrs. Terhune was making her
 
 102 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 
 
 way through the rows of anxious sewing-women, 
 to the hall where twenty pairs of shears were fly- 
 ing through the rolls of cloth, and laid before the 
 treasurer a package of bills sufficient to pay the 
 poor workers for three weeks, and to provide ma- 
 terials for a month's operations. So heroic can a 
 woman be who has strength of character and a 
 tender heart. 
 
 The same winter the Association netted a thou- 
 sand dollars by a single performance of the cantata 
 of The Haymakers. The chorus of fifty voices, and 
 the members of the orchestra gave their services ; 
 but each represented one, or more, and sometimes 
 a half-dozen calls from the President, but she 
 found time for the work. She often says she has 
 become an optimist in charitable undertakings, 
 for she " has found people ready to help in every 
 good work, provided they are approached in the 
 right way. Tact in this respect goes as far as 
 energy." 
 
 While in Newark she taught a large Bible class 
 of young girls, and was also superintendent of the 
 Infant Department of the Sabbath-school. After
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND"). 103 
 
 Dr. Terhune was called to the First Congrega- 
 tional Church in Springfield, Mass., she took 
 charge of a class of young men, beginning with 
 eight. When they removed to Brooklyn, N. Y., 
 five years later, Dr. Terhune being called to the 
 First Reformed Church, there were sixty-eight 
 young men on the roll, and a noble body of work- 
 ers they were. They had their own class-rooms 
 adjoining the main Sunday-school rotunda, which 
 they fitted up as reading and sitting-rooms, and 
 these they kept open during the week. 
 
 Mrs. Terhune has a similar class in Brooklyn, 
 N. Y., who call themselves "her boys," and for 
 whom she has an affection largely akin to that 
 felt for her own children. She says : 
 
 " My heart yearns unspeakably over all young 
 things that need love and training. I think two 
 thirds of me is ' mother.' This was the motive 
 that induced me to accept the editorship of Baby- 
 hood. Letters from all parts of the country ask 
 what are my methods of managing classes ; and 
 of making friends of boys and girls. I know but 
 one secret : to love and sympathize with them.
 
 104 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 
 
 God bless them one and all ! ' My boys ' are 
 scattered far and near, all over this and other 
 lands, but they still write to me, telling me of 
 their prospects of business and happiness, ask 
 congratulations when they marry and sympathy 
 when they bury their dead." 
 
 In Brooklyn, Mrs. Terhune is one of the man- 
 agers of the Training School for Nurses, a mem- 
 ber of the Local Visiting Committee of the State 
 Charities' Aid Association, a Vice-President of a 
 Musical Association and First Director of the 
 Ladies Association of her husband's church. 
 
 The broken blood-vessel above mentioned did 
 not heal. In 1876 a consultation of physicians 
 said Mrs. Terhune had not three months to live. 
 Her husband with his usual promptness and deci- 
 sion, sent in his resignation to the Newark Church 
 by whom he was greatly beloved, sold his home, 
 furniture and horses, " burned the bridges behind 
 him," as he said, and took his wife to Europe, 
 where they remained for two years, he acting as 
 Chaplain of the American Chapel in Rome the 
 first winter, and the second supplying the American
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND"). 105 
 
 Church in Paris. Mrs. Terhune became entirely 
 restored to health, and now, a little past fifty, 
 seems in the very prime and full joy and activity 
 of a vigorous womanhood. 
 
 She has learned how with no appearance of 
 care to constantly care for her health, varying 
 her occupations to relieve one another, and giv- 
 ing full time to sleep and to out-door exercise, 
 especially to walking. 
 
 On her return from Europe she wrote Loitering* 
 in Pleasant Paths, a most interesting and delight- 
 ful book combining fine description with much of 
 history, and evincing wide reading and culture. 
 
 One of Marion Harland's most valuable vol- 
 umes is entitled Eve's Daughters, devoted to hy- 
 gienic common-sense for maid, wife and mother. 
 She urges broad education for girls. She says : 
 
 Mary may not " keep up " her Latin after she leaves 
 school, and her German may, from the same date, become 
 to her as truly a dead language. But she will write and 
 speak her mother-tongue the better for having learned the 
 one ; the breadth and grasp of her mind be improved by the 
 study of the other. 
 
 She has carried out this idea in the education
 
 106 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 
 
 of her own children. Her eldest daughter, though 
 married, fitted herself for the chair of English 
 Literature in any college, and reads and converses 
 in five languages. Among other literary tasks, 
 she and her mother have charge of the Household 
 Department of a syndicate of fifteen papers. 
 
 Mrs. Terhune loses no opportunity to urge girls 
 to form some definite aim. To mothers she says : 
 
 Do not in the absence of indications of the divine thirst 
 and longing for musical expression which is genius sacri- 
 fice, diurnally, two hours of sunshine and sweet airs and 
 such affluence of innocent delight in the mere fact of being 
 alive, as only childhood ever knows this side of the Land of 
 Eternal Youth, to the ignoble ambition to have your baby 
 "accomplished." . . . Pay her for picking berries, hem- 
 ming towels, shelling peas and dozens of other small tasks, 
 stipulating that they must be done well and " on time." Let 
 her make out her bills, keep her own accounts and never 
 impress her with the belief that she is dependent upon you 
 for aught save love and care. . . . It is not work, but 
 impatient solicitude, the fretting, teasing thought and care 
 for the next minute, the next hour, the next day, to which we 
 apply the homely term " worry >" that breaks down our school- 
 girl. 
 
 So far from the election and study of professions by 
 women acting unfavorably upon domestic life, I believe, 
 after a tolerably thorough examination of arguments and
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 107 
 
 examples on both sides of the question, that the highest and 
 purest interests of the Home are promoted by these. She 
 who need not marry unless won to the adoption of the state 
 of wife by pure love for him who seeks her, is likely to 
 make a more deliberate and a wiser choice of a husband 
 than she who has done little since she put off long clothes 
 but dream and long and angle for her other half. 
 
 You may pass a long, useful, and contented life without 
 learning how to embroider a tidy. . . . No American 
 woman, however exalted or assured her social rank, or what- 
 ever -may be her accomplishments, can afford to remain igno- 
 rant of practical housewifery. 
 
 How has " Marion Harland " accomplished so 
 much work ? By economizing time ; using spare 
 hours and minutes to shape articles, and carry on 
 stories, and while cooking or sewing, watching for 
 the opportunity to write. All her life has been 
 subject to interruptions ; her best working-hours 
 years ago were when her children were in bed. 
 Now she is usually at her desk from nine o'clock 
 until one, never writing or studying in the evening 
 if she can avoid it. 
 
 She says : " Domestic duties have never ham- 
 pered me. On the contrary, I work better than if 
 I had not thus had time to think over a composi-
 
 I08 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 
 
 tion before rushing it into print. I have knit a 
 pair of cradle blankets for my grandchild in the 
 intervals of composition, thinking out page by 
 page, as the needles played, and laying them 
 down now and then, to commit the digested thought 
 to paper. 
 
 One learns contentment and concentration of 
 thought by such discipline of daily life, and to 
 manage temper and mind together." 
 
 She once said to me : " I love my kind and 
 have tried to help women. If the lowly places of 
 life are brighter, daily burdens that must be borne 
 lighter because I have lived and worked, I am sat- 
 isfied. I believe it is possible to elevate house- 
 hold ' drudgery ' into a Mission ; to make Home 
 the centre of thought and duty, and yet help the 
 toilers in other homes." 
 
 Truly, this woman has glorified the common- 
 place. In behalf of domestic home-making women 
 everywhere, in cottage and in mansion, she has 
 bestowed shaping thought and refining care upon 
 a thousand details of household comforts ; through 
 her influence countless women have learned to
 
 MARY V. TERHUNE ("MARION HARLAND "). 109 
 
 look upon cookery as a fine art. Her influence 
 upon the home will endure for more than this gen- 
 eration ; indeed it may be regarded as one of the 
 forces of our time that determine what shall be the 
 beliefs and ideals of the woman of the future.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 MARGARET. 
 
 NEW ORLEANS, with its orange-trees, fra- 
 grant with white blossoms and golden fruit, 
 with its verandaed homes overgrown with roses, with 
 its house-lawns bordered with sweet blue violets, is 
 a city long to be remembered by a stranger. 
 
 I was glad to see this ; I was glad to touch 
 the warm Southern hand with its genuine hospi- 
 tality ; but I was especially glad to see remem- 
 bering what it represented to New Orleans the 
 marble statue of " Margaret. " It stands in a 
 large open square, and is the first, I believe, 
 erected to a woman in this country. " Margaret " 
 is represented sitting in a rustic chair, dressed in 
 her usual costume a plain skirt and loose sack, 
 with a simple shawl thrown over her shoulders ; 
 her arm encircles a pretty orphan child, 
 no
 
 THE STATUE TO " MARGARET OF NEW ORLEANS.'
 
 MARGARET. 113 
 
 The face of the woman is very plain but very 
 kindly. There is no indication that " Margaret " 
 was a woman of great power or of great fame ; the 
 statue is simply the thank-offering of a whole city 
 for a beautiful, unselfish life, lived in its midst. 
 Many men and women have possessed millions 
 and have spent all upon themselves ; Margaret 
 spent her small riches for others. Thousands 
 about her had unlimited opportunities for educa- 
 tion ; " Margaret " could scarcely write her own 
 name. Yet to her, of all our countrywomen, 
 stands the beautiful memorial. 
 
 Who was this " Margaret " so honored above 
 others ? 
 
 More than a half-century ago, there came to 
 Baltimore, among the Irish emigrants, a young man 
 and his wife, William and Margaret Gaffney, to 
 seek their fortunes in the New World. They were 
 poor of course, but they loved each other, and were 
 happy to struggle together. By and by a little 
 daughter came into their home, whom they natu- 
 rally called Margaret, after the mother. 
 
 They were not long to enjoy the little daughter
 
 114 MARGARET. 
 
 or she to know their love, for both parents died 
 of yellow fever, leaving the helpless child to the 
 tender mercies of the world at large. Fortunate- 
 ly, some friendly people, Mrs. Richards and her 
 husband, had crossed from Wales on the same 
 steamer as the Gaffneys, and though Mr. Richards 
 had just died also of yellow fever, the stricken wife 
 took the wee child into her own home. 
 
 The girl grew to womanhood in this shelter ; and 
 while she knew the privations and wearinesses of 
 poverty and lowly labor, she knew also from the 
 good teachings of Mrs. Richards, that the best of 
 all things in the world is loveliness and truth of 
 character, and this precious seed was to bear fruit 
 in later years. 
 
 In due time Margaret was married, to young 
 Charles Haughery. They commenced life to- 
 gether, as did her parents, with empty purses and 
 full hearts. But shadows soon began to steal over 
 the little home. The husband's health failed, and 
 they decided to move from Baltimore to New 
 Orleans. But this change of climate did no good. 
 Advised by his physician that sea-air might prove
 
 MARGARET. 115 
 
 beneficial, he said good-by to his young wife and 
 baby-child, and sailed for Ireland. The good-by 
 proved to be the final farewell, for he died soon 
 after reaching his destination. 
 
 Though this loss was hard for the wife to bear, 
 a second loss followed, the hardest a woman can 
 ever know the loss of her only child and Mar- 
 garet was alone again, poor, yet warm-hearted, 
 and loving all children tenderly the more, it may 
 be, that her own arms were empty. 
 
 Did she sink in despair ? No. She could feel 
 the hand that was leading her, even in the densest 
 darkness of her sorrow, and she never lost the full- 
 ness of her divine trust, or the tenderness of her 
 human love. As ground is made mellow by har- 
 rowing, so ofttimes are hearts made fruitful. 
 
 What should she do for self-support, and to fill 
 her lonely life ? She who was an orphan herself, 
 a widow and childless, wished that she might 
 work for orphans, and to this end she entered the 
 domestic service of the Poydras Orphan Asylum 
 for Girls. Here she toiled early and late, some- 
 times doing housework, and sometimes going out
 
 Il6 MARGARET. 
 
 to collect food and money. How she was dressed, 
 or whether she had ordinary comforts, seemed to 
 her of no moment. Her life was centred in the 
 asylum. 
 
 One day when she appealed to a large grocery 
 establishment for aid for the orphans, one of the 
 firm laughingly said, " We'll give you all you can 
 pile on a wheelbarrow, if you will wheel it to the 
 asylum yourself." 
 
 Margaret promptly agreed to this, and in a short 
 time returned with her wheelbarrow, filled it to its 
 utmost capacity, and trundled it home along the 
 sidewalk. The young man surprised at her cour- 
 age, and admiring her noble spirit, insisted on 
 wheeling it for her, but Margaret politely refused, 
 saying she would cheerfully wheel a barrow-load 
 every day for the orphans if it were given to her. 
 
 Sister Regis, the Superior of the Sisters of Char- 
 ity, much beloved for her self-sacrificing life, in 
 time became Margaret's warmest friend and ad- 
 viser. When it was necessary to erect a new Or- 
 phan Asylum, a large and commodious one was 
 built on Camp street (in front of which Margaret's
 
 MARGARET. 1 17 
 
 monument now stands), and in ten years Marga- 
 ret and Sister Regis, working together, had freed 
 it from debt. For seventeen years Margaret had 
 lived in the asylum, managing the large dairy, 
 and doing any and every kind of work that would 
 aid fatherless and motherless children. 
 
 In 1852, she decided to open an independent 
 dairy in the upper part of the city ; in this enter- 
 prise she soon demonstrated her financial ability. 
 Never wasting a cent upon her own wants in- 
 deed she never seemed to have any she scrupu- 
 lously devoted all profits to her beloved work. 
 Everybody knew Margaret's milk-wagon, and her 
 kind plain face as she went from customer to cus- 
 tomer. 
 
 Then she added the old D'Aquin bakery to her 
 business. The former proprietor, who had always 
 been generous to the orphans, had become finan- 
 cially crippled, and borrowing from Margaret, her 
 creditor at last was obliged to take the bakery 
 into her own business. That she succeeded in 
 " making money " out of the new branch, was due 
 to economy, sterling integrity, and to the fact that
 
 Il8 MARGARET. 
 
 everybody knew and respected and relied upon 
 her and' liked to buy of her. 
 
 She opened her bakery in 1860. Says George 
 W. Cable, who knew her : " But long before that, 
 as well as long and ever after it, any man might 
 say to you as a strange woman passed in a dingy 
 milk-cart or bread-cart in later years sitting 
 alone, and driving the slow, well-fed horse, ' There 
 goes Margaret.' ' Margaret who ? ' ' Margaret, 
 the Orphan's Friend.' I suppose we should have 
 forgotten her married name entirely, had not the 
 invoices of her large establishment kept it before 
 us. ' Go to Margaret's ' was the word when a coun- 
 try order called for anything that could be bought 
 of her ; but the invoice would read : 
 
 New Orleans, March 15, 1875. 
 MESSRS. BLACK, WHITE & Co. 
 
 To MARGARET'S BAKERY (Margaret Haughery) Dr. 
 
 2 Bbls. Soda Crackers, etc. 
 
 " And what had she done, what was she doing, 
 to make her so famous ? Nothing but give, give,
 
 MARGARET. 
 
 (From the f'w/ografh l>y Soitby, 113 Ca- al St., New Orleans.}
 
 MARGARET. 121 
 
 give, give to the orphan boy and the orphan girl, 
 Catholic, Protestant, Hebrew, anything. Yes, one 
 thing more ; she gave and she loved. But that was 
 all. Never a bid for attention. Never a high seat 
 in any assembly. Never a place among the proud 
 or the gay. No pomp, no luxury, no effort to 
 smarten up intellectually and take a tardy place in 
 the aristocracy of brains. Nothing for herself. 
 Riches and fame might spoil Solomon ; they did 
 not spoil Margaret. 
 
 " Of education she had almost nothing ; of 
 beauty as little to the outward eye ; accomplish- 
 ments, none ; exterior graces, none ; aggressive 
 ambition, the disposition to scheme or strive for 
 station or preference, none ; sparkling gayety, ex- 
 uberant mirth, none, more than you or I ; money, 
 some, a little, a trifle ; financial sagacity, a fair 
 share, but nothing extraordinary; frugality? yes, 
 frugality as to herself. What else ? religion ? 
 Yes, yes! pure, sweet, gentle, upbubbling, overflow- 
 ing, plentiful, genuine, deep, and high ; a faith 
 proving itself incessantly in works, and a modesty 
 and unconsciousness that made her beneficence as
 
 122 MARGARET. 
 
 silent as a stream underground. Hers was one of 
 those very rare natures, whose happiness is found 
 in blessing, not in being blessed. 
 
 " The whole town honored her. The presidents 
 of banks and insurance companies, of the Chamber 
 of Commerce, the Produce Exchange, the Cotton 
 Exchange, none of them commanded the humble 
 regard, the quick deference, from one merchant or 
 a dozen, that was given to Margaret. They called 
 her by her baptismal name as they do queens 
 and saints because they loved her, and then 
 loved her the more because she went by that 
 name; the name of that sweet meadow flower 
 which Wordsworth calls ' the poet's darling.' " 
 
 While the Civil War lasted her business was 
 somewhat checked, but never her charity. 
 
 During the war, the Fourth Louisiana Regiment 
 was captured at Shiloh and brought to New Or- 
 leans, and imprisoned at the police station, Algiers, 
 across the river. The news of their arrival sped 
 through the city, exciting the sympathies of thou- 
 sands of women, who immediately sent presents of 
 clothing, food and niceties. Margaret, true to her
 
 MARGARET. 123 
 
 instincts and principles, though having no son or 
 relative in the war, loaded a wagon with bread and 
 crackers, and accompanied by two negro men, ap- 
 peared before the gateway of the prison, her two 
 men bearing immense baskets filled with bread, 
 on their heads. 
 
 The sentry on seeing her approach, slightly de- 
 pressed his musket and commanded, " Halt ! " 
 Margaret replied, " What for ? " 
 The sentry again commanded, " Halt ! " 
 Margaret advancing, said, " What for ? " 
 Thrice the challenge was repeated and question- 
 ing answer given. Then she, with remarkable 
 quickness for a woman weighing one hundred and 
 eighty pounds, jumped to one side the musket, 
 seized the boy in blue by both shoulders, and lift- 
 ing him away, marched in, followed by her attend- 
 ants. The surprised soldier, overcome with aston- 
 ishment, could but join in the shout of his comrade 
 sentinels, who had witnessed the scene. 
 
 During the Fourteenth of September fight a 
 young man, a Protestant, lost his leg ; Margaret 
 tried to obtain for him a situation at a toll-gate,
 
 124 MARGARET. 
 
 but failing in this, gave him one hundred and fifty 
 dollars to buy a leg ; then set him up in business 
 as a newspaper-seller, and supplied his family with 
 bread during her life. This young man was a 
 pattern-maker in a foundry ; but his wound inca- 
 pacitated him for his position. 
 
 In the inundations to which New Orleans is 
 subject from the overflow of the Mississippi River, 
 Margaret could be seen daily in a large boat, 
 standing in the midst of great piles of bread, a 
 colored man paddling her through the river-streets, 
 as she dispensed her loaves to the half-starved 
 families. 
 
 She never asked what their race or creed. All 
 alike shared her bounty. Her life-motto : " God 
 has been so good to me, I must be good to all." 
 
 The three largest Homes for Children in New 
 Orleans are almost entirely the work of Margaret, 
 as well as the Home for the Aged and Infirm. 
 Being asked once, " Why don't you buy a fine 
 dress ? " she replied, " There is too much suffering 
 in this world." 
 
 For forty-six years Margaret had carried on
 
 MARGARET. 125 
 
 these labors of love in New Orleans, making 
 her money with great industry and sagacity, to 
 spend it for the poor and afflicted. But the time 
 drew near for her to leave her work to other hands. 
 Sickness came. The women of wealth and fashion 
 made the sick bed as easy to lie upon as possible. 
 To a lady who said, " I am sorry to see you ill," 
 Margaret answered, " Oh ! no, the Lord sometimes 
 has to lay his finger on me to let me know I am 
 mortal and don't belong to myself but to Him." 
 On February 9, 1882, the end came of this noble 
 life. And then thousands, the poor and the rich, 
 the City Government and New Orleans' merchants 
 and bankers, gathered at the funeral to do Mar- 
 garet honor. The services were conducted by the 
 Archbishop of the Diocese. Then followed in 
 carriages, after the pall-bearers as the beloved 
 Margaret was borne to the grave, the children of 
 eleven orphan asylums, white and black, Protes- 
 tant and Catholic. Many of the fire companies 
 of the city were present, especially " Mississippi 
 Number Two," of which she was an honorary 
 member. Great crowds lined the streets, and all
 
 126 MARGARET. 
 
 men took off their hats reverently, as the proces- 
 sion moved by. 
 
 The following Sabbath, sermons upon Mar- 
 garet's character and life were preached from 
 many pulpits ; upon the woman so poor and plain 
 that she never wore a silk dress or a kid glove ; so 
 rich that she gave in charities six hundred thou- 
 sand dollars, the fruit of her own labors. 
 
 " St. Margaret " as she is often called, lived her 
 life in grand heights and breadths. She brought 
 every man and woman who knew her up on higher 
 levels, too, for a moment's glimpse at least. Her 
 monument, built by the city she blessed, stands now, 
 in place of her, a constant reminder that one's own 
 children are not the only children in the world ; 
 that one's home is not the only home into which 
 we are commanded to carry sunshine and love ; 
 that though one be poor, there is work for others 
 to do ; that though one be ignorant, one may yet 
 carry heaven's own light far and near.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 THERE stands beside me as I write, a bouquet 
 of exquisite flowers ; pink and yellow roses, 
 lilies-of-the-valley, red and white carnation pinks, 
 and, loveliest of all, daisies. I have just brought 
 them from a large and well-kept greenhouse, on 
 Jennings Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, owned and 
 managed by a young woman whose taste and ability 
 make it well worthy of a visit. 
 
 The daily press calls this greenhouse " the finest, 
 the best-equipped and the best-managed floral es- 
 tablishment in the city." The business office as 
 you enter, is dainty with pictures and flowers ; tall 
 pampas grass stands in this great bay window, and 
 in the reception room or studio, where the designs 
 are made, palms and plants in flower, grow in bow- 
 ery profusion. There is a womanly home-making 
 127
 
 128 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 touch here, for the business woman has hung 
 among the blossoms a large picture of her daugh- 
 ter, named " Pansy," a pretty little creature with 
 blue eyes and golden hair, who holds in her arms 
 a pussy-cat nearly as large as herself. 
 
 The greenhouses of this establishment are al- 
 ways an interesting study. Plants just set out from 
 clippings which the deft ringers of Mrs. Campbell 
 pull up for us to see if they are rooted, and then 
 set down again in the warm earth, seem not to 
 mind the uplifting. Here are carnations in bud ; 
 great beds of lilies-of-the-valley ; trees covered with 
 lemons, masses of rich-colored foliage plants 
 ready for the summer beds in the parks. 
 
 And I can but wonder as I look upon this beau- 
 tiful and successful business, and see how refined 
 and how sunny and happy is the young woman 
 who manages it, whom I have known for years 
 I can but wonder, I say, that more women do not 
 take up the business of floriculture. There is hard 
 work in it, as in every other calling patience, care, 
 perhaps even the creation and training of a good 
 market-demand for plants and flowers but tending
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL.
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 131 
 
 upon flowers and developing them, is really work 
 so dainty and pleasurable that it seems especially 
 fitted to the hands of those women who shall be 
 willing to study of the nature and habits of the 
 flowering and decorative plants. 
 
 Mrs. Campbell can best tell her own story of 
 effort and well-deserved success : 
 
 " When I was thirteen or fourteen years of age 
 my father met with reverses which rendered him 
 penniless. I was obliged to do something to help 
 the family exchequer. 
 
 " After trying crochet work, delivering butter to 
 father's customers in his new business, I began to 
 feel discouraged and long for talents and a voca- 
 tion. One thing I heartily loved to do, and that 
 was to care for my flowers. At this time I read of 
 a young girl who was enabled, through her own 
 exertions, to build a greenhouse. The tale fasci- 
 nated me. Why could not I be a florist? I would ! 
 My vocation was found ! Every fibre of my being 
 vibrated in harmony with the thought. 
 
 " Fate was kind, and threw just the opportunity 
 desired into my pathway. Passing out Euclid Av-
 
 132 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 enue one bright afternoon (eleven years ago last 
 fall), I noticed that Mr. Jaynes had just built an 
 expensive office. He would want a girl to take 
 care of it! I entered, found Mr. Jaynes; asked 
 him breathlessly, ' If he didn't want a girl to take 
 care of the office, learn to make up flowers, and do 
 anything that she could to make herself useful ? ' 
 
 " ' Yes,' he needed such a girl, and I was 'just 
 the one he wanted. The active way I jumped in 
 and out of the wagon pleased him.' I was en- 
 gaged to keep books, wait on customers, take care 
 of the office, and make myself 'generally useful. 1 
 I had been in my position three or four months, 
 when father met with an accident and I was obliged 
 to go home and help take care of him. Mr. Jaynes 
 told me on leaving that ' in everything I was sat- 
 isfactory except making up.' That 'my work was 
 too loose and scraggy,' and that ' he did not think 
 I would amount to much as a florist.' 
 
 "I went home very much discouraged. But I 
 loved flowers, and plants and flowers I must have. 
 A gentleman (a true lover of all plant forms), Mr. 
 Taintor, deputy post-master of Cleveland for twenty-
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 133 
 
 five years, presented me with some small plants 
 and choice cuttings from his private greenhouse. 
 And at different times mother would invest from 
 ten to twenty-five cents in market plants for me, 
 until by the next fall I had quite a nice collection 
 of choice plants. I secured twenty-six native va- 
 rieties of hardy ferns from the woods, which I 
 planted on an old table, and in a hanging basket 
 of old hoop-skirt dipped in sealing-wax. 
 
 " This fern basket and table were my especial 
 pride that winter, and more than one came to see 
 my collection. Besides, I had one hundred and 
 seventy-five plants in pots and in boxes, old butter 
 crocks, and anything that could be utilized. 
 
 " Mother allowed me to have our front room, 
 which has two east windows and one north window, 
 for my plants. I had only a poor apology of a soft 
 coal stove for heating. On cold nights I used to 
 move all the plants into the middle of the room, 
 and wrap them up in newspapers to keep them 
 from freezing or getting chilled. We had an un- 
 usually cold, severe winter. I would sleep on the 
 lounge in the room and get up sometimes three
 
 134 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 or four times a night to replenish the fire, but I 
 succeeded in bringing my plants safely through, 
 while most all of my friends had theirs destroyed. 
 One day as I was looking through Mr. Taintor's 
 garden, I came across a pile of sash and other 
 materials pertaining to a greenhouse structure. I 
 asked him what it was and he told me it was an 
 old greenhouse he had taken down and brought 
 in from his farm. Turning to me, he said : ' I'll 
 sell it to you cheap and you can take your own 
 time in paying for it.' I asked him ' How much ? ' 
 more for conversation than with any idea of buy- 
 ing it. ' Well,' said he, ' I'll sell it to you for ten 
 dollars and you can pay me when you are able, and 
 there is a quantity of bricks and old lumber out on 
 the farm now which you are welcome to.' 
 
 "At the supper table that evening I repeated 
 what Mr. Taintor had said, whereupon my younger 
 brother Bert remarked, ' I tell you what, Ella, you 
 take it, and I will put it up for you, if you will only 
 get those plants out of the house.' (Bert used to 
 be called on to help me move the plants.) 
 
 " The next day we went to the farm and in-
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 135 
 
 spected the debris there, came home, and concluded 
 to try it. I never could endure anything ugly, and 
 though Bert did a large share of the carpenter work, 
 and I set over half the glass myself, I found it had 
 cost for lumber, glass, nails and putty a trifle over 
 one hundred dollars. This included the labor of 
 a carpenter for three or four days to help Bert. My 
 total cash assets to start with were fifteen cents. 
 The lumber, glass and putty I obtained on credit. 
 I told the parties from whom I got the goods that I 
 could give them no security but 'my word.' But 
 they were very kind, and offered to give me what 
 credit I needed. 
 
 " Well, I was one hundred dollars in debt, and 
 no heating apparatus in either. I rigged up, with 
 the help of my brother, an old stove that had been 
 stored in the barn, in one corner of the greenhouse, 
 moved my plants in from the house, went to Mr. 
 Jaynes, told him what I had done, and got credit 
 for plants. 
 
 " It was then the last of April or the first of May. 
 I went among my acquaintances, told them I had 
 plants for sale, and solicited orders for hanging
 
 136 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 baskets, plants, or cut flowers. Every day father 
 was not using his horses I would take one and 
 deliver orders, also take out plants and sell them. 
 To be brief, I cleared my greenhouse of debt by 
 my spring work. I did all the work myself with 
 occasional assistance from my brother. That fall 
 we put in a flue and furnace. My first greenhouse 
 was eleven by eighteen feet, with glass on sides 
 and roof, and adjoining the house. I had tried 
 to do all the work well, that was given me to do, 
 but I was a struggling girl, and I had a hard 
 time of it. When I first thought of gaining my 
 living as a florist, I received a great deal of dis- 
 couragement from father, he prophesying that ' I 
 would not make a two-cent hat or six-cent calico 
 dress.' He has since changed his opinion. 
 
 " The next spring my greenhouses were full of 
 fair market plants. I strove to grow only choice 
 varieties, or something that was not grown in pro- 
 fusion by the other florists ; I bought plants in 
 quantity from Mr. Jaynes and others, restocking 
 my houses several times. From the first I have 
 always believed in pushing business, and I went
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 137 
 
 after my orders, instead of waiting for them to 
 come to me ; though I always endeavored to keep 
 within the limits of good taste in this direction. 
 That fall I determined to make a bold stroke. I 
 would build a greenhouse large enough to grow 
 my own cut flowers. My brother, who had been 
 away, came home at this time, and we built a green- 
 house twenty-two by fifty-five, with a shed twelve 
 by twenty-two at the end, where our furnace was 
 located. This cost about three hundred and fifty 
 dollars. It took two years to pay for it. We also 
 purchased a horse. It was during these two years 
 that I commenced to push 'my floral design' 
 work. 
 
 " I was craving for a recognition from the other 
 florists, and I could not see any better way than 
 to meet them on their own ground, on their own 
 level. I have always been most anxious that my 
 work should be judged with man's work, or in other 
 words, on its own merits. My first exhibition was 
 at the State Fair at Columbus. 
 
 "I arrived before any of my competitors, and 
 found the flowers pretty badly shaken up. My
 
 138 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 largest piece, a combination of a heart, anchor and 
 Bible, came to hand turned over on its side. 
 
 " Bouquets and baskets were in various stages of 
 perfection and imperfection and decay. I looked 
 at my carefully prepared work and felt blue. But 
 I picked up my spirits and went to work. I had 
 taken the precaution of bringing loose flowers with 
 me, and these I soon utilized, repairing what dam- 
 age had been done as far as was possible. I re- 
 ceived many courtesies from the officials and was 
 placed on the awarding committee for amateurs. 
 
 "When I viewed the designs brought in by my 
 competitors I began to be sure I had no chance 
 against fresh flowers, and such excellent work. I 
 was agreeably surprised when I received first pre- 
 mium on hand bouquets, and second on display. 
 The first premium was also given to a woman, Miss 
 Maggie Evans of Columbus, Ohio, who has a great 
 native talent in floral arrangement, and I am glad 
 to say she has been a warm personal friend from 
 the day we were active competitors at the State 
 Fair at Columbus. 
 
 " I now made up my mind that if I was to sue-
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 139 
 
 ceed professionally, I must get thoroughly well- 
 known and identified with my business. Three 
 or four large wedding orders that were placed in 
 my hands at this time, and in which I was allowed 
 to'use my judgment, were more favorably spoken 
 of, and our local press gave me many compliments. 
 
 "The next year I exhibited at the Northern Ohio 
 Fair. Here I knew I must meet with the sharp- 
 est competition with our old, established florists. 
 It proved to be a hot, dry, sultry day, with just 
 wind enough to keep the dust in motion. The flow- 
 ers and designs had to be transported over seven 
 miles of dry, dusty roadway before reaching their 
 destination in Floral Hall. On arriving at the 
 grounds the Superintendent of Cut Flower Hall 
 met me and said : ' It's no use, your bringing your 
 flowers here. You can't compete with the designs 
 in there,' indicating with his hand the building oc- 
 cupied by the cut flower department. 
 
 "My flowers at that moment arrived, and the 
 florists crowded round to see what I had brought. 
 I could hardly suppress my emotions when I 
 found that, owing to the rough pavements, there
 
 140 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 were places where the flowers were shaken out 
 almost as large as a man's hat. The other florists 
 had their exhibits entirely in place. And I felt 
 indeed as though ' I could not compete with the 
 designs in there.' It was then five o'clock, and I 
 worked until dark, when my brother and the Su- 
 perintendent took turns holding lighted matches 
 for me to see by. The premiums were to be 
 awarded the next morning ; but so discouraged 
 did I feel that I could not be induced to visit the 
 grounds. (I must confess to a good, hard cry.) 
 But mother and brother went out, and I stayed at 
 home and worked, and worked, and chided myself 
 for my presumption in thinking I could compete 
 with those who had so much better facilities in 
 skilled labor and choice flowers. By the time 
 they had returned at night, I had worked myself 
 into a proper submissive mood to receive the 
 news I expected them to bring. Mother came in, 
 and sitting down, said, 'Well,' in answer to my 
 inquiring look, and drew forth from her pocket a 
 yellow piece of card-board and handed it to me. 
 I thought she was teasing me, and said . ' Mother,
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 141 
 
 how can you ! ' I still thought she had palmed off 
 a bit of useless card-board on me. ' Read it,' said 
 she, and through my tears I managed to read 
 ' ist premium' Even then I could scarcely be- 
 lieve the good news. ' Mother,' said I, ' you are 
 unkind.' ' Why, it's yours, child. 'Twas on the 
 table design when we got there.' 
 
 " Can you imagine my feelings ? From one ex- 
 treme I rushed to the other. I was wild with joy. 
 I hugged mother. I waltzed around the room 
 like a crazy girl. I had been weighed and not 
 been found wanting ! I had ideas ! I had come 
 out victorious in a fair and square test with those 
 who had every facility at their command. I have 
 passed through other such scenes since, but the 
 most exciting test of abilities would not raise me 
 to such a fever of delirium as that first public ac- 
 knowledgment of my success in competing with 
 our old and well-established florists. 
 
 " Not the least pleasant feature of the exhibi- 
 tion was, that on the following day some of the 
 competing florists came to me and said ' You 
 have won it fairly! It belongs to you rightfully.'
 
 142 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 "All our papers spoke in praise of my efforts, 
 and it was the means of giving me a general in- 
 troduction to the public as a commercial florist. 
 
 " Soon after this I received an invitation from 
 Col. Fogg, editor of the Herald, to go to Cincin- 
 nati as a special correspondent to write up the 
 floral features of the Exposition there. Here I 
 was in my element, though in a new field. A flo- 
 ral reporter ! It opened up new means for self- 
 improvement which I endeavored to improve to 
 the uttermost. I believe there is no better means 
 of self-education than to write on live issues and 
 new ideas ; to catch events before they become 
 old. It was a red letter day when I saw my first 
 letter in print, and by carefully noting what errors 
 had been committed, and avoiding them after- 
 ward, I found by the fourth or fifth letter that they 
 were printed verbatim. 
 
 " Two years afterward my brother went into 
 business with me, and we erected a larger ' forcing 
 house.' This was built running east and west 
 with a long slope facing the south. Peter Hen- 
 derson's Practical Floricultrtre, presented by Mr.
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 143 
 
 Taintor, was our text book. At this time we had 
 the pleasure of an acquaintance with Mr. John 
 Thorpe, now so well known as the president of 
 our Society of American Florists. Mr. Thorpe 
 is a friend to struggling young florists : such we 
 found him, always willing to give information, and 
 a walking encyclopaedia of useful information per- 
 taining to floral subjects. Our new house was 
 located on a strip of land we bought next to 
 father's, and is the property we are now occupying. 
 
 "The house was planted to Roses, and Bert 
 had unusual success with them, considering that 
 the heating was done by flues. In fact this house 
 at the present writing is in full leaf and blossom, 
 with not an insect or a speck of mildew to be 
 found. In 1881 my brother left me to enter busi- 
 ness in Chicago, and from that time to the present 
 I have given my personal care to all departments 
 of the business. In 1884 I built a long-wished- 
 for addition, our new office and greenhouse. This 
 last was built for tropical and decorative plants. 
 
 " For some years I have done all the watering 
 of my greenhouses, believing that by so doing I
 
 144 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 could keep track of all the little things that go to 
 make up the sum total of success. I find, also, 
 that watering is one of the most important opera- 
 tions connected with the practical running of a 
 greenhouse. To give or withhold water from dif- 
 ferent plants at different times of the year requires 
 experience and the nicest judgment, not only for 
 different plants, but also for the different stages 
 of the same plant. 
 
 " In regard to the future of woman in horti- 
 culture, I regard it as bright. Any woman can do 
 what I have done, and better if she has capital 
 and experience. For I have worked at a disad- 
 vantage in regard to both. Last Christmas I em- 
 ployed eight or ten girls and two young men. 
 
 " I must not forget to mention in conclusion the 
 very material aid and help I have received from a 
 lady who has been my true friend. When finan- 
 cial skies looked dark or some very much-needed 
 improvement needed to be made, she has given 
 me help in the shape of loans, at six per cent in- 
 terest, with the privilege of paying it back in easy 
 payments. And more than this, she has placed
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 145 
 
 liberal orders with me, and so gave me real help 
 the privilege of earning the money she so 
 kindly loaned me. Would that more would loan 
 from their plenty, not give, to struggling begin- 
 ners who are straining every nerve to make a suc- 
 cess of life." 
 
 But Mrs. Campbell has not referred to some 
 of her signal successes. So let me mention one 
 or two. For instance : When President Garfield's 
 body was brought to Cleveland for burial, the 
 streets of the city were, of course, to be beautifully 
 decorated with arches, and all that money and taste 
 could do to make the city worthy to honor its great 
 statesman, was to be thoroughly done. Mrs. Camp- 
 bell received notice on Thursday noon, that she 
 had been designated to superintend much of the 
 floral work. She began at eight in the evening, 
 with a force of picked men and girls, upon whom 
 she could rely, and slept but two hours each night 
 until the streets were made ready for the passing 
 of the solemn procession. Her designs were orig- 
 inal and elaborate, yet with beautiful breadth of 
 effect. Each arch was impressive, all the com-
 
 146 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 memorative lettering distinct and symmetrical. 
 The verdict of the press was : " Every piece is a 
 work of art, and will bear the closest inspection." 
 Quite recently she has bestowed a pleasure upon 
 the public, in the form of a " chrysanthemum show," 
 having over two hundred varieties upon exhibition. 
 A similar exhibition of choice roses was given last 
 year, some of them so rare and so beautiful as to 
 bring five dollars for a single blossom. At the 
 National gathering of the American Horticultu- 
 rists, in 1886, Mrs. Campbell carried off many of 
 the honors ; she received the first premium for best 
 floral designs, as also the first premium for the 
 best collection of cut flowers; the second prize 
 for the best collection of gladioli, the second for 
 dahlias, the second for geraniums, and the second 
 for begonias in pots. One of her floral designs, 
 much admired there, was a dainty white parasol 
 of carnations with a lining of bright scarlet Lady 
 Emma's. The exterior was decorated with a dra- 
 pery of Le France roses, and lilies with delicate 
 ferns, the whole supported by a standard of tropi- 
 cal ferns.
 
 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 147 
 
 Mrs. Campbell is celebrated for her decorations 
 for fine weddings ; she is not only an artistic origi- 
 nator, but is also a constant student, experiment- 
 ing and combining, and also has developed the 
 business tact and talent to "win trade" which she 
 holds by her genuine courtesy and candor, and her 
 painstaking to give satisfaction. No order how- 
 ever small misses of her personal attention. 
 
 These are the business-rules framed and hung in 
 her office : 
 
 Advertise thoroughly. 
 
 Carry the best stock. 
 
 Sell at small profits. 
 
 Improve every opportunity to increase trade. 
 
 Her books are kept with system. She is quick 
 to act, and accommodates herself to the taste and 
 wishes and need of her smallest customer. 
 
 Mrs. Campbell has made a specialty of carpet- 
 beds in lawns, and many beautiful grounds in 
 Cleveland and other cities are indebted to her 
 originality in designs for their attractions. 
 
 And yet this successful florist, this thorough 
 business-woman, is scarcely yet out of her girlhood,
 
 148 ELLA GRANT CAMPBELL. 
 
 a slight, fragile creature. Other women, too, are 
 succeeding as florists. 
 
 Mrs. Harris Jaynes, the widow of the florist who 
 first employed Mrs. Campbell, has, since her hus- 
 band's death, managed the business with the aid 
 of her two sons. She has seven greenhouses, with 
 fifty thousand feet of glass, cultivates nine acres 
 of grasses and flowers, and employs nearly a dozen 
 persons. Miss Bristol of Topeka, Kans., Mrs. 
 Packard of Quincy, Mass., Mrs. Shuster of Brook- 
 lyn, N. Y., and many others are known as prosper- 
 ous florists. Miss Merriman of Beacon street, 
 Boston, has for seven years been a successful 
 flower-grower and flower-trader, the first woman 
 to engage in this business in that city, I believe. 
 The oldest florists in Boston said, " We will give 
 her six months to go under ; " but their predic- 
 tions have failed. She admits that the working 
 hours are long, the cares of the business many, 
 but she has no thought of abandoning it. 
 
 Why is not this an ideal industry for women ? 
 The more flower-growing the better, the more 
 lovely our homes, the more refined our nation.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 THE roll of Successful Women would not be 
 complete without the name of Prof. Rachel 
 Littler Bodley, A. M., M. D., Dean of the Woman's 
 Medical College of Pennsylvania. She has not 
 reached the position she occupies without meeting 
 difficulties and surmounting obstacles; her story 
 is a record of heroic efforts, untiring industry, un- 
 selfish devotion. 
 
 Prof. Bodley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her 
 paternal ancestry was Scotch-Irish, the American 
 progenitor, Thomas Bodley, having emigrated from 
 the north of Ireland in the first quarter of the 
 eighteenth century, and settled in what is now 
 Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. There he 
 married Mrs. Eliza Knox (nee Mclntosh) from 
 Edinburgh, Scotland; the eleventh president of 
 149
 
 150 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 the United States was a direct descendant of this 
 widow. William, the eldest son of Thomas and 
 Eliza Bodley, was the great-grandfather of Prof. 
 Bodley ; he was a soldier in the Continental army, 
 and during the terrible winter of 1777-78 was with 
 General Washington at Valley Forge, where he 
 ranked as Major; he contracted consumption from 
 exposure in the service, and died in 1780. His 
 grave, with its gray lichened headstone in a state 
 of excellent preservation, is in the churchyard of 
 Providence Meeting House not far from Norris- 
 town, Pa. Standing by its side the eye takes in a 
 far-reaching landscape of marvellous beauty, the 
 distant hills about Valley Forge being distinctly 
 visible. 
 
 The maternal ancestor was John Talbott, an Eng- 
 lish Friend who emigrated to the Colony of Vir- 
 ginia and was the progenitor of a large family who 
 through two succeeding centuries have honored 
 their name and lineage. Rebecca Wilson Talbott 
 and Anthony Richard Bodley, the parents of 
 Rachel Littler Bodley, went to Ohio early in the 
 present century. Rebecca, the Quakeress, the
 
 DR. RACHKL LITTLER HODLEY.
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 153 
 
 only daughter of Samuel and Rachel Littler Tal- 
 bott, crossed the Alleghany Mountains in an emi- 
 grant wagon, being one of a family of five young 
 children who were taken by their parents from the 
 old home near Winchester, Virginia, to the far West 
 which in 1806 was on the banks of the Mononga- 
 hela in Western Pennslyvania. A few years later, 
 the Virginia emigrants moved into the adjoining 
 State and eventually the whole family embarked in 
 an " ark " constructed by the eldest son, and de- 
 scended the Ohio River, landing at the town of 
 Cincinnati in May, 1817. 
 
 Anthony Bodley at twenty-one set out from 
 Montgomery County, Penn., to seek his fortune, 
 and crossed the mountains on foot ; from Pittsburg 
 he descended the river in a canoe or skiff, reach- 
 ing Cincinnati about the same time as the Talbott 
 family. 
 
 Five children were born to Anthony and Rebecca 
 Bodley, of whom Rachel was the elder daughter 
 and the third child. The education and training 
 of the children devolved upon the mother. This 
 pious and devoted woman dedicated her little
 
 1 54 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 daughter to the Lord, and chiefly to her influence 
 and teaching is due the strength and excellence of 
 character exemplified in her child. The daughter 
 never forgot the consecration, and her life has been 
 one of steadfast obedience to her mother's injunc- 
 tion written in a birthday album : " Make every- 
 thing subservient to the high aim of pleasing the 
 great I AM, lean on Him, lean on no earthly stay : 
 your strength, your sufficiency is in Jesus alone." 
 
 Mrs. Bodley opened a private school in Cincin- 
 nati, and in this school Rachel was a pupil until 
 her twelfth year. Both mother and daughter be- 
 lieved that the best education and the broadest cul- 
 ture were means to the greatest usefulness ; hence 
 even the fragments of time were improved to secure 
 a liberal education, and to this end Rachel entered 
 the Wesleyan Female College of Cincinnati in 
 1844. This institution, the first chartered college 
 for women in the United States, and hence, in the 
 world, was founded in 1842 for the purpose of giv- 
 ing to women a higher education than the existing 
 schools and seminaries afforded. This college 
 which, for the first seventeen years of its history,
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 155 
 
 was under the presidency of Rev. P. B. Wilber, 
 has enriched society with women of a noble type. 
 While the intellect was under training, especial 
 attention was given to the education of the moral 
 powers. The conscience was carefully cultivated, 
 hence its graduates have been to a remarkable de- 
 gree the foremost Christian laborers in church and 
 charitable work in their respective communities. 
 
 Here, in her school-course of five years, every- 
 thing required of Rachel Bodley was well done, 
 and in all that she attempted the highest standard 
 was reached; especially was it soon evident in her 
 duties pertaining to the college literary society that 
 she was endowed with the "gift of writing." It 
 is not always that persons of the finest mental 
 powers and of studious habits are the most genial 
 companions ; but in the case of Miss Bodley, to 
 her literary taste and skill was added a warm heart 
 overflowing with affection and sympathy, prompt- 
 ing her to deeds which endeared her then and for- 
 ever to the discouraged class-mate and the home- 
 sick schoolgirl. 
 
 Immediately after graduation in 1849, Miss Bod-
 
 156 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 ley was appointed to an assistant teacher's place 
 in the faculty of her Alma Mater, and here she 
 remained ascending in grade, till 1860, when she 
 was Preceptress in the Higher Collegiate studies. 
 To say she was a good teacher were too tame and 
 spiritless an expression to use in referring to one 
 so thoroughly prepared, so in love with her work. 
 Her rare power in winning the hearts of her 
 pupils, gave her unusual influence over their minds, 
 and thus mutually loving and being loved, they 
 taught and learned with an enthusiasm which 
 robbed study of its tedium, begat a hunger and 
 thirst for knowledge, and made the school-room a 
 place of delight. Not content with explaining the 
 lessons of the text-books, she felt responsible for 
 the moral development of her pupils, and made 
 time to close each week's duties with special reli- 
 gious instruction. It is the testimony of many of 
 her pupils of those early years that these lessons 
 given in such an unobtrusive manner made a last- 
 ing impression, and that the example of Christian 
 character before them daily became their highest 
 model in maturer years.
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 157 
 
 Notwithstanding her success through these 
 eleven years as a teacher, Rachel Bodley was not 
 satisfied with her attainments. Hence to gratify 
 a worthy ambition and to qualify herself for still 
 greater usefulness, she left home in the autumn of 
 1860 for Philadelphia to become a special student 
 in advanced chemistry and physics in the Poly- 
 technic College of Pennsylvania, at that time the 
 leading institution of the country for instruction in 
 the applied sciences ; and of practical anatomy and 
 physiology in the Woman's Medical College of 
 Pennsylvania. After a year of close application 
 and of rich acquirement, she returned home, and 
 in February, 1862, was appointed Professor of 
 Natural Sciences in the Cincinnati Female Semi- 
 nary, which position she occupied three years. 
 
 During this time she made a valuable contribu- 
 tion to local botanical science in the shape of a 
 catalogue of plants. Joseph Clark, a native of 
 Scotland, but for the last thirty-five years of his 
 life a resident of Cincinnati, died in 1858; he was 
 a lover of nature and an indefatigable collector of 
 specimens of natural history. After his death his
 
 158 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 extensive collections came into the Cincinnati Fe- 
 male Seminary. We will let Prof. Bodley tell what 
 she did in an extract from the preface of this at- 
 tractive catalogue of forty-eight pages : 
 
 When I entered the seminary in 1862, I found chaos 
 reigning in the domain of science. In the midst of abound- 
 ing wealth famine was inevitable through lack of classifica- 
 tion. With a resolute will I entered single-handed upon the 
 Herculean task of making these treasures available to sci- 
 ence. No attempt at classification according to the natural 
 system had been made. The plants for the most part had 
 been named, but named according to the nomenclature of 
 thirty years ago. Hence the necessity for a careful study 
 of synonyms and a critical and laborious examination of in- 
 dividual specimens for the purpose of effecting the numer- 
 ous nomenclatural changes which the advance of science 
 rendered necessary. 
 
 The American plants have been classified according to the 
 natural system as published by Prof. Gray in his " Manual 
 of the Botany of the Northern United States," revised edi- 
 tion 1857, and by Dr. Chapman in his " Flora of the South- 
 ern United States, 1860." There were also foreign plants, 
 British ferns and mosses, packages of plants from New Zea- 
 land. In the absence of any reliable manual which embraced 
 the countries represented by these plants they were clas- 
 sified as far as orders and genera with Lindley's Vegetable 
 Kingdom as my guide. The mass was carefully opened, the 
 plants identified and finally arranged in labelled sheets of 
 uniform size, and the whole placed in a convenient herba-
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 159 
 
 rium case, where it is now in complete readiness for refer- 
 ence and study. During these years I have labored patiently 
 and faithfully upon it in my leisure hours, and it is only 
 now in my fourth summer vacation that I have finished the 
 classification and arrangement of this herbarium. I have 
 found my work womanly, secluded, ennobling ; and I submit 
 to educated women of this vicinity whether, since these pur- 
 suits fail through lack of patronage, they may not enter upon 
 them, and, as they find opportunity, become workers in, 
 or patronesses of science. Only the will is lacking ; culti- 
 vated talent, wealth, and opportunity are abundant. 
 
 The preparation of this catalogue received the 
 commendation of so experienced and critical a 
 judge as Dr. Asa Gray, the highest authority upon 
 botany in the United States. " Your attempt is 
 very satisfactory indeed," kindly wrote the great 
 botanist, " and much I know must have depended 
 upon your good taste and knowledge. I see but 
 very few misprints, and the arrangement is wholly 
 pleasing to the eye." 
 
 In 1865, Rachel Bodley was called to the chair 
 of chemistry and toxicology, in the Woman's Medi- 
 cal College of Pennsylvania. She accepted and 
 thus became the first woman-professor of chemistry 
 on record ; and here, after more than twenty years
 
 l6o RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 of arduous labor, she still toils inspiring students, 
 serving humanity, and honoring God. In January, 
 1847, she was elected Dean of the Faculty, since 
 which time she has given herself, time, talents, and 
 strength wholly to the college, promoting its inter- 
 ests, striving in every way to benefit and elevate 
 her sex, and to secure for woman and her work 
 the recognition and respect which they deserve. 
 
 The industry whose results have been partially 
 shown, has been truly marvelous. Although Prof. 
 Bodley graduated, she has never finished her 
 course of study. While teaching in Cincinnati 
 she was still pursuing her studies under the best 
 masters. Her college course had been a thorough 
 classical one, including also mathematics and two 
 modern languages, but throughout the eleven years 
 this mental acquirement was systematically and 
 statedly supplemented with private lessons in 
 higher mathematics, music, French, German, elo- 
 cution, drawing, microscopy and phonography. 
 These subjects alternated with each other usually 
 only one subject being pursued at a time ; when 
 these self-imposed tasks were challenged by her
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. l6l 
 
 friends, the young teacher was accustomed to de- 
 fend them by saying that they kept her "out 
 of the ruts " and imparted good quality to her 
 own teaching. From this extended and critical 
 study of standard French and German authors, 
 the transition to text-books was easy and natural 
 when the time came for her to devote herself to 
 natural science. Through sight-reading she has 
 without effort been able to keep abreast with the 
 latest phases of scientific thought on the continent, 
 without the marring and the delay incident to pub- 
 lished translations. After Prof. Bodley had taken 
 up her residence in an Eastern city the same habit 
 of daily application enabled her to pursue the 
 regular course of medical study begun in i'86o, 
 and to complete it while fulfilling the duties of 
 her chair in lecture room and in laboratory. 
 
 Her summer vacations constitute the only leisure 
 the laborious life of Prof. Bodley has ever per- 
 mitted. The vacation trip was carefully planned 
 months before it occurred and usually compre- 
 hended long journeys, never hotel residence except 
 during brief pauses for needful rest. In this way
 
 162 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 throughout the decades, this American woman, 
 loyal in her recreations as in her labors, has visited 
 every typical locality whose natural scenery or his- 
 toric associations invite attention, from the Great 
 Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic 
 Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. 
 
 Beginning as a little girl with the encircling 
 hills of the beautiful queen city of her birth, which 
 hid from her view the great world which she longed 
 to explore, her earliest journey beyond them was 
 made one summer day when the wise mother trans- 
 ported her entire little brood of four, on the won- 
 derful railway (the Little Miami) then in process of 
 construction and which terminated in the fields 
 about thirty miles from Cincinnati ; the little party 
 pushed on by stage to Green County, their desti- 
 nation being the " cliffs of the Little Miami River." 
 This for the children was their first " scenery " 
 and the happy day spent in the miniature canyon 
 was never forgotten ; of the " four " it was Rachel's 
 soul that was filled with reverent awe and speech- 
 less delight. The impending rocks, the unfamil- 
 iar, sombre evergreens and the falling waters re-
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 163 
 
 appeared in her day-dreams again and again long 
 after she had returned to her school tasks. The 
 next great revelation was Niagara some years 
 later, the next Mammoth Cave, the next the Great 
 Lakes, the tour planned to end at the head of Lake 
 Superior as to the steamer, and the crossing to 
 the head waters of the Mississippi River to be 
 made by canoe and afoot. Her elder brother was 
 her congenial travelling companion and the at- 
 tempt to carry out the programme was resolute, 
 but failed finally, through inability to obtain re- 
 liable guides. The attempt was renewed two 
 years later when with her younger brother as fel- 
 low traveller, the long trip by steamer from Cin- 
 cinnati to St. Paul was accomplished at the " Fuller 
 House " and the party was booked for Lake 
 Superior ; the first stage of the land journey was 
 actually made, but the arrival of a party of half- 
 breeds at the first station who had just come over 
 the route to be taken, compelled the enthusiastic 
 tourists to desist from their purpose. These trap- 
 pers reported the streams and little lakes over- 
 flowing from recent rains and the numerous port-
 
 164 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 ages utterly unsafe to be undertaken by a lady. 
 Sixteen years later the same lady, this time alone ; 
 entered the harbor of Duluth on a magnificent 
 steamer and, after a late breakfast in a first-class 
 hotel, began the ascent of the St. Louis River 
 seated in a luxurious railway car; onward sped 
 the train, the names of stations as gleaned from 
 railway guide recalling the careful study of the 
 portage route, which was to have consumed many 
 days. In the late afternoon of the glorious mid- 
 summer day the train rolled into the stately city of 
 St. Paul and the dream of years was fulfilled ! 
 The transit from the greatest lake to the greatest 
 river of the continent had been made, but the 
 glamour was gone, the steam passage had proved 
 destitute of poetic elements, the dear brothers were 
 both dead. 
 
 Many of the later recreation journeys were taken 
 quite alone as a friend rarely could be found able 
 to undergo the fatigue incident to extended and 
 often laborious routes. Botany here came in good 
 stead, the traveller finding in the collection and 
 field study of plants abundant companionship ; in
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 165 
 
 witness of this, the botanical trunk manufactured 
 to order and containing specimen-sheets and dry- 
 ing paper and boards in abundance, together with 
 ready-cut labels and the manuals of Gray and of 
 Chapman, always constituted part of the baggage 
 of the tourist. In this silent and congenial com- 
 panionship within the last twenty years, the Venus' 
 Fly-trap has been studied and gathered in the 
 sandy bogs in the vicinity of Wilmington, North 
 Carolina ; the lily of the valley on the high moun- 
 tains of Virginia ; the graceful white racemes of 
 the snowdrop-tree on the mountain road leading to 
 Hawk's Nest which overhang New River in West 
 Virginia ; the crimson panicles of the dwarf horse- 
 chestnut on the shore of Mobile Bay ; the Alpine 
 sandwort on the summit of Mount Monadnock ; 
 in the hem of the vast wilderness on the north 
 shore of Lake Superior, the dainty and fragrant 
 Linnaea Borealis ; on the western plains the sage- 
 bush ; in the valley of the Arkansas, the regal 
 blossoms of the cactuses ; and on the mountain 
 sides in Colorado in the solemn presence of the 
 snow-crowned peaks, the brilliant Alpine flora
 
 166 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 which in August glorifies the scanty soil above 
 timber line. As will be readily surmised, Prof. 
 Bodley is an ardent lover of nature, not its wor- 
 shiper, for to her " nature is but the name of an 
 effect, whose cause is God." And at His feet she 
 keeps herself and all her gifts in perpetual offering. 
 
 Previous to her election as Dean, Prof. Bodley 
 accepted invitations to teach or lecture during 
 time which was unoccupied by the duties of her 
 professorship ; she was thus occupied in the sum- 
 mer of 1866 at Flushing, Long Island ; 1867 and 
 1868, in Philadelphia; in the spring of 1869 she 
 delivered a course of lectures in Cincinnati to 
 which leading physicians and teachers listened 
 with interest and profit. Five seasons, 1870-1874 
 inclusive, she gave instruction in Rowland school, 
 Cayuga Lake, N. Y. 
 
 Prof. Bodley came to the deanship when a new 
 college building was in progress, the corner stone 
 of which was laid in 1874, and possession taken in 
 March, 1875. The number of students then in at- 
 tendance was seventy ; during the present annual 
 session (1886-87) tn ^ s number is one hundred
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 167 
 
 and fifty-five. The duties of the new position added 
 to those of her chair left no time for stated out- 
 side work, her official letters alone gradually in- 
 creasing to a correspondence which now encircles 
 the globe and continues throughout the year. By 
 means of these letters she has wielded a world 
 wide influence for good in addition to what she 
 has achieved by personal contact. In recent 
 years one of the most notable events connected 
 with Dean Bodley's work has been the delivery of 
 an address to the graduates at the Commencement 
 in March, 1881, entitled "The College Story." 
 No less distinguished an authority than Mr. 
 Thomas Wentworth Higginson in the Woman's 
 fournal characterized this address as " the first 
 really good and careful collection of facts I have 
 ever seen bearing on the professional life of 
 woman. It relates to the medical profession, the 
 only one yet open to women on a sufficiently large 
 scale to make facts of much value, except the pro- 
 fession of teaching which involves in some re- 
 spects a different set of conditions, and need not 
 now be considered. But medical practice is essen-
 
 1 68 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 tially professional life, and Dr. Rachel L. Bodley, 
 Dean of the Woman's Medical College of Pennsyl- 
 vania, has lately instituted, among the two hun- 
 dred and seventy-six graduates, a series of inqui- 
 ries bearing on their whole public life for the thirty 
 years since the first class graduated. The care 
 with which the facts were obtained, and the clear- 
 ness with which they are stated, give them a value 
 almost unique." 
 
 Among the thirty-three graduates of the class of 
 1886 was a Brahmin lady of high caste from India. 
 Already well educated when she came she pursued 
 the course of medical study for three years. The 
 previous history of Dr. Anandibai Joshee, her com- 
 ing to America, her progress and success, had been 
 a perpetual source of interest to those acquainted 
 with her presence in the college. In anticipation 
 of the memorable event of the graduation of this 
 Brahmin lady, Dean Bodley extended an invitation 
 to her distinguished kinswoman then in England, 
 Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, scholar, lecturer and 
 poet of India, to visit Philadelphia as her guest. 
 The Pundita came, accompanied by her little daugh-
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 169 
 
 ter of five years, and in the American Academy of 
 Music in the presence of a vast audience she wit- 
 nessed on Commencement Day with full heart, the 
 conferring of the degree of Doctor of Medicine 
 upon her Hindu sister. The next evening a formal 
 reception was given the two distinguished ladies 
 in the parlor of Association Hall, the guests being 
 ladies to the number of about one hundred who rep- 
 resented every department of woman's work in Phil- 
 adelphia, educational, charitable, philanthropic and 
 reformatory. Dean Bodley received the guests and 
 introduced them to the Brahmin ladies ; later, in 
 the hall she delivered the public words of welcome 
 to the Pundita and at its close presented the re- 
 nowned stranger to a large audience of ladies and 
 gentlemen who had assembled to listen while she 
 addressed them on " The Women of India." The 
 events of the two days engaged public attention to 
 an unlooked-for degree and in response to this fact 
 and that the interest in these lovely and gifted 
 representatives of India might be fostered, Dean 
 Bodley, early in April following, prepared a dainty 
 little pamphlet entitled "The Welcome to Pun-
 
 1 70 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 dila Ramabai," which was a complete record of 
 the two events the graduation of Dr. Joshee, 
 and the Welcome at Association Hall. This little 
 missive was widely distributed throughout America 
 and Asia ; its compiler taking especial pains to ob- 
 tain from the Hindoo ladies the postal address of 
 their relatives and friends that she might send it 
 by mail to as many as might thus be reached in 
 India. Contact with Western civilization on the 
 part of both, and Christian baptism as regarded 
 Ramabai, had marie them outcasts among their 
 kindred, but it was desired that in the land of 
 their birth it might be known that American women 
 cherished and loved them. Out of the half-dozen 
 copies mailed to England, one was proffered for 
 the acceptance of Her Majesty the Queen, Empress 
 of India, through the good office of the Legation 
 of the United States. The correspondence of the 
 dean was enriched, and the summer rendered 
 memorable in her life by a prompt response from 
 Windsor Castle, written by the Queen's private 
 secretary, Sir General Henry F. Ponsonby. By 
 command of the Queen thanks were returned for
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 171 
 
 "having sent Her Majesty the account of Dr. 
 Joshee's reception in the Woman's Medical Col- 
 lege of Pennsylvania " and the assurance added, 
 " the Queen has read the paper with much interest." 
 
 Queen Victoria's acknowledgment is of no small 
 importance to the development of woman's medical 
 work in India, and her recognition of one of her 
 Hindoo subjects by her medical title is of great sig- 
 nificance; all who in India are working for the ele- 
 vation of women will thank the dean for thus calling 
 the attention of her majesty to the subject. 
 
 Other honors beside those already enumerated 
 have been conferred upon Dr. Bodley in acknowl- 
 edgment of her contributions to literature and sci- 
 ence and indicating the esteem in which her work 
 and herself as a woman are held. In 1864 she was 
 elected a corresponding member of the State His- 
 torical Society of Wisconsin; in 1871 elected a 
 member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of 
 Philadelphia. In 1871, the degree of A. M. (Ar- 
 tium Magister) was conferred by her Alma Mater 
 in Cincinnati. This institution, up to this time, 
 had never given a degree to any of its alumnaa
 
 172 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 subsequent to the A. B. at graduation. At the 
 College Commencement of 1871, three of its 
 alumnae were selected upon whom to confer the 
 first honor of the kind, of which trio Prof. Bodley 
 was one. 
 
 In 1879 tne degree of M. D. was conferred by 
 the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. 
 In 1873 she was elected a corresponding member of 
 the Cincinnati Society of Natural History; in 1876, 
 a corresponding member of the New York Acad- 
 emy of Sciences, and during the same year a mem- 
 ber of The American Chemical Society located in 
 New York City. Early in 1874 it was proposed 
 in the columns of The American Chemist to cele- 
 brate the centennial of chemistry in August of 
 that year, this date being chosen in honor of the 
 discovery of oxygen by Dr. Joseph Priestley in Au- 
 gust, 1774; suggestions as to methods and place 
 were solicited. Prof. Bodley had only the year 
 previous, made a pilgrimage to the grave of Dr. 
 Priestley at Northumberland. And she proposed 
 that the Centennial gathering be held at that 
 place. It was her suggestion which determined
 
 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 173 
 
 the location of the meeting and accordingly "a 
 reunion of American chemists for mutual ex- 
 change of ideas and observations " was held, 
 whose proceedings fill a volume of over two hun- 
 dred pages, and at which Prof. Bodley was elected 
 first Vice-President, and was the only lady upon 
 whom such honor was conferred. In 1880 she 
 was elected a member of the venerable Franklin 
 Institute of Philadelphia ; in the winter following 
 she was invited to deliver six of the lectures of the 
 regular course of the institute, which she did, tak- 
 ing for her subject " Household Chemistry." 
 
 In January, 1882, she was chosen a member of 
 the Public Educational Society of Philadelphia, and 
 in February was elected School Director of the 
 twenty-ninth School Section of Philadelphia, in 
 which capacity she served acceptably for three 
 years. In 1883 she was appointed one of seven 
 women visitors to assist the Board of Public Char- 
 ities of the State of Pennsylvania in visiting and 
 inspecting such institutions in the county of Phil- 
 adelphia as came under their supervision. 
 
 It is not too much to say that every year since
 
 174 RACHEL LITTLER BODLEY. 
 
 her residence in Philadelphia Dr. Bodley's influ- 
 ence has grown stronger and been more percepti- 
 ble, but it has not been limited to that city ; it has 
 become world-wide through those who have car- 
 ried away with them her helpful instructions and 
 her healthful spirit. The elements of her success 
 have not all been peculiar to herself, but have 
 simply been appreciated and improved. Some of 
 these have been good health, acute powers of ob- 
 servation, a refined and modest manner, careful- 
 ness in details, a systematic division of time, and 
 an orderly arrangement of material. 
 
 For some years she has been the head of a 
 modest but sunny home in the vicinity of the col- 
 lege building whose central figure is her aged 
 mother who, having finished her work, awaits 
 tranquilly by her daughter's side the summons to 
 "come up higher." Here in her own home the 
 Dean each autumn holds a reception in honor of 
 the incoming college class and here throughout 
 the year come and go those from near and from 
 far who are busy about the world's work.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 COME with me in New York City to that well- 
 known number, "115 East 23d street," to 
 the house of the " Associated Artists." The head 
 of the association, Mrs. Candace Wheeler, is busy, 
 so we will step into this large studio in the rear, 
 and wait for her. 
 
 This studio is a study in color. The walls, of a 
 delicate and light green, are covered with pictures ; 
 one especially interests me a dark-haired girl 
 with her chin resting on her hand, and beside her 
 a sphinx : Modern Egypt and Ancient. Persian 
 rugs lie thick on the floor. The old-fashioned 
 black chairs are wonderfully carved ; serpents 
 coiled in the backs, their heads forming the arms. 
 Water-color brushes lie across a bowl on the table, 
 beside which red roses in a yellow vase are drop-
 
 176 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 ping their petals, one by one, on the open pages 
 of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of 
 Verses. 
 
 Everything about the studio reminds me of a 
 girl's grace and delicacy, and I am not surprised 
 to learn that it is the workshop of Mrs. Wheeler's 
 daughter, the artist, Dora Wheeler. 
 
 But here the mother comes in to welcome us; 
 she is a happy-faced, attractive woman, with a 
 cordial manner and a winsome smile. She is to 
 show us the artistic fabrics and needlework of the 
 famous house. These art-cloths are of the best 
 in quality ; the silks are pure, and the colors fade- 
 less. The work of needle and shuttle is "done 
 upon honor." 
 
 We especially have come to look at the now- 
 famous Tapestries, which are unsurpassed if not 
 unequalled in modern times, and we are conscious 
 of a feeling of pride that they are the thought of 
 a woman, and of an American woman. One of 
 the most beautiful in design is known as "The 
 Penelope," a lovely Greek creature pulling out by 
 lamplight the work she has done by day, from the
 
 MRS. CANDACE WHEELER.
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 179 
 
 old classic story. There are other " literary can- 
 vases " : " Hilda " from Hawthorne's Marble Faun, 
 and " Evangeline " from Longfellow, and a " Hes- 
 ter Prynne " from The Scarlet Letter. The Zufti 
 girl and the " Minnehaha " are both fine in con- 
 ception as well as color. The latter leans against 
 a tree, her hair falling over a branch. Bougereau 
 and Fleury especially commended this when the 
 tapestries were shown in Paris ; the latter saying, 
 "Her face is listening." "The Peacock Girl," 
 dressed in mediaeval costume, feeding her pea- 
 cocks, is one of the most beautiful, in color. Most 
 of these tapestries are from designs by Dora 
 Wheeler, who has made each detail a study, faith- 
 fully drawing from American history and litera- 
 ture. The inspiration for "The Peacock Girl" 
 came from a visit to quaint old Haddon Hall in 
 England. 
 
 These examples of pictorial needlework have 
 won the distinction of being treated by reviewers 
 and critics as works of art. Of "The Birth of 
 Psyche " and the " Winged Moon," Mr. Koehler, 
 the art-critic, says :
 
 l8o CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 " The former is executed upon a salmon pink ground in 
 shades of flesh tint, very pale green and white. The mind 
 or the soul, Psyche, if that be preferred is represented 
 by a winged female figure, rising up slowly in a dreamily 
 ascending line, like curling smoke, through the rosy mists 
 of a warm morning, her garment still trailing along the 
 earth, her gossamer wings of a pale, broken green, expand- 
 ing in the mild air of a new-born day. 
 
 " While in Psyche we have the roseate hues of a morning 
 veiled by the vapors rising from the earth, the Winged 
 Moon, although executed upon a ground of the same color, 
 gives us the feeling of a perfect evening. As to the com- 
 position, we have again a slightly draped female figure, this 
 time with slender birds' wings. The latter, of pale yellow, 
 are folded around and behind the figure, and assume a form 
 suggesting the crescent of the young moon. The figure, 
 thus bedded upon its own wings, floats in the calm evening 
 sky, in which are slight indications of bluish or violet clouds, 
 and of stars. Painting, whether in oil or in water-colors, 
 seems incapable of adequately rendering this superterrestrial 
 beauty. In this creation of the needle and the loom, how- 
 ever, there is a very potent suggestion, the best yet given, 
 of the glorious effect hinted at." 
 
 One naturally inquires how this needle-woven 
 tapestry is made. Mr. Koehler explains thus : 
 
 "Upon heavy silk canvas of rather loose and coarse 
 texture the design is produced, or woven as it were, by 
 introducing threads of the colors needed along the woof upon
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. l8l 
 
 the face. The material which serves as a basis, specially 
 made for the purpose, is in itself very beautiful, and, as the 
 woof and the warp are usually of different colors, develops 
 a play of changing tints, which, aided by the rich gloss of 
 the silk, gives it a life not to be otherwise attained. As 
 the color of the ground can never be wholly suppressed it is 
 easily seen that it fixes the keynote of the scale to be em- 
 ployed, and thus keeps the artist within certain decorative 
 bounds, however strong may be his or her tendency toward 
 realism. The delicacy of gradation that can be obtained by 
 the introduction of threads, either of one color or of several 
 colors twisted together, along the woof, is quite extraordi- 
 nary. As a practical advantage of these tapestries, it is 
 worth noting that they are absolutely moth proof, as nothing 
 but silk, and occasionally threads of gold and silver, enter 
 into their composition." 
 
 Of course any one of these tapestries should com- 
 mand the large price belonging to fine-art objects 
 and a thousand dollars is hardly its legitimate 
 value. One consideration greatly enhances this 
 value, looking at the tapestry aside from its dec- 
 orative quality that it furnishes remunerative 
 labor to numbers of women. Mrs. Wheeler and 
 her daughter have in many directions proved them- 
 selves benefactors to their sex, while they have 
 greatly developed the artistic taste of our country,
 
 182 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 raising the needle and the shuttle to the rank of 
 the brush and pigment and the sculptor's chisel. 
 
 Do you ask how was this woman, a mother with 
 home duties, led into this line of work, which not 
 only has made her famous, and her daughter, but 
 have been helpful to thousands in the way of self- 
 support ? Let us look back along her life and see. 
 
 Born in Delaware County, New York, of New 
 England parentage, she was one of eight children, 
 "each one of whom," says a friend of the family, 
 "has reason to be proud and thankful for the 
 chance of inheritance of such characters as the 
 parents. The father was as good as the prophet 
 Elijah, and as fervent as Paul, and withal possessed 
 of what we now call the 'artistic temperament.' 
 He had a passionate love of everything beautiful 
 in nature, or in the interior world of thought, and 
 so fine a religious and moral nature, that he really 
 became the conscience of the community. The 
 mother, still living at eighty-six, is the impersona- 
 tion of that Yankee gift which Mrs. Stowe calls 
 'faculty,' all of which was exercised in trying to 
 keep her children up to her own and the father's
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 183 
 
 ideal. They had to be intelligent, and obedient, 
 and industrious, and kind to others, and truthful, 
 for she compelled it. They were taught that life 
 meant work, and that what concerned the happi- 
 ness or welfare of others was their business. And 
 so they all grew up and swarmed out into the 
 world, so early in life that she is wont to say that 
 ' her children all ran out of the nest like chickens 
 with the shells still on their heads.' " 
 
 Though these young people had little money, 
 they had, you see, what was better than money 
 a happy home and the willingness to work. Can- 
 dace, the third child, and second daughter, would 
 walk with her father by the hour, drawing every 
 rare flower, which he picked for her, just because 
 it gave him pleasure to see her do it. So fond of 
 poetry was he that he clipped from the newspapers 
 each fine poem which he saw, and saved it for his 
 children. No wonder that such seed-sowing in 
 little hearts brought forth fair fruit of flavor. 
 
 At sixteen years of age Candace married a 
 young merchant and went to the city of New York 
 to live. Three of her brothers followed her there
 
 184 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 in due time, adding themselves to the number of 
 country boys who so often take their places in the 
 front rank of successful merchants. 
 
 In her unaccustomed city-life, with all the pleas- 
 ant country sights and sounds lost to her, all nat- 
 ural beauty blotted out, no sunsets or mountain 
 tops or blossoming pastures, nothing seemed beau- 
 tiful to our young countrywoman outside of her 
 home-life, until she suddenly found that it was the 
 beneficent province of art to create beauty for those 
 who had lost nature. Yet a picture to her was at 
 first a very inadequate substitute for the unroll- 
 ment of an evening sky, with all the dusky valleys 
 of the Delaware lying in perspective. 
 
 The love of art and the companionship of artists 
 in time became a part of the family-life. The 
 Studio-buildings were hives of friends ; and under 
 this genial social influence young Mrs. Wheeler 
 began to paint. An " instinct for color " proved 
 to be one of her natural gifts, and with the criti- 
 cism from the artists who were foremost among 
 our American painters, it was easy to form a high 
 standard and work toward it. Her own friend-
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 185 
 
 liness had made artists helpful and friendly, 
 and she rapidly expanded in the sunny atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 Fortunately she had always drawn ; even from 
 the time when the stalk of tiger-lilies she at- 
 tempted was high enough to look down upon her 
 little hands. She had long ago come to know 
 every expression of every plant, for she had lived 
 with them, and had held her father's hand while 
 she gazed up at the transparent crimson bell of 
 color which the meadow lily made between her 
 and the sky, or the fiery pink which the wild rose 
 showed with the sun behind it. She knew at just 
 what stage of growth the timothy-grasses threw 
 out purple, feathery seeds, and every curve and 
 angle of the blade and stem ; and all this digested 
 and assimilated knowledge of color and form 
 helped her rapidly on now at her easel. 
 
 After some years of city-life, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Wheeler made a country home on Long Island 
 for their growing children, and called it " Nestle- 
 down," an appropriate name for the home of four 
 little people, who, like their mother, loved the big
 
 1 86 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 trees, the rustle of green leaves, the sunshine and 
 a quiet home nest. 
 
 Twice the family made long sojourns in Europe, 
 where they all studied together, music, literature, 
 the languages and art ; the mother as enthusiastic 
 a student as her children, and well-nigh as youth- 
 ful in her feelings and sympathies. 
 
 When they returned to New York from their 
 second visit to Europe, Mrs. Wheeler's work for 
 the outside world began. The conditions of life 
 in America had been changing since her youth. 
 She saw men so busy in the hard struggle for 
 place and success that fewer married, and those 
 who did, could maintain only their immediate fam- 
 ilies, so that vast numbers of women were left 
 without homes and the means of support. 
 
 Of these women those who had accomplish- 
 ments zealously tried to turn them to account. 
 They taught music ; made fancy articles ; painted 
 little pictures ; concocted all sorts of tempting con- 
 veniences and sold them to their friends, or their 
 friends' friends, in an anxious, unsuccessful way. 
 
 Many of these women were the friends of Mrs.
 
 MISS DORA WHEELER.
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 189 
 
 Wheeler, and she was in sympathy with each. 
 This state of things at large became at last thor- 
 oughly borne in upon her, and then her mother's 
 New England faculty, and her father's zeal for 
 helping others suddenly clasped hands, rose up 
 within her, and examined the times for a remedy. 
 "Why not," said Mrs. Wheeler, " bring everything 
 that any woman can make, and needs to sell, into 
 a shop, and let everybody come and buy what 
 they really want, and put an end to this forcing of 
 the wrong thing upon the wrong person ? " 
 
 But who would pay the rent, and attend to the 
 store ? Mrs. Wheeler was equal to the emergency. 
 She called together a few of the best and the rich- 
 est women of New York, and 'asked fqr opinions. 
 Everybody had seen the want, everybody was glad 
 to hear of a remedy. Then Mrs. Wheeler sat 
 down at her desk and wrote a circular and printed 
 it at her own expense, telling the women of New 
 York that it was proposed to form a large and 
 influential association for the purpose of establish- 
 ing a place for the exhibition and sale of "sculpt- 
 ures, paintings, wood-carvings, paintings upon
 
 1 90 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 slate, porcelain and pottery, art and ecclesiastical 
 needle-work, tapestry and hangings," which work 
 shall be done by women. 
 
 About two hundred women responded to this 
 circular, and they formed themselves into the 
 New York Society of Decorative Art. They took 
 a house and made the society a blessing and a 
 success, by enlarging the range of things women 
 could do. China painting, needle-work, decoration 
 upon wood and other minor arts were thoroughly 
 taught. Mrs. Wheeler gave her time and thought 
 and heart fully to the work. 
 
 Soon arose the question : " What shall we 
 do with inartistic labor ? " So many desired to 
 earn a livelihood, but had received no artistic 
 training. There must be a shop where such work 
 could be received, and Mrs. William G. Choate, 
 Mrs. Wheeler and others proceeded to form a 
 "Woman's Exchange." As Mrs. Wheeler was the 
 Corresponding Secretary of the Decorative Art 
 Society, she succeeded in encouraging women in 
 many other cities to form auxiliaries and ex- 
 changes. Now there are few American cities
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 191 
 
 without these institutions, and they have been 
 copied in Canada, Sweden and Germany. 
 
 The next thought in Mrs. Wheeler's mind was 
 to demonstrate the fact that woman's labor, if well 
 trained, was needed in the world, and could not 
 only make its demand but find its wages, without 
 the intervention of charity or benevolence. To 
 this end she proposed to unite with other artists 
 in an artistic and decorative enterprise, under the 
 name of the " Associated Artists," where embroid- 
 ery and decorative needle-work should be made a 
 part of the scheme. Her friends now predicted a 
 failure. But her husband and brother were ready 
 to aid her with money. And she did not fail. 
 
 The very first work she and her allies were en- 
 trusted with was the now famous drop-curtain of 
 the Madison Square Theatre. To the execution 
 of this work was brought no special technical 
 knowledge of embroidery, but an intelligent un- 
 derstanding of the methods of both modern and 
 ancient schools, and a direct application of knowl- 
 edge of pictorial effect. It was a translation of a 
 painter's methods into needle-work. Every textile
 
 192 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 and material which would give color or effect, and 
 every method which would express drawing and 
 perspective, were considered, both broadly and mi- 
 nutely. The result was a landscape with color, 
 foreground, middle distance and perspective in 
 embroidery. 
 
 To Mrs. Wheeler the development of a school 
 of American embroidery meant more than mere 
 stitchery, however beautiful. It meant the train- 
 ing of bold strong designers, the teaching of girl 
 art-students how to turn their knowledge in a 
 direction where it was needed, and with a needle 
 instead of a brush to treat textiles with a feeling 
 belonging to pictures. Already a better kind of 
 talent has been developed and has been brought 
 to bear upon a branch of work that is purely fem- 
 inine, and with a result that is a great gain to dec- 
 orative art. Yes, from the " Associated Artists " 
 have resulted the important additions to the art of 
 this country ; the needlewoven tapestries, and the 
 manufacture of as beautiful drapery, upholstery 
 and wall-hanging fabrics as are made in the world 
 to-day. Careful study of ancient textiles, careful
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 193 
 
 selection of the best qualities they possess, and 
 careful pursuit of appropriate designs for modern 
 fabrics and missing them, bold creation of beau- 
 tiful forms have made the "Associated Artists' 
 Textiles " known among artists and art-lovers at 
 home and abroad. 
 
 The following incident shows what Mrs. Wheeler 
 has accomplished in decorative design. Messrs. 
 Warren and Fuller, some two or three years ago, 
 offered two thousand dollars in prizes for the best 
 wall-papers, the judges to be three of the most 
 prominent architects and decorators of New York. 
 Mrs. Wheeler prepared one design, which had 
 bee, honey-comb, and clover as motive ; her 
 daughter Dora, one ; and Miss Clarke, a young 
 lady who had studied with them from the begin- 
 ning of their work, another. Sixty designs were 
 sent from Germany, England and France, and two 
 hundred other designs were accepted for the com- 
 petition. Mrs. Wheeler took the first prize of 
 one thousand dollars, Miss Wheeler, Miss Clarke 
 and Miss Townsend, the second, third and fourth. 
 Four women took all the prizes !
 
 194 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 She herself believes that one of the most im- 
 portant things she has done is " to teach women 
 that they must bring perseverance, character and 
 teachableness, as well as technical skill to their 
 work in the world." 
 
 Back of her own wonderful executive ability 
 and knowledge, she has great kindness and sym- 
 pathy, without which no person can be a good 
 teacher. She has, says a lady who has worked 
 with her for years, " the biggest heart in the world." 
 She usually gives one afternoon each week to talk 
 with those women who wish to do good and re- 
 munerative work, and are glad to come to her from 
 distant cities for suggestions. 
 
 There has been another reason for her doing 
 humanitarian work. The death of her oldest 
 daughter, a lovely young mother, made an active 
 life, one that took her out of herself and her sor- 
 row, a necessity to her. How often God plans 
 great work for his creatures, in a way quite differ- 
 ent from their own careful sketching ! 
 
 Mrs. Wheeler has done much other public work. 
 She has been one of the managers of Cooper In-
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 195 
 
 stitute, lecturing before the students upon designs 
 as applied to textiles, and also before the Gotham 
 Art School of artisans and artists ; a member of 
 the State Charities Aid Association, and a writer 
 of books which her daughter has illustrated. She 
 was invited to the Silk Congress in England, as 
 an expert in silk-weaving. 
 
 She has plans in prospect for a Woman's Hotel, 
 for self-supporting women, a co-operative, dignified, 
 self-managed, home-like home, and when one is 
 established she hopes it will be the mother of 
 thousands, as the Decorative Art Society and the 
 Woman's Exchange have been. 
 
 If Mrs. Wheeler's public life has been success- 
 ful, not less, be sure to take note, has her home- 
 life been a happy one. " Nestledown," a red, 
 roomy cottage in the midst of three hundred acres 
 on Long Island, is a most charming place to visit. 
 It is a home, with its great fireplaces, which artists 
 and poets enjoy ; glowing with dainty color. The 
 hall in light Venetian red, contains Dora's first 
 work, along its stairway ; a procession of the chil- 
 dren of the family, in Japanese costumes, trooping
 
 196 CANDACE WHEELER. 
 
 up to bed, one with a doll in her arms, and the 
 artist-son, Durham, now grown to manhood, with 
 a toy gun in his hand. The parlor is in brown 
 and gold hues, the frieze, fleur-de-lis on matting. 
 The library in copper and robin's-egg blue, is 
 rich in books, and pictures, many of them remem- 
 brances from authors and artists. The motto of 
 the house is engraved over the mantle : 
 
 " Who lives merrily, he lives mightily ; 
 Without'en gladness availeth no treasure." 
 
 The dining-room especially interested me from its 
 wall-paper, for which Mrs. Wheeler received her 
 thousand-dollar prize, the exquisite china on every 
 hand, and her paintings on either side of the side- 
 board of mullein and cat-tails. Not less inviting 
 were the sleeping-rooms, where the furnishings 
 showed the exquisite taste of mother and daughter. 
 Mr. Wheeler has a right to feel proud of his fam- 
 ily, as he evidently does. The pet of the family 
 must not be left out ; Ponto, a great dog, yellow- 
 color with intelligent white face, given when a 
 puppy, by the monies of St. Bernard, to General
 
 CANDACE WHEELER. 197 
 
 Grant, and afterward to the Wheeler family by 
 General Badeau. 
 
 Their summer home on the top of the Catskill 
 Mountains, must be no less charming than " Nes- 
 tledown." They call it " Penny-royal ; " " be- 
 cause," say its owners, " it scarcely cost a penny," 
 and "because," say the friends who visit there, 
 " it is the most royal place they ever saw." 
 
 Thus in the prime of her womanhood, Mrs. 
 Wheeler has come to success along the way of 
 noble thought for others, by wise use of her time, 
 by careful development of her own natural tastes 
 and gifts, and by a cheerful courage that of itself 
 presages success. And though it be her daily 
 work to plan, to direct, to govern, to buy and to 
 sell and to estimate carefully and safely, to be a 
 good business woman as well as an artist and a 
 dreamer of dreams of beauty, she has kept her 
 womanly individuality and the greatest charm of 
 woman, lovableness.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 I BELIEVE I have never looked upon a happier 
 face than that of Clara Barton. The unselfish 
 heart, the hopeful nature, the helpful spirit, the 
 definite purpose to bless the world, are all revealed 
 in the radiance of that face. 
 
 And hers has been an eventful life. A New 
 England girl, born in North Oxford, Mass., the 
 youngest of a large family, enjoying the glee of 
 snow-sliding, and the gentle gathering of wild 
 flowers in the summer sunshine, she came care- 
 lessly to her eleventh year; then a great duty 
 broke in upon this gladsome girlhood. 
 
 A brother, by a terrible accident, became for 
 
 some years an invalid. And to the lot of the 
 
 buoyant Clara it fell to nurse him day and night 
 
 for nearly two years, taking only one half day for 
 
 198
 
 CLAKA BARTON.
 
 CLARA BARTON. 2OI . 
 
 recreation. Who could know then that the girl 
 was already fitting for heroic deeds by the side of 
 dying soldiers, both in Europe and America ; that 
 she was beginning that work which was to make 
 her name forever remembered and cherished? 
 Truly, a hand leads us though we may not feel it, 
 and the way is opened for us to walk in, though 
 we may not see our guide. 
 
 When Clara was sixteen she began to teach 
 school, the natural occupation for an energetic, 
 busy, conscientious, well-trained New England 
 girl. Later, she took up a full course of study 
 at Clinton, N. Y., and then went back to her 
 work. 
 
 But Miss Barton seemed always to be reaching 
 out to do the hard things in life ; the things which 
 others shrank from taking hold of not but that 
 she shrank too ; yet as she said years afterward, 
 when she was the only woman among the swamps 
 and sands of Morris Island, "Why, somebody had 
 to go and take care of the soldiers, so I went." 
 
 In 1853 she undertook a free school in Borden- 
 town, N. J. There was a strong prejudice against
 
 202 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 such a school ; she was assured it would prove a 
 failure, but she believed in it, and said she would 
 assume the responsibility for three months at her 
 own expense. She began with six scholars in an 
 old building, made this little school grow into two 
 large ones, and its influence secured the erection 
 of a fine building with five hundred pupils on the 
 roll. 
 
 Worn with the ardent labor as who is not that 
 gives genuine sympathy and devotion to a work ? 
 she resigned, and went to Washington for rest 
 among relatives, and to live awhile in a milder 
 climate. While there, some embarrassments hav- 
 ing developed in the Patent Office, Miss Barton 
 was recommended to the Commissioner as one 
 who was honest, capable and thorough ; and for 
 three years she labored faithfully in that new field- 
 but was removed during the Buchanan administra- 
 tion, because she was said to be a " Black Repub- 
 lican." She was reinstated, but resigned at the 
 beginning of the Civil War, for a broader work. 
 
 When the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment ar- 
 rived in Washington, from the bloodshed in Balti-
 
 CLARA BARTON. 203 
 
 more, Miss Barton was among those who met the 
 soldiers at the cars. When they were quartered 
 at the Capitol, she helped secure baskets of food 
 for them, and read to the wounded what the papers 
 were saying of their heroic conduct. 
 
 When the war began in earnest, and comforts 
 for the soldiers poured in from the people, many 
 sent direct to Miss Barton, feeling that their pack- 
 ages would surely reach the sons and brothers for 
 whom they were intended. Her own room was 
 soon filled, and overflowed into spacious ware- 
 houses ; and when the boats went down the Poto- 
 mac, she was on board with her precious freight 
 for the hospitals. 
 
 Late in 1861, she came home to see her aged 
 father, eighty-six years old, who in his youth had 
 served under General Wayne, and was anxious to 
 hear about the work which his youngest child was 
 doing. She told him how her heart constantly 
 ached for those at the front, who lay in suffering on 
 the battlefields, and how she longed to go to them ; 
 and the old father said : " Go, if you feel it your 
 duty to go ! I know what soldiers are, and I know
 
 204 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 that every true soldier will respect you and your 
 errand." 
 
 But when she offered herself to go beyond the 
 lines, there was no place for her. Woman-like 
 she made a place. She went to Assistant Quarter- 
 master-General Rucker, with tears on her face. 
 His generous spirit responded, for he believed 
 that a true woman could safely and properly go 
 anywhere, and be God's ministering angel, and 
 he gave her a " Godspeed." 
 
 And then, says Miss Lucy Larcom, in Our Fa- 
 mous Women, in a sketch of Miss Barton's work : 
 
 "We may catch a glimpse of her at Chantilly in the 
 darkness of the rainy midnight bending over a dying boy 
 who took her supporting arm and soothing voice for his 
 sister's or falling into a brief sleep on the wet ground in 
 her tent, almost under the feet of flying cavalry; or riding 
 in one of her train of army-wagons towards another field, 
 subduing by the way a band of mutinous teamsters into her 
 firm friends and allies ; or at the terrible battle of Antietam 
 (where the regular army-supplies did not arrive till three days 
 afterward) furnishing from her wagons cordials and bandages 
 for the wounded, making gruel for the fainting men from the 
 meal in which her medicines had been packed, extracting 
 with her own hand a bullet from the cheek of a wounded 
 soldier, tending the fallen all day, with her throat parched
 
 CLARA BARTON. 205 
 
 and her face blackened by sulphurous smoke, and at night, 
 when the surgeons were dismayed at finding themselves left 
 with only one half-burnt candle amid thousands of bleeding, 
 dying men, illumining the field with candles and lanterns 
 her forethought had supplied. No wonder they called her 
 the 'Angel of the Battlefield.' 
 
 " We may see her at Fredericksburg, attending to the 
 wounded who were brought to her, whether they wore the 
 blue or the gray. One rebel officer, whose death-agonies 
 she soothed, besought her with his last breath not to cross 
 the river, in his gratitude betraying to her that the move- 
 ments of the rebels were only a ruse to draw the Union 
 troops on to destruction. It is needless to say that she fol- 
 lowed the soldiers across the Rappahannock, undaunted by 
 the dying man's warning. And we may watch her after the 
 defeat, when the half-starved, half-frozen soldiers were 
 brought to her, having great fires built to lay them around, 
 administering cordials, and causing an old chimney to be 
 pulled down for bricks to warm them with, while she her- 
 self had but the shelter of a tattered tent between her and 
 the piercing winds " 
 
 One of her friends for many years, General J. J. 
 Elwell of Cleveland, O., a brave and noble soldier 
 on many battlefields, gives me this illustration of 
 her bravery : 
 
 " Miss Barton once came very near falling into 
 the hands of the enemy rather than abandon a 
 desperately wounded boy. The incident occurred
 
 206 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 in the retreat of Pope during the several days 
 fighting at the second battle of Bull Run. 
 
 " Miss Barton was about stepping on the last 
 car conveying the wounded from the field with the 
 enemy's cavalry in sight, and shot and shell from 
 their guns falling in our disordered ranks, when a 
 soldier told her there was left behind in the pine 
 bushes, where he had fallen, a wounded young 
 soldier, that he could not live, and that he was 
 calling for his mother. 
 
 " She followed her guide to where the boy lay. 
 It was growing dark and raining. She raised him 
 up and quietly soothed him. When he heard her 
 voice he said in his delirium, 'Oh! my mother has 
 come. Don't leave me to die in these dark woods 
 alone do stay with me don't leave me.' 
 
 " At that moment an officer cried out to her : 
 ' Come immediately, or you will fall into the hands 
 of the rebs they are on us.' 
 
 " ' Well, take this boy.' 
 
 "'No,' said the officer, 'there is no transporta- 
 tion for dying men. We have hardly room for the 
 living. Come quick.'
 
 CLARA BARTON. 207 
 
 "'Then I will stay with this poor boy. We 
 both go, or both stay.' 
 
 " Both were therefore taken on the car, and the 
 wounded boy carried to one of the Washington 
 hospitals, where his New England mother found, 
 nursed, closed his eyes in death, and took him to 
 his old home, where he rests with his kindred. I 
 heard read a most touching letter, all covered with 
 tear drops, full of expressions of thankfulness and 
 gratitude to the brave, gentle woman who had 
 rescued her son from a lonely death in the woods, 
 and sent him to Washington where she could meet 
 and administer the consolations of a mother to a 
 dying child. 
 
 " At another time she had raised a faint, fallen 
 soldier in her arms, and just when she was plac- 
 ing a cordial to his lips, a solid shot or shell took 
 him out of her arms, covering her with his blood. 
 
 " On Morris Island, she was the only woman 
 during the siege of Fort Wagner, where she con- 
 tributed greatly to the relief of the suffering and 
 wounded soldiers. The Island was itself a grave- 
 yard, having been occupied first by the rebels and
 
 208 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 then by our forces. A cup of good water was no- 
 where to be found. Wells were shallow and the 
 water brackish ; almost deadly in its character. 
 The siege was in hot weather, and the climate 
 malarious. Every part of the island could be 
 reached by the guns of Sumpter, Wagner, and 
 other forts. Here Miss Barton stayed, and on 
 the night of the assault when we lost fifteen hun- 
 dred men in an hour, she was there to succor the 
 wounded. She soon become dangerously ill in 
 her tent. I appealed to her to return to Port 
 Royal, or she would certainly die. Her answer 
 was, 'Do you think I will leave here during a 
 bombardment ? ' 
 
 " After a time, she was carried away, almost by 
 force, to a more healthy locality, where she was 
 ill for a long period. While on Morris Island she 
 helped care for General A. C. Voris of Ohio, 
 General Leggett of Connecticut, who losing his 
 leg would probably have died had it not been for 
 her timely help, and many other officers." 
 
 General Voris says : " I was shot with an Enfield 
 cartridge within one hundred and fifty yards of
 
 CLARA BARTON. 209 
 
 the fort, and so disabled that I could not go for- 
 ward. I was in an awful predicament, perfectly 
 exposed to canister from Wagner, and shell from 
 Gregg and Sumpter in front, and the enfilade 
 from James Island. I tried to dig a trench in the 
 sand with my sabre, into which I might crawl, but 
 the dry sand would fall back in place about as 
 fast as I could scrape it out with my narrow im- 
 plement. Failing in this, on all-fours I crawled 
 toward the lea of the beach, which I hoped might 
 shelter me a little, which was but a few yards off. 
 . . A charge of canister all round me aroused my 
 reverie to thoughts of action ; I abandoned the 
 idea of taking the fort and ordered a retreat of 
 myself, which I undertook to execute in a most 
 unmartial manner on my hands and knees spread 
 out like a turtle ; I moved toward the rear at the 
 slowest pace possible and say that I made any 
 progress. 
 
 " After working this way for a half-hour and 
 making perhaps two hundred yards, two boys of 
 the Sixty-second Ohio found me and carried me to 
 our first parallel, where had been arranged an ex-
 
 210 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 tempore hospital. After resting a while I was put 
 on the horse of my Lieutenant Colonel, from which 
 he had been shot that night, and started for the 
 lower end of the island, one and a half miles off, 
 where better hospital arrangements had been pre- 
 pared. Oh ! what an awful ride that was ! A sol- 
 dier walked along each side of the horse to hold 
 me from falling off. Every step taken sent a 
 pang through my tortured body. But I got there 
 at last, by midnight. I had been on duty for 
 forty-two hours without sleep, under the most try- 
 ing circumstances, and my soul longed for sleep, 
 which I got in this wise : an army blanket was 
 doubled and laid on the soft side of a plank, with 
 an overcoat for a pillow, on which I laid my worn- 
 out body. 
 
 " And such a sleep ! I dreamed that I heard 
 the shouts of my boys in victory, that the rebel- 
 lion was broken, that the Union was saved, that 
 we were a united people again, and that I was at 
 my old home and that my dear wife was trying to 
 soothe my pain ; in my rapture I tried to shout, 
 but my throat was husky, my lips parched, and my
 
 CLARA BARTON. 211 
 
 tongue was unable to respond. My sleepy emo- 
 tions awoke me, and a dear, blessed woman was 
 bathing my temples and fanning my fevered face ; 
 Clara Barton was there, an angel of mercy doing 
 all in mortal power to assuage the miseries of the 
 unfortunate soldiers." 
 
 And yet when I wrote to Miss Barton asking for 
 some data for this sketch, she modestly replied : 
 " The humdrum work of my every-day life seems to 
 me quite without incident. The persons who use 
 their brains, tongues and pens for the improve- 
 ment of their kind, are those of whom biographies 
 may profitably be written. The grand things their 
 tongues and pens have said are accessible, and 
 form a living inspiration to others. But me ; I 
 know of nothing remarkable that I have done." 
 
 After the war, letters poured in upon her from 
 broken-hearted mothers asking that the burial 
 places of their boys might be found. Talking the 
 matter over with President Lincoln, it was decided 
 that she should go to Annapolis, where the sur- 
 vivors of Andersonville were received, and attend 
 to this correspondence. Three days after the an-
 
 212 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 nouncement was made that she would be there, 
 she arrived, and to her amazement found four 
 bushels of letters awaiting her. 
 
 Soon after this she returned to Washington, es- 
 tablished a Bureau of Records of Missing Men, 
 employed several clerks to assist her, and com- 
 piled from hospital and prison-rolls, and from 
 burial-lists as complete a record as possible. 
 Later she visited Andersonville, and by the aid of 
 a Union prisoner, who being engaged in hospital 
 service had preserved the prison-rolls, she identi- 
 fied all but about four hundred of the thirteen 
 thousand graves of soldiers buried there, placing 
 a head-board at each grave, and a fence around 
 the cemetery. 
 
 For all this work she raised her own money, 
 Congress reimbursing her afterwards, by an ap- 
 propriation of fifteen thousand dollars. During 
 these four or five years of labor, she lectured fre- 
 quently both East and West upon experiences of 
 the war, holding audiences spellbound by her elo- 
 quent and sympathetic recitals. 
 
 In 1869, broken in health, she turned to Europe
 
 CLARA BARTON. 213 
 
 for rest, under the shadow of the Alps at Geneva. 
 But there another work was brought unto her very 
 doors. Five years previously, an International 
 Association called the " Red Cross Society " had 
 been formed at Geneva, whose object was the 
 lessening of the horrors of war, by rendering neu- 
 tral all surgeons, chaplains, and other persons 
 engaged in caring for the wounded, of both friend 
 and foe, extending over them the perpetual shelter 
 of the white flag of truce. 
 
 The United States had been solicited to join 
 in this treaty among the nations, but strangely 
 enough seemed indifferent. The leaders of the 
 Society sought Miss Barton, and urged her to 
 interest her country. This she promised to do. 
 But other work was close at hand. The Franco- 
 Prussian war had begun. The Red Cross Com- 
 mittee at Geneva came to Miss Barton again and 
 asked that she go at once with them to the battle- 
 field, and ill though she was, she would not refuse. 
 Her strong executive hand, her busy organizing 
 systematizing brain were felt at once. When Stras- 
 burg capitulated and twenty thousand were home-
 
 214 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 less and starving, she provided materials for thirty 
 thousand garments to be made by poor women, who 
 needed to earn money for their daily bread ; then 
 distributed the garments. She aided the starving 
 people at Metz, and the wounded at Sedan. She 
 entered Paris on foot during the days of the Com- 
 mune, distributing food and clothing to the needy. 
 Once, when, eager for bread, so that the mob over- 
 come the police, she came out of her house and 
 spoke to them ; they said " God ! it is an angel," 
 and became quiet and orderly. 
 
 While in Germany she spent much time with 
 the Grand Duchess of Baden, the daughter of Em- 
 peror William, a noble woman, and, like the Em- 
 press Augusta, devoted to the Red Cross Society. 
 
 Miss Barton says of this regal woman : " Her 
 many and beautiful castles, with their magnificent 
 grounds, were at once transformed into military 
 hospitals, and her entire court, with herself at its 
 head, formed into a committee of superintendence 
 and organized for relief. I have seen a wounded 
 Arab from the French armies, who knew no word 
 of any language but his own, stretch out his arms
 
 ORDERS AND DECORATIONS RECEIVED BY MISS KAKTON.
 
 CLARA BARTON. 217 
 
 to her in adoration and blessing as she passed his 
 bed." 
 
 The Grand Duchess gave Miss Barton a beau- 
 tiful Red Cross broach in gold and enamel, and 
 the Emperor gave her the Iron Cross, given only 
 to those who have done brave deeds on the field 
 of battle. 
 
 In 1873 she returned to America, and " though 
 so ill that through years of suffering," she says, " I 
 forgot how to walk, I remembered my resolve 
 and my promise, about the Red Cross Society." 
 By much personal persuasion, the Government was 
 at last brought to join itself to the thirty-one States 
 already in the humane compact, and President 
 Garfield appointed Miss Barton President of the 
 American Association of the Red Cross. 
 
 She soon saw the need that in our country the 
 society should act also in time of peace, and she 
 secured an amendment whereby calamities by fire, 
 flood, and other misfortunes could be ameliorated 
 by the aid of the organization. 
 
 Such misfortunes came. In the great fires in 
 Michigan, in the recent floods along the Missis-
 
 2l8 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 sippi and Ohio rivers Miss Barton dispensed the 
 gifts of the American people ; now providing seeds 
 for fields, and goods for building homes anew, and 
 now sending a pretty doll with these words pinned 
 to the dress : " Little Florence Jones of Western 
 Springs, 111., sends this doll to some little girl five 
 years old, who has lost all her dollies." Truly, 
 said the newspapers, " The flag of the Red Cross 
 has won the deepest confidence, love and respect 
 from the people on both sides of four thousand 
 miles of river." 
 
 After the earthquake in Charleston, Miss Bar- 
 ton at once hastened thither with supplies. While 
 there, being invited to a reunion of the Yates Pha- 
 lanx in Illinois, she wrote to them : 
 
 "And Charleston herself, standing thunderstruck, but 
 still manly, firm and brave, says, with bated breath : ' We 
 are stricken, but it was worth an earthquake to us to receive 
 the sympathy and learn the spirit of our Northern country- 
 men and women. We never knew them till now; their 
 courage was great, but their magnanimity is greater. We 
 thank God, to-day, that we are one people, and one people 
 we will remain; we would fight harder to stay in the Union 
 than we ever did to get out of it.' General Mann, tell the 
 old 39th this, and that at last they are fully victorious, not
 
 CLARA BARTON. 219 
 
 only in war, but in peace they have conquered. Tell them 
 that as I stood in the dismantled dome of Charleston Or- 
 phan House, last week, and looked over the bay upon the 
 glittering sands of Morris Island, I fancied us all there 
 again ; that in memory I saw the bayonets glisten ; the 
 swamp angel threw her bursting bombs ; the fleet thundered 
 its canonade, and the little dark line of blue trailed its way 
 in the dark to the belching walls of Wagner ; tell them from 
 me, what you will not of yourself, that I saw again their 
 fearless leader waving them on, up and over the parapets 
 into the jaws of death, and heard the clang of the death- 
 dealing sabres as they grappled with the foe. I saw the 
 ambulances laden with agony, and the wounded slowly 
 crawling to me down the tide-washed beach, Voris and 
 Cumminger gasping in their blood; heard the deafening 
 clatter of the hoofs of ' Old Sam,' as Elwell madly galloped 
 up under the walls of the fort for orders. I heard the 
 tender, wailing fife, the muffled drum, and the last shots, 
 as the pitiful little graves grew thick in the shifting 
 sands. 
 
 "All this for an entrance into Charleston, and never 
 gained. I turned and looked upon her now, a mass of 
 ruins ; there stood beside me the men who had held her 
 forts and manned her guns. 
 
 "'Behold what God hath wrought,' I said; and awed 
 as if by Almighty presence, hearts beating low and eyes 
 dim with memories old, we joined hands and picked our 
 way down the shaken staircases to the broken city at our 
 feet." 
 
 For a year Miss Barton was at the head of the
 
 220 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 Woman's Reformatory Prison at Sherborne, Mass., 
 and won the highest confidence. As I was walk- 
 ing with her one evening through the halls, a young 
 convict sprang out of bed, and stood half hidden 
 behind her grated door. 
 
 "What is it?" said the kind voice of Miss 
 Barton. 
 
 " I heard you coming, and I just wanted to look 
 at you," was the low response. 
 
 Passing two large letter boxes, I asked their use. 
 " One is that they may drop letters in to me, that 
 they may tell me anything and everything. They 
 often write because they are so lonesome." 
 
 Oh ! for such wardens in all the prisons of earth. 
 
 " The other box is for letters which they may 
 write to the Commissioners about any complaints 
 they have to make ; and nobody can see what they 
 write." 
 
 Abundant honors have come to Miss Barton. 
 Queen Natalie of Servia has conferred upon her 
 the Servian decoration of the Red Cross, suspended 
 by red, white and blue ribbons a compliment to 
 the Union colors. The German survivors of the
 
 CLARA BARTON. 221 
 
 Franco-Prussian war elected her a member of 
 their society, and sent a beautiful diploma. At 
 the opening of the World's Exposition at New 
 Orleans, a day was given to the Red Cross So- 
 ciety, Miss Barton sending a flag with the Red 
 Cross between the stars. At the last Red Cross 
 gathering at Geneva, she received a great ovation 
 from prominent persons. Among two hundred dis- 
 tinguished guests at an official dinner, Miss Barton 
 was the only lady present. From the Woman's 
 Relief Corps of the Grand Army of the Repub- 
 lic, she has received a Maltese Cross suspended 
 from a bar pin, bearing the name Clara Barton. 
 The red Geneva cross which drops over the ribbon 
 is of California gold, set with a diamond solitaire. 
 In her eloquent response, Miss Barton said : 
 
 " And it is neither in vain nor too soon that you 
 learn your lessons, for, whether one will or no, the 
 time is coming in the march of human progress 
 when you will be called to take a part in the di- 
 rection of the Government under which you live. 
 Desired or not, well or ill, veteran comrades, it is 
 coming. Well or ill, sister comrades, it must be
 
 222 CLARA BARTON. 
 
 so. The day is marching on when it shall be a 
 part of your duty as citizens to help judge of the 
 welfare of the nation, of the causes and necessities 
 for war, and to say of yourselves wherefor you 
 bear and rear sons. It can no more be stayed 
 than a tidal wave, and my charge to you, my 
 sister comrades, is that you learn your lessons 
 faithfully." 
 
 Surely, the world has been made better by the 
 life of Clara Barton.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 
 
 ON the Albany Railroad, midway between 
 Boston and Worcester, stands a group of 
 buildings beautiful for situation, grand in archi- 
 tectural proportions, and perfectly adapted to the 
 uses for which they were constructed. The broad 
 undulating acres border on a lake whose indented 
 shores are covered with stately trees and beautiful 
 villas. The cultivated lawns and gardens which 
 are seen on the opposite side of the sparkling 
 water are filled with every variety of tree and 
 shrub, and every device of landscape gardening. 
 The parterres and terraces sloping down to the 
 water's edge are covered with flowers of every hue, 
 transplanted from every clime, and are such as one 
 might see on the shores of the beautiful Como. 
 Lily-pads cover the surface of Waban water and 
 223
 
 224 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 
 
 every wild flower known to New England blooms 
 along the banks. Here the anemones and violets 
 first show their beauty in the early spring, and here 
 in the autumn the purple asters and the brilliant 
 golden-rod linger long after they have disappeared 
 from the neighboring meadows (as if to say we 
 cannot leave these shady haunts and walks). The 
 whole scene is one of surpassing beauty and it 
 would seem that nature with lavish hand had pre- 
 pared it for some grand purpose. 
 
 The steward into whose possession all this had 
 fallen, and who had for years been planting his 
 vineyards and trees and preparing the grounds for 
 a family mansion which should crown and complete 
 the picture, had been saying to himself : " Soul, 
 thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take 
 thine ease, eat, drink and be merry." Under the 
 shade of these stately trees he had spent his lei- 
 sure hours with the beautiful boy, his only son, 
 who was heir to all these proud acres. Here 
 with his own surpassing taste he had planned the 
 walks and drives and beautified the lawns. 
 
 In an unlooked-for moment this only son was
 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 225 
 
 stricken with a fatal disease ; one week of sickness 
 ended his earthly life, and his father, the brilliant 
 man of the world, the successful lawyer, at the 
 acme of his fame, in the heyday of life, bowed his 
 head in such overwhelming grief that his hair 
 became white as snow in one short week, and every 
 plan and purpose was changed. His hopes and 
 prospects were buried under the green mound of 
 earth which covered that little form around which 
 all the interests of his life had clustered. Hence- 
 forth every tree and smallest flower spoke only of 
 his boy. 
 
 Thus bereft, he heard out of the desolate silence 
 a voice like the sound of many waters, a voice 
 which stirred his inmost soul, saying, "I have 
 other work for you to do ; let the treasures which 
 I have committed to your keeping be used for fit- 
 ting other sons and daughters to do the great work 
 which must be done to save this world from sin, 
 and to make its waste places to bud and blossom 
 for other souls as you have made your little spot 
 of earth to bring forth fruit for one. Have I not 
 so loved the world that I have given my only son
 
 226 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 
 
 to redeem it ? " Thus called, the ready answer 
 was : " Here, Lord, am I ; send me." 
 
 For six years this man of God journeyed far and 
 near through the storms of winter and the heat of 
 summer to consult eminent men and women as to 
 the wisest way to use his fortune for the highest 
 and broadest education of the young. At length, 
 after these many wearisome journeys, with utter 
 abandonment of ease and luxury, even of the 
 ordinary comforts of life, his resolution was formed 
 and his life-work begun. In 1872 the corner-stone 
 of Wellesley College was laid ; and a structure as 
 beautiful and complete as any in the world has 
 arisen, for the purpose of giving to the daughters 
 of this country a broad and thorough Christian 
 education. 
 
 " Because," said the founder of Wellesley, 
 " educated Christian women have more to do in 
 forming the opinions and making the character 
 of men than all other influence combined, I will 
 build a hall large enough to accommodate three 
 hundred girls." 
 
 His friends smiled at his enthusiasm, and thought
 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 227 
 
 in their hearts " It will be many a year before 
 three hundred girls will want a college education." 
 But he with his prophetic vision believed other- 
 wise. He said " The young women of Wellesley 
 College shall be taught every thing necessary to 
 make a true woman. They shall be taught that 
 household labor is as honorable as the study of 
 Latin and Greek ; they shall be taught that it is 
 honorable and womanly and Christian for a girl 
 whose parents are obliged to sacrifice the ordinary 
 comforts of life to give her an education, to bear 
 some part of that sacrifice." Here again many 
 friends of the enterprise shook their heads and 
 questioned the feasibility of such a plan. 
 
 During these years of waiting and preparation, 
 while the towers and turrets of the " College 
 Beautiful " were rising from the hill-tops among 
 the trees, a young girl in a Western town was 
 quietly pursuing her college course and prepar- 
 ing, all unconsciously, for the great work which 
 awaited her. 
 
 Miss Alice E. Freeman was born in Colesville, 
 Broome County, N. Y. She is the daughter of
 
 228 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 
 
 Dr. James and Elizabeth Freeman and is the eldest 
 of four children. Her father, with a longing for 
 education which nothing could check, began his 
 professional studies after the birth of his youngest 
 daughter, and the youthful mother, only seventeen 
 years older than her daughter, was left with the 
 care of the farm and the household affairs while 
 her husband studied medicine in a neighboring 
 town ; so it will be seen that the daughter is, by 
 an act of predestination, the child of both zeal and 
 culture. 
 
 While Miss Freeman was still very young Dr. 
 Freeman removed with his family to the little vil- 
 lage of Windsor, a charming spot on the Susque- 
 hanna, whose beautiful natural scenery filled the 
 child with enthusiastic delight. She early began 
 to share the responsibilities of the household and 
 became the nurse and constant companion of the 
 younger children ; her days were spent in teaching 
 the little ones in the woods and fields the love of 
 wild flowers and of all beautiful things in nature, 
 and this is perhaps the secret of her own enthusi- 
 astic love for flowers and ferns and sunset clouds,
 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 229 
 
 and this the fountain from which she drew that 
 elixir which has thus far kept her as young in feel- 
 ing and as fair in face as when she roved over the 
 fields and meadows of the old farm and at six 
 years of age sat down on a mossy bank by the 
 roadside and with the three little children fell fast 
 asleep. With remorseful feelings she hastened 
 with her charge when she awoke, the baby in the 
 little wagon and the other two tagging behind, to 
 confess to her mother how unfaithful she had been, 
 and with what horror she contemplated the possi- 
 bility that the children might have been stolen by 
 the gypsies while she slept. Thus early she began 
 to take upon herself the responsibilities of life 
 and thus early began that conscientious discharge 
 of life's duties which has worked out for her a 
 character as beautiful as it is rare. 
 
 She spent the years of her happy childhood in 
 this picturesque village, and here at the old acad- 
 emy she developed a love for study which made 
 it inevitable that she should desire to go to college. 
 About this time Michigan University opened its 
 doors to women. At once Miss Freeman's reso-
 
 230 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 
 
 lution was taken. She entered the University 
 soon after, and was one of the pioneers of the 
 hazardous experiment of co-education. During 
 the four years of her college-life her simplicity and 
 directness of character, her thorough womanly self- 
 respect, her faithful scholarship and earnest Chris- 
 tian spirit exerted an influence which cannot be 
 over-estimated. Miss Freeman graduated in 1876 
 and after teaching three years in the West she 
 was called to the chair of History in Wellesley 
 College. Her success in this department was so 
 marked, though she was but twenty-four years of 
 age, that the founder of the College often said 
 of her : " There is the future President of Welles- 
 ley College." 
 
 In 1880 the founder of Wellesley College, Mr. 
 Henry F. Durant, died. The same year the Presi- 
 dent of the College was obliged to leave on ac- 
 count of ill health. In the exigency of the moment, 
 Miss Freeman was invited by the trustees to act as 
 President until some one could be found to fill the 
 place. It had been predicted by wise men and 
 women alike that there was not a woman in the
 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 231 
 
 country who could stand at the head of a large 
 and growing college and administer its government 
 successfully. 
 
 Miss Freeman occupied the position of Presi- 
 dent pro tern for one year, and so remarkable was 
 her influence in this position, such was her aptitude 
 m governing and such her skill and tact in mana- 
 ging the affairs of the college, that at the end of 
 the year she was invited by a unanimous vote of the 
 trustees to become the President of Wellesley Col- 
 lege ; the only question being whether with her 
 youth and her delicate physique she would be able 
 to bear the great burden of work which the posi- 
 tion would involve. Six years have passed since 
 Miss Freeman took the reins of government. In 
 her administration she has displayed strength and 
 sweetness of character, discernment and wise 
 judgment, ability to govern, and at the same time to 
 influence, and to lead to the highest and best. With 
 the playfulness and simplicity of a child, she has 
 a deep religious nature and the modest reserve of 
 a true woman. The charm of her personality and 
 the wisdom of her methods have won all hearts ;
 
 232 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 
 
 her own enthusiasm is contagious and every stu- 
 dent regards her as a personal sympathetic friend 
 to whom she may go at all hours for council and 
 comfort. She has a clarity of mental vision that 
 is rarely equaled, and a balanced judgment which 
 is seldom questioned ; her keen insight into char- 
 acter enables her to detect anything wrong in the 
 life of a girl, and her ready tact and sympathy lead 
 her always to apply the right remedy. 
 
 During Miss Freeman's administration the num- 
 ber of students has more than doubled. Four 
 large halls and two cottages have been added and 
 nearly every house in the village where the college 
 is located is filled with students. Last year there 
 were fully one thousand applicants, and at the 
 present moment the number of those who are 
 seeking admission to the college is larger than 
 ever before. 
 
 Miss Freeman, though delicate in feature and 
 slight in figure, has a power of endurance which 
 enables her to accomplish a great amount of work. 
 She is working out her own theories, the most im- 
 portant of which she thus states to her girls :
 
 ALICE E. FREEMAN. 333 
 
 " God has made you after his own plan, and He 
 places you just where He wishes you to work with 
 Him to bring about the highest results for your- 
 self ; He has given you every opportunity. Make 
 yourself what you will remember it lies with you. 
 God can make no mistakes." 
 
 One who has known her for many years says of 
 Miss Freeman : 
 
 " She is especially esteemed for her quick sym- 
 pathies, her sincere enthusiasm, her devotion to 
 the cause of higher education, her capacity in 
 carrying out her convictions, and particularly for 
 her most lovely Christian charity which creates an 
 atmosphere of purity and earnestness throughout 
 all her work." 
 
 Her Alma Mater, in just acknowledgment of her 
 work, has conferred upon her the degree of Ph. D. 
 Columbia College on the occasion of its semi-cen- 
 tennial conferred upon Miss Freeman with other 
 distinguished literati and educators the degree of 
 Doctor of Letters.
 
 T 
 
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