a, daughter of her
eldest sister Guelma and Aaron McLean, the best beloved of all her
nieces. She was twenty-three years old, beautiful and talented, a good
musician and an artist of fine promise. In her Miss Anthony had
centered many hopes and ambitions, and the letters show that she was
always planning and working for her future as she would have done for
that of a cherished daughter. She was laid to rest on the silver
wedding anniversary of her parents. Miss Anthony writes: "She had
ceased to be a child and had become the fullgrown woman, my companion
and friend. I loved her merry laugh, her bright, joyous presence, and
yet my loss is so small compared to the awful void in her mother's life
that I scarcely dare mention it."

Months afterwards she wrote her sister Hannah: "Today I made a
pilgrimage to Mount Hope. The last rays of red, gold and purple fringed
the horizon and shone serenely on the mounds above our dear father and
Ann Eliza. What a contrast in my feelings; for the one a subdued sorrow
at the sudden ending of a life full-ripened, only that we would have
basked in its sunshine a little longer; for the other a keen anguish
over the untimely cutting off in the dawn of existence, with the hopes
and longings but just beginning to take form, the real purpose of life
yet dimly developed, a great nature but half revealed. The faith that
she and all our loved and gone are graduated into a higher school of
growth and progress is the only consolation for death."

At another time she wrote her brother: "This new and sorrowful reminder
of the brittleness of life's threads should soften all our expressions
to each other in our home circles and open our lips to speak only words
of tenderness and approbation. We are so wont to utter criticisms and
to keep silence about the things we approve. I wish we might be as
faithful in expressing our likes as our dislikes, and not leave our
loved ones to take it for granted that their good acts are noted and
appreciated and vastly outnumber those we criticise. The sum of home
happiness would be greatly multiplied if all families would
conscientiously follow this method."

There were urgent appeals in these days from the lately-married brother
and his wife for sister Susan to come to Kansas and, as no public work
seemed to be pressing, she started the latter part of January, 1865.
She stopped in Chicago to visit her uncle Albert Dickinson, was
detained a week by heavy storms, and