literary woman thus
formed a distinct period of her life, quite apart from the epoch which
preceded it and from the later one which followed. A change soon came.
Her health was never very strong, and she was liable to severe attacks
of diphtheria, to relieve which she tried the climate of Colorado. She
finally took up her residence there, and was married about 1876, to
William S. Jackson, a merchant of Colorado Springs. She had always had
the greatest love for travel and exploration, and found unbounded field
for this in her new life, driving many miles a day over precipitous
roads, and thinking little of crossing the continent by rail from the
Atlantic to the Pacific. In the course of these journeys she became
profoundly interested in the wrongs of the Indians, and for the rest of
her life all literary interests and ambitions were utterly subordinated
to this. During a winter of hard work at the Astor Library in New York
she prepared her "Century of Dishonor" (1881). As one result of this
book she was appointed by the United States Government as one of two
commissioners (Abbot Kinney being the other) to examine and report upon
"the condition and needs of the Mission Indians of California." Their
report, to which Mrs. Jackson's name is first signed, is dated at
Colorado Springs, July 13, 1883, and is a thoroughly business-like
document of thirty-five pages. A new edition of "A Century of Dishonor"
containing this report is just ready by her publishers, Messrs Roberts
Brothers.

As another fruit of this philanthropic interest, she wrote, during
another winter in this city, her novel, "Ramona," a book composed with
the greatest rapidity, and printed first in the _Christian Union_,
afterward appearing in a volume in 1884. Its sole object was further to
delineate the wrongs of the aborigines. Besides these two books, she
wrote, during this later period, some children's stories, "Nelly's
Silver Mine, a Story of Colorado Life" (1878), and three little volumes
of tales about cats. But her life-work, as she viewed it at the end, was
in her two books in behalf of the Indians.

* * * * *

HINGHAM.

By Francis H. Lincoln.

[Illustration: THE PUBLIC LIBRARY BUILDING, BURNT IN 1879.]

The impression left upon the mind of the traveller who has seen Hingham
only from the railroad train would be one of backyards, a mill-pond, and
woods; but to him who approaches it towards the close of