d her, but she
fought till she fell.

In these different days, when,

"Pealing, the clock of time
Has struck the Woman's Hour,"

[Illustration: THE REV. DR. E. PHELPS, GRANDFATHER OF ELIZABETH
STUART PHELPS.]

I have sometimes been glad, as my time came to face the long question
which life puts to-day to all women who think and feel, and who care
for other women and are loyal to them, that I had those early visions
of my own to look upon.

When I was learning why the sun rose and the moon set, how the flowers
grew and the rain fell, that God and heaven and art and letters
existed, that it was intelligent to say one's prayers, and that
well-bred children never told a lie, I learned that a mother can be
strong and still be sweet, and sweet although she is strong; and that
she whom the world and her children both have need of, is of more
value to each, for this very reason.

I said it was impossible to be her daughter and not to write. Rather,
I should say, impossible to be _their_ daughter and not to have
something to say, and a pen to say it.

The comparatively recent close of my father's life has not left him
yet forgotten, and it can hardly be necessary for me to do more than
to refer to the name of Austin Phelps to recall to that part of our
public which knew and loved him the quality of his work.

"The Still Hour" is yet read, and there are enough who remember how
widely this book has been known and loved, and how marked was the
literary gift in all the professor's work.

It has fallen to me otherwise to say so much of my peculiar
indebtedness to my father, that I shall forbid myself, and spare my
reader, too much repetition of a loving credit which it would not be
possible altogether to omit from this chapter.

He who becomes father and mother in one to motherless children, bears
a burden which men shirk or stagger under; and there was not a
shirking cell in his brain or heart.

As I have elsewhere said: "There was hardly a chapter in my life of
which he was not in some sense, whether revealed or concealed, the
hero."

"If I am asked to sum in a few words the vivid points of his
influence, I find it as hard to give definite form to my indebtedness
to the Christian scholar whose daughter it is my honor to be, as to
specify the particulars in which one responds to sunshine or oxygen.
He was my climate. As soon as I began to think, I began to reverence
thought and study and the hard work of a man