own convictions. From childhood she developed a personality which
charmed all with whom she came in contact. Persons of both sexes,
young and old, the sober and the gay, alike fell under the influence
of her magnetic power. Living for a time in the family of her brother,
to whom she proffered her services as housekeeper when he was pastor
of a Union church in Worcester County, Mass., she drew to her all
sorts of people by the brightness and charm of her personality.
Self-forgetful and genuine, interested in all about her, she lived
only to serve others, valuing lightly all that she did. Here it was
that her remarkable capacity for journalism first developed itself.
One of the means by which she interested the community was the public
reading of a semi-monthly paper, every line of which was written by
herself and a fellow worker. The reading of that paper every
fortnight, to an audience that crowded the church, was an event in her
history.

Jennie was no dreamer. She was no speculative theorist spinning
impossible things out of the cobwebs of her brain. She was no Hypatia
striving to restore the gods of the past, revelling in a brilliant
cloudland of symbolisms and affinities. If she was caught in the mist
at any time, she soon came out of it and found her footing in the
practical realities of daily life. Never over-reverential, she never
called in question the deeper realities of soul-life. She was no
ascetic: she would have made a poor nun. But she was a born preacher
if by preaching is meant the annunciation of a gospel to those who
need it. Jennie was always an ardent devotee of her sex, and whatever
else she believed in, she certainly believed in women, their instincts
and capacities.

In the year 1856, on February 14th, St. Valentine's Day, my sister