he blessings that have been rained down
upon me."

It is too late to make amends for omissions in this paper, but it
would be unjust to Mrs. Child to forget her life-long devotion to the
interests of her own sex. In 1832, a year before her "Appeal in behalf
of that class of Americans called Africans,"--eleven years before the
appearance of Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century,"
Mrs. Child published "A History of the Condition of Women in all ages
and nations," showing her disposition to begin every inquiry with a
survey of the facts, and also that the "woman question" was the first
to awaken her interest. Her greatest contribution to the advancement
of women was herself; that is, her own achievements. To the same
purpose were her biographies of famous women: "Memoirs of Mme. de
Stael and Mme. Roland" in 1847, and sketches of "Good Wives" in 1871.
Whittier says, she always believed in woman's right to the ballot, as
certainly he did, calling it "the greatest social reform of the age."
In one letter to Senator Sumner, she directly argues the question: "I
reduce the argument," she says, "to very simple elements. I pay taxes
for property of my own earning, and I do not believe in 'taxation
without representation.'" Again: "I am a human being and every human
being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax
him, to imprison him, or to _hang_ him."

A light humor illuminates this argument. Humor was one of her saving
qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from
any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness.
Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I
have only a local reputation, done in water colors."

Could anything have been better said than this of the New England
April or even May: "What a misnomer in our climate to call this
season Spring, very much like calling Calvinism religion." Nothing
could have been keener than certain points scored in her reply to Mrs.
Senator Mason. Mrs. Mason, remembering with approving conscience her
own ministries in the slave cabins caring for poor mothers with young
babies, asks Mrs. Child, in triumph, if she goes among the poor to
render such services. Mrs. Child replies that she has never known
mothers under such circumstances to be neglected, "and here at the
North," said she, "after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell
the babies." After Gen. Grant's election to the Presi