Working constantly for so many years, she had yet known nothing of her readers, had felt her literary life to be an utter failure, had thrown a voice into the world and heard no echo; and when for the first time told of the admiration she elicited in this country and of one who rejoiced in her, her face kindled and she desired to come and be among her own people.  Those who have failed to appreciate her can hardly be blamed, as it is owing entirely to their deficiency; but the cavillers—­those who have ears and hear not—­are less excusable.  Almost a recluse,—­declining even an interview with her publishers,—­in ill-health, in poverty, and with waning youth, she poured out her precious ointment from alabaster boxes, and there were not wanting Pharisees.  But hampered by precedent and somewhat barren of enthusiasms as are almost all productions now, how could we do aught but welcome this spontaneous and ever-fresh fountain bubbling into the sunlight, albeit without geometrical restrictions, and bringing as it did such treasures from its secret sources?  Yet, welcomed or not, there is no record of any female prose-writer’s ever having lived who possessed more than a portion of that genius which permeated Elizabeth Sheppard’s whole being.  Genius,—­the very word expresses her:  in harmony with the great undertone of the universe, the soul suffused with light.  Flower-warmth and fragrance are on her page, the soft low summer wind seems to be speaking with you as you read, her characters are like the stars impersonated, and still, however lofty her nature, always and forever genial.  You catch her own idiosyncrasy throughout, and believe, that, like Evelyn Hope, she was made of spirit, fire, and dew.  When we remember the very slight effect ever visible to her of all her labor, there is something sad in the thought of this young soul, thrilled with its own fervors and buoyant in anticipation, sending forth the first venture.  But then we recognize as well, that she was one of those few to whom creation is a necessity, that in truth she scarcely needed human response, and that when men were silent God replied.

Miss Sheppard’s style was something very novel.  Based, perhaps, on an admiration of one whose later exploits have dwarfed his earlier in the general estimation, there was yet no more resemblance than between the string-courses of a building and its sculptured friezes.  Indeed, writing was not her virtual expression:  this may be learned even in her peculiar way of loving Nature, for it was not so much Nature itself as Nature’s effects that she prized; and between the work now performed and that awaiting her in some further life one feels the difference that exists between the soft clay model with its mild majesty, its power clogged and covered, and the same when it issues in the white radiance of marble.  She does not seem to have been an extensive reader, and certainly no student, while she totally disregarded all rules and revision.  Her sentences