er's arms, was baptized at his mother's funeral; and
we looked on, and wondered what it all meant, and what became of
children whose mother was obliged to go to heaven when she seemed so
necessary in Andover.

At eight years of age a child cannot be expected to know her mother
intimately, and it is hard for me always to distinguish between the
effect produced upon me by her literary success as I have since
understood it, and that left by her own truly extraordinary
personality upon the annals of the nursery.

[Illustration: PROFESSOR PHELPS'S HOUSE AT ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS, THE
HOUSE IN WHICH ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WAS REARED.]

My mother, whose name I am proud to wear, was the eldest daughter of
Professor Stuart, and inherited his intellectuality. At the time of
her death she was at the first blossom of her very positive and
widely-promising success as a writer of the simple home stories which
took such a hold upon the popular heart. Her "Sunnyside" had already
reached a circulation of one hundred thousand copies, and she was
following it fast--too fast--by other books for which the critics and
the publishers clamored. Her last book and her last baby came
together, and killed her. She lived one of those rich and piteous
lives such as only gifted women know; torn by the civil war of the
dual nature which can be given to women only. It was as natural for
her daughter to write as to breathe; but it was impossible for her
daughter to forget that a woman of intellectual power could be the
most successful of mothers.

[Illustration: PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS, FATHER OF ELIZABETH STUART
PHELPS.

From an early photograph.]

"Everybody's mother is a remarkable woman," my father used to say when
he read overdrawn memoirs indited by devout children; and yet I have
sometimes felt as if even the generation that knows her not would feel
a certain degree of interest in the tact and power by which this
unusual woman achieved the difficult reconciliation between genius and
domestic life.

In our times and to our women such a problem is practical, indeed. One
need not possess genius to understand it now. A career is enough.

The author of "Sunnyside," "The Angel on the Right Shoulder," and
"Peep at Number Five," lived before women had careers and public
sympathy in them. Her nature was drawn against the grain of her times
and of her circumstances; and where our feet find easy walking, hers
were hedged. A child's memories go f