wide and wise and inspiring influence; and of these Thomas Wentworth Higginson had come more intimately and effectually into formative relations with the minds and characters of those gathered in that sunny room than any other person.  They certainly owed much of the loftiness and breadth of their aim in life, and their comprehension of the growth and work to be accomplished in the world, to his kind and steady instigation.  I wish I could remember what they said, and what Jane said; but all that has passed away.  I think somebody objected to the length of the title, which Jane admitted to be a fault, but said something of wishing to get the idea of the unity of the world into it as the main idea of the book.  I only recall the enthusiastic delight with which chapter after chapter was greeted; we declared that it was a fairy tale of geography, and a work of genius in its whole conception, and in its absorbing interest of detail and individuality; and that any publisher would demonstrate himself an idiot who did not want to publish it.  I remember Jane’s quick tossing back of the head, and puzzled brow which broke into a laugh, as she said:  “Well, girls, it can’t be as good as you say; there must be some faults in it.”  But we all exclaimed that we had done our prettiest at finding fault,—­that there wasn’t a ghost of a fault in it.  For the incarnate beauty and ideality and truthfulness of her little stories had melted into our being, and left us spellbound, till we were one with each other and her; one with the Seven Little Sisters, too, and they seemed like our very own little sisters.  So they have rested in our imagination and affection as we have seen them grow into the imagination and affection of generations of children since, and as they will continue to grow until the old limitations and barrenness of the study of geography shall be transfigured, and the earth seem to the children an Eden which love has girdled, when Gemila, Agoonack, and the others shall have won them to a knowledge of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.

I would like to bring before young people who have read her books some qualities of her mind and character which made her the rare woman, teacher, and writer that she was.  I knew her from early girlhood.  We went to the same schools, in more and more intimate companionship, from the time we were twelve until we were twenty years of age; and our lives and hearts were “grappled” to each other “with links of steel” ever after.  She was a precocious child, early matured, and strong in intellectual and emotional experiences.  She had a remarkably clear mind, orderly and logical in its processes, and loved to take up hard problems.  She studied all her life with great joy and earnestness, rarely, if ever, baffled in her persistent learning except by ill-health.  She went on at a great pace in mathematics for a young girl; every step seemed easy to her.  She took everything severe that she could get a chance at,