SOURCE: "Dusting Mirrors," in Female Persuasion: Six Strong-Minded Women, Yale University Press, 1949, pp. 215-53.

In the biographical sketch below, Thorp delineates the "dichotomy of mind" that prompted Child to alternate between apparently apolitical works and her highly political antislavery tracts.

"Too much cannot be said on the importance of giving children early habits of observation." When, in 1832, Maria Child wrote that dictum in her Mother's Book she was anxious not only that the young should be made to see truth but that they should be helped to enjoy the world. And she was making, really, an autobiographical statement. Observation was for her the first of the virtues. The greater part of her long and active life was spent in teaching people to see, to see often things they did not want to look at. "I sweep dead leaves out of paths and dust mirrors," she said once in...