the channels of her study, until it sprung from her pen complete at
a stroke. She wrote good English, of course, and would never
sentimentalize, but went directly at the pith of the matter; and, if
she had few thoughts on a subject, she made but few words. I don't
think she did much by way of revising or recasting after her thought
was once committed to paper. I think she wrote it as she would
have said it, always with an imaginary child before her, to whose
intelligence and sympathy it was addressed. Her habit of mind was to
complete a thought before any attempt to convey it to others. This
made her a very helpful and clear teacher and leader. She seemed
always to have considered carefully anything she talked about, and
gave her opinion with a deliberation and clear conviction which
affected others as a verdict, and made her an oracle to a great
many kinds of people. All her plans were thoroughly shaped before
execution; all her work was true, finished, and conscientious in every
department. She did a great deal of quiet, systematic thinking from
her early school days onward, and was never satisfied until she
completed the act of thought by expression and manifestation in some
way for the advantage of others. The last time I saw her, which was
for less than five minutes accorded me by her nurse during her last
illness, she spoke of a new plan of literary work which she had in
mind, and although she attempted no delineation of it, said she was
thinking it out whenever she felt that it was safe for her to think.
Her active brain never ceased its plans for others, for working toward
the illumination of the mind, the purification of the soul, and the
elevation and broadening of all the ideals of life. I remember her
sitting, absorbed in reflection, at the setting of the sun every
evening while we were at the House Beautiful of the Peabodys [We spent
nearly all our time at West Newton in a little cottage on the hill,
where Miss Elizabeth Peabody, with her saintly mother and father, made