Various

“ Those who believe in heredity can trace some of Helen Bell's noblest traits, her self-forgetfulness, her public spirit, her restrained enthusiasm and her fine balance of character to an ancestry, Quaker and Moravian, including men and women who were distinguished, in their day and generation for their steadfast endurance, their simplicity of life and their integrity of purpose. ”

“ Of Helen Bell, as president of the Browning Society others will speak, dwelling upon the generous culture, the richly stored mind the well balanced judgment and administrative ability that have enriched and guided our society during the years of its broadest development. Although deeply appreciating, and having enjoyed to the fullest extent these benefits, I like better to linger over those intimate personal traits—those qualities of heart and spirit that conspired to make up a character of unusual strength and sweetness, the subtle underlying traits, which make us what we are. ”

“ And here it seems to me we touch the lesson, the power of her life—the value of character! This is an old and trite thing to say, but the preponderance of character in our every-day estimate of the importance of a life is not so very common. We are much more apt to count up the social or business value of the individual than to realize what the simple presence of a pure and lovely life means to all who live within its influence. But this is really what Nature works out for us—the great Fate that no one can escape—"As a man lives so shall he be." ”

“ The girls, slightly or not at all acquainted with each other, timid in expressing their wishes or even in asking questions as to the possibilities or advantages of the Guild, would have been repelled by the slightest appearance of a patronizing spirit or discouraged by any prominence of superior attainment. The former Helen Bell could not manifest; any consciousness of superiority was held cautiously under—all covered up in the woman heart of sympathetic companionship and co-operation in promoting the work of the Guild. ”

“ After the uncle's death Helen Bell found an opportunity of purchasing the desired property, and so complete the gift of Mr. Jordan, known as "The Ephrata Estate." She reserved a life interest—how short it proved!—in this part she purchased, and made the deed to the Moravian Society, thus manifesting affectionate regard for her uncle, and the missionary spirit which carried the love of Christ to all peoples. Such was the religion learned from her mother.
If happiness comes unsought to those who use their talents for the enriching of their fellow-beings, happiness sought her and possessed her. ”

“ Some lives are sent down to this dear old world of ours, which seem to bind us not only to themselves but to it by the force and intensity of their very humaneness, their appreciation and delight in its beauty and its joy, while by the expansion of their higher and spiritual powers, their abnegation, their aspirations and their devotion, they make fast for us a link in the chain that draws us toward the unseen and the eternal. ”

“ There was the attractive personality; the genial benignity; the generous appreciation; the contagious keenness of enjoyment; the child spirit of the happy now; the absence of anxiety for the future. There was a perpetual youth whose present moment is ever the fullest of life. Therefore, her coming was a joy; her leaving ever a sadness.
To women born and bred in the leisure class, she ought to be a stimulus to holy living; to the selfishly indolent, the victims of ennui and misanthropy, a perpetual rebuke. ”

“ Here an abundant flora greets the advent of spring, and makes summer fragrant with the white blossoms of the buckwheat that clings to the stony hill side, caressed by lively bees gathering a royal harvest of honey for their winter stores. A little later autumn assumes a dress of unusual brilliancy, contrasting finely with the unchanging evergreens till winter follows all enrobed in white, bringing leisure for family parties and all the blessedness of home and social life. ”

“ She would give freely her services to many now unknown to her, who were hungering for human companionship and sympathy.
The days of leisure had been well employed—the time of preparation wisely ordered. Now, the world was all before her, where and what to choose. Helen Bell was undergoing a transformation, and anxiously this transformation seemed to correspond to the material change in her outer surroundings. Her childhood, her play days, her memories of father and mother were closely associated with the beautiful street also undergoing transformation. ”

“ She was always constant in her attachments and friendships, never in the widening circle of later years losing sight of any of the friends of her girlhood—and, after any separation, long or short, meeting them with just the same loving interest in all that concerned them. She had the rare faculty of being the nearest and dearest to many without allowing herself to become absorbed even partially in any one of them to the exclusion of another. ”

“ Of the crowds who came from all parts of the city to find pleasure and profit in the Browning Society meetings, no one enjoyed the society of literary men and women, no one had finer appreciation of the beautiful than the presiding officer. Nevertheless what she sought was the improvement and progress of the society far more than her own enjoyment. In the papers read at the In Memoriam, the Browning Society have beautifully expressed their mourning for their loss, and their appreciation of her valued services. ”

“ A voice of comfort breathes from sorrowing Earth
⁠If winter is the nursery of flowers,
If purity and loveliness have worth
⁠Beyond this world of ours,
If there is pity for the tears we shed,
If any truly live—thou art not dead! ”

“ Enjoying all that is good in art and in literature, choosing with unerring instinct the best in all, she made these treasures her own in the truest sense of possession, the ownership of understanding and appreciation, always realizing that each endowment and each acquisition was a sacred trust which she held for others, something to be used for the world's brightening and uplifting. ”

“ Even in the most commonplace and ordinary mortal whom many of us would call dull and pass over without another thought, she through some heaven-born instinct of comradeship, some generous feeling of the kinship of humanity, would find something to interest her, some meeting place of thought through which she could enter into his or her pursuits and pleasures. ”

“ At home, the young scholar found leisure and opportunity to gratify her desire for knowledge. General society could not draw the omnivorous reader from the companionship of historians and philosophers, of poets and novelists. ”

“ We cannot fail to believe that the light which shone upon so many with clear and comforting radiance is already shining for joy and blessing, somewhere, in those illimitable spaces which we call Heaven. ”

“ While admitting into the close bonds of friendship certain chosen ones, whom she loved with a tender and utterly unselfish devotion, she entertained a strong liking for a large circle of acquaintance and felt a warm sympathy and interest in "all sorts and conditions of men." ”

“ HELEN BELL'S WORK IN THE N. C. GUILD FOR WORKING WOMEN.
The feeling which overshadows all our hearts at this time is the loss of our beloved director, teacher and fellow-member, Helen Bell. She has been so constantly with us and a part of us from the first inception of the Guild, that we almost grew to accept her as something we had a right to, like our air and sunshine ”

“ Subscribing with almost childlike simplicity to the evangelical faith of the Church of her fathers, the Moravian Church, treasuring with jealous affection the memorials of its heroic past, and aiding in its works of present usefulness, her attitude towards other religious bodies, Jewish and Christian, was broadly Catholic, a brotherhood of faith seeming to be an integral part of a character whose leading impulse was the brotherhood of man. ”

“ Yet only in our hearts and in our memories can be the knowledge of the strength she has been to us, of the joyous earnestness with which she has performed her different duties on the Board, and of the modest way in which when we were perplexed she would suggest just the right thing for us to do. ”

“ Her natural sincerity and nobility gave her stability and a personal power that centered her and her deep seriousness made her take even the little events of every day at an unusual valuation. She never despised another's opinion, or failed to consider the rights of those whose judgments she could not accept. ”

“ Into this labor of love Helen Bell entered and taught the History of German Literature, until a fatal illness removed the accomplished teacher.
Besides those seeking instruction in evening classes, the chairman of the committee, the devoted Mrs. Eliza S. Turner, suggested that many girls might find benefit in meeting together for conference, for recreation, for social enjoyment, for mutual improvement, and also for the encouragement of the less thoughtful and less experienced, who needed the counsel and sympathy of wiser and stronger sisters. ”

“ The secluded student was to become a leader; habits of life would undergo a radical change; contemplation would yield to action; receiving to dispensing; the retiring maiden would be well known to admiring thousands of men and women as President and Secretary of two of the largest organizations in Philadelphia whose duties would engross during many years her time and energies. ”

“ On holidays these merry girls gathered in the freedom of country life, where in rural walks and wild adventure Helen lead on to fun and frolic, for her nature knew neither physical nor moral fear, and her independence and love of liberty felt no veneration for Mrs. ”

“ From her father she inherited a love of nature which was strengthened in her long summer vacations near the Water Gap, where field walks or mountain scrambles, or excursions in the woods were ever a pleasure. ”

“ Hallowell, in her beautiful remembrances of Helen Bell, in the Philadelphia Ledger, has spoken with exquisite appreciation of her work in the New Century Guild and in her German class. Of the delights of the Saturday walks, I can speak with enthusiasm having taken part in many of them and entering with her into the desire to arouse in these young women an interest in the historic spots so dear to her, Carpenters' Hall, the Hall of Independence, old Christ Church, the burial place of Franklin, or old St. ”

“ In this little paper it is not my intention to speak of our president's work in the Browning Society or elsewhere, but very simply and briefly give one woman's impressions of another in some of the more open relations of life, premising with a few verses which Lowell might have written expressly for Helen Bell.
"Not as all other women are
⁠Is she that to my soul is dear ”