“ Willing was drawn into public speaking by her temperance zeal, and soon she found herself addressing immense audiences in all the great cities of the land. As one of the corresponding secretaries of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, she presented its claims at conferences of ministers, and in scores of large towns in different parts of the United States, interesting thousands of people in its work. ”

“ At the age of nineteen she became the wife of a Methodist minister, and went with him to western New York. The multitudinous duties of a pastor's wife left small time for study, but she has always had a language or a science on the tapis. She began to write for the press at the age of sixteen years, and, besides constant contributions to papers and magazines, she has produced two serials for New York papers and ten books of no mean quality. ”