James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[67] an inferior, or common-place woman. The mother of Nathaniel, Richard, and Sara Willis was a large-brained, as well as great-hearted woman. The beautiful tributes of her poet-son made all the world aware of her most lovable qualities --her faithful, maternal tenderness and broad, sweet charity; but to these were added rare mental power and character of singular nobility and weight.

From a private letter, addressed by the subject of this biographical sketch to a friend, in answer to some questions concerning this noble mother, I am permitted to take the following touching tribute: “All my brother's poetry, all the capability for writing which I possess — be it little, or muchcame from her. She had correspondence with many clergymen of the time and others, and, had she lived at this day, would have been a writer worthy of mention. In those days women had nine children — her number and stifled their souls under baskets of stockings to mend and aprons to make. She made every one who came near her better and happier for having seen her. She had a heart as wide as the world, and charity to match. Oh, the times I have thrown my arms wildly about me and sobbed ‘Mother’ till it seemed she must come! I shall never be ‘weaned,’ never I She understood me. Even now, I want her, every day and hour. Blessed be eternity and immortality! That is what my mother was to me. God bless her!”

In 1817 Mr. Willis removed to Boston, where he for many years edited the “Recorder,” a religious journal, and “The youth's companion,” a juvenile paper, of blessed memory. In Boston, Sara spent the remainder of her childhood; and a grand old town it is to be reared in, notwithstanding the east wind, its crooked, cow-path streets, and general promiscuousness,--notwithstanding its exceeding self-satisfaction, its social frigidity, its critical narrowness and its contagious

isms; among the most undesirable of which count conventionalism