And so, at last, her teaching days were over; that is, she taught no
more in the log schoolhouse in the clearing on the mountain-side. But
in her little home beside the river she continued her work; not from
text-books, indeed, but as all such souls must continue to teach, until
the sun sets for the last time upon their mortal days.

Work-worn, toil-hardened mountaineer mothers, whose narrow world denied
them so many of the finer thoughts and things, came to counsel with
this childless woman, and to learn from her a little of the art of
contentment and happiness. Strong men, of rude dress and speech, whose
lives were as rough as the hills in which they were reared, and whose
thoughts were often as crude as their half-savage and sometimes lawless
customs, came to sit at the feet of this gentle one, who received them
all with such kindly interest and instinctive understanding. And young
men and girls came, drawn by the magic that was hers, to confide in
this woman who listened with such rare tact and loving sympathy to their
troubles and their dreams, and who, in the deepest things of their young
lives, was mother to them all.

Nor were the mountain folk her only disciples. Always there were the
letters she continued to write, addressed to almost every corner of
the land. And every year there would come, for a week or a month, at
different times during the summer, men and women from the great world of
larger affairs who had need of the strength and courage and patience and
hope they never failed to find in that little log house by the river.
And so, in time, it came to be known that those letters written by
Auntie Sue went to men and women who, in their childhood school days,
had received from her their first lessons in writing; and that her
visitors, many of them distinguished in the world of railroads and