She told one story which well illustrated the almost cruel persistent inquiries of neighbours about someone who is long in dying.  An unfortunate husband was bothered each morning by repeated calls from children, who were sent by busy mothers to find out “Just how Miss Blake was feeling this morning.”  At last this became offensive, and he said:  “Well, she’s just the same—­she ain’t no better and she ain’t no worse—­she keeps just about so—­she’s just about dead, you can say she’s dead.”

One Sunday evening she described her talks with the men in the prisons and penitentiaries, to whom she had been lately lecturing, proving that these hardened sinners had much that was good in them, and many longings for a nobler life, in spite of all their sins.

No, I was not disappointed in “G.G.”  She was just as natural, hearty, and off-hand as when some thirty years ago, she was a romping, harum-scarum, bright-eyed schoolgirl, Sara Clarke, of western New York, who was almost a gypsy in her love for the fields and forests.  She was always ready for any out-door exercise or sport.  This gave her glorious health, which up to that time she had not lost.

Her nom de plume, which she says she has never been able to drop, was only one of the many alliterative names adopted at that time.  Look over the magazines and Annuals of those years, and you will find many such, as “Mary Maywood,” “Dora Dashwood,” “Ella Ellwood” “Fanny Forrester,” “Fanny Fern,” “Jennie June,” “Minnie Myrtle,” and so on through the alphabet, one almost expecting to find a “Ninny Noodle.”  Examining one of Mrs. Lippincott’s first scrapbooks of “Extracts from Newspapers,” etc., which she had labelled, “Vanity, all is Vanity,” I find many poems in her honour, much enthusiasm over her writings, and much speculation as to who “Grace Greenwood” might really be.  The public curiosity was piqued to find out this new author who added to forceful originality “the fascination of splendid gayety and brilliant trifling.”  John Brougham, the actor and dramatist, thus expressed his interest in a published letter to Willis: 

The only person that I am disposed to think, write or talk about at present is your dazzling, bewitching correspondent, “Grace Greenwood.”  Who is she? that I may swear by her!  Where is she? that I may fling myself at her feet!  There is a splendour and dash about her pen that carry my fastidious soul captive by a single charge.  I shall advertise for her throughout the whole Western country in the terms in which they inquire for Almeyda in Dryden’s Don Sebastian:  “Have you seen aught of a woman who lacks two of the four elements, who has nothing in her nature but air and fire?”

And here is one of the poetical tributes: 

If to the old Hellenes
Thee of yore the gods had given
Another Muse, another Grace
Had crowned the Olympian heaven.

Whittier at that time spoke most cordially of her “earnest individuality, her warm, honest, happy, hopeful, human heart; her strong loves and deep hates.”