"I believe Mrs. Palmer had a full share of both these manly
excellences, and practiced them in thoroughly feminine fashion.
She was essentially true, hating humbug in all its disguises....
Her love of plainness and distaste for affectation were forms of
veracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plain
realities. These had their significance heightened by her eager
emotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Of
course the warmth of her sympathy cut off all inclination to
falsehood for its usual selfish purpose. But against generous
untruth she was not so well guarded. Kindness was the first
thing.... Tact too, once become a habit, made adaptation to the
mind addressed a constant concern. She had extraordinary skill
in stuffing kindness with truth; and into a resisting mind could
without irritation convey a larger bulk of unwelcome fact than
any one I have known. But that insistence on colorless statement
which in our time the needs of trade and science have made current
among men, she did not feel. Lapses from exactitude which do not
separate person from person she easily condoned."

Surely the manly virtues of truthfulness and courage could be no
better exemplified than in the writing of this passage. Whether
his readers, especially the women, will agree with Professor Palmer
that, in woman, truthfulness and courage "take a subordinate place,
subservient to omnipresent sympathy", is a question.

Between 1876 when she was graduated from Michigan, and 1879 when
she went to Wellesley, Miss Freeman taught with marked success,
first at a seminary in the town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where
she had charge of the Greek and Latin; and later as assistant