The funeral services were held in King's Chapel. They were simple in character, as befitted the sacred majesty of the occasion. For an hour before the services people were permitted to pass through the room where she lay, beautiful in the light of the holy peace reflected from that noble countenance. "God giveth quietness at last" was the refrain in every heart.

In King's Chapel flowers sent by loving hands lay about her. The deep organ music in its solemn chant blended with the prayers that were said. The chancel inscription: "This is my commandment to you, that you love one another," seemed the expression of her entire life. Still and cold lay Charlotte Cushman in the last dreamless sleep under the shadow of white lilies that leaned above her, fair and fragrant.

Forty years had passed since the untried girl had gone out from her native city to conquer life. In those years she had done more. She had conquered herself. She had learned the lesson of renunciation. She had won the reward of achievement.

To Charlotte Cushman life was a conflict. Born into simple, primitive conditions, with the inherited instincts of a long line of Puritan ancestry, yet with the tragic intensity of creative genius in her soul, and the glow of its sacred mystery in her being, what wonder that those two warring forces should have alternately swayed her throughout her plastic youth, and stamped their traces on her mature womanhood? It was this meeting of two forces that could never, from their intrinsic nature, mingle, that gave to her character an aspect of superficial inconsistency. In reality she was strictly true, but now one nature and now the other dominated her.

Her character was made up of the massive forces, and it included with almost startling distinctness two entirely different personalities.

"Oh, sorrowful, great gift

Conferred on poets of a twofold life

When one life has been found enough for pain,"

wrote Elizabeth Browning, and this twofold life was essentially that of Charlotte Cushman.

To some degree it was true of her, as Miss Kate Field has said of Ristori, that in her presence" it required a mental effort to recall her histrionic greatness." Conversely this was equally true, and to those who knew in her the grandeur, the sublimity, the intensity of the artist, it was difficult to associate her with other than the artistic life, or to see in her aught but the grandest tragic actress of America.

The religious earnestness of her character never faltered. It was a part of her identity; and, disregarding all forms, the heart of the woman spoke when she said, "I can go to any church and find God."

She is dead. "The curtain drops upon a vanished majesty." A plain granite shaft, thirty-three feet in height, stands in Mount Auburn, and at its base is the name, Charlotte Cushman. Afar to the east lies the beautiful city that she loved her native Boston. Beyond rolls the blue sea. The wind sighs its low requiem among the trees. It is hallowed ground. Here stands the monument to Margaret Fuller. The beloved poet Longfellow sleeps not far away. Names that have made life sacred and heaven. more dear meet the eye. Lingering among the loveliness of Mount Auburn one feels that, indeed,

"Happy places have grown holy: if we go where once we went, Only tears will fall down slowly as at blessed sacrament."

Remembering the crystalline purity and truth of this divinely-gifted woman, you may find yourself repeating, as you stay and stray by her last resting-place, the words of Queen Katherine, whose impersonation was the most majestic triumph in the art of Charlotte Cushman :

"After my death I wish no other herald,
No other speaker of my living actions
To keep mine honor from corruption
Than such an honest chronicler as Griffith."

CHAPTER X.

LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

BY SUSAN COOLIDGE.

The Little Maid of Medford - Her Early Life and Happy Marriage - Books She has Written-Surprise and Indignation excited by Her "Appeal" The Battle of Life-Rowing against the Tide- Her Patience, Fortitude, and Reliance-Stirring Times- Devotion to Her Husband-Life at Wayland - Her Bright Humor-Sympathy for Old John BrownMrs. Mason's Violent Letter-Mrs. Child's Famous Reply-She is Promised a "Warm Reception "- Her Loyalty, Self-Denial, and Work during the Civil War-Princely Generosity - Serene Old Age-Death of Her Husband - Mrs. Child's Touching Tribute to His Memory - Waiting and Trusting-Her Death and Funeral.

N the year 1636 one Richard Francis emigrated from England to America and settled in Cambridge, Mass., where his tombstone may be seen to this day. A hundred and thirty-nine years later we find one of his descendants taking part in the skirmish at Concord, where he is said to have killed five of the enemy. Half a century after Concord, another descendant of the same. sturdy stock was settled as a baker in Medford, Mass., where he first introduced what are still known as " Medford crackers." He was the father of Lydia Maria Francis, the subject of this sketch; and in Medford, on the 11th of February, 1802, she was born.

To children of a thoughtful and intelligent cast, the very bareness of New England life at that period had in it something formative and stimulating. The keen, youthful observation and analysis, undistracted by trifles, expended themselves upon facts with their underlying principles, upon theories and the convictions to be deduced from them. At nine years of age, the little maid of Medford was puzzling

her brains to find out exactly what that "Raven down of darkness" could be which smiles when stroked, and was sorely perplexed by the explanation of her teasing brother Convers, that it must mean the fur of a black cat, which snaps and crackles with electricity when caressed in cold weather! At twelve she read "Waverley," and exclaimed, "Why cannot I write a novel?" In her seventeenth year she writes to her brother: "Do not forget that I asked you about the 'flaming cherubims,' the effects of distance, horizontal and perpendicular, Orlando Furioso,' and Lord Byron!"

Her earliest teacher was an old woman known as " Marm Betty," who kept her school in an untidy bedroom, and chewed much tobacco. At no time does Lydia Francis seem to have had better opportunities for education than the public academy of her native town could furnish, with the exception of one year at a private seminary. But her mind had that power of assimilation which converts spare diet into generous growth. And the home atmosphere in which she was reared was full of good, practical teaching.

David Francis, her father, though not a highly-educated man, was remarkably fond of books, and possessed of a wide and zealous benevolence. His anti-slavery principles were in advance of his time, and his children were taught from their infancy to exercise a frugal self-denial with regard to their own wants, and a hospitable generosity towards those of others. A Sunday dinner was always carried to "Marm Betty," and at Thanksgiving she and all the other humble friends of the family, to the number of twenty or thirty, were assembled and feasted. This mingling of frugality on the one hand, and liberality on the other, characterized Mrs. Child during her whole life.

In the year 1819 Convers Francis was ordained pastor over the first Unitarian church at Watertown, Mass., and his sister went to live with him. Two years later her first book appeared, a novel called "Hobomok," after its Indian hero. It is a tale somewhat resembling "Enoch Arden," with the important variation that the noble red-man who has married

the heroine promptly gives up his wife and child on the reappearance of her early lover. But this was in the dawn of American letters; and with all its crude improbability, "Hobomok" enjoyed such a measure of popularity as to warrant the publication during the following year of a second novel, "The Rebels; or, Boston before the Revolution," bearing a motto from Bryant, and "respectfully inscribed" to George Ticknor. The immediate effect of its appearance was to make its author a celebrity in her own circle.

In 1825 Miss Francis opened a private school in Watertown, and in 1827 she established "The Juvenile Miscellany," pioneer to the long line of American children's magazines. In 1828 she married David Lee Child, a lawyer in Boston, and took up her residence in that city. The following year appeared "The Frugal Housewife," a manual of domestic management, which proved so suited to the wants of the public that it has since attained its fortieth edition. Later came, in a natural sequence, "The Mother's Book," "The Girl's Own Book," "The History of Women," and "The Biographies of Good Wives." It was about this time that "The North American Review," then the highest literary authority in the country, said of her: "We are not sure that any woman of our country could outrank Mrs. Child. Few female writers, if any, have done more or better things for our literature in the lighter or graver departments."

This was probably the time of Mrs. Child's life in which she tasted most of what the world calls ease and good. Happily and congenially married to the man she loved, courted and invited, revelling in the work which she most enjoyed doing, feeling an increasing influence resulting from it, the sweetness of a new home-life encompassing her day by day; surely this was much for any woman to possess, and very much for any woman to endanger. Many young wives in her situation would have found abundant occupation for mind and heart in self-cultivation, the enjoyment of society, or the details of housekeeping. Decorative art, or whatever did duty for it in those early days, would have claimed atten