career as a public speaker. And here we come to the tardy but magnificent development of her essential gift. Unquestionably her genius is the genius of address. She is one of the few women as yet come to the front of whom we can safely say that she is a born orator.

As is so often the case, the discovery of the niche for this statue came late in life. She was almost fifty years old when the fame of the platform found her. She has brought to it, therefore, ripe womanhood, the very harvest of experience, the repose which comes only when the past begins to tip the balance against the future. Her popularity as a public speaker is one of the marvels of lyceum annals. Tried by the Midas touch which cannot be escaped as a test of success, it will be remembered of her that during the year when lyceum lecturing as a "business" was at a height which it will never reach again, she was one of four lecturers who were most in demand, and made the largest terms with the bureaus; the other three were men of world-wide fame.

She has delivered more than eight hundred temperance addresses, nearly a hundred of these in Boston. She lectures five nights a week for five months in the year, and has done so for many years. She travels twenty-five thousand miles. yearly, besides keeping vigil late into the night, often into the morning, to hold her immense correspondence afloat. This gives some idea of the steady strain upon brain and body which this woman of iron and fire sustains.

In addition to the regular fulfilment of her contract with her bureau, and the work as above described, she constantly receives, and almost as constantly accepts, invitations to speak on Sunday in the pulpits of Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian, and Universalist churches, invited usually by the ministers of these churches to "deliver her message." Often this message is a temperance address. Sometimes it is called a sermon.

Another of the demands made upon her is from schools, colleges, and literary institutions for Commencement and other educational addresses. Her summer vacation is never

free from these extra labors. Political conventions and Sunday-school conventions add their clamor to the list. "She is always at work," a friend says of her; "never flags, takes little recreation." Her summers are spent at her own home in Melrose, or in the mountains, or in Europe with her husband.

Mrs. Livermore's manner as a speaker is noticeable for its dignity. She has a deep, rich voice, of remarkable compass, capable of filling any audience-room, trained, and flexible. She begins quietly, but has a grip on the house from the first. At times she rises to impassioned fervor. There is no feminine squeak or frivolity. The register of her voice is rather low, reminding one of Mrs. Kemble, or of Charlotte Cushman, who said, "All I inherited from my grandmother was this voice. It was my capital in life."

Mrs. Livermore's personal appearance adds to her power on the platform. She is tall and large, with a fine figure and dignified carriage. She is eminently well-proportioned, and one gets a sense of power from every motion. Of her face, which is very fine, quite beyond any portrait which I have seen, it is not easy to say the right word. Regular features, and grave, gray eyes, and the warmest smile in the world stay by the memory, but chiefly this: that one has seen the most motherly face that the Lord ever made. As she pleads for her own sex, crying patience with its weakness, and justice for its wrongs, and compassion on its woes, her expression rises to one of inspired solemnity, then melts into a strong tenderness, which reminds one of what was said of the face of George Eliot, that she "looked as if she bore the sorrow of all the earth."

The subjects of Mrs. Livermore's lectures are: "What Shall we Do with our Daughters?" "Women of the War"; "Queen Elizabeth"; "Concerning Husbands"; "The Reason Why "; "Superfluous Women"; "Harriet Martineau"; "The Moral Heroism of the Temperance Reform"; "The Coming Man"; "Beyond the Sea"; "Our Motherland"; "The Boy of To-day."

It is doubtful if there is any other public speaker who so wins his way, or hers, to the hearts of their opponents. Many

of her audiences disagree with Mrs. Livermore's views; few can be found to disagree with Mrs. Livermore.

I remember once to have heard her on the platform of a conservative, Calvinistic girls' seminary, where I was not sure of her hearty welcome. She had lectured in the village the evening before on some topic connected with the political enfranchisement of women, and she was the wife of a Universalist clergyman. I anticipated that her reception, though courteous, might be a trifle chilly. I might have spared myself my fears. In five minutes every woman in the room listened to her like a lover, and when, at the close of her talk to the girls, she was invited by the pious principal to "lead in prayer," who was there to ask if she prayed orthodoxy? She prayed Christianity, and she took us with her to the very heart of Christ. Rarely have I heard a prayer which moved me as that one did. She swept away everything between the soul and God - herself was cancelled she was no more an individual whose personality impinged on our consciousness; she was an appeal, an outcry from humanity to Divinity. All our mixed motives, and shallow thoughts, and frail feeling went down before the power of her religious nature and her religious life. It was impossible to hear her, and not say, "That is the voice of a consecrated soul. Take me, too; take me up thither."

"Of all the speakers who have ever been brought to our institution," said a trustee of a large charity at the north end of Boston, "Mrs. Livermore, to my mind, without exception, made the best address that has ever been made to our poor people. They never listened to any one else in the way they listened to her. She never talked down' to them; she always said 'we.' Most speakers say 'you' to such audiences. She never once forgot herself; it was always we.'"

"I would pay the price of a ticket to her lecture any time," said a lady, listening to this conversation, "to hear that woman's voice."

Time urges, the pages slip, my task is all but done, and I have as yet said nothing of the domestic life of this woman

whom the public delighteth to honor. The army commissariat, the reformer, the orator, have had their "three souls" expressed in this one rich life. What of the fourth, which is the vital one after all? What of the woman behind this power? What of the home behind the career? What is the story beneath the glory?

It is with a feeling of peculiar pride and thankfulness that those who would fain believe that public usefulness for a woman need not imply private uselessness, are able to point to the symmetrical and beautiful domestic history of one who for twenty years has given herself so ably to important public services. We may be permitted to step across the sacred threshold of what it is safe to pronounce one of the happiest homes in the land, so far as to say that we shall never find a fireside at which the wife and the mother is honored with more pride and devotion than at this. The very tone of the voice in which the materials of this sketch were given me, by the husband of "this great and good woman," was enough. I needed to ask no questions. The manly pride in womanly use of human power was itself worth a visit to that home to see. Be sure that she who has "mothered" half the land-that she who can mother half the land is the last of all living women to put by the finer grace of the dearer life, or dull in the heart of child or husband the sacred vision of the mother and the wife.

After all is said, it is true, and we are glad it is, that the great natural gifts of the subject of this sketch have been run in that best and broadest mould which is given by the full development of a wholesome natural life.

It is good to have her power, her wisdom, her influence, and her fame. It is better to have her tenderness, her selfoblivion, her human happiness, and her home. It is best to know that she has been able to balance these qualities and quantities with a grace which has not fallen short of greatness, and that she has accomplished greatness without expunging grace..

CHAPTER XVIII.

LUCY LARCO M.

BY MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY.

A Happy Name-Lucy Larcom's Childhood-First Literary Venture Removal of the Family to Lowell - Lucy's Mill-life- The Little "Doffer"-A Glimpse of the Daily Life of a Lowell Mill Girl - The Lowell "Offering"-First Meeting with the Poet Whittier - His Lifelong Friendship - Removal to Illinois Pioneer Life-Teaching a Real "Deestrick" School- Incidents in Her Life as Teacher - Mysterious Disappearance of one of Her Pupils - An Amusing Incident - Return to Old New England - Work as Teacher in Wheaton Seminary - Her Loyalty During the War - Editing "Our Young Folks"-Work that will Endure.

UT what is her real name?"

"That."

୧୧

Lucy Larcom? I always thought it was her pen-name."

"So it is; and her birth-name; and her heartand-soul name, also. I fancy it needs not to be changed much into her heaven-name."

I suppose I have more than a score of times been the respondent in some colloquy like the above, in regard to my friend, Lucy Larcom; though I do not remember ever adding what I have added now, about heart and soul and heaven. Yet her name has always seemed to me one of those born and baptismal appellations which hold a significance and a prophecy. Her name is a reminder of herself, and herself of her name. I" s'pect," like Topsy, that they must needs have "growed" together. "Lucy," the light; "Larcom," the song-bird haunt; the combe, or valley-field of larks. For it is no great stretch of supposition, but a clear probability, that Lark-combe may have been the origin of the patronymic.

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