One lady told me that after hearing her she felt she could go out and be a praying band all by herself.  Indeed she was

          A noble woman, true and pure,
          Who in the little while she stayed,
          Wrought works that shall endure.

She was asked who she would prefer to write a sketch of her and her work and she honoured me by giving me that great pleasure.  The book appeared in 1883, entitled Our Famous Women.

Once when Miss Willard was in Boston with Lady Henry Somerset and Anna Gordon, I was delighted by a letter from Frances saying that Lady Henry wanted to know me and could I lunch with them soon at the Abbottsford.  I accepted joyously, but next morning’s mail brought this depressing decision:  “Dear Kate, we have decided that there will be more meat in going to you.  When can we come?” I was hardly settled in my house of the Abandoned Farm.  There was no furnace in the house, only two servants with me.  And it would be impossible to entertain those friends properly in the dead of the winter, and I nearly ready to leave for a milder clime.  So I told them the stern facts and lost a rare treat.

This is the end of Miss Willard’s good-bye letter to me when returning to England with Lady Henry: 

Hoping to see you on my return, and hereby soliciting an
exchange of photographs between you and Lady Henry and me,

I am ever and as ever
Yours,
FRANCES WILLARD.

While at Mrs. Smith’s home in Germantown, both she and Miss Willard urged me to sign a Temperance Pledge that lay on the table in the library.  I would have accepted almost anything either of those good friends presented for my attention.  So after thinking seriously I signed.  But after going to my room I felt sure that I could never keep that pledge.  So I ran downstairs and told them to erase my name, which was done without one word of astonishment or reproof from either.

I wish I knew how to describe Hannah Whitehall Smith as she was in her everyday life.  Such simple nobility, such tenderness for the tempted, such a love for sinners, such a longing to show them the better way.  She said to me:  “If my friends must go to what is called Hell I want to go with them.”  When a minister, who was her guest, was greatly roused at her lack of belief in eternal punishment and her infinite patience with those who lacked moral strength, he said:  “There are surely some sins your daughters could commit which would make you drive them from your home.”  “There are no sins my daughters could commit which would not make me hug them more closely in my arms and strive to bring them back.”  Wherewith he exclaimed bitterly:  “Madam, you are a mere mucilaginous mess.”  She made no reply, but her husband soon sent him word that a carriage would be at the door in one hour to convey him to the train for New York.

* * * * *

“If you do not love the birds, you cannot understand them.”