Mary Elvira Elliott

“ MARY STONE BURNHAM.—It has been well said: "It is as difficult to write a faithful biography as to paint a true portrait. The artist gives form, line, color, and a phase of life and expression. The biographer gives country, line- age, personal appearance, deeds; but the better part of life, the incentive, is as hard to catch, as delicate to transcribe, as the soul is to imprison on canvas." The incentive in the life of Mrs. Burnham, it may well be said, is a deep- rooted generosity, which has prompted her to carry out the principle she has adopted, "Let me share my portion with others." ”

“ Now came the broader question of the right to vote, which involves all other rights. She was earnest in its advocacy, and came to see that it was a much more comprehensive reform than even the anti-slavery movement. But she felt that her life was consecrated to the slave, and that her failing voice and broken health must be husbanded for that service. Yet she was thoroughly identified with the suffrage movement, and was recognized, with the Grimkes, as the pioneer who, with bleeding feet, smoothed the path through which the women of the suffrage movement might lead their sex to the light. ”

“ KATE SANBORN.— Breezy Meadows, cool, shady, a brook singing along a few steps from the piazza; cattle, sleek and contented, grazing on the rolling slopes of upland pasture; fields of growing timothy and clover, grain and corn, on every hand. A garden, blossoming full with flowers of our grandmothers' day, and new varieties also, leads into but half hides another, where grow old-fashioned and new-fangled fruits, berries, and vegetables, for the refreshment of mistress and guests. ”

“ I think every one who knows and loves poetry in its highest form and expression will agree with all this, and will feel that the critic spoke of very great verse. Many other critics have been to the full as appreciative, and have felt, as I do, the constant delight of splendid phrase and Shakespearian vigor and utterance in Louise Chandler Moulton's sonnets, and the atmosphere of warmth and beauty that bathes the thought and fancy of each page.
But in spite of the largeness and high quality of her work it is quite as much the woman as the poet who is to be loved and admired. ”

“ Large-hearted and large-souled, of a religious spirit unfettered by dogma, most tender, most true, most compassionate, genial, ingenuous, of an absolute integrity and an absolute unworldliness, she has the warm affection of all who are fortunate enough to know her at all closely. Men and women, young and old, come to her for the pleasure of the passing hour, for advice, for sympathy in joy or trouble. ”

“ It is about a year and a half since I burst the harrowing bonds of the narrow creed of partialism — man-made — and found light and joy in the glorious field of God's universal and impartial love, and I find I can gather daily of its wholesome and delicious fruits a fresh supply; and, should I be spareil to the common age of men, and be permitted to range the same broad field of glowing grace and partake of the heavenly bounties, I surely shall find a spiritual food sufficient for all my wants. In the good Father I fear not to trust."
Eunice's heart beat in sympathy with her soul. ”

“ Absorbed in her work, unconscious of the spiritual beauty which invested her daily life—whether in her kitchen, in the heat and overcrowding incident to the issues of a large special diet list, or sitting at the cot of some poor lonely soldier, whispering of the higher realities of another world—she was always the same presence of grace and love, of peace and benediction. ”

“ The parents had high ideals for their children, eight in all, and together they trained the boys and girls in habits of industry, thrift, self-control, and a genuine religious faith. The father was a man of unusual sweetness and purity of character. The mother, like so many New England women of that period, had a practical wisdom and energy which beautifully complemented her husband's gentle traits. Both believed in the value of a good education, for daughters equally with sons, and labored cheerfully to secure for their large family such advantages as the times afforded. ”

“ Robinson is a noble woman. By nature, by training, by environment, by devotion to duty, by living for the benefit and comfort of others less fortunate than herself, she is a splendid representative of true New England womanhood, the best in the world. Her work in the Woman's Relief Corps, both locally and in the State, is a matter of record, known throughout the country. It is a record of which every resident of Worcester is proud, and in thus honoring her city and her State she has brought honor upon herself. ”

“ Such a woman as Mrs. Flint is a blessing to any community and an honor to humanity. Her memory will be cherished with grateful affection and genuine respect in the towns where her influence and good deeds have been best known and her personal qualities appreciated, while in the wider circle of those who have been told of her gracious character and noble philanthropy will her name be treasured with reverence and admiration.
In the little cemetery at North Reading, not many rods from the home once so dear to her, lies the body of Harriet N. Flint beside that of her husband. ”

“ I was once a sufferer on a battle-held and long afterward in a hospital, and every morn I could feel as if a silver cord was twined around a capstan in the region of glory and reached to my heart, where it was anchored by the hand of woman. ”

“ If I were asked where under 'Representative Women' Charlotte J. Thomas stood, I should class her with those whose watchword is emancipation—freedom of thought, speech, and action, wherever such freedom would lead to the betterment of mankind. To have original and persistent ideas and to develop them honestly and independently has been her unswerving aim. These characteristics have shown themselves first and always in the home, where music, society, and hospitality have been of an unusual scope and of choice quality. ”

“ We travel to learn; and I have never been in any country where they did not do something better than we do it, think some thoughts better than we think, catch some inspiration from heights above our own — as in the art of Italy, the learning of England, the philosophy of Germany. ”

“ She carries the burdens of others easily, and seems to have none of her own. "Verite sans peur" is Miss Benneson's motto, adopted when she was eighteen year's old and so faithfully adhered to that her friends, seeing it even on her office; walls, have come to associate it with her name. Following truth without fear and seeing the best that is in every one, she has become to others a constant stimulus to new and high achievement. They cannot bring into her atmosphere what is trifling or degrading. She opens to them a larger life, helping them by showing them how to help themselves. ”

“ A lyrical and dramatic power is needed, together with that sway over language which welds a fancy immutably into its own sentences. This last the author has in the highest degree: every word strikes home; every line is clear, distinct as if cut in stone ; the pen in her hands becomes so like the sculptor's chisel that one questions if poetry be the fittest exponent of her genius. ”

“ Then, with her pale, uplifted face, always beautiful, but never so beautiful as when it lay back looking into the world to which she has herself now gone, she bore the departing soul by the power of faith to its rest. ”

“ ABBY KELLEY FOSTER was the descendant of a long line of Quaker ancestry, English on the mother's side, Irish on the father's. From the former came her unflinching determination, her almost dogged persistence, her unyielding will where a principle was at stake, her severe judgment of all who failed to reach her lofty standards of morality. With the Celtic blood came her cheerfulness, her ingenuousness, her childlike simplicity, and utter lack of self-consciousness. ”

“ CORA AGNES BENNESON, counsellor-at-law and special commissioner.—Wherever in history a person is found whose plan of life has been drawn from within, whose course has been mapped out without precedents, that man or woman justly challenges attention. The last third of a century has furnished not a few women of independent thought and action who have vindicated the right of each individual to do that for which he or she is fitted by nature. Younger women too easily forget the debt they owe these women of earnest conviction and liberal spirit. ”

“ To high and low her attitude has been and is, 'You have innate nobleness: give the best in you a chance to show itself and to increase and benefit your fellow-beings.' Such a trend on the individual side has naturally on public questions meant 'anti-slavery, woman suffrage, education without stint, and universal brotherhood.' Here is a democratic instinct that does not content itself with word of mouth, but daily puts into practice the precepts it holds dear. ”

“ Lucy was born about a year after her mother had made, in behalf of her children, almost the only determined stand in all her gentle life; and it has been suggested that this fact, through heredity, may have had something to do with Lucy's remarkable character. Every one on the farm worked. The mother milked eight cows the night before Lucy was born, a sudden thunder-shower having called all the men into the hay-field. She said regretfully, when informed of the sex of the new baby, "Oh, dear! I am sorry it is a girl. A woman's life is so hard!" ”

“ It is not a show place, but a home; and Miss Sanborn's hospitality is much larger than her acres. Sometimes it is a picnic party out from Boston, and always a guest in the house, often half a dozen. She is a good housekeeper and an excellent farmer.
She lives outdoors, makes her garden, and walks among the growing crops. Dogs and horses know the clear, wholesome ring of her voice, and come to be petted. Even the cows are a little more attentive when she calls. Only a womanly woman, a lady born and reared, could live her life of good cheer, literary environment, and farming. ”

“ The gifted woman who has brought the music in this church to rank with the first in the land, and who in the last ten years has done more to ennoble and spiritualize the work of music in the church than any one within the writer's knowledge, brhigs to her position not only special aptitude, but skill acquired by intense and unremitting study, an artistic style born of acquaintanceship with the best music of many peoples and lands, and, what is still more important, a realization of the soul of things which finds utterance in the majestic strains of Te Deum and oratorio. ”

“ The old home, which has been for a century in the Stevens family, resounds constantly to the music of children's voices, for, although Mrs. Stevens has been prominently connected with the child-saving institution of her State, she believes most ardently that an institution can never be a substitute for a home; and, while she urges her Maine women to open their doors to God's homeless little ones, she herself sets them a practical example. ”

“ Loving her Saviour, she loved the divinity in our humanity, and believed that all good thoughts, words, deeds, are divine; that we are but the channel through which they flow, and that the divine current is sure to deposit in our hearts the seeds of constant joy. ”

“ Distinguished abolitionists were often called men with one idea. Anti-slavery, in its immeasurable importance to all the interests of the country, material, mental, moral, and social, as well as religious and political, was one idea far too great for ordinary minds, even without any other. But the sturdy symmetry and consistency of Mr. Foster's character were as wonderful as were his vigor and power in any one direction. Earliest and bravest among the temperance reformers, when even that cause was almost as odious as anti-slavery became afterward ”

“ In many cases she has now in charge children whose father or mother or both parents were formerly under her instruction and are now teachers in some department of the school. On each returning Sunday she has the inspiring satisfaction of looking the greater part of these children in the face, a most beautiful sight; and through her constant watchfulness and well-directed efforts she controls, directs, and draws out their young minds in the direction of truth, justice, and loveliness of character. She restrains all that is wrong, and encourages all that is good and lovely. ”

“ I come from a State in which there does not breathe a loyal man who does not extend the right hand of welcome to every sister, mother, or sweetheart within her borders, whose heart beats in sympathy with us."
The resolution which was offered by Chaplain-in-chief Foster was adopted, namely: "That we cordially hail the organization of a National Woman's Relief Corps, and extend our greeting to them. We return our warmest thanks to the loyal women of the land for their earnest support and encouragement, and bid them God-speed in their patriotic work." ”