many women-writers. Her foreign letters to the _Tribune_ discussed
questions of political significance and international interest. Miss
Field is a woman of so many resources that she has never made of her
writing a trade, but has used it as an art; and she never writes unless
she has something to say. This fact teaches a moral that the woman of
the period may do well to contemplate.

Yet with all the varied charms of foreign life, passed in the most
cultivated and refined social circles of Europe, Kate Field never forgot
that she was an American, and patriotism grew to be a passion with her.
She became a student of English and American politics, and her
revelations of the ponderous machinery of the British Parliament, in a
series of strong and brilliant press letters, now collected into the
little volume called "Hap-Hazzard," was as fine and impressive in its
way as is her dramatic criticism or literary papers. All this, perhaps,
had paved the way for her to enter into a close and comprehensive study
of the subject which she is now so ably discussing in her notable
lectures on the social and the political crimes of Utah. The profound
and serious attention which she is now giving to this problem stamps her
lectures as among the most potent political influences of the time. Miss
Field's discussion of Mormonism is one of those events which seem
pre-determined by the law of the unconscious, and which seem to choose
the individual rather than to be chosen by him. In the summer of 1883,
by way of a change from continental travel, Miss Field determined to
hitch her wagon to a star and journey westward. She lingered for a month
in Denver where she received distinguished social attention and where,
by special request, she gave her lecture on an "Evening with Dickens"
and her charming "Musical Monologue." Of this Dickens' lecture a western
journal said:--