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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

A TRUE TEACHER 
 
 MARY MORTIMER 
 
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 MINERVA BRACE NORTON 
 
 Author of " In and Around Berlin," etc. 
 
 ^'MAY^ISqO 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York : : Chicago : : Toronto 
 
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 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1894, by 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY, 
 
 [n the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C 
 
DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 Those who Have Been, Are, and Will Be 
 
 inspired by This Example 
 
 of 
 
 Earnest, Truthful Teaching 
 
 and 
 
 Right Living. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The closing decade of the nineteenth century has 
 no more distinguishing characteristic than the en- 
 larged opportunities which it offers to women. The 
 education which enables women to enter upon these 
 opportunities has been the preparatory work of the 
 whole century. Its sources are in rills which ap- 
 peared, mostly in New England, in the first quarter 
 of the century, and which gathered volume in the 
 second quarter, notably in the opening of Oberlin, 
 a co-educational college, in 1833, and of Mt. Holy- 
 oke Female Seminary in 1837. The third quarter 
 witnessed greatly increased growth and momentum, 
 by reason of the founding of Vassar and other 
 colleges for women which approach the standard of 
 the best colleges for men ; and the fourth quarter, 
 not yet completed, has seen the remarkable enlarge- 
 ment of this far-reaching movement. 
 
 The great world-story of this new factor in history 
 must be written in succeeding centuries. At pres- 
 ent, its phenomena are attracting chief attention. 
 The present is also the time when contributions to 
 the study of the movement must be secured. Some 
 of its early phases are of surpassing interest and im- 
 portance, 
 
 [vJ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Such, it is believed, is the story told for the first 
 time in this volume. The work of Mary Mortimer 
 in Christian Education intertwined as it is with 
 that of Catherine Beecher, has had no superior in 
 the difficult and delicate work of awakening women 
 to their duties and responsibilities without undue 
 emphasis on their rights and privileges. It was 
 work which found its appropriate field in the best 
 intellect and the highest moral nature. It was 
 never noisy nor self-asserting, but quiet, operative, 
 intense, unique. 
 
 The material for the chapter on the early history 
 of the higher education of women has been gathered 
 with painstaking from many sources which have 
 been recognized and acknowledged as far as prac- 
 ticable. 
 
 That the volume may promote the true interests 
 of woman and of humanity, and commend itself 
 especially to the homes, the mothers, the daugh- 
 ters, and the schools of the better day in whose 
 dawn we already stand, is the motive which has led 
 to its preparation. M. b. n. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE PREPARATION. 
 Chapter. Page. 
 
 I. Childhood and Youth 3 
 
 II. Education and Conversion 12 
 
 III. Earl\ Teaching . , 27 
 
 Summary 67 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE LIFE WORK. 
 
 I. The New West 73 
 
 II. Catherine Beecher — Education 99 
 
 III. Miss Mortimer and Miss Beecher 115 
 
 IV. The Milwaukee School 124 
 
 V. Rest and Change 171 
 
 VI. Baraboo Female Seminary 188 
 
 VII. Second Administration at Milwaukee College. 231 
 
 VIII. Willow Glen — Last Days 281 
 
 PART III. 
 
 RETROSPECT. 
 
 I. Miss Mortimer and her Work 295 
 
 II. Tributes 315 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE PREPARATION. 
 
 Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree — how its 
 
 stem trembled first, 
 Till it passed the kid's lips, the stag's antler ; then 
 
 safely outburst 
 The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindest when 
 
 these, too, in turn, 
 Broke abloom, and the palm-tree seemed perfect." 
 
 — Browning's ' * Saul. " 
 
"To study the lives, to meditate on the sorrows, to 
 commune with the thoughts of the great and holy men 
 and women of this rich world, is a sacred discipline, 
 which deserves at least to rank as the fore-court of the 
 temple of true worship." — James Martineau. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. 
 
 Amid the green fields and majestic trees of south- 
 western England, surrounded by rich rolling mea- 
 dows which are bounded by hedgerows, shaded by 
 grand old oaks and spotted with grazing cattle, lies 
 the town of Trowbridge in Wiltshire. Ten miles 
 to the northwest is the city of Bath, with a history 
 which spans the Christian era ; twenty miles to the 
 southeast, across the plain of Stonehenge, the spire 
 of Salisbury Cathedral pierces the sky. About as 
 far to the southwest, the finest group of ecclesias- 
 tical buildings in England clusters about the wells 
 of living water which have given their name to ca- 
 thedral, city, and bishopric, and the Abbey of Glas- 
 tonbury, the earliest seat of English history and 
 Christianity, lifts its ruined and ivy-mantled walls 
 above the traditional burial-place of Joseph of 
 Arimathea and of King Arthur. 
 
 Trowbridge is to-day a woolen manufacturing, 
 railroad town of twenty thousand inhabitants, with 
 the villas of prosperous tradesmen adorning its 
 suburbs. Seventy-five years ago it was an ancient 
 village where clear west country heads and stout 
 English hearts wrought with vital strength and 
 
 [3] 
 
MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 power, in patience, after the manner of the 
 
 fathers. There the established church of St. 
 
 James reared its venerable walls, within which the 
 poet Crabbe, 
 
 "Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best/' 
 
 officiated as rector, and there, too, the great renais- 
 sance of religious life had made its home in a stone 
 chapel for the worship of the people called Method- 
 ists. 
 
 It was the England which had felt in great earth- 
 quake shocks the throes of the French Revolution, 
 and over which had surged a refluent wave of con- 
 servatism ; which had marveled at the sudden 
 splendors of the First Empire across the Channel, 
 and shuddered at Marengo and Austerlitz and 
 Leipsic and blazing Moscow ; which had buckled 
 on its armor and gone forth with Nelson at Trafal- 
 gar, with Wellington to the Peninsula. It was the 
 England in which women sat by lonely hearths and 
 wept for husbands, sons, and brothers who fell last 
 year on the field of Waterloo, the England which 
 scarcely yet breathed freely in the knowledge that 
 he who had overwhelmed Europe in blood was safe 
 on his rock at St. Helena. Great debt hung heavy 
 upon the neck of Britain, and from Land's End to 
 John O'Groat's there was severe agricultural distress, 
 to be followed soon by corresponding depression in 
 trade and manufactures. 
 
 De Quincy has well said : — 
 
THE PREPARATION. 
 
 "The agitation, the frenzy, the sorrow of the times 
 reacted upon the human intellect, and forced men into 
 meditation. Their own nature was held up before them 
 in a sterner form. They were compelled to contemplate 
 an ideal of man far more colossal than is brought for- 
 ward in the tranquil aspects of society : and they were 
 often engaged, whether they would or not, with the 
 elementary problems of social philosophy. Mere dan- 
 ger forced a man into thoughts which else were foreign 
 to his habits. Mere necessity of action forced him to 
 decide." 
 
 It was in England at such a time that Mary Mor- 
 timer was born, at Trowbridge, Dec. 2, 1816. 
 Her parents, William Mortimer and Mary (Pierce), 
 his wife, with a name reaching back to the time of 
 the Plantagenets, were plain and simple folk, and 
 bequeathed to their children, along with their name, 
 a most honest and honorable character. Loyal 
 English souls they were, too,- judging from the his- 
 toric baptismal name, Edmund, bestowed on the 
 eldest son, while the eldest daughter bore that 
 of the Princess Charlotte, whose untimely death 
 plunged all England into heart-felt grief before 
 these Mortimers had left their native land. 
 
 Mary was the sixth child and fourth daughter in 
 a family of seven children. Before she had com- 
 pleted her fifth year, the family emigrated to 
 America. The Trowbridge home, on the site of 
 the ancient castle-hill at the head of Court street, 
 surrounded by trees of the father's planting, was 
 
MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 not, however, sold ; and when the family arrived 
 at Bristol, that port whence so many English emi- 
 grants had ventured forth to the New World, the 
 eldest son, a boy of sixteen, refused to go. The 
 family remained at Bristol for a week, when the 
 father, wisely yielding to the manly desire of the 
 son to remain and make his own way in the land 
 of his birth, returned to Trowbridge with him and 
 arranged home and business for the youth. Then, 
 though the mother's heart lingered pathetically 
 with her boy, the family sailed for New York. 
 
 It was long before the days of railways and 
 ocean-steamers, and the voyage, in a sailing-vessel, 
 was one of weeks which lengthened into months. 
 What impression the sublimity of the sea made 
 upon the young child's susceptible nature we do 
 not know, for her memory did not retain it. It 
 was one of her keen regrets that in twice crossing 
 the ocean in mature life, the "malady of the sea" 
 kept her from enjoying the sight of its billows and 
 its storms. 
 
 The land of her birth was but a dim memory to 
 Mary until she revisited it half a century afterward. 
 On her journey from Liverpool to London, in 1871, 
 she wrote : ' ' Four thousand miles from home and 
 from you, I bethink myself this is my native land, 
 the home of my father and mother of blessed mem- 
 ory to their children. A dim, vague memory of 
 learning the large letters in the large old Bible I 
 have in Milwaukee, under the guidance of my 
 
THE PKEPARA TION. 
 
 mother's hand, seems to rise from the past, — the 
 far past, when King George Fourth, of not blessed 
 memory reigned over these islands. As I muse, 
 seeing the beautiful and cultivated landscape before 
 me, and remembering the hardships of my mother's 
 life in America, my heart aches for her." 
 
 The family lived at first in the city of New York, 
 where the seventh and youngest child, John, was 
 born. They afterward removed to the central part 
 of the State, much of which was then almost a 
 wilderness. In Cayuga County they took up their 
 abode, and finally settled on a farm, near the 
 village of Waterloo, and not far from Geneva. 
 Amid this beautiful lake-region of central New 
 York, Mary's intense love of nature was nourished 
 by congenial influences, and perhaps she first here 
 became conscious of that English preference for 
 country over city life which she often emphatically 
 expressed in later years. ■ 
 
 1 ' Her childhood was marked by many peculiarities 
 that no one seemed fully to understand," writes a 
 relative, ' ' and she was not a popular or pleasing 
 child. She seldom joined in the plays of other 
 children, but sought, in such books as she could 
 find, her chief recreation. A wonderful depth of 
 heart and mind was concealed by a modest and 
 diffident exterior to an extent often most painful to 
 herself and perplexing to her friends." 
 
 After a few years the eldest son and brother 
 joined his parents in America, bringing with him a 
 
MA R Y MOR TIMER. 
 
 young English wife. Not long after the son's ar- 
 rival, in the summer of 1829, both the parents were 
 stricken down with one of the fevers incident to a 
 new country, and within the brief space of a single 
 week, death removed, first the mother, and then 
 the father of the young family. 
 
 Mary, a mature child of twelve years, seemed to 
 realize fully the awful nature of this stroke. To 
 the thoughtful brain, God had joined a passion- 
 ately affectionate nature which was now over- 
 whelmed in hopeless sorrow. Her chief earthly 
 ties had been sundered by a swift and sudden blow. 
 She stood orphaned in the world, her heart crushed, 
 blindly, instinctively groping for help she knew not 
 how to find. Friends who heard her refer, in 
 later years, to this bereavement, — not with many 
 words but always with the deepest feeling, — can 
 never forget the impression of its bitter agony. 
 
 The tendrils of her loving nature, thus rudely 
 torn from their natural support, twined themselves 
 round her older sister, Sibyl, whom, to the end of 
 life, she regarded with the utmost devotion, and 
 who possessed a character worthy of such rare 
 affection. Her brother, John, five years younger 
 than herself, also shared regally in the wealth 
 of her affectionate heart. Possessing uncommon 
 strength of regard for all her near kindred, she yet 
 bestowed her utmost love upon this sister and 
 brother. In her strong womanhood, after family 
 ties had bound them to their own for many years, 
 
THE PREPARATION. 
 
 and her life had been filled with cares and trials in 
 a widely diverging path, she was crushed to the 
 earth by their death, and out of these great sorrows 
 she rose up to lay garlands of touching remem- 
 brance and imperishable affection upon the grave 
 of each. 
 
 The calamity which had deprived the family of 
 both parents left the eldest son and brother, 
 Edmund, chief counsellor among the children, and 
 guardian of their slender patrimony. Mary's share 
 she wished to transmute into material for feeding 
 her unbounded craving for knowledge, but her 
 guardian, with true English thrift, refused his per- 
 mission. She, however, attended the common 
 schools, and for a short time the Academy at 
 Auburn, N. Y. , where her eldest brother, after a 
 time, took up his residence, and in whose family 
 she found a home. At the age of sixteen she began 
 to teach a country school, but the same qualities 
 which had marked her childhood interfered with 
 her apparent success, and her deep, original nature 
 not easily falling into the educational traditions of 
 the time, she relinquished the work. Not far from 
 this time Mary and her sister, Sibyl, found for some 
 months a most congenial abode in a Quaker family 
 in Scipio, N. Y. As the better educational advan- 
 tages for which she deeply longed were denied her, 
 she devoted all the time she could win from other 
 duties to private study. She has been heard to 
 refer to her home study of geometry in these years, 
 
10 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 with the book propped open behind the coffee-mill, 
 at which she would glance occasionally as she went 
 to and fro in household duties, reciting to herself 
 every morning the demonstrations from the begin- 
 ning as far as she had learned. The home in which 
 she found herself at Scipio was presided over by a 
 sweet Quaker matron who in quietness of spirit 
 brought about great results with small outlay. The 
 favorite motto from Goethe of Mary's mature life, 
 4 'Without haste, without rest," found brightest 
 illustration in this cherished friend of her youth, 
 and hundreds of Miss Mortimer's pupils learned 
 lessons of value from references to "Aunt Susy" 
 long after the serene Quaker face was under 
 the sod. 
 
 The marriage of her sister Sibyl, who became the 
 wife of Mr. L. S. Bannister, was a great trial to 
 the youthful Mary, second only to the terrible 
 stroke which had deprived her of her parents. 
 Her intense affection could brook no rival in the 
 regard of the idolized sister, but was, perhaps, not 
 so much the morbid passion that it may have 
 seemed to those who could not understand the 
 strangely intense young girl, as the exponent of a 
 great nature, with wonderful powers of thought 
 and emotion, and which was all the more tem- 
 pestuous, because its fastidious shrinking found few 
 friends fitted to call it forth — perhaps none per- 
 fectly so. 
 
THE PREPARATION. \\ 
 
 During all these years of unguided study and 
 struggle she was wandering amid the desolations of 
 religious unbelief. At times speaking of the great 
 problems of life and destiny to her brothers and 
 sisters, some of whom shared the same skeptical 
 tendencies, more often pondering these things si- 
 lently in her heart, she was deeply unhappy. 
 
 Thus sorely in need of help, of sympathy and 
 guidance, she reached the age when she could 
 legally take possession of her share of the paternal 
 estate, and turned with the elasticity of the bent 
 bow toward her long-desired object, the attainment 
 of a better education. In the year 1837 sne en- 
 tered the seminary for young ladies under the care 
 of Mrs. Ricord in Geneva, N. Y., with no very 
 definite aim beyond the longing to gratify her in- 
 satiable craving for knowledge. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 EDUCATION AND CONVERSION. 
 
 At the time when Miss Mortimer entered the 
 Geneva Seminary, the principal was temporarily 
 absent, and the school was under the charge of 
 Miss Clarissa Thurston, associate principal. Miss 
 Mary A. Bradley, a young lady near Miss Mortimer's 
 own age, was also a teacher there. The friend- 
 ships she at once formed with these teachers were 
 most influential to the end of life. After an un- 
 broken intimacy with Miss Mortimer for forty years, 
 Miss Thurston wrote : ' ' The years at Geneva were, 
 in many respects, the most important and decisive 
 of her life," and a family friend writes, " It was at 
 Geneva that she first began really to live." 
 
 It has been said that at Geneva Seminary Miss 
 Mortimer went through a four years' course of study 
 in two years. Miss Thurston says : "In two years 
 she did acquire a thorough knowledge of the prin- 
 cipal branches in the course, and besides studying, 
 in the second year she taught several classes. 
 Often she sat up until after midnight and rose 
 before day to pursue her studies. She entered at 
 the middle of a term and took up Chemistry, and 
 Mental Science, Latin, and I think, Paley's Natural 
 
 [12] 
 
THE PREPARATION. 13 
 
 Theology. She recited alone in Latin and made 
 rapid strides. In the other studies she was soon 
 altogether in advance of those who had been pur- 
 suing them during the whole term. The next term 
 she took up Algebra, Evidences of Christianity, 
 Ancient History, Astronomy, and continued her 
 Latin. Later she studied Rhetoric, Moral Philoso- 
 phy, a History of Modern Europe in three volumes, 
 Geometry, Butler's Analogy, and some time, I 
 hardly know when, she acquired considerable knowl- 
 edge of French. We gave no diploma to a gradu- 
 ating pupil, but a certificate stating the branches 
 she had studied. History, Mathematics, and 
 Metaphysics were absorbing studies to her. " These 
 three lines of study continued to be Miss Morti- 
 mer's pre-eminent choices through life, and her 
 remarkable attainments in the first, and wonderful 
 analytic and constructive powers in the last, 
 marked most truly the scope and grasp of her 
 mind. 
 
 The friendships formed at Geneva with her 
 teachers, and the large liberty for heart and mind 
 afforded by the atmosphere of this Christian school 
 were of the greatest service to the unformed but 
 rapidly unfolding character of this remarkable pupil, 
 and made of Geneva a heart-home which had never 
 before been found by the orphaned girl. As leafy 
 verdure in a backward spring-time shrinks within 
 the cover of the buds from the cold winds, giving 
 no sign of life until the warm breezes blow, and 
 
14 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 then bursts forth almost to maturity in a day, all 
 the more vigorously because held back so long, so 
 this shrinking soul soon clothed itself in the gar- 
 ments of praise when congenial sympathies and in- 
 fluences were at work about it. 
 
 At the time of her going to Geneva, Miss Morti- 
 mer's burning thirst for knowledge was second only 
 to her intense spiritual struggles, She had by 
 nature a strong tendency to question any system 
 which challenged her belief until she had followed, 
 link by link, its entire chain of evidence, pausing at 
 each until a full measure of light shone upon it. 
 She was known among her schoolmates as an 
 infidel and condemned by certain ones, who fancied 
 themselves superior in faith, because she did not 
 believe in Christianity. This she once said in after 
 years, ' ' was unspeakably cruel. I longed in agony 
 to believe, and I could not." But under the quick 
 sympathy and the clear teachings of her instructors 
 she gradually came to the light. 
 
 Miss Thurston writes of this period : — 
 
 "One sultry morning, July 14, 1837, among the 
 group of young ladies assembled for the opening exer- 
 cises of the school, I observed a stranger-pupil, her 
 countenance attractive from its being lighted up with 
 intelligence, and indicating a maturity of mind that 
 quite distinguished her from others of the youthful 
 audience. 
 
 "When I conferred with her as to the studies she 
 wished to pursue, I found she had made good progress 
 
THE PREPARATION. 15 
 
 and was desirous of taking up branches in the higher 
 department. She was quite sure that she could attend 
 to more studies than seemed to me possible, the classes 
 being so far advanced at that time in the term. She 
 was plain in her appearance and taciturn in her manners, 
 but her speaking face and her readiness in recitation 
 soon rendered her conspicuous among her classmates. 
 Her teachers were much impressed with her superior 
 mental endowments, and with her faithful attention to 
 every school duty 
 
 " Much interest being thus awakened in regard to our 
 new pupil, we were led to seek the secret springs that 
 gave direction to her course of action. We found much 
 that was pleasing, — an intense desire for knowledge, a 
 fine literary taste, a delight in delving into foundation 
 principles, a mind not satisfied to take upon trust the 
 conclusions of others, but intent upon arriving at the 
 truth by pursuing a train of reasoning for itself. 
 
 "The change in her character wrought at Geneva was 
 remarkable. In the pride of her intellect she had built 
 for herself a fine structure of morality upon which she 
 purposed to model her character without the aid of 
 Divine power or the teaching of Revelation. In this 
 state of mind she entered the class in Moral Philosophy, 
 and that in Evidences of Christianity. She became 
 convinced of the truth that the Bible is a revelation 
 from God, and that a religion not based upon this can- 
 not save the soul. . . . The Gospel plan of Salvation 
 was unfolded to her. She accepted it, not without great 
 struggles, but at last, in true humility of spirit, became 
 a believer in Jesus. . . . With all the ardor of her 
 nature and the power of her intellect, she entered into 
 
16 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the service of her Master, never resting, until bidden to 
 come up higher and enter into the joy of her Lord." 
 
 The anniversary of the Sabbath day, Dec. 31, 
 1837, which was to her the climax of decisive 
 change, was ever after a time of abiding memories 
 and deepest gratitude. To the friend who stood 
 nearest her at this crucial hour, she wrote, eleven 
 years afterward : — 
 
 " Years ago there was a Sabbath, like this the last 
 day of the year. On the morning of that day, which 
 was made bright and beautiful by the sunlight of heaven, 
 walked a lone child of earth to an earthly temple. 
 Lonely she was in spirit; none sympathized in or knew 
 the feelings which worked at her heart, which fevered 
 her brow, — lonely most of all had she been in the con- 
 viction which for long weary years had pressed upon 
 her that for her there dwelt no Friend above, whose 
 existence, Eternity, and whose nature, Love, could sat- 
 isfy the deepest, loftiest yearnings of her nature. She 
 had been proud and self-willed, and had looked to her 
 own understanding for guidance until ' darkness which 
 might be felt' had settled upon her ; her best, dearest, 
 earthly friends lay silent beneath the clods of the valley. 
 No wonder that earth to her had become a dreary waste, 
 that she was desolate, oh ! how desolate. Glad faces 
 and beating hearts were all about her, the earth in its 
 varied beauty was spread out around her, and the glori- 
 ous canopy of heaven was over her. She saw it, felt it 
 all, but only the more fully to realize her desolation. 
 . . . She could not reach the glorious Creator of whom 
 
THE PREPARATION. Yl 
 
 nature in her speaking beauty, whispered. She could 
 only cry, ' O Thou Lofty One that inhabitest eternity, 
 wilt Thou not hear a worm of earth and reveal Thyself 
 to her?* But pride and self were still unconquered, 
 and the darkness only grew darker. . . . With no Bible, 
 for it was but 'foolishness and a stumbling-block ' to 
 her, with no God, no Saviour, she had stoically resolved 
 to nerve herself for the conflict of life, to gather any 
 flowers she might find in the dreary way, and to be con- 
 tent until the grim monster, Death, to her vision an 
 Angel of Light, should come to her relief. 
 
 " But that sunlit Sabbath a new light was shining upon 
 her, 'a light which the darkness comprehended not/ 
 and such a tumult was excited within her that she 
 scarcely realized her bodily existence. 
 
 "The Only-Wise had left her to the chosen guidance 
 of her own wisdom until she was convinced by bitter 
 and undeniable experience that it was but an ignis 
 fatuus, which had only bewildered and dazzled her, 
 . . . that virtue, even, a dim abstraction which she 
 had idolized, she could not attain. Thus was she 
 humbled and fitted to appreciate the force of the evi- 
 dence which, faithfully and earnestly, had at length 
 been set before her, to prove that He who made all 
 things had revealed Himself to the children of men, 
 that He would hear their cry and give to them bread 
 from heaven and water from the river of life, — and in 
 a gush of intense overpowering emotion, she was pon- 
 dering the question now pressing upon her, < Can it be 
 that the book I have so despised and derided is the 
 word of the Holy One ? that He has condescended to 
 speak and offer Himself to be a Friend to such an one 
 
18 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 as I, and I have stopped my ears and blinded my eyes 
 to the blessed truth ? 
 
 " She dared not believe that He had done all this; 
 she trembled at the thought that she had made such a 
 return. What a history is the human heart ! Who 
 can portray it ? That lone wanderer from her Father's 
 house, in amazement and consternation, mentally stood 
 still. It seemed as if some miracle would be wrought 
 before her to settle the startling question. She uncon- 
 sciously looked to see ' a strong wind rend the mount- 
 ain or an earthquake shake the earth, or a fire break 
 out before her,' but all was calm and unmoved. Her 
 heart alone, as she went to that earthly temple, beat so 
 tumultuously that she scarcely heard the preacher's 
 voice. She was unconscious of the 'still small voice' 
 that was whispering to her, and that God was in the 
 voice. The service closed. Mechanically she walked 
 with the multitude toward her abode, when lo ! thou 
 didst appear before her, thou who wast the?i her friend, 
 thou who hadst gently, kindly, but earnestly and faith- 
 fully plead with her for the truth of God ; thou who 
 hadst almost convinced her that there was 'balm in 
 Gilead and a physician there ' to heal all maladies, that 
 she need no longer wander lone and desolate on earth. 
 ... In silence ye walked together until in low and 
 earnest tones thou didst inquire, 'M., have you yet re- 
 solved to be a Christian ? ' Little didst thou know how 
 that question thrilled through every nerve of her to 
 whom it was addressed. 
 
 " ' No,' she said to herself, ' I have not, but if I give 
 this answer, I shall be asked, why ? What can I, shall 
 I say ? This friend, kind and true as she is, knows not 
 
THE PREPARATION-. 19 
 
 my difficulties ; she cannot appreciate them ; I cannot 
 utter them.' The obligation to be a Christian if she 
 might be one, she had long seen and felt, it pressed as 
 the weight of a world upon her now, — but then, per- 
 haps \t ^2,% not true, — and there arose before her the 
 objections which for long years had been gathering 
 strength within her, and darkness was again settling over 
 her, when athwart that view, clear as if the light of 
 Heaven shone upon it, came the arguments which so 
 faithfully thou hadst set forth for the truth of Jesus, and 
 she felt < None can refute them, ' ' the Bible must be true. ' 
 Still a lingering doubt remained, a doubt which boded 
 ruin. < It may not be, and then, if I should make this 
 resolution, I could not keep it, and it is folly and wick- 
 edness to make and break vows.' Such was the spe- 
 cious plea which well-nigh overcame her, but in that hour 
 of fearful conflict between darkness and light, between 
 the flesh and the spirit, the Good One sent his angel to 
 whisper, * If thou resolvest to do what thy clearest con- 
 victions show to be thy highest duty, thou canst incur 
 no guilt from this, . . . fear not.' And that heart 
 quivering on the line which separates light from dark- 
 ness, life from death, with one earnest prayer to an 
 ' unknown God ' for strength, with the energy of despair 
 and hope combined, threw itself toward the point 
 whence it believed light would come, ... as its 
 possessor turned to thee, still silent by her side, and 
 answered, ' / have resolved. ' 
 
 "On this, the anniversary of that day so dark, yet so 
 fraught with blessings, that twilight of her existence, 
 she turns to thee with unutterable emotions. . . . She 
 yearns to express to thee the deepest gratitude of her 
 
20 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 heart for thy faithful labors to lead her to the light and 
 truth. She would tell thee, if words could utter it, how- 
 bright at length has arisen upon her the sun of which 
 thou dost so beautifully reflect the rays ; how darkness 
 has become light and the crooked places straight before 
 her. She would describe how precious has become the 
 Being whom then she knew not, how like hues of living 
 light His word appears. At the foot of the cross the 
 problem of life has been solved, truth has been found, 
 the spirit healed of its maladies, and a glorious immor- 
 tality opened to the ravished vision of the once deso- 
 late wanderer. Thou who didst guide her to that cross 
 wilt pardon the gush of emotion which impels her once 
 more to obtrude herself upon thee, and the incident of 
 which this day is commemorative, and which is stamped 
 in burning characters on her memory. . . . May He 
 who in mercy sent thee to her in her hour of need, 
 shed upon thee the richest blessings, may He lead thee 
 into the green pastures and beside the still waters of his 
 love, may 'His candle' ever enlighten thy dwelling. 
 May He send his angels to strew flowers of beauty, of 
 peace, and love in thy pathway on earth, and at last 
 open to thee the portals of everlasting blessedness." 
 
 A few days after the date of the foregoing letter 
 she wrote to Miss Thurston of this anniversary. 
 
 "Jan. 6, 1849. 
 "This year, — you did not think of it, perhaps, — the 
 last day of December was on Sabbath, as it was eleven 
 years ago, and the more vividly was that important 
 epoch of my life brought to mind. . . . You can im- 
 agine, you who know so well what I was, what were my 
 
THE PREPARATION. 21 
 
 feelings, what they now are. God be praised ! I re- 
 mind you, for deeply associated as you are in all these 
 events, I want you to rejoice with me, and M. A. too. 
 I wonder if this last sunlit Sabbath, so like the one 
 when we walked together and she led me to the most 
 blessed resolution of my life, reminded her of her 
 friend." 
 
 Under the date of March 30, 1842, her sister, 
 Mrs. Sibyl Bannister, wrote to Miss Thurston : — 
 
 ". . . I have ever looked upon the circumstances of 
 our being brought together as graciously providential, 
 and designed for my benefit and that of my sister. 
 When I think of dear sister Mary and her unhappy con- 
 dition a few years since, without father or mother, and 
 without friends except her orphan brothers and sisters, 
 and destitute of that light which alone can guide us in 
 the path of life, . . . truly when I think of these 
 things, I am led to praise and adore the Hand that 
 made you and your dear fellow-teacher the instruments 
 of bringing her to a knowledge of the truth. . . . This 
 one instance is enough to strengthen our faith in the 
 promises of God." 
 
 Miss Thurston's reminiscences of those days are 
 interesting, and show the workings of Miss Morti- 
 mer's mind on the great problems of life and des- 
 tiny. 
 
 "The Bible now became her study," writes Miss 
 T. , " and much did she lament her ignorance of its 
 sacred truths. With a spirit of meekness she sought 
 my instruction, and the year that followed was one 
 
22 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 of interest to us both. I left her to search the word 
 of God according to her own sense of need and the 
 interest she felt in its pages, giving what time I 
 could to conversation with her on the subjects 
 therein revealed. But as she was a day-pupil, it 
 was but little intercourse that we could have with- 
 out neglecting other duties. I therefore proposed 
 that we should talk with the pen. . . . This cor- 
 respondence I have preserved, at least I have her 
 replies to my letters." The first quoted bears 
 
 date — 
 
 "July 3, 1838. 
 "It is with heartfelt pleasure and gratitude that I 
 gratify your desire of knowing my feelings, my per- 
 plexities, my doubts. It would be vain should I at- 
 tempt to tell you the intensity of my feelings when I 
 first saw that I had spent my life in the dark path of 
 error, when I was first convinced that the high and 
 holy Being who rules the universe had condescended 
 to give us a revelation of his will, that a Saviour had 
 died for our transgressions, and I had disregarded all. 
 Mind and body seemed to sink under the overwhelming 
 thought, and the months that followed were passed in a 
 state of continual excitement. May I, my dear teacher, 
 offer this as some palliation for my neglect of doctrines, 
 my neglect of all, save to me the thrilling fact that 
 Christianity is true. . . . Perhaps I permit feeling to 
 influence me too much, but I do most earnestly desire 
 to be led into the way of truth." 
 
 Here follows her statement of dissent from some 
 of the doctrines accepted by her teachers, and her 
 
THE PREPARATION. 23 
 
 serious questioning of others, made, not without 
 humility, but in clear reliance on her own reasoning 
 powers. Of another doctrine she says : "It is a 
 mystery I have not yet fathomed ; I have no settled 
 opinion on this subject." "The Bible is to me a 
 new book, and though most of its contents is yet 
 shrouded in darkness, I do rejoice that this treasure 
 is in my hands, and hope that its blessed light will 
 save me from future error." 
 
 Her teacher wisely forbore to combat the posi- 
 tions of her dissenting pupil, and says, ' ' I felt sure 
 that by searching the Scriptures she would soon 
 come to the light." She was at first disappointed 
 that the errors to which she still clung were not no- 
 ticed, but afterward writes : i ' Reflection has taught 
 me you were right, and I now rejoice that you did 
 not put another temptation in my way by attempting 
 to reason with me. . . . I have been trying to read 
 the Bible under your direction and have proved 
 your words true, ' The more 'you study it, the more 
 precious it will become to you.' . . . A year has 
 rolled round since a kind Providence directed me to 
 you, and many overpowering reflections are brought 
 to my mind. I came here an isolated being, feeling 
 that science was the only light that glimmered 
 across the universal gloom. Now — but you can 
 realize better than I can tell, the change that has 
 come over me." 
 
 " In accordance with my advice," continues Miss 
 Thurston, ' ' she decided to remain in school another 
 
24 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 year, and to adopt teaching as her life-work. . . . 
 Her great desire now was to dedicate her time and 
 talents to that employment in which she could be 
 most useful." 
 
 This second year, as a pupil in Geneva Seminary, 
 was, like the first, a time of investigation. The 
 great decision of her life was irrevocably made. 
 She was henceforth a Christian believer. But she 
 "saw men as trees walking;" the transformation 
 from darkness to light had not as yet shown her the 
 true perspective of important phases of Christian 
 doctrine. Her original nature led her to search out 
 these for herself, though she often appealed for 
 sympathy and help to the instructor whose influence 
 had been so blessed to her. For some time she 
 held to the Quaker view of the ordinances of bap- 
 tism and the Lord's supper as not needed in a 
 spiritual religion, and she was doubtful of all de- 
 nominational distinctions and tenets. In Novem- 
 ber, 1838, she writes, "There is a want of clearness 
 in my conception of the doctrines of the different 
 denominations ; I must understand the Bible far 
 better than I do now before I can decide between 
 them." This disquietude was the more deeply felt 
 because in her own family circle there were Quakers, 
 Methodists, and Universalists, while her beloved 
 teachers were members of the Presbyterian Church. 
 This last was the church now nearest to her, and 
 after months of testing its leading doctrines by the 
 Bible, she went before the session of the Presby- 
 
THE PREPARA TION 
 
 terian Church of Geneva, presented in writing an 
 account of her religious experience and views of 
 doctrinal truth, and a few weeks after was admitted 
 to its communion, in February, 1839. 
 
 1 ' The Christian graces shone brightly in her 
 character," writes her teacher. " Her charity was 
 abounding, reaching down to raise from the depths 
 those whom the world despises, — a soul emptied of 
 self, ever longing to impart blessings to others. 
 The longer she lived, the more her views were ex- 
 panded, and her heart was moved for the lost and 
 perishing in every land." 
 
 One of Miss Mortimer's teachers at Geneva, Miss 
 (now Mrs.) M. A. Bradley, writes of the years spent 
 there : — 
 
 "How well I remember her as a pupil, docile, faith- 
 ful, earnest, never shirking any responsibility and never 
 doing any superficial work, patient, persistent, holding 
 herself rigidly to the achievement of all that was pos- 
 sible in whatever she undertook. Retiring in manner 
 and utterly unconscious of superiority, by her eagerness 
 for knowledge and the force of her intellect, she was 
 conspicuous, even when shrinking from observation. 
 She 'gave heed to instruction/ and her presence in class 
 was always an inspiration to her teachers. Simplicity 
 and integrity of character were strongly marked traits. 
 Incapable of dissimulation, she could not conceal from 
 her teachers the burden of doubt she had carried for 
 years as to the truth of Divine Revelation. She felt 
 that her mental difficulties could not be understood by 
 
26 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 those who had never known them, and her struggle was 
 severe. She wanted to know the truth, and seeking for 
 it in the way of argument and external evidence, she 
 reached an intellectual conviction which only increased 
 her wretchedness. There was no rest or peace for her 
 till she tried the test of experiment. /If any man will 
 do His will, he shall know of the doctrine. ' 'This is 
 the will of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath 
 sent.' She made a full self-surrender, and then what 
 light and joy broke in upon her ! Henceforth her life 
 was a steady purpose and effort to do His will." 
 
 At the age of twenty-one Miss Mortimer seemed 
 to have lived a long life of struggle with doubt and 
 uncertainty. Now with undisciplined strength of 
 intellect, emotion, and will, she had given herself in 
 life-long surrender to the best she knew, and found 
 that birthright which she had sought so long and 
 carefully and with so many tears. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 EARLY TEACHING GENEVA, BROCKPORT, LE ROY. 
 
 ' ' A teacher, above almost any other, needs to 
 serve a faithful apprenticeship to her business ; and 
 I look back and rejoice in deep gratitude that I 
 have been led, it may be at pecuniary sacrifice, to 
 serve a ten years' apprenticeship under tutors and 
 guardians." Thus wrote Miss Mortimer as she 
 stood in her early prime on the threshold of a great 
 change. This " ten years' apprenticeship, " as she 
 was pleased to call it, was spent in three places, 
 and considerably broken at intervals by ill health ; 
 it ran through all grades, from her beginning in 
 1838 as assistant pupil in Geneva to the assured 
 strength of almost independent work at Le. Roy 
 Female Seminary, in the absence of its Principal in 
 Europe, in 1 847. But until the latter part of this 
 period at Le Roy, she was seldom without the pres- 
 ence and sympathy of teachers and friends whose 
 greater experience or whose special gifts exercised 
 over her a marked influence without destroying the 
 strong individuality which underlay her diffident 
 and somewhat reticent manner. Her disposition 
 to independent thought and originality of method 
 was remarkably combined with humility and eager- 
 
 [27] 
 
28 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ness to attain the best, producing the docility 
 which her discriminating teacher, Miss Bradley, 
 has named first among her characteristics. 
 
 The three most intimate friends of this period 
 were all teachers, Miss Thurston, her senior ; Miss 
 M. A. Bradley, her contemporary ; and Miss Frances 
 Collier, her junior in years. The experience, devo- 
 tion, and practical wisdom of the first, the elevation, 
 gentleness, and benignity of the second, and the deli- 
 cacy, vivacity and fine artistic nature of the third, 
 each appealed to her susceptibilities, met her needs, 
 and called forth the warm admiration and affection 
 of her heart. In addition to the influence of these 
 three life-long friends, Miss Mortimer was constantly 
 brought into contact with other teachers in whom 
 her quiet but keen observation could discern special 
 excellencies of adaptation, methods or results ; at 
 Geneva and Le Roy she was working on founda- 
 tions laid by others, some of whom were among the 
 foremost teachers of their time and region. This 
 experience was to her far more beneficial than an 
 extended course in technical pedagogics ; for it was 
 unformulated but vital theory combined with con- 
 stant and severely self-scrutinized practice. Her 
 passionate love for the work, her lofty ideals, un- 
 fettered by conventionalities, and her patient and 
 persistent efforts to overcome all obstacles in herself 
 and her pupils, were nowhere without marked effect. 
 
 At Geneva Seminary, after she had completed 
 her studies in 1839, she remained two years as a 
 
THE PREPARATION. 29 
 
 teacher ; her four years there having a strongly 
 marked unity of influence both as received from 
 teachers, and communicated, not at second hand, 
 but as a part of vital growth, to her pupils. Her 
 correspondence during the later, as in the earlier 
 years at Geneva, was addressed mainly to her 
 family friends when in school, and to the teachers 
 during vacations, and in other absences through ill 
 health which had begun to shadow her pathway. 
 Her favorite theme is Christianity ; her constantly 
 growing happiness in its contemplation and prac- 
 tice being diminished only when the unbelief of 
 some of her nearest and dearest kindred saddens 
 her heart. When Presbyterian doctrines were at- 
 tacked, she at first began to write out her belief, 
 which conformed in the main to the standards of 
 the church of her choice. But on second thought 
 she desisted, in adherence to her early rule "to 
 defend Christianity, not Prcsbytcrianism" In all 
 the ardor of her youth and her early Christian ex- 
 perience, it was not possible for her to be a bigot. 
 
 The time now approaches when the friendship of 
 Miss Thurston on which Miss Mortimer had so 
 much leaned in her emergence from the darkness of 
 her youth, was to be, gradually and gently, but 
 firmly disengaged, as a prop, while it continued 
 through life as a present and remembered blessing. 
 
 In regard to the circumstances attending Miss 
 Mortimer's leaving Geneva and her subsequent life 
 in Brockport, Miss Thurston wrote : — 
 
30 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " Miss Mortimer's four years in Geneva of such in- 
 tense application, both as pupil and teacher, had been 
 more than she had strength to endure. Her last year 
 there was one of great suffering, and she ought to have 
 taken a year for recuperation. But I had received an 
 application for a teacher to fill the position of Principal 
 of the Female Department of Brockport (N. Y.) Colle- 
 giate Institute. Knowing her to be admirably fitted for 
 the position, I could not but desire her to take it, and 
 she was equally desirous of entering this new field of 
 labor. . . . The great, and I may say, the only hin- 
 drance to her enjoyment at Brockport was intense 
 bodily suffering. Her system seemed full of disease, 
 and her right hand and right foot became nearly help- 
 less. Before the close of the first year, I was also en- 
 gaged in the same institution, and Miss Collier entered 
 at the same time as music teacher. By our relieving 
 her from all care, and doing all that could be done to 
 alleviate her sufferings, she was able most of the time 
 to instruct her classes, but she took no general over- 
 sight of the school while I was with her." 
 
 Thus the hope with which Miss Mortimer entered 
 upon this new field was speedily dissipated by in- 
 creasing physical disability. But her feelings at the 
 thought of entering upon work for which she at first 
 expected to be alone responsible, are mirrored in a 
 letter to Miss. T. The chirography of her letters, 
 always unique and full of character, shows at this 
 period, by the greater firmness and consistency of 
 its strokes, that she who wielded the pen was al- 
 ready entering on that maturity of thought and 
 
THE PREPARATION. 31 
 
 freedom of action which marked her womanhood. 
 But the first stepping out from the shelter of her 
 loved Geneva friends was shadowed by lowly self- 
 estimate and self-distrust. 
 
 "Nov. 20, 1841. 
 
 "The hour draws near, when, without the guidance 
 and support of my loved friend, I am, among strangers, 
 to assume new and untried responsibilities, and in view 
 of it an oppressive sadness creeps over me. There is, 
 however, mingled with that sadness, some trust in Him 
 who has said, ( Sufficient to thy day shall thy strength 
 be.' 
 
 "Over the future there hang two clouds; the one, 
 your absence, the other, the charge I have accepted. 
 The first I must endeavor to dispel by getting nearer 
 to the light which emanates from the countenance of a 
 higher Friend. . . . The other, too, I know will vanish 
 if I undoubtingly, trustingly, lean upon this Friend. I 
 wish you, my dear sister, to write me very explicit direc- 
 tions and counsel to help me in all emergencies. Tell 
 me particularly as to religious instruction what course I 
 shall take." 
 
 The first letter after reaching the new field is 
 dated — 
 
 "Brockport, Dec. 7, 1841. 
 
 [After describing the unfinished condition of the 
 large and fine new edifice erected for the school, and 
 the consequent difficulties in beginning.] "We already 
 number ninety, by next Monday probably shall have 
 more than a hundred students. Much the larger num- 
 ber are gentlemen. The ladies do not seem very much 
 
32 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 advanced, tho' some of them appear very well. The 
 college building is a little out of the village, standing in 
 solitary grandeur. . . . Do you begin to feel badly 
 about my prospects ? Spare yourself, except on the 
 ground that I very much fear that I shall disgrace you 
 and your recommendations. All this confusion has at 
 least spared me the excitement I should have felt if I 
 had had a formal beginning. But there is a drawback 
 even worse than excitement. My pupils will be getting 
 bad habits (in regard to study, surrounded by the con- 
 fusion of completing the building). . . . The prospect 
 for pupils is, however, good." 
 
 "Sabbath Evening, Jan. 2, 1842. 
 
 "I feel my obligations to a considerable extent, and 
 have felt, I think I may say, an abiding and increasing 
 earnestness in supplication at a mercy seat for grace 
 and wisdom to fit me for the duties of my station and 
 for a blessing on my labor. . . . O that the Father of 
 mercies may hear our prayers and answer them to the 
 best good of these dear young people. 
 
 "I much feel the need of Christian intercourse and 
 counsel. . . . My advances I fancy are met rather 
 coldly, and I shrink away with the fear that I may be 
 thought affectedly zealous. Perhaps I may be wrong, 
 and in meekness I will try again to lead to the topics 
 which should be nearest our hearts. I suspect I am 
 too square and decided, which you know is my besetting 
 sin. I will try to watch myself on this point. . . . 
 
 " Most affectionately, 
 
 "Your own child in the faith, 
 
 "Mary." 
 
THE PREPARATION. 33 
 
 As ill health increased, her dear Geneva teacher 
 and friend, Miss Bradley, came to visit and cheer 
 her, and, deferring other plans, remained for a time 
 at Brockport, to assist her in teaching. 
 
 Miss Mortimer writes Miss T. from — 
 
 " Brockport, March 26, 1842. 
 
 ". . . Our examination has now become an old 
 story and I think you would not be interested to hear 
 further details. . . . We began school on Wednesday. 
 My good girls have returned as bright as dollars, and a 
 number of new ones about the same age. . . . The 
 school, thus early in the term, numbers 126. In addition 
 to the studies pursued last term, Miss Bradley has 
 Chemistry, Botany, Physiology, and I have Aber- 
 crombie. 
 
 " Sabbath Evening. 
 
 "I have been talking to M. A. until she does not 
 want to listen to me any longer, and so I turn to you. 
 . . . We have been talking of faith. ... I fear I do 
 not know what faith is, and yet I know it is the very 
 thing I need. How shall I obtain it ? You will tell 
 me to pray. Alas ! how can I without first possessing 
 faith? What then can I do? — Nothing. There is 
 the stumbling-stone. Christ is all and in all, and even 
 trust in Him is a gift, and that gift obtained by no 
 effort of ours, because without the gift we should never 
 seek it. How mysterious to the human understanding 
 is godliness, and yet, even to that understanding, en- 
 lightened, how glorious ! But enough, my dear con- 
 fessor. I trust the spirit of grace will yet dispel the 
 cloud and enable us to rejoice together." 
 4 
 
34 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 A long cherished project with Miss Thurston 
 and Miss Mortimer had been that of setting up a 
 new school together. Though temporarily in the 
 background, it had not at this time been relin- 
 quished. 
 
 "What" writes Miss M. "shall I tell Mr. B. 
 when he asks me about remaining here? A definite 
 answer must be given soon. The citizens are more 
 than ever engaged since the examination. Our 
 grounds are being laid out in great style, with 
 parks, etc., etc. I am glad you have written for 
 Mr. N. I have not, and have not time. I will try, 
 however, to have an article ready for July. My 
 ' thinking class ' was very popular, and the young 
 ladies are anxious to have a class again this term. 
 1 find two extracts from Mrs. R. 's Philosophy over 
 her name in the Evangelist." 
 
 " Brockport, April 7, 1842. 
 'We are both as much occupied, for aught I see, as 
 I was last term. ... I think with regard to your com- 
 ing here, our situation would be, on many accounts, 
 
 pleasant. . . . Mrs. is disturbed at the thought 
 
 of my going away, and tells me that here is a fine field 
 for doing good, and inquires if you could not be pre- 
 vailed upon to come. . . . Mrs. R.'s Philosophy is 
 wondrously recommended, is it not ? I think it will 
 get into favor and use too, for which I shall be heartily 
 glad. 
 
 "We will endeavor to discover you in your incognito 
 
THE PREPARATION. 35 
 
 in the Observer. How comes on the book you were to 
 write ? " 
 
 The failing health of Miss Mortimer decided her 
 that she could not remain long in the responsible 
 position to which she had been invited at Brock- 
 port ; and without unduly urging Miss Thurston to 
 take the place which she felt she must relinquish 
 soon, she yet presented the opportunity for useful- 
 ness and the pleasant aspects of the work so win- 
 somely that Miss Thurston finally decided to enter 
 upon it. 
 
 Miss Mortimer wrote from — 
 
 "Brockport, June 4, 1842. 
 "I might, without any great stretch, be glowing upon 
 the attention and good feeling which is, and will be, 
 manifested by the best class of persons here. As to 
 usefulness, I will not say that I would not far better 
 like to be more by ourselves, but really I do not think 
 we could have a much better field to do good in. You 
 can, in this village, exert an influence, an extensive one 
 if you wish, even aside from school. . . . We have one 
 of the best of boarding places, and that, too, without 
 any care or anxiety on our part." 
 
 Miss Mortimer was not unwilling to remain and 
 attempt the instruction of a few classes, though 
 feeling strongly the uncertain tenure of her work. 
 She much desired that her friend, Miss Bradley, 
 should remain, as a permanent assistant to Miss 
 Thurston. It was, however, finally decided that 
 
36 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Misses Thurston and Mortimer should have the 
 charge of literary instruction and Miss Frances 
 Collier, of New York, that of the music department. 
 Miss Bradley turned her thoughts to her plan of 
 going West, formed before she went to Brockport. 
 
 The correspondence during these years which 
 is not quoted, shows great growth in independent 
 action, an ever loyal affection for Miss Thurston 
 with, consciously or unconsciously, a wide departure 
 from her in modes of thought and action. Here 
 Miss Mortimer formed a deep and influential attach- 
 ment to Miss Collier, their young associate teacher. 
 Incidentally, the enthusiasm of a lover of Nature in 
 its sublimest moods is shown by her reference to a 
 visit, in company with Miss Bradley and other 
 friends, to Niagara Falls, and her offer, though in 
 ill health and with limited purse, to repeat the visit 
 soon with Miss Thurston. Her practical faculty in 
 the management of school affairs, her wide sym- 
 pathies, and the deep impression she is making on 
 the best minds with which she comes in contact, 
 are evidently growing with opportunity. 
 
 Her prized associate and friend, Miss Frances 
 Collier, now Mrs. L. S. Bannister, wrote of this 
 period : — 
 
 "It was sometime in the late Autumn of 1841 that 
 Miss Mortimer left Geneva, and entered upon new and 
 arduous duties in the organization of the ' Collegiate 
 Institute ' at Brockport, N. Y. In this work she was 
 associated with Mr. Julius Bates, a man peculiarly 
 
THE PREPARATION. 37 
 
 fitted to grapple with the duties of a new enterprise, 
 and with a band of teachers who co-operated with him 
 most earnestly, and who will be long and gratefully re- 
 membered by many pupils of the Institution, now 
 scattered far and wide, who were there trained and 
 girded for the great battle of life. Miss Mortimer en- 
 tered upon this new sphere of labor with all the bound- 
 less enthusiasm of her nature. Difficulties only seemed 
 to arouse her untiring energies. It was at this time that 
 looking out upon the future, which lay spread before 
 her like a book with its fair pages all unwritten, she in- 
 scribed upon its opening leaf these words, which reveal 
 something of her life-purpose : — 
 
 "'Free as I am from domestic cares, and in one 
 sense from family ties, I feel that I should devote my- 
 self to the good of others ; that I should enter heart 
 and hand into the vineyard of the Lord; not to be a 
 looker-on, not to labor for myself, but for Him.' 
 
 "And again, 'Great God, I bless Thee that it is 
 thine to will and to do, of thine own good pleasure.' 
 Oh ! will in me such graces and such affections as shall 
 enable me aright to perform the duties before me. May 
 the anxiety I feel for success be purified from every- 
 thing earthly, and may it be manifested forth in labors 
 of love, in labor for Thee, O most blessed Saviour.'" 
 
 The winter of her second year at Brockport 
 (1842-3) found Miss Mortimer at the home of her 
 sister in Phelps, for a time too ill to remain in 
 school. In the spring she went to Geneva to con- 
 sult a physician, and later, made a visit to her 
 friends, Miss Ingham and Miss L. A. Seymour, at 
 
38 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Le Roy Female Seminary. Returning to Brock- 
 port, where she spent a short time, the early sum- 
 mer finds her again in Phelps, whence she writes, 
 giving a picture of traveling in the dawn of modern 
 methods of locomotion. 
 
 " Phelps, June 8, 1843. 
 " I am really in Phelps, after a journey so unroman- 
 tic, undangerous, etc., that it is hardly worthy of being 
 referred to. . . . When I arrived at the boat, ' Sir 
 Henry/ I found two ministers of our acquaintance 
 among the passengers. The boat began to move. I 
 kissed the children good-bye and they left me. I put 
 myself at the window to take a last look at them 
 and the renowned town of B. . . . We sailed on to 
 Rochester as people are wont in the packet. The 
 ministers talked about General Assembly, marrying a 
 deceased wife's sister, theological seminary, etc., etc., 
 and I talked, — till at length we arrived. Mr. S. 
 went out to find a carriage, and we proceeded to the 
 National Temperance Hotel. We had but little time 
 before the cars left. I thought, however, I would try 
 to see the doctor. . . . We reached Oak's Corners 
 about four, where I was set out with my baggage. 
 Mr. G. looked around in some apparent dismay and 
 inquired if no one was to meet me. I told him not to 
 be troubled, as I could get along very well, so, as he 
 could not help, he jumped into the cars and away they 
 went, leaving me standing in the middle of the road. 
 ... I limped to the nearest house and stepped within 
 the gate, when who should appear but P. and her 
 husband, coming to my relief. . . . Since that momen- 
 tous day I have been trying to get well. ... I have 
 
THE PREPARATION. 39 
 
 got a crutch, but do not like it and think I shall not 
 use it." 
 
 This letter refers to a mysterious lameness which 
 had settled in her right hand and foot, and which 
 became her chief disability, involving intense suf- 
 fering, and finally severing her connection with 
 Brockport. This trouble followed her for some 
 time, but proved not to be permanent, although 
 her right hand and arm were never after entirely 
 recovered, and occasionally she was under the ne- 
 cessity, even many years later, of writing with pen 
 in her left hand for months at a time. 
 
 In the same letter : — 
 
 "I have begun the 'Life of Brainerd.' ... I will 
 think of you in reading it, and of your desire in giving 
 it to me." 
 
 Two days later : — 
 
 "I sat up last night and read Brainerd. I pondered, 
 my dear friend, but knew not what to think. He must 
 have been a holy man, but am I wrong in asking, Was 
 there no undue enthusiasm about him, or excitement? 
 Or does this question arise from my being so far from 
 right, my heart so cold ? " 
 
 " Phelps, June 15, 1843. 
 "I read Brainerd last evening, — during his last sick- 
 ness, — and the epistle of John, until rather late for my 
 present good habits, and found it quite an effort to 
 stop. ... I felt more than I have done for several 
 months. . . . My heart was pretty well melted, and I 
 
40 mary Mortimer. 
 
 felt some desire, I trust earnest and humble, to live a 
 different life, — a life of devotion to Him who has, year 
 after year, spared the barren fig tree. O ! how infinite 
 is His love and mercy. ..." 
 
 To Miss Collier : — 
 
 "I wish very much that I could see you. ... I am 
 very nearly well enough to go to New York, at least I 
 should not feel much hesitation in going on account of 
 my health. ... I will meet you at Auburn, and, if I 
 go, go on immediately as fast as steam will carry us. 
 ... I trust you will be safely landed at your own dear 
 home. I shall be very happy to see you there. The 
 day has been when the sight of others at home reminded 
 me too painfully of my loss, . . . but my heart is better 
 schooled now, and I look only with pleasure on that 
 dearest, brightest picture of earth." 
 
 New York, July 14, 1843. 
 
 " More than two weeks have elapsed since we reached 
 this city. My health is much improved but my foot 
 remains about the same. ... I do so want it to get 
 well. So far as I am able to judge, I improve at Phelps 
 faster than anywhere else I have been. Avon I have 
 not yet tried." 
 
 "Newark, July 25, 1843. 
 
 " I have of late felt a little discouraged. . . . This, 
 as well as the Doctor's prescription, seems to forbid my 
 returning to Brockport. ... I have rather decided it 
 not safe for me to teach at present, but as, not know- 
 ing your movements, I can lay no plan to see you on 
 the way, I think I shall go on to Brockport with F., 
 and then I trust no untoward circumstances will prevent 
 
THE PREPARATION. 41 
 
 our consulting together and laying plans for the future. 
 Our present design is to leave New York next Monday 
 morning, take the packet at Schenectady and proceed 
 as fast as that will take us to B . ..." 
 
 After a visit to L e Roy : — 
 
 "Avon, Aug. 15, 1843. 
 
 "I am actually at Avon Springs, and have drunk a 
 glass and a half of its famed water. . . . After you left 
 me (at Le Roy), Miss I. came and gave me a very 
 warm welcome. Sabbath she gave me < Philosophy of 
 the Plan of Salvation ' to read — a very philosophic 
 book, by the way. . . . Monday went to examination, 
 which went on considerably after our fashion. . . . By 
 the time we left the schoolroom a great company was 
 assembled in the parlor to all of whom I had to be pre- 
 sented. . . . Music, talking, etc., etc., were going on, 
 when I, a little sad and weary, laid hold of Miss S. 
 and begged to withdraw, which being accomplished, I 
 finished my book, and thought upon the delights of 
 peace and quiet, and much more which I will not ex- 
 plain. . . . This morning I resolutely announced my 
 determination to proceed to Avon without delay. . . . 
 The stage left me a mile and a half from here, but I got 
 a horse and buggy and came on. ... I rather like the 
 looks of things. ... I can be comfortable, even happy 
 here, and do very much as I please. I am very near 
 the lower Spring to which I have walked once. This 
 is not, I presume, a fashionable place, though I think I 
 shall like it better than a fashionable one. ..." 
 
 "I am being tried, though not very cruelly so, and 1 
 do trust the process will be purifying ; indeed I feel 
 
42 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 that it has done something, that it will do more. I 
 think I never realize temporal blessings so much as 
 when out of health, but while these, among which the 
 dearest have been the love and kindness of friends, 
 have been a comfort, my plans have been frustrated, 
 my energies have almost evaporated, my hopes again 
 and again been blasted, until it seems to me I have, to 
 some small extent, learned the lesson my Father would 
 teach me." 
 
 Notwithstanding her fears, some temporary re- 
 cuperation found Miss Mortimer again at Brockport 
 in the fall term. But by midwinter she was again 
 in need of the rest and change afforded by a visit 
 to her friends at Phelps and Auburn. 
 
 She writes from — 
 
 "Auburn, Tues., Jan. 23, 1844. 
 
 "At the Corners, found S. awaiting me. . . . 
 Yesterday morning S. and I took a ride of a few 
 miles and after dinner came to this village. I seemed 
 to get better every mile, and if I could ride far enough, 
 think I should get quite well. . . . 
 
 " Tis very nice to be at home, though I believe that 
 word, at this era of my life applies better to the spot 
 where you, my dear friend, and the school are, than 
 anywhere else. I will try to keep very quiet and happy 
 and get well as fast as possible. . . . Perhaps I shall 
 go to Geneva to spend next Sabbath. . . . Remember 
 me very affectionately to the young ladies and tell 
 them they are much in my mind." 
 
 In the early spring of 1844 Miss Thurston was 
 suddenly and finally called from the school in 
 
THE PREPARATION. 43 
 
 Brockport, by a bereavement which fell on the 
 household of her brother in the death of his wife. 
 Miss Mortimer remained for a few months in charge 
 of the work, but with sufficient physical disability 
 to look without doubt on the necessity of abandon- 
 ing her post ere long. 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 Brockport, May 13, 1844. 
 
 " How are you getting along in your solitary home ? 
 I trust peace and joy will beam around your desolate 
 fireside. . . . 
 
 " My school-keeping without you gets on but sadly, 
 and my heart is, in consequence, often oppressed. It 
 is a fearful thing to have such responsibility resting 
 upon one. . . . Need I tell you that my heart is cold, 
 that I get through the business of the day as the current 
 leads me, but with so little heart that I am almost star- 
 tled sometimes ? I have, a few times, in Bible class or 
 on similar occasions, felt a gushing forth of feeling, 
 and an interest which enabled me to speak with some 
 ease and earnestness upon that which interests us all so 
 nearly, but how soon it is gone. . . . 
 
 " Our catalogue we send you. . . . We keep you in 
 it still, you see. ..." 
 
 After vacation and a visit to Miss T. : — 
 
 "Brockport, Aug. 12, 1844. 
 "I am, as you may imagine, tired and solitary, in- 
 deed feel this morning exceedingly unfitted for the 
 labors of the day. My school-symptoms are fast creep- 
 ing over me, and I could cry in sorrow at the thought. 
 
44 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 O, it is nice to feel bright and well and to be in school 
 too, but I cannot seem to reconcile the two things." 
 
 Soon the inevitable decision was made to leave 
 the school, its pupils and friends, and the place 
 which, notwithstanding constant interruption on 
 account of illness, in the nearly three years since 
 she came to it, had become endeared to her. The 
 home of her sister, Mrs. Bannister, was the refuge 
 to which she looked forward for the winter. A 
 few of her pupils wished to follow her into her re- 
 tirement, and it was finally arranged that her friend 
 and associate, Miss Collier, should accompany her, 
 and that the young ladies should be received as 
 pupils, these with their teachers occupying a house 
 near Mrs. Bannister's but all becoming a part of 
 the family and gathering around the home-table. 
 This prospect of having something to do, yet being 
 in her sister's family, and free from the cares of 
 more responsible station, was to Miss Mortimer, in 
 her invalid state, most attractive. She wrote 
 from — 
 
 " Brockport, Oct. 16, 1844. 
 
 "How rich I shall be, — friends, books, sisters, 
 home, everything ! . . . I am getting impatient to get 
 away from school, I feel so badly. Perhaps I shall not 
 stay till close of the term." 
 
 In the same letter, Miss Collier wrote : — 
 
 "Four weeks from to-night we bid adieu to school, 
 and in a day or two, to Brockport. I cannot realize 
 
THE PREPARATION. 45 
 
 that I am so soon to leave, perhaps forever, the spot 
 where I have been so happy, where I have found dear 
 friends who will hold a place in my heart as long as I 
 live. But so it is. I did not care to come in search of 
 friends or happiness, and here I have found both." 
 
 Miss Mortimer's last letter addressed to Miss 
 T. from Brockport Collegiate Institution is dated — 
 
 "Oct. 30, 1844. 
 "Thank you a thousand times, my dear sister, for 
 your sympathy. I feel badly, as you know, sometimes, 
 over my prostrate health and blighted hopes, but I have 
 very much for which to be thankful. I feel comfort- 
 able, even bright, when I have nothing to tax my wits, 
 or my feelings. I have the very comforts of life I love 
 best, and more than all besides, the blessing I so long, 
 so earnestly sighed for, — a revelation from the Author 
 of all. The winter if no unforeseen event occurs to 
 mar our happiness, can be but pleasant and quiet. Turn 
 away then, from my sorrows, and sympathize with me 
 in my joys." 
 
 One of the band associated with Miss Mortimer 
 in this happy winter gives the following graphic 
 picture : — 
 
 "In the fall of 1844 Miss Mortimer origniated and ma- 
 tured a plan for the winter which, while it furnished her 
 with congenial employment, proved both pleasant and 
 profitable to a class of a half dozen young ladies who 
 enjoyed the advantages of her instruction. This ' band 
 of sisters' was domiciled for the winter in a quiet 
 farm-house a few miles distant from one of the beautiful 
 
46 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 villages in Western New York. There, shut in by the 
 wintry snows, sometimes for days cut off from all inter- 
 course with the outside world, they devoted themselves 
 to study, with all the ardor of their own youthful 
 minds, inspired to extraordinary effort by the enthu- 
 siasm of their teacher. The amount of mental labor 
 achieved during their four months session by that little 
 group of students would be considered simply incred- 
 ible by the average young lady. It was a grand finish- 
 ing-school, or rather, a grand preparatory course, for 
 those who were looking forward to teaching as their 
 work. The hours of severer study in Metaphysics and 
 Mathematics were pleasantly relieved by a course in 
 Modern History, and, at stated times, lessons in Music, 
 French and Drawing afforded a healthful and much 
 needed change. 
 
 "When the hours of study for the day were ended, 
 exercise and play were the order, and no one was 
 excused. When the weather did not admit of a walk, 
 the old porch furnished out-door promenade, and the 
 chance passer-by must sometimes have been startled 
 with the ring of merry voices and the rapid tramp of 
 many feet under the shelter of the piazza. 
 
 "The little children of the family had their part in 
 the programme, and when the hours of freedom came, 
 gladly turned from conning their Geography and Multi- 
 plication-table to the delights of sledding and snow- 
 balling and hunting eggs in the barn. 
 
 "In the evening, study was renewed for two hours, 
 and all retired early to their well-earned rest, for no 
 midnight oil was consumed in that well-ordered house- 
 hold. 
 
THE PREPARATION. 47 
 
 "Nor were there wanting seasons of social festivity, 
 a gathering of neighbors in the parlor who enjoyed a 
 song or a lively piece of music as a rare treat ; a quilt- 
 ing-bee, an occasional sleigh-ride, when the silence of 
 the winter evening was broken by the sound of happy 
 voices, mingling with the merry peal of the sleigh-bells. 
 At Thanksgiving, a large party was gathered around a 
 bountiful repast at the hospitable mansion of a friend 
 in a neighboring village. And early in the spring, 
 when the snow melted and the sap began to run, there 
 was a ' sugaring off' in the 'maple-bush' which afforded 
 a sweet and novel entertainment to some members of 
 that happy party who had never before been initiated 
 into the mysteries of country life. 
 
 "But why dwell on these vanished scenes? They 
 passed away, as bright things will, and are now remem- 
 bered by the surviving ones of that band of seven, as a 
 pleasant dream. The spring came, they parted, to 
 meet no more an unbroken band, on this side Heaven." 
 
 From the home of her eldest brother, Miss 
 
 Mortimer writes : — 
 
 "Auburn, April 8, 1845. 
 " Our winter has passed on the whole pleasantly and, 
 I trust, profitably, and now, our nice little home-school 
 is numbered with the things that were." 
 
 "Saturday p. m., May 4, 1845. 
 "I am alone in many respects to-day, and yet, not 
 alone. My brother is so good, kind and sympathetic. 
 I think of the young man in the Gospel, and feel 
 happy in the reflection that, though essentially wrong, 
 yet even Jesus loved him. . . . Our future is very dark 
 
48 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 and unsettled is it not ? You are tied to your children 
 and your housekeeping, and I am hampered with lame- 
 ness. . . . I have been reading Prof. Bush on the Resur- 
 rection. Do read it, if you can get it, and let me know 
 your opinion. ... I have ridden about considerably 
 and been very leisurely and feel somewhat recruited, 
 still my arm and foot are far from well." 
 
 After a visit with Miss T. : — 
 
 "Auburn, July 17, 1845. 
 
 " I returned on Tuesday in order to get (or be got) 
 ready to go East, which I have pretty much decided 
 
 to do." 
 
 " New York, Sept. 22, 1845. 
 
 "My health, though better than at B., seems not 
 much affected by my medicine. I am pining for love 
 and sympathy and something to do. How dark is our 
 earth without these solaces. ... I have been reading 
 Carlyle, and it seems to me it has done me good. 
 Truth as the good, the one object of life, has risen 
 most brightly and beautifully before me, and I have 
 longed to be freed from the dominion of falsehood, 
 from sin and evil and to be made pure, free, true, like 
 Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. ... I 
 did not go to the seashore, because, poor, lone damsel 
 as I was, I did not know where to go. . . . That 
 Illinois school I wish we could go to. I wonder if they 
 would have F. and me next spring. ... I am very 
 anxious to get to work, as soon as I can. Tell me 
 what you think I had better do next winter." 
 
 "Auburn, Nov. 15, 1845. 
 
 "My journey is safely accomplished and here I am 
 again, after an absence of fifteen weeks — how much 
 better in health for my journeyings, medicines, etc., I 
 
THE PREPARATION. 49 
 
 cannot tell. . . . The Doctor still speaks confidently 
 of my recovery. . . . My winter will, I trust, be passed 
 pleasantly and profitably, though I do not feel very 
 sanguine. 
 
 "Mr. and Mrs. C. have been very kind and atten- 
 tive, and I have left them very much impressed with 
 their goodness." 
 
 "Auburn, Dec. 4, 1845. 
 
 ". . . My own heart, as I have hinted before, has 
 been in a strange, sad state for months past. An effort 
 to awake I have seemed to make, but the chains of sin, 
 of ignorance, of darkness are strong, and firmly they 
 hold me down. Life, Religion, what they should be 
 have seemed dimly to rise before me, and a struggle 
 has been in my heart in which it sometimes seems 
 doubtful whether corruption or grace would gain the 
 victory. I read Carlyle until I grew so excited I dared 
 read no farther, and I took up St. Pierre's ' Harmonies 
 of Nature' and grew calmer." 
 
 Miss Mortimer had been entirely released from 
 her connection with Brockport for over a year and 
 had been diligently using means for recovering her 
 health, but with only partial success. The winter 
 of 1844-5 sne na d spent, as we have seen, in the 
 shelter of the home of her sister and brother-in- 
 law, Mr. L. S. Bannister, on a farm near Phelps, 
 with congenial friends and a few private pupils 
 around her. The winter of 1845-6, was spent in 
 the home of her brother, Mr. Edmund Mortimer in 
 Auburn, and the occupation she needed was sup- 
 plied by a little home-school in which his children 
 
 5 
 
50 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 were pupils. At this time, December 1845, sne 
 had received an invitation to return to the charge 
 of the ladies' department of the school in Brock- 
 port, and also one to enter Le Roy Female Semi- 
 nary as an instructor. 
 
 The tidings of the death of the Principal of 
 Brockport Institute, Mr. Julius Bates, after a brief 
 illness in the previous autumn, had saddened the 
 hearts of the teachers who had been associated with 
 him. To Miss Thurston, Miss Mortimer writes at 
 this time : — 
 
 "You propose to go to Brockport. I wish I could 
 go with you, but this cannot be. Your visit I shall be 
 able to picture to myself. It will be sad, but sweet. 
 God grant you may be able to comfort the lone widow 
 in her sorrow and desolation. Oh, how you will miss 
 him who is gone forever ! It seems to me Brockport 
 would be most sad and desolate, and yet, as I read Mr. 
 L.'s letter, my very heart yearned to say Yea to his 
 application. His proposal seemed very kind and con- 
 siderate of my health, and I was strongly tempted to 
 accept. But I feared for my health . . . and so I 
 declined. 
 
 " Miss S.'s proposition seemed very fair (to go to Le 
 Roy) . . . and I really feel honored by it, and though 
 I feel some misgivings, I am disposed to accept. . . . 
 I have written, stating the case I am in now, and re- 
 questing them to reconsider, to weigh my capability or 
 rather want of capability for the proposed post, . . . 
 and then if I must, I will reply definitely. 
 
 "My promises which are in the way are to F., to 
 
THE PREPARATION. 51 
 
 brother John, to whom I had written recently, offering 
 to go West and teach, provided he will teach with me, 
 and an offer I have made here, too. Pray do venture a 
 little advice, for I am at a loss what to do. ... I 
 have commenced teaching the children, and hope to 
 pass the winter pleasantly, though I shall be lonely. I 
 do believe I am better. My foot is certainly much 
 better, and by spring I hope for quite a renovation." 
 
 "Auburn, last day of 1845. 
 
 ". . . It is eight years since I resolved to be a 
 Christian, and this, the anniversary of the most sol- 
 emn day of my life, never comes without exciting in 
 my breast deep emotion, and to-day there is much to 
 make me feel more than usual. As I tried to describe 
 to you in my last, I have been, for months past, more 
 excited than for five or six years. Life, it seems 
 to me, has risen more clearly to my view, and I have 
 seen and tried to see more what a Christian's should 
 be ; and a deeper, clearer desire to live for God, for 
 truth, has sprung up in my heart. I say not this, my 
 truest friend, to make you think I am good, or even 
 better. Ah, no, my heart is evil and only evil, except 
 as the blessed Spirit puts in it good desires. If any 
 right feeling be there, I would give Him the praise, and 
 be lowly. 
 
 "But you do not understand me. I have not been 
 running away into any heresies. Carlyle has done me 
 no harm, but, I trust, good, and I bless God for the 
 book, — it has helped to wake me up, to lead me to look 
 deeper, to see farther. . . . Swedenborg, too, has 
 aided. ... Be not alarmed. I am neither Sweden- 
 borgian nor Carlylian, but, I hope, a seeker after truth, 
 
52 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 and I trust, whenever I find it, in whatever garb, I shall 
 embrace it and love it. . . . 
 
 " Permit me while on this to say, you and I, my 
 dear sister, are differently constituted and you do not 
 always fairly appreciate me. I have never wavered in 
 the creed which, by the blessing of God, you aided me 
 to adopt, but I never believed, and do not now, that it 
 is ' the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth,' and still I would seek, remembering that I am 
 fallible and always was, — and the Westminster Assem- 
 bly of divines were, too, fallible, erring, creatures. . . . 
 It is not my nature to turn away from contending opin- 
 ions and settle down that because I have the Bible and 
 the creed-book in my hands, I have the truth, and 
 need look no further. 
 
 "Understand me now, with reverence would I say it: 
 I believe the Bible to be ' the truth, the whole truth and 
 nothing but the truth,' at least in religion, but then, my 
 views of it are liable to be wrong, to be superficial, and 
 if other minds can aid me to draw from this fountain, 
 truth, should I not gratefully accept the boon ? Let me 
 ask you then to be patient, to be forbearing with me, if 
 I seek among so-called heretics and heresies for truth ; if 
 I sometimes eulogize them and their doctrines, and get 
 excited over their sayings. Seek not, my ever faithful 
 friend, to turn me from a course which my reason tells 
 me is right, but pray for me in my search, sympathize 
 with me so far as you can, and tell me if I wander from 
 the pole-star, the Bible." 
 
 The same letter announces her acceptance of the 
 invitation to teach in Le Roy : — 
 
THE PREPARATION. 53 
 
 " I sent last week an affirmative reply. Whether or 
 not I shall like my post I know not. I do not feel very 
 sanguine, and yet I am hopeful. May God go with me 
 and make me a blessing. Miss S. inquires if I can go 
 in the early part of February. I have written saying I 
 would prefer to go later, and proposing, instead, the 
 first of March. ... I feel more quiet and happy than 
 when I last wrote you, and get along pretty comfortably 
 here, — get out of patience sometimes with my children, 
 which is naughty. ... I shall think much of you and 
 our dear M. A. to-day and to-morrow." 
 
 "Female Seminary, Le Roy, March 13, 1846. 
 " Here I am, safely ensconced once more in school. 
 I am happy, and yet not altogether so. . . . Your 
 children, whom you have watched so carefully, so faith- 
 fully, whom you have loved so fondly for two long 
 years, you expect soon to be called to leave. . . . We, 
 my dear sister, have outlived our dearest earthly bless- 
 ings, our earliest and best friends ; health and home 
 have fled ; the warmth and fervor of our hopes are 
 chilled, the blessing we prized more than life has been 
 torn from our grasp, and with blighted hearts we have 
 looked out on the world. Why have we not more 
 deeply learned the lesson thus set before us — to cease 
 fixing our hearts on the perishing things of earth ? . . . 
 You will gather strength as you commit all to Him, 
 and yet I know the parting will be painful, deeply so. 
 Your sweet little C, what will she do without Aunty? 
 May our Father watch over both, and perfect in M. the 
 good work which seems begun." 
 
54 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Le Roy, Dec. 6, 1846. 
 
 "I feel sad this morning, for the warmest feelings of 
 my heart have been checked. They find no resting 
 place ; the picture of beauty within me is defaced, yet 
 I am not very unhappy. My spirit is quiet, — almost, 
 it seems to me, resigned to whatever shall come. Would 
 that I could, in recalling the past, feel that I have acted 
 nobly, honorably, but I cannot. It is darkened all 
 over, and peace, of which I have been thinking and 
 talking this morning, could never be mine were it not 
 that an all-sufficient atonement has been made for me. 
 On that atonement, with you, my friend, I would rely, 
 and in it, I am happy. . , . Oh, my heart does warm 
 with the thought that our evil nature can be subdued, 
 that the day will come when all shall be overcome, and 
 life and light and truth and love shall burst upon us, 
 and no discord shall be produced. . . . Pride shall be 
 overcome, and selfishness and ignorance, and all sin. 
 For this great, this blessed object, it seems to me I 
 would endure anything. Trials I will not shrink from, 
 but rejoice in them if they are what is needed to sub- 
 due me, to bring me submissive to the feet of Jesus. 
 Nay, let them come, let my heart be lacerated, every 
 other joy wither at my side; if Jesus and Truth but 
 remain, it is enough. . . . 
 
 "I am trying to teach my Bible class Romans. Is 
 it presumptuous? It has, I think, done me good, what- 
 ever may be the case with them. What a clear, forci- 
 ble argument it is ! We commenced the fifth chapter 
 this morning, stopped upon peace, and used up our 
 allowance of time upon it. It is blessed to teach, — to 
 teach the Bible thus, — best of all, if one can teach her- 
 
THE PREPARATION. 55 
 
 self. I have a little feared to come to the eighth and 
 ninth chapters, but I am getting over my fears, for the 
 way grows brighter and clearer with each succeeding 
 lesson, and I fear not to teach any one any doctrine I 
 see thus clearly as thus far I see, and substantiated as 
 all has been. Pray for us that good may be done." 
 
 The perennial fervor and the deep insight which 
 
 the foregoing letter reveals, were marked at this time 
 
 as in a period of rich mental and moral growth. 
 
 Fifteen years afterward Miss Mortimer handed to 
 
 the writer of these pages a volume, — "Chalmers, 
 
 Commentary on Romans," — referring to it as having 
 
 been a most profitable guide in this Bible class, 
 
 and describing the pleasure and the profit of the 
 
 teacher and the enthusiasm of the pupils, with 
 
 a vividness that left an abiding picture in the 
 
 memory. 
 
 "Phelps, July 18, 1847. 
 
 "I have grown calmer, especially for the last few 
 months, and perhaps look upon life more rationally, 
 but I fear that in the calming, rationalizing process I 
 I have lost something of my warmth and fervor, and yet, 
 I hope not. This one thing cheers me in view of my 
 cold, evil heart : Truth arouses its warmth, and it 
 seems to me I can live and suffer and die and spend a 
 blessed eternity in contemplation of its majestic beauty. 
 More and more clearly do I see and feel that Chris- 
 tianity is truth, and, I trust, more warmly does my 
 heart burn with gratitude to Him who led me to believe 
 this blessed truth, who, by his own infinite sufferings 
 made it possible for you, my dear friend, for me, for 
 
56 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the world, to become partaker of its rich blessings. . . . 
 
 I heard Mr. preach to-day, a sort of sectarian 
 
 sermon. Alas, for the Church in general ! It seems 
 as if many people think they are going to heaven on 
 Methodism, or Baptism, or Presbyterianism, or some 
 other ism, instead of Christ, the only name given under 
 heaven among men whereby they can be saved. ..." 
 
 " Phelps, Sep. 15, 1847. 
 "The people around me are talking about the [Mexi- 
 can] war, — the blessed, heroic, defensive war of the 
 nineteenth century. S. is contending that good may 
 grow out of it. . . . 'The wrath of man shall praise 
 our God,' and, as the iniquitous war in China has done 
 good, spite of its injustice, so may this. . . . O, I 
 long for the time when men shall open their eyes to the 
 folly and wickedness of war, and shall rally round the 
 standard of the great Immanuel to conquer their 
 brothers by truth and righteousness instead of by swords 
 and cannon. ... I expect to leave for Le Roy next 
 Monday, — of course very much to my sorrow shall miss 
 seeing you. ... I cannot delay, for I expect no teacher 
 to take the lead will be at Le Roy except myself. [Miss 
 Emily Ingham had become Mrs. Stanton in June pre- 
 vious, and was now with her husband absent on a Euro- 
 pean trip.] Mrs. Stanton at the last intelligence was 
 in Paris, where she expected to remain until October, 
 and then return. My health is sufficiently good, so 
 that I feel no hesitation in returning to school, which 
 promises to be very large. ... I design remaining at 
 Le Roy only for this winter, still I may remain longer. 
 I return to school, as usual, thankful that I may." 
 
THE PREPARATION. 
 
 r ol 
 
 "Le Roy, Oct. 14, 1847. 
 
 "I have been thinking to-night how much more quiet 
 and home-like you will be in your house than we are, 
 and sighing to be by your side. I like not this excite- 
 ment, and I believe some day I must bid it adieu, for it 
 will wear me out. Amid it now I feel very much alone, 
 for, one after another, my friends have passed away, 
 until now none remain save a few who love me here. 
 What a changing world ! How deeply have I loved 
 you, and M. A., and F., and now where are you? Gone 
 from me bodily and, almost, in spirit too, and once 
 more I am as before, alone, and yet, blessed be the 
 Father of all mercies, not alone, for he liveth and 
 reigneth. . . . We have been three weeks in session, 
 have the largest school I have ever known here ; our 
 house is thronged. . . . Mr. and Mrs. S. were to sail 
 about this time and we hope to greet them here in a few 
 weeks. ... I am pretty well thus far, but am so full 
 of business that I get very weary, and have some fears 
 for the future. 
 
 "We have one hundred and thirty scholars, and 
 nearly seventy boarders besides teachers." 
 
 "LeRoy, Jan. 17, 1848. 
 "You remember ten years ago ? I do, most vividly, 
 and bless God that I saw that period in my life, and 
 that I saw you, and other dear faithful friends of that 
 period. I have thought of the blessings bestowed upon 
 me, and now, ten years after the vow I made that I 
 would be a Christian, I do feel, more than then, how 
 rich is the blessing bestowed, do feel that light has 
 shone upon my pathway, — and now, all is so much 
 clearer. Two or three years after that memorable 
 
58 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 winter, I read a discussion on Christianity, and found 
 myself so far shaken that I was wretched, and sighed 
 that Christianity was so far involved in difficulty. It is 
 different now, and I can but rejoice, in deep gratitude, 
 at the warm, blessed glow of feeling which now comes 
 over me in view of the strength, the reasonableness, the 
 fitness to our necessities, of Christianity. I wonder no 
 longer that it is above me, I tremble no more in view 
 of its seeming weakness, for it seems all strength, all 
 light, so light it dazzles me. . . . My well days are 
 over for this winter I fear, but I am in the harness and 
 must try to hold on eleven weeks longer, and then I 
 think I will rest again. . . . Various things impel me 
 to think of turning my steps West or South, if I find 
 myself recruited again after another rest." 
 
 "Le Roy, Feb. 16, 1848. 
 
 " I wish you would not work so incessantly. What 
 Sabbaths. you must have, and how unfitted you must be, 
 after such a day's labor, for the week ! Do, pray, look 
 at yourself as you would another, and inquire into the 
 right of your teaching out of your own family on the 
 Sabbath, added to all the labors you have in it. I am 
 worn out myself, and feel the more deeply on the sub- 
 ject, and would fain know what, in the mighty labor to 
 be done for this world, I can do. It seems to me I 
 have a will to work, but the way I find not, or finding 
 it, break down before I get well going. We have yet 
 seven weeks, which I hope to live through without quite 
 prostrating myself." 
 
 "Le Roy, March 17, 1848. 
 
 "Here we have continued to be afflicted until, last 
 Saturday, death closed our last case of illness. A good 
 
THE PREPARATION. 59 
 
 spirit is, we trust, hovering over us. A number think 
 they have given themselves to the Saviour, but O, I 
 tremble for them. Excitement, sympathy, these and 
 other things affect them, and how often it is that the 
 still, small voice of the Spirit is lost in the confusion of 
 other voices. ... I am better than I was, but my 
 strength is still overtaxed." 
 
 " Phelps, June 12, 1848. 
 "I want to see you very much for a variety of rea- 
 sons, but you know, and so do I, that I am very prone 
 to set about doing what I really desire to, hence I feel 
 the necessity of putting the more curb upon my feel- 
 ings. I look with some anxiety to the future, mainly, 
 I trust, in the desire to make such an arrangement for 
 myself as shall best secure my usefulness. I have no 
 one to advise me. Do you, my dear friend, consider 
 my case, my peculiarities, my health, and pray for wis- 
 dom from above, and advise me what I should do. I 
 feel weak, and yet I feel strong to cope with evil and 
 falsehood, and I pray to be led forth into the wilder- 
 ness to battle for Christ. Where shall I go ? What 
 shall I do? Would it be safe and prudent for me to go 
 West at a venture, visit Miss Seymour (now Mrs. Par- 
 sons) and start a school wherever I might find a good 
 opening ? I dare not hazard much expense without a 
 fair prospect of success. I do not want boarders, and 
 do not want a large school, but would very much like an 
 advanced one, therefore it seems to me I would better 
 go to a large place and establish a day-school. I pro- 
 pose to be joined by Miss N., one of the Le Roy 
 graduates of a year ago last spring. . . . Miss S. (Mrs. 
 P.) talks of going to Milwaukee. . . . 
 
60 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "I have of late read 'Vestiges of Creation,' — have 
 you seen it ? I am now reading De Tocqueville's 
 'Democracy in America/ and Tappan on the Will. 
 De T. writes very finely. I wish all Americans with 
 unprejudiced minds would read and consider." 
 
 " Auburn, Thurs., July 25, 1848. 
 ". . . And now, my dear friend, you are cautious 
 and true to me ; therefore earnestly and confidingly I 
 appeal to you in regard to my proposed plan of going 
 off to found a school. It seems to me if ever I desired 
 to follow the leadings of Providence it is now ; that I go 
 forth to do the will of my Heavenly Father, to seek 
 to accomplish his purposes, and I would be guarded 
 from acting rashly and unwisely. Time is most .pre- 
 cious. I pray to be kept from any enterprise which 
 shall trifle it away. Think of me and my plans, pray 
 for me, and if any information come in your way con- 
 cerning the West or South, please treasure it up for me." 
 
 Thus far the correspondence quoted has been 
 mostly from that with her early teacher and tried 
 friend, Miss Thurston, who placed in the hands of 
 the editor of this memoir a series of letters from 
 Miss Mortimer rich in self-revelation, and covering, 
 unbroken, a period of nearly forty years. The 
 quotations which follow are from letters addressed 
 to Miss Morilla E. Hill, a loved and trusted Le Roy 
 pupil. 
 
 As we have seen, Miss Mortimer was approaching 
 a momentous decision, which was to take her far 
 from the scenes and friends of her childhood and 
 
THE PREPARATION. 61 
 
 youth, of her school days and her early teaching. 
 Occupied as she was with the anxieties and duties 
 attendant upon this decision, the welfare and use- 
 fulness of the friends she was soon to leave filled a 
 large share of her heart. Miss Thurston was now 
 at the head of a private school for girls in Elmira, 
 New York. Her incessant labors had been the 
 theme of Miss Mortimer's remonstrance in passages 
 already quoted from the correspondence. She 
 visited Miss T. in July, 1848, and then exerted her 
 influence (as both felt the mysterious leading of 
 Miss Mortimer to the shaping of a school after her 
 own ideals in some newer part of the country) 
 toward the employment by Miss Thurston of one 
 who should be a strong staff on which she could 
 lean for help in her Elmira school. Miss Mortimer's 
 relation to Miss Thurston was that of a pupil, a re- 
 lation which gave color to her feeling of respect and 
 gratitude while life lasted. Her relation to Miss 
 Hill was that of a teacher, and yet her recognition 
 of excellence was here one of admiration and love 
 which amounted almost to reverence from the elder 
 to the younger. 
 
 Miss Mortimer writes Miss Hill, then teaching in 
 Le Roy, under date — 
 
 "Oak's Corners, June 5, 1848. 
 
 "I shall not soon forget the glow of happiness which 
 
 you have often been the means of bringing to my heart. 
 
 Once ' a word in kindness spoken ' sent a thrill of agony 
 
 through that heart. You expressed a prayer that I 
 
02 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 might have a friend who would be to me what I was to 
 you. It was a simple wish, but the connection showed 
 me that you meant much. ... A guide, a counsellor 
 and friend — how much that word means to me ! May 
 I strive to be such to you, and will you trust me fully 
 enough to let me sympathize in your trials and aid you 
 in the development of your deepest feelings ? You have 
 often heard me express my belief in a higher kind of 
 evidence than that of experience, but like the rest of 
 this superficial world, I am very susceptible to this 
 latter, and therefore have grown a little skeptical as to 
 my meeting a realization of my ideas of friendship and 
 sympathy ; indeed I have grown very doubtful whether 
 it would be safe or happy for me to do so, and I leave 
 it in my Father's hands. ... If there is one thing for 
 which I am fitted, I believe it is to sympathize in sor- 
 row, in trial, in feeling, and as I believe this is almost 
 the channel to usefulness, I would cultivate this suscep- 
 tibility. . . . You, body and soul, are in school, and 
 want sympathy and counsel. The first you have, 
 warmest and truest ; the second I cannot give you 
 better than I have done. I do not flatter ; I hold you 
 to be my superior, at least in conscientiousness and 
 faith and a deep, fervent desire to live only for the 
 good of others, and these, my dear sister, are the foun- 
 dations, so far as may be within us, for usefulness. I 
 more than believe, I feel that I know that your labors 
 as a teacher will be blessed. Long and with ever- 
 increasing interest have I studied your character, and 
 the result has been that I love and admire you ; that as 
 I look over this sinstricken world I bow in earnest 
 gratitude that such laborers as yourself there are to go 
 forth to bless it. Be not impatient with my eulogy ; it 
 
THE PREPARATION. 63 
 
 is more moderate than I feel. I know, to your heart 
 and understanding, more than this, different than this 
 is needed, and I will not annoy you by ceasing to coun- 
 sel you. Which of us is the wiser, it is of little conse- 
 quence to decide. . . . 
 
 "To the point then. You know I have tried to tell 
 all my children what education is, what its aim should 
 be, and you, at least, have obtained a better conception 
 of the subject than my weak words embodied. Keep 
 that conception ever in view — let everything you say 
 and do tend to the great end. Many obstacles you will 
 encounter, and plans which you could and would make 
 you may not be able to carry out, but something you 
 can do. I charge you, let not doubt of your own abilities, 
 consciousness of your weakness and sinfulness, hinder 
 you from what you can do, and what you see needs to 
 be done. 
 
 "Your paper I trust is flourishing and the Historical 
 Society or some other among the seniors. . . . To 
 you, as my friend, my sister, my fondly cherished 
 pupil, my successor in labors I love more than life, to 
 my well-remembered and well-beloved co-laborers in 
 the same blessed work, to my dear pupils, I have much 
 to say, — oh, that the heart could speak its feelings! 
 that I could tell you all how deeply I sympathize with 
 you, how earnestly I desire your highest good. Assure 
 all of my undiminished regard and affection, and tell 
 them I want to hear from them, very, very much. 
 I hope the children will write me a long letter." 
 
 "Oak's Corners, July 10, 1848. 
 "How grateful I am that all seemed going on so 
 pleasantly and profitably with you. You have even ex- 
 
64 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ceeded a little my expectations, my dear. Present my 
 best wishes, my warmest love to your two, — yes, three 
 societies. ... I can but rejoice that I was not invited 
 to become corresponding member of The Society of 
 Novices, for I might, in my reckless canvassing of what 
 I do not agree with, wound some sensitive one. . . . 
 None the less, however, do I rejoice in its prosperity. 
 . . . Your other society I feel very much interested in, 
 and would take quite a journey to attend one of its 
 meetings. Tell them to stand firm, to 'be not weary 
 in well-doing' and they will be able to look back to this 
 summer as the waking-up time of their lives. ... I 
 think you have assumed a little too much in what I 
 said, and really I do not feel that I could benefit you 
 much by any advice which I could offer. In the sug- 
 gestions which come to me, my memory is too good, — 
 I remember to have made them before, and you have 
 paid so good attention to your teacher, been so dis- 
 posed to gather all the good that could be extracted 
 from her instructions, that she feels there is no need of 
 repeating them. Sympathy is always delightful in so 
 trying, so responsible a life as a teacher's, and this you 
 have warmly from me. Before the throne of Him who 
 alone can sustain and guide and make you successful, 
 you are not forgotten. ... I cannot, I think, consist- 
 ently visit you this term, but shall perhaps pass through 
 Rochester and Brockport on my way West about the 
 last of August. Could y*>u meet me at one of those 
 places?" 
 
 " Elmira, Aug. 2, 1848. 
 "... I am visiting my good friend, Miss Thurston, 
 and we have been talking about school and about you. 
 
THE PREPARATION. 65 
 
 You will remember that you assured me last spring you 
 should not remain at Le Roy longer than the close of 
 the present term. On the strength of this assurance I 
 feel that I shall not be interfering if, once more, I try 
 to get you here. I have told Mrs. S. that I would, if 
 in her place, keep you as long as I could, and for the 
 sake of the school I wish you might remain. If any- 
 thing has induced you to do so, you will not consider 
 me as in the least wishing to interfere with your de- 
 cision. Lest, however, you have not thus concluded, I 
 venture a proposal. Miss T. needs a teacher, — such 
 an one as yourself. You see I still consider myself a 
 judge in regard to you, and, notwithstanding your 
 doubts, I will add, a truer, better one than yourself. 
 ... I know, at least, something of the worth of my 
 last winter's best scholar, and have made Miss T. feel it. 
 ... I think it might be of great benefit to your future 
 usefulness as a teacher, to labor for a season with Miss 
 T. ... As to the services she would wish, you would 
 be expected in the main to take charge of the mathemat- 
 ics. You would probably need- to teach all the time in 
 school hours, but out of school, you would, I think, be 
 very much more at your ease, and very much less liable 
 to interruption than heretofore. Miss T. will have only 
 a family circle in her house ; herself the mother, her 
 teachers older sisters, her [boarding] pupils probably 
 not more than half a dozen, affectionate and happy. 
 Will you come, and be as sister, as helpmeet to the 
 friend of my youth and of my riper years, the friend to 
 whom I am more indebted than any other? I love her, 
 I love you, and as I wander far away, it will be a grate- 
 ful solace to my heart to know that she has you to aid, 
 6 
 
66 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 to comfort, to sympathize with her ; that you have her 
 to guide, to support, to love and sympathize with you. 
 But I would by no means urge you against duty. Con- 
 sider and decide, and may the wisdom of Him who 
 only is wise, direct you. . . . The school now, day- 
 pupils and boarders, numbers about eighty. ... I 
 have frankly stated my own wishes and desires, and 
 given all necessary information, and now I leave the 
 subject for your careful, prayerful consideration and 
 decision. . . . The fullness of my esteem for you is 
 not diminished, nor the warmth of my affection 
 changed." 
 
 Three notes to pupils under Miss Mortimer's 
 charge in these years of early teaching have been 
 preserved. One is an apology for words which she 
 felt had caused undeserved pain, in terms of the 
 deepest sorrow, and absolutely without self-justifi- 
 cation. Her scorn of her own weakness is couched 
 in expression which is one of the finest and most 
 exquisite touches of the truthful portrait painted by 
 her own hand in her correspondence. Another is 
 addressed "To Our Example ; " a New Year's 
 greeting full of appreciation and of cheer to a lovely 
 but self-distrusting pupil. Still another is a ringing 
 expostulation "to the young ladies of two halls, " 
 on their thoughtless violation of necessary regula- 
 tions, and reveals a side of Miss Mortimer's nature 
 which doubtless suffered more in administering re- 
 buke than those to whom it was addressed. But — 
 
 " The graven flowers that wreathe the sword 
 Make not the blade less keen." 
 
THE PREPARATION. 67 
 
 The sensitive soul of the teacher, and the love with 
 which her soul was overflowing, were not allowed 
 to blind her to the demands of justice, nor to hold 
 her back from so administering her trust as best to 
 subserve the good of each and all. 
 
 In the midst of farewells to kindred and friends, 
 and of parting visits to the scenes of her labors at 
 Brockport and Le Roy, Miss Mortimer addressed 
 her old friend Miss Thurston a last line from the 
 Empire State, describing a visit she had paid to 
 Miss Hill and her parents, the interview which had 
 resulted in a final decision that her loved friend and 
 pupil should go to the assistance of her loved and 
 respected teacher, and sealed the letter with the 
 motto, "I've won ! " 
 
 A last word she writes from — 
 
 "Le Roy, Tues., Aug 29, 1848. 
 "I am thinking this morning that I will write Mr. 
 Hogarth (pastor at Geneva) for a letter of introduction 
 to the Western Education Society, and have it ready to 
 use in case of need. ... I feel well and ready, I trust, 
 to fight for truth and righteousness. I have decided to 
 go around by the lakes to Milwaukee. Do not forget to 
 love and pray for 
 
 "Your wandering but affectionate sister, 
 
 "Mary." 
 
 We have now glanced at the influence of heredity 
 and environment which shaped Miss Mortimer's un- 
 conscious life, — the traits transmitted to her by 
 her English ancestors whose character was moulded 
 
68 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 by a thousand years of English history ; the storm 
 and stress of the period in which she was born, and 
 which, for aught we know, may have been the large 
 factors in determining her peculiar mental and 
 moral gifts ; we have seen her original and in- 
 tense youth, in the midst of a most beautiful region 
 of her adopted country, crushed under awful be- 
 reavement ; we have followed the struggles of a 
 mind not inherently unbelieving but demanding the 
 full satisfaction of her reasoning powers, and have 
 looked with sympathy upon her remarkably vivid 
 picture of the climax of those struggles when 
 reason, aided by faith and by human friendship 
 and Divine guidance, made life-long surrender of 
 her whole being to the truth of Revelation. 
 
 "To love truth for truth's sake" says Locke, 
 " is the principal part of human perfection in this 
 world, and the seed plot of all other virtues." This 
 was the rich attainment of Miss Mortimer's young 
 womanhood. She had been led to the wicket-gate 
 of truth by the hand of friendship, but once entered 
 on its boundless domain, she expatiated therein 
 with endless delight, never losing sight of her 
 "pole-star" of revelation, fearlessly investigating 
 on every side, incapable of being cramped by human 
 tradition or even of being held to any narrowness of 
 interpretation by loving hands. 
 
 Her mental and physical faculties matured 
 rapidly under the discipline of study and of her 
 early teaching ; with surprising docility gathering 
 
THE PREPARATION. 69 
 
 the best from every source, and while still seeking 
 support and guidance from friends and books, she 
 reached, consciously and unconsciously, that plane 
 where a wider field of action was a necessity. For 
 this wider field she had been prepared, too, in her 
 deepest heart-life. By friendship, by disappoint- 
 ments, by loss of health, by the responsibilities at- 
 tendant upon her teaching, especially in the measure 
 of her independence in instruction at Brockport and 
 Le Roy, the undisciplined vehemence of her youth 
 had been brought into subjection, chastened and 
 elevated, largely controlled, and made an instru- 
 ment of incalculable power for good in her relation 
 to others. Her unwavering loyalty and devotion to 
 Christianity in the person of Christ, brought into 
 her soul its richest fruit, union with the object of 
 its fealty, growth in clearness of vision, and an all- 
 encompassing love. 
 
 Her sensitive self-distrust, though not conquered, 
 was rendered less obstructive to her influence by 
 experience ; and she was now, in the prime of early 
 womanhood, increasingly able to live without un- 
 due dependence upon friends, and to repose con- 
 fidence in her power to win the love of her pupils, 
 and the respect of their guardians. Her health, 
 though not good, was better than formerly, and 
 with experience in illness she had gained more 
 ability to care for her physical needs, and more tri- 
 umph over physical disabilities. The soul rose su- 
 perior to the body ; to the imperious demands of 
 
70 • MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the heart, even, except as that heart might lean 
 upon the friendship of the Highest Friend ; and to 
 the ties which bound it to the region where all her 
 conscious life had been spent, and where her kin- 
 dred and the friends of her youth and womanhood 
 were to remain. 
 
 Some of her acquaintances had gone forth into 
 the great South and the new West ; there was 
 much need in this moral wilderness — a field for a 
 hero. There, too, independence beckoned, free- 
 dom to shape a school after her own ideals. But 
 the field was all unknown before her ; she had no 
 powerful friends to smooth her pathway ; she was 
 hampered by a weak body and a straightened 
 purse. 
 
 How touching her teachableness, her appeals for 
 the advice and prayers of her friend ! Yet the 
 tendrils which bound her soul to those she had 
 loved — and still loved — had been torn loose. 
 She had learned "to suffer and be strong." 
 
 She sets forth for the unknown West alone, and 
 not knowing whither she goes. 
 
PART II, 
 
 THE LIFE WORK 
 
 "A dangerous tendency of civilization is that toward 
 crystallization, — toward hardened, inflexible conven- 
 tionalisms which refuse the soul its way. 
 
 "Such crystallization, such conventionalisms, yield 
 only to the dissolving power of the spiritual warmth of 
 life-full personalities. 
 
 "Only the man who supplies new feeling fresh from 
 God, quickens and regenerates the race and sets it on 
 the King's highway." — Corson. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NEW WEST, I 848, I 849. 
 
 Wisconsin was the fifth and last of the States 
 carved out of the great "Northwest Territory" 
 which lay north of the Ohio River and east of the 
 Mississippi, — an area which had once belonged by 
 charter to the thirteen original colonies. Its south- 
 ern portion was largely settled by emigrants from 
 New England and New York. Admitted to the 
 Union in the year 1848, with a population of 250,- 
 000 scattered over an area of fifty thousand square 
 miles, with an eastern frontage washed for two 
 hundred miles by the waters of Lake Michigan ; 
 Lake Superior skirting its then almost unknown 
 northern border ; and the Mississippi coursing along 
 nearly 400 miles of its western boundary, with a 
 most healthful climate and every variety of soil, 
 from the fertile undulations of its southern prairies 
 and oak openings to the pine forests of its northern 
 parallels, and with rich and varied mineral stores 
 within its borders, — the young State attracted the 
 attention of the capitalist and the emigrant by its 
 material resources, and of the philanthropist by the 
 need of moulding influences on its plastic society. 
 Its chief port, Milwaukee, occupying a beautiful site 
 
 [73] 
 
74 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 on high bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan, even 
 then gave promise of the lovely city it was to be- 
 come, but its fifteen thousand inhabitants were still 
 struggling for a foothold in their new home ; streets, 
 public buildings, and private houses, were in process 
 of construction, substantial docks and bridges were 
 visions of the future, and the railroad facilities in 
 prospect made a heavy draft on the resources of 
 public-spirited citizens, when, in early September, 
 1848, Miss Mortimer found herself a passenger by 
 the great lakes for a visit to that young city and to 
 her friend and former associate at Le Roy, Miss 
 L. A. Seymour, now become Mrs. W. L. Parsons. 
 The Rev. W. L. Parsons had been called to the 
 pastorate of the Free Congregational Church then 
 situated on Broadway, Milwaukee, and had begun 
 his labors there a few weeks previous to Miss 
 Mortimer's arrival. Mrs. Parsons, an experienced 
 teacher, whose position at Le Roy Female Seminary 
 Miss Mortimer had been called to supply two years 
 before, felt deeply the need of better educational 
 advantages for girls in the West. On the arrival 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Parsons in Milwaukee ' ' but one 
 third the youth of the city were enrolled in the 
 public school," 1 and these were poorly housed and 
 ill equipped. Within a month after the beginning 
 of her husband's pastorate in Milwaukee, Mrs. 
 Parsons issued, Aug. 18, 1848, a circular announc- 
 
 1 Wight's " Annals of Milwaukee College" [2]. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 75 
 
 ing the opening of " Milwaukee Female Seminary " 
 in the ensuing autumn. Its location was in a build- 
 ing at the northwest corner of Milwaukee and 
 Oneida streets, as a home for teachers and board- 
 ing pupils, and the school-rooms were in a structure 
 near Broadway which had been purchased, removed 
 to the rear end of the Free Church lot, and fitted 
 up for the purpose. Three teachers of experience 
 Were engaged to assist Mrs. Parsons in the instruc- 
 tion of the school, the plan of which was equal to 
 that of the best Eastern schools for girls. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's first letter from the West to Miss 
 Thurston is dated — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Wis., Thursday, Sept. 21, 1848. 
 " . . . It is but a few weeks ago since I sat down in 
 your room to write to L. A.; now, at a thousand miles' 
 distance I sit down in hers to write to you. ... I felt 
 a little tempted, even before I left the Empire State to 
 wish that it had seemed best for me to go to you this 
 fall, for I have had some reason to think I might have 
 done your school more good now than at any future 
 time; but the die seemed cast, and the Friday after I 
 wrote, I proceeded to Brockport, and there the very 
 same day arrived Mrs. G., bound for Chicago. We 
 were both glad to have company of course ; concluded 
 to remain there until the Friday following. . . . We 
 reached Buffalo Saturday noon. ... I attended Dr. 
 Lord's church on the Sabbath ; heard some fine ser- 
 mons. Monday evening (Sept. 11) we took the 
 steamer 'Niagara,' bound for Milwaukee and Chicago. 
 
76 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Our sail around the lakes was rough and in almost every 
 way unpleasant. We lay aground twenty-six hours in 
 Lake St. Clair, and had almost constant clouds and 
 strong head winds. Wednesday night and Thursday 
 the wind blew quite a gale. The first night we were 
 aground, and the wind did us no harm. The second it 
 made me — oh ! so sick. I pray to be spared the sail- 
 ing round these lakes again, unless it be in fine, calm 
 weather. On Friday I thought I should never again 
 want to go to England, and that I should not very soon 
 be willing for you to be exposed to the same suffering 
 for the sake of coming to see me. Saturday, just be- 
 fore dark, we reached this city, and, after a long 
 search, I found L. A. and her husband. . . . They 
 are, I think, going to be very comfortably situated and 
 to have a very flourishing school. They opened last 
 Thursday and have now fifty scholars. 
 
 ". . . The West, as far as I have been able to gather, 
 is in no such forlorn condition as we are sometimes led 
 to believe, still, our good friends here seem to think 
 that its wants are far greater than those of New York. 
 Mr. P. has written in relation to schools, for me, to two 
 towns on Fox River, 111. What the result of this, and 
 any further investigations, may be, of course I cannot 
 tell. . . . Since I left home, my foot feels its old 
 symptoms coming on, and the fear of a full return of its 
 ailments in this land of strangers is rather disheartening 
 to me. If it gets much worse, I shall feel tempted to 
 turn my face eastward at once, but I do not think it 
 will if I am careful. Mr. P. and I have been discussing 
 heresies, and my discussions have led me once more to 
 be grateful for the lesson, long ago learned, to doubt 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 77 
 
 my own reasoning, to receive mysteries on the word of 
 the Highest." 
 
 Soon, Miss Mortimer goes onward to Chicago, 
 there to visit pupils and friends of former days, and 
 then proceeds to carry out a long cherished desire 
 to visit her brother Simeon in Michigan who, some 
 years previous, had removed thither, there buried 
 the wife of his youth and two of his children, and, 
 after an interval in which his sister, Miss Martha 
 Mortimer, had presided over his household, had 
 recently installed a second wife, as mother to his 
 remaining children. 
 
 Lyons, Mich., Nov. 17, 1848. 
 
 "I have strayed away into a little town in the forests 
 of Michigan, — where my next tour will be I do not 
 know. . . . Indications have pretty nearly decided 
 me to remain somewhere in this Western land. I trust 
 I have been and still am watching the indications of 
 Providence and desiring to be led in the path of duty. 
 
 "I remained in Milwaukee two and a half weeks, 
 and then went, in company with Mr. P., who was going 
 to a Convention of Ministers, to Southport [Kenosha], 
 at which place I spent five days attending Convention 
 and visiting Mr. and Mrs. M., formerly of Brockport. 
 The meetings were very interesting — about sixty min- 
 isters present. A very good spirit seemed to reign there, 
 and I could but feel that they separated to kindle a 
 flame of love in the churches of their charge. I heard 
 one of the finest sermons there that I ever heard, — 
 upon the wants of the age, or, rather, the quality of re- 
 ligion demanded." 
 
78 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " Thornapple, Mich., Nov. 21. 
 
 " Alone, in a backwoods public house, I sit down to 
 add a little to my epistle. . . . Saturday, letters 
 reached me from Illinois which decided me to set off, 
 even in this unpropitious season, for that place. But I 
 will go back to where I left off. 
 
 "From Southport I went to Chicago, where I spent 
 two weeks in the family of J. H. C, one of the western 
 liberals. My visit was very pleasant, very interest- 
 ing, and, I trust, profitable. I heard a number of the 
 Chicago ministers, visited two of the schools, rode all 
 about the city and some miles out of it. I received a 
 visit from Mr. and Mrs. J. (formerly Miss R. ) and 
 Mrs. H., and visited them in return. . . . Mr. C. and 
 his family urged me to abide in their city, said there 
 was a fine building now vacant which the proprietor 
 would let at a very low rate for a Female Seminary. 
 The idea has some charms for me, but I felt that in 
 various respects I was unfit for the undertaking, and I 
 declined having any steps taken thereto. Something 
 else, however, more to my liking, offered itself in reply 
 to a letter written by Mr. P. to Ottawa. I should have 
 proceeded there immediately had it not been that before 
 I received word that seemed to me sufficiently encour- 
 aging, I had written J. that I would go with him to 
 Simeon's. . . . I accordingly left Chicago for Michigan, 
 made a flying call, on my way, at Milwaukee, found 
 L. A. and her family in a flourishing condition, and, 
 for once on the Western lakes, had a delightful sail. 
 Having crossed the lake we found a miserable steam- 
 boat at the mouth of Grand River waiting to take us to 
 Grand Rapids. The evening after I left there, I ar- 
 rived, after a hard day's ride, at my brother's. My 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 79 
 
 visit there was most gratifying, for his wife is, I think, 
 the best step-mother that I ever saw. No words of 
 ours, it seems to me, could eulogize her too strongly, 
 always, of course, orthodoxly omitting, perfect. She is 
 not beautiful nor graceful nor elegant nor brilliant, but 
 she is intelligent and good, and O ! so patient and 
 devoted to the interests and happiness of the children 
 but a few months ago strangers to her. God bless her ! 
 I trust I shall not soon lose the influence of her quiet, 
 patient, loving spirit. 
 
 " My brother and his family and the neighbors gener- 
 ally, all urged that I should abide with them for the 
 winter. They begged so hard that I could scarcely 
 muster strength enough to say nay, but I did, feeling 
 that I ought so to do, and yesterday set out on my way 
 to Ottawa. My prospect there for the winter is to 
 board in the family of the minister and teach a class, 
 preparatory to opening a school in the spring, when, 
 the minister informs me, there will be a building either 
 to be sold or rented, suitable for my purpose. I like 
 this plan better than commencing school at once, be- 
 cause I want to see how things appear, and want the 
 people to know me, before any permanent arrangements 
 are made. ... If all turns out well, I expect then to 
 send for Miss N. and open my school. I will only add, 
 I think I never felt so much under the direction of 
 Providence as since I left New York, — never felt more 
 fully desirous to be guided by Him who is ' the Way, 
 the Truth, and the Life.' 
 
 "I will retain this, I think, until I reach Chicago, as 
 you will receive it sooner, I presume, than from here, 
 
80 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 and then you will know of my fate after crossing the 
 lake. My health is very good." 
 
 " Niles, Friday, a. m. 
 "I will delay my letter no longer. I reached this 
 place through great tribulation Wednesday evening ; 
 find myself here very pleasantly situated with kind, at- 
 tentive friends ; was too tired when I reached here to go 
 immediately on, and now am too late to reach Chicago 
 before the Sabbath, so I suppose I shall remain until 
 Monday." 
 
 "Ottawa, Sat. evening, Jan. 6, 1849. 
 
 "I left Niles the Tuesday after I wrote you, and had a 
 rough sail across the lake in the last steamer that crossed. 
 At Chicago I staid several days, hoping for better 
 weather, but came at last in the awful — I cannot stay to 
 describe my (December) stage ride, with a company of 
 profane men, through mud and mire, water and storms, 
 through streams, against logs, etc., etc. Suffice : 
 we were forty-nine hours coming eighty miles, but 
 not a hair of our heads was injured. My gentlemen 
 company were very respectful, and I did not feel so 
 badly as I anticipated when I left Chicago. . . . The 
 morning after my arrival, Mr. B. appeared and greeted 
 me very cordially. . . . He is quite intellectual, and, I 
 think, the most independent minister that I ever knew, 
 . . . amiable, energetic, most thoroughly awake to the 
 corruptions of the church and the ministry, and withal, 
 a very warm abolitionist, — too warm, too daring, to be 
 popular with the mass. Mr. B. took me to his house 
 and presented me to his wife, a very excellent lady, a 
 
THE LIFE WORK'. 81 
 
 cousin of one of my Le Roy pupils. They have no 
 children, and I find myself very pleasantly situated with 
 them. They are very much interested in the matter of 
 a Female Seminary, but I see not much else to warrant 
 the undertaking. The place, however, is very pleasant, 
 and a gentleman has offered to give two acres of land 
 finely situated on the Fox river for a Seminary, but the 
 money to build is wanting. . . . 
 
 "I am now teaching a small class of young ladies, 
 and myself studying Philosophy of History and Greek ! 
 I should have thought it wiser to pursue my Latin, but 
 I had not the books, and Mr. B. urged Greek. Be- 
 sides this, I am reading all I can. Mr. B. has a valu- 
 able library. My friends at Niles still urge me to go 
 there. . . . 
 
 "I have been writing some articles for the papers. 
 . . . This brings to mind a subject which often weighs 
 on my heart. I wish you could see it, and help me to 
 decide on my future path. . . . Nothing in these days, 
 I believe, gives me such a flow of spirits as health, and 
 I have scarcely had such health for ten years as since I 
 left New York. 
 
 " You will give me your careful, earnest, prayerful 
 attention, will you not, and tell me what you think. I, 
 long ago, told you of my early dreams and aspirations 
 for fame and honor. Your instructions, perhaps more 
 than anything else, awoke me from those dreams ; but, 
 convinced of the errors of my life, awakened to the 
 truth as it is in Jesus, a desire deeper than for fame 
 seized me to proclaim to others the truth and light which 
 
 7 
 
82 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 I had found. That desire, modified somewhat, as my 
 views have been changed or enlarged, still abides with 
 me with all the freshness and fervency of youth. . . . 
 I might long ago have believed myself called to write, 
 for the idea, more or less deeply impressed upon me, 
 has been before me almost ever since I can remember. 
 It was the dream of my childhood, the ambitious as- 
 piration of my youth, the vision most deeply of all 
 impressed upon my riper years. No words can describe 
 to you the yearning which sometimes comes over me to 
 utter to others the truth which is thrilling my own heart. 
 At the feet of Jesus it has been impressed upon me that 
 I have a message to the world, that I must utter it. It 
 seems to me that I have enthusiasm enough to suffer 
 anything if I might be permitted to utter this message. 
 ... I have said something of all this to you before, 
 but I have not told, I cannot tell you, how wildly my 
 heart still beats, how it sympathizes with the loftiest 
 flights of the great and good, how it throbs at the 
 query, — Can I labor as they have labored? Vanity is 
 not moving me, else would I shrink from uttering all 
 this. I wish to reach the truth, to see my duty in re- 
 gard to the truth. We ought to exert all the power that 
 we have. ... I therefore inquire earnestly, Am I doing 
 that for which I am best fitted, that by which I can 
 accomplish most for the truth ? 
 
 " Amid all the conflict of opinion and feeling within 
 myself, the doubts, the hopes, the fears, you and other 
 friends have urged me to write, have insisted that I 
 could write. Will you now, my friend, tell me what all 
 this, — what my not very bright prospects here, indi- 
 cate? I left New York, as I said to you, with an inten- 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 83 
 
 tion to return if I saw not a good prospect for useful- 
 ness. The feeling in my own heart was that then . . . 
 I would write, and thus test the long-pondered question. 
 At Mr. P's. we talked over some of these things, and, 
 very unexpectedly to me, he said an editorship was just 
 the thing for me. He proposed at once taking some 
 steps to bring it about, but I shrank from it, and that 
 subject has now left me. I see my ignorance of a 
 thousand things I need to know, my incoherent, inele- 
 gant, unformed style of writing ; still it seems to me 
 that now, after a fashion, I could edit a journal, and 
 O if I could thus advance the cause of education, 
 elevate woman, and lead some of the thousands of wan- 
 derers from truth and righteousness to see and know 
 from blessed experience that Jesus is the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life, I could then, as Simeon of old, in 
 full honesty of heart, exclaim, "Now, Lord, lettest 
 thou thy servant depart in peace ! " It seems to me there 
 is a wide and noble field but poorly occupied by any of 
 our journals, — it is that of education, in its noblest 
 sense of woman's elevation, and of defending the truth 
 of Christianity. ... I know full well I am not fitted 
 for this great, this noble work, still I am deeply inter- 
 ested in it, and capable, I almost dare to believe, with 
 proper preparation, to do something thus. 
 
 "I am not weary of teaching, I still love it as the 
 apple of my eye. What shall I do ? Shall I labor to 
 establish a school here ? Shall I return and try to 
 write, and thus seek to relieve my heart of a burden 
 which almost crushes it ? I would heed nothing but 
 the voice of wisdom and duty in all this. If I can ut- 
 ter nothing to benefit the world, God forbid that I 
 
84 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 should waste my time; that I should add to the heap 
 of trash called literature. 
 
 " It has seemed to me in my musings in this far-off 
 land, that a school is a most fitting place for a publica- 
 tion of the kind I am thinking of to emanate from, and 
 that my reputation with some friends would make them 
 interested in this enterprise. And now, my friend, I 
 leave this matter. I have not told, as I said before, I 
 cannot tell my thoughts and feelings. I wish I could, 
 that you might the better advise me. I believe I have 
 come to another crisis in my life. Whatever comes, I 
 believe I can bow submissively if I can but see that I 
 am doing my Heavenly Father's will, and I leave all to 
 him with the prayer that he will make the path of 
 duty plain before me ; that I may be wise to under- 
 stand the leadings of Providence. ,, 
 
 To M. E. H. (in regard to having spoken unfa- 
 vorably of another.) 
 
 " Ottawa, Jan., 1849. 
 
 " I have said many things calculated to give you an 
 unpleasant, painful impression of me. ... I love to 
 study character, and in spite of knowing and feeling 
 that I am full of faults, I am severe upon it. I know it 
 is against me, and I feel impelled to make a confession 
 to you for many un-Christian words I have uttered ; 
 words which, though I believed them true, it was not 
 necessary nor kind for me to say. Some things I per- 
 haps should not have said had I not at first, under cir- 
 cumstances peculiarly trying to me, broken the ice, at 
 a time when pain and weakness of body rendered me 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 85 
 
 weak in mind, too. But I will not try to cover a fault 
 too glaring in my character to be hidden. May it 
 teach you a lesson, which still it seems to me you 
 scarcely need, and may I grow more humble, more 
 faithful, more merciful. . . . 
 
 "lam glad to learn that you are happy with Miss T., 
 and she with you. She tells me she has some hope of 
 retaining you, and that she expects Miss C. The thought 
 of such a trio, so dear to me, and I almost a thousand 
 miles from them would once have made my heart beat 
 wildly, . . . but I am resigned, and can look forward 
 hopefully to a field of labor far from them. I have 
 never been able to comprehend the dark, sad view you 
 take of life. I feel that it is not right, but more than 
 this, I cannot understand why you have adopted it. 
 Your general appearance is not sad, and with such hopes 
 and aspirations as yours, why look thus upon life ? . . . 
 I trust you have not had so much to darken your lot as 
 I. An orphan's lot is but a sad one at the best, and 
 mine has been far from the best. Disappointment has 
 attended me in every cherished pursuit; the dearest, the 
 best, have been snatched from my grasp. Still, I 
 bless the Only Wise and Good that it is so. Save in my 
 darker moments, I feel that life is a precious boon, that 
 ' it is good to be here ' even in this vale of tears. I see 
 and feel that had it not been for my evil heart, I should 
 not have experienced so many trials. That heart, more 
 or less, has poisoned every cup of joy. Still is not 
 this, the richest of all, left — Christ and his Truth? A 
 world, dark to be sure, and full of evil, but in which 
 there comes light so bright, so beautiful it dazzles the 
 
86 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 eyes to look upon it, — in which we may labor, and 
 successfully too, to chase away darkness and evil. O ! 
 I think I can never weary of life, nor cease to feel it 
 the richest of blessings, so long as in it I may lead any 
 wanderer to duty, and to God ; so long as I may con- 
 tinue to catch glimpses of that truth of which Christ is 
 the personification, so long as I may strengthen my 
 power of vision, and obtain, day after day, and year 
 after year, richer and fuller draughts of light, love and 
 truth. Nor are we destitute of other blessings. False 
 and hollow as is the world, there are warm, true hearts 
 in it, and we may reach those hearts. Think you not, 
 in my solitude this winter I look back to the time when 
 some bright, loving faces were around me ? Some hearts 
 which vibrated in sympathy with mine, and from which 
 I drank inspiration in the hope of leading them still 
 more deeply and fully to love the truth ? . . . I love to 
 think of my last winter's twelve [the class of 1848 at Le 
 Roy], and to commit them to Him who is able to keep 
 them and to gather them and their teacher at his own 
 right hand where there is fullness of joy. And we have 
 nature, in her speaking beauty, upon which heart and 
 inagination may revel, and science into whose mysteries 
 and beauties we may search. Ah, believe me, my 
 younger sister, it is blessed to live. We need not be 
 blighted, nor disappointed, we need not doubt or fear, 
 but hope and trust ever, and be satisfied and happy. So 
 good is our Father. 
 
 " Almost seven months have fled since I left my 
 home and friends. For three months I have seen no 
 one with whom I had any acquanitance before these 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 87 
 
 three months began, still mercy has attended me. A 
 stranger in a strange land, I have found kind friends 
 and rich sources of improvement, and at length, ray 
 path looks considerably plain and straight before me. 
 . . . My kind Father has led one faithful heart to be 
 willing to share my fortunes. With her I have a mod- 
 erate, I trust a resigned, hope of happiness, of useful- 
 ness. The future, in some sense, is all uncertain, in 
 others, surer than the everlasting hills. God grant that 
 in this gold-loving, truth-hating world we may do some- 
 thing to bring about a better state of things. 
 
 " For this winter, I have just closed eleven weeks of 
 instruction to seven damsels, and now, I am waiting, — 
 and I believe five or six of them, too, — somewhat anx- 
 iously for the fourth of April. Besides teaching them, 
 I have studied German some, and actually looked into 
 a Greek grammar! ... I have studied History of 
 Philosophy, and read Schiller's poems, and Shakespeare, 
 and Carlyle. . . . All of which, or a part of which, has 
 had a tendency to awaken my highest enthusiasm, and 
 sometimes, therefore, when Schiller's glorious thoughts, 
 or some one's else, are burning in my brain, I am, as of 
 old, troubled to sleep. 
 
 " I pant and thirst and yearn for the infinite, the in- 
 describable ; my heart flutters, and the body seems a 
 clog to the soaring spirit; then again joy, the sweetest, 
 the brightest, comes. No truth, no imaginings are so 
 glorious, so bright and beautiful as the religion of Jesus, 
 and with the blessed conviction that this is mine, that 
 He is forever mine, I sink in tears at his feet and am 
 happy. 
 
MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " 1 hope for Miss N.'s presence soon after my school 
 opens. I am pretty well, — not to boast of, or be proud 
 of, however. 
 
 " It is related of Herder that on his death-bed he ex- 
 claimed : ' Give me a great thought that I may feast 
 myself ! ' Let me give you one. You remember the 
 grand Federation of the Champ-de-Mars, in the history 
 of the French Revolution. Carlyle says of it, ' O ! 
 Champ-de-Mars Federation with three hundred drum- 
 mers, twelve hundred wind musicians, and artillery 
 planted on height after height to boom the tidings of it 
 all over France in few minutes ! Could no atheist con- 
 ceive to discern, eighteen centuries off, those thirteen 
 most poor, mean-dressed men at frugal supper in a 
 mean Jewish dwelling, with no symbol but hearts God- 
 initiated into the divine depths of sorrow, and a "Do 
 this in remembrance of me," — and so cease that 
 small, difficult crowing of his, if he were not doomed 
 to it?' 
 
 "What a closing this of that vivid description of that 
 scene ! What a contrast the few words set before me ! 
 
 "A thought or two from Schiller and I have done: — 
 
 "Alas, the Truth may light bestow, 
 
 Not always warmth the beams impart, 
 
 Blessed be he who gains the boon to know, 
 Nor buys the Knowledge with the heart. 
 
 For warmth and light a blessing both to be, 
 
 Feel as the enthusiast, — as the world- wise, see." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 "Ottawa, Sabbath, March. 18, 1849. 
 "The Fox river flowing into the Illinois, beautifully 
 tinged by the last rays of the setting sun, lies spread out 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 80 
 
 before me, but the friends I love dwell not toward the 
 golden West. The King of day has already left them, 
 and as they gaze upon the still glowing West, perhaps 
 some of them are reminded of the wanderer, and offer 
 one petition that she may be sheltered under the wings 
 of Almighty love. The thought is touchingly sweet to feel 
 that those we love are offering the prayer of faith for 
 us; that the influence of these prayers, richer than 'the 
 dew of Hermon' shall descend upon us. I believe I 
 feel such influence ; my heart has burned within me as 
 I have besought a blessing on the absent ones. ... It 
 is the richest privilege we can conceive. 
 
 "I have mingled somewhat with the slandered aboli- 
 tionists, — thank God that I am happy to be counted 
 among them. I grow more interested in the subject, 
 more satisfied that the church is corrupt on this great 
 question, that our benevolent societies, ecclesiastical 
 bodies, are tainted with the sin of loving the praise of 
 men rather than the praise of God. My spirit is, if 
 possible, more stirred within me as I think of the 
 'wolves in sheep's clothing' who seek to fasten on 
 God's blessed book the foul crime of upholding slavery. 
 I had a conversation the other evening with a good 
 Wesleyan upon Hebrew slavery, or rather servitude. 
 O how much more becoming the professed ministers 
 of Christ to vindicate God's book from the darkest 
 crime which could be laid to its charge, at the expense 
 of wicked men, than to vindicate them at the expense 
 of it, and of the salvation of thousands who will perish 
 through this foul lie ! Dear Miss T., who taught me to 
 love Him who < has made of one blood all nations of 
 
90 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the earth/ I laid me down that night with an ach- 
 ing heart and a throbbing brow, yet my heart burned 
 with gratitude, for my heavenly Father, by the mouth 
 of his servant had cleared away all clouds from His 
 word on this subject. But I thought of you, of other 
 loved friends, whose hearts are more full of love, of 
 kindness than mine, yet who are, to some extent, 
 blinded on this subject. I thought of the thousands in 
 the Christian Church who are holding slaves, trampling 
 their Maker's image in the dust, breaking even sacred 
 obligation, and, worse than all, attempting to justify 
 themselves by the word of the Holy One ; of the thou- 
 sands of others, who directly or indirectly, are uphold- 
 ing them ; and my tears flowed fast. My friend, 
 believe you that the Bible teaches anything about 
 slavery but opposition to it? 
 
 " Let me tell you a tale from the Wesleyan. He said 
 he once preached upon Hebrew servitude. After the 
 sermon, he fell into conversation with an apparently 
 very intelligent and conscientious man, of whom he 
 asked, among other questions, his views of the Bible. 
 The man replied that he had been skeptical and the 
 defense of slavery from the Bible had made him so. 
 Our learned divines, he said, defended slavery ; they 
 had long and carefully studied the Bible, — their opin- 
 ions were certainly of weight ; he had yielded to them, 
 and therefore doubted the Bible. He knew what slavery 
 was, had been among it, and while he remembered 
 one scene, a poor slave, only on suspicion stretched to 
 the utmost tension of his bones and muscles, whipped 
 till his flesh was a pumice, and then burning wax in seven 
 places poured upon him and allowed to burn there, — 
 while he remembered this, he should know that a book 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 91 
 
 defending such a system never came from a righteous 
 God. But I must not dwell upon the theme. My head 
 has ached ever since my conversation with the Wesleyan, 
 and I am increasing the pain. May God hasten the 
 day when the veil shall be rent from all eyes, when 
 God's best gift to man shall be seen in its own un- 
 clouded glory and excellence." 
 
 The great educational needs of the West could 
 not be met by private and unendowed schools, 
 although some of these were of the greatest service, 
 especially before larger enterprises appealing to a 
 wider constituency were founded. Miss Mortimer's 
 unique personality, indomitable perseverance, and 
 remarkable gifts and attainments were needed 
 in the widest sphere. Yet such was her love of 
 independence, and her originality in methods of 
 education, that an experiment in a school of her 
 own, whose ideals she should dominate, was an 
 essential part of her preparation for the larger work 
 which awaited her. This experiment she now 
 made in Ottawa, 111. As shown by her correspond- 
 ence, she had spent the winter teaching a class of 
 a few young ladies, and studying the field and the 
 mutual adaptions of herself and the people. Not 
 without some misgivings as to the outlook in the 
 young community for the building up of such a 
 school as she desired, but on the whole, coura- 
 geously and cheerfully, she prepared to open her 
 school in the spring of 1 849. Her circular announc- 
 ing this fact bears date — 
 
92 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " Feb. 16, 1849. 
 
 "Misses Mary Mortimer and M. J. Newcombe pro- 
 pose to open an Academy for the instruction of young 
 ladies in Ottawa, La Salle Co., Illinois. 
 
 "The object of this school will be : First, carefully 
 and thoroughly to teach the sciences, not wholly, nor 
 even mainly, as an end, but as a means through which 
 to arrive at Truth, physical, intellectual and moral ; 
 Second, by the aid of this Truth and the mental ex- 
 ercise required to reach it, to assist in the formation and 
 development of character, — such character as woman 
 needs to fit her for her high and responsible duties. 
 In accordance with these objects, the teachers of this 
 school will aim to exercise the judgment rather than 
 the memory, the reason rather than the imagination; to 
 teach the principles of science rather than its details ; 
 science itself rather than books. 
 
 " Misses M. and N. believe that woman is capable 
 of the highest mental culture, and that the arguments 
 brought against her studying the abstruser sciences — 
 viz., her volatility and want of power — only prove her 
 need of such study. Therefore, while they will not 
 aim to discard or neglect the ornamental branches of a 
 refined education, they will esteem them of secondary 
 importance compared with those which are universally 
 admitted to be better calculated to develop the power 
 of thought and to form noble and useful character. . . . 
 
 " They design to establish a permanent school, which, 
 without being the representative of any sect or party, 
 without aiming to teach the peculiar tenets of any, shall 
 yet make Christianity the light and life of its instruc- 
 tions. ..." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 93 
 
 The school was announced to open April 4, 1 849, 
 and among the names to whom intending patrons 
 were referred for reference, were those of the 
 Principals of Geneva, Elmira, and Le Roy Female 
 Seminaries, of a number of professional gentlemen 
 in Brockport, Geneva, Rochester, and Buffalo, of 
 Horace Webster, LL. D. , Principal of Free Acad- 
 emy, New York City, and of several friends in the 
 West, including the Rev. W. L. Parsons of Mil- 
 waukee and Mrs. Dr. Bradley (her former associate 
 in Geneva and Brockport), then of Byron, 111. 
 
 Her associate, Miss Newcombe, had been (as a 
 member of the class of 1847) one °f ner favorite 
 pupils in Le Roy, and could enter into the spirit of 
 her teaching and share her ideals as no one could 
 who had not enjoyed the privilege of her instruc- 
 tion. In reply to inquiry regarding the Ottawa 
 period of Miss Mortimer's life, Miss Newcombe, 
 later Mrs. John Mortimer, writes : — 
 
 "You ask for some particulars of the Ottawa life. 
 She went there with the idea of establishing a school of 
 her own. She had been in early youth, as you know, 
 profoundly skeptical in respect to Christianity, and as 
 her views cleared and settled, she longed to go West. 
 There was more latent infidelity, she thought, than was 
 generally known or dreamed of, especially in the West, 
 and she desired to go there and teach in her own way, 
 free and untrammeled, the new-found truth which 
 burned within her. She took, at that time, also the 
 deepest interest in Southern slavery, and wished to be 
 
94 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 free to speak and work against it. I have heard her 
 often, at Le Roy and at Ottawa, combating it in the 
 presence of its advocates, with indignant denunciation 
 and the most consummate and conclusive arguments. 
 
 "1 will only add that in all my life I have never 
 known so unique, so tender, yet so strong and grand a 
 character as hers." 
 
 Miss Mortimer wrote Miss Thurston : — 
 
 "March 20, 1849. 
 
 "For the present, as you will have learned ere this, 
 the matter is decided, and I have enough, more than 
 enough to do, to build up a school on a soil not very 
 promising. I am thankful that light sufficient was 
 afforded me for a decision, and since then I grow more 
 and more confirmed that it was right, — though faint 
 doubt comes sometimes. . . . 
 
 " I am glad is going to you. . . . Beautiful, 
 
 sensitive and unselfish as she is, I fear, much as we have 
 prized and loved her, we have never fully appreciated 
 her. Sure I am, I never met such a combination of 
 beauty, simplicity and guilelessness with such strength 
 and such keen, refined and lofty sensibility. . . . God 
 bless you both and make you rich blessings to each 
 other, to all around you. It is not without emotion 
 that, almost a thousand miles from you, I think of the 
 union of the two whom I have believed myself to love 
 so deeply, but believe me, I rejoice in it. I am willing, 
 weak as the flesh is at the thought, to be forgotten, if 
 thus I might conduce to the happiness of either, but I 
 have no fear of this. You have both proved yourselves 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 95 
 
 . . . too true and faithful to forget, to cease to love 
 and yield to me the kindest offerings of friendship. I 
 shall think of you in my far-away home, and pray that 
 upon you may descend Heaven's richest, brightest 
 blessings. 
 
 "I commence school in two weeks. As to prospects 
 . . . Mr. B. is sanguine, but he is a sanguine man. 
 Thus far I feel very happy in the prospect. The best 
 school-building in the town was very unexpectedly of- 
 fered me, and the furniture, on moderate terms. . . . 
 Mr. B. has engaged a large brick house, where he con- 
 sents to board us and any young ladies who may offer 
 themselves. . . . This I feel is a very fortunate ar- 
 rangement, and I shall commence hopefully, trustfully. 
 My friends are so kind and good, — I have no words to 
 express my gratitude. . . . How many mercies I have 
 to rejoice over! . . . Tell me if you like my circular. 
 . . . L. A. (Mrs. Parsons at Milwaukee Seminary) is 
 progressing finely. She has twice written me to join 
 her. She had more than eighty scholars at her last re- 
 port to me. Bro. W. has given me up. ... I cannot 
 yield myself a proselyte of Oberlinism, — still, Miss T., 
 there is good in Oberlin." 
 
 " Ottawa, June 9, 1849. 
 "I can but hope that with two such reliable helpers 
 as F. and Miss H., you will relieve yourself a little, 
 but I do n't know. The day never was yet when you 
 did not see it necessary to perform an amount of labor 
 which I should sink under. For my part, I do not see 
 what keeps you up. Sure I am 'tis a blessed thing that 
 you have not such a tumultuous boiling nature as I 
 have, or you could not endure the labor you do. I 
 
96 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 cannot judge much as to whether you have good 
 ground for the apprehension of which you spoke in 
 your last. . . . What is the need of fearing ? We are 
 laboring, I trust, in our Master's vineyard, and for 
 Him. He will take care of us and our interests. I do 
 for myself realize this, and am grateful to you more 
 than to any other earthly friend for the doctrine. 
 Headstrong, willful as I am and have been, the Geneva 
 Female Seminary did very much toward moulding and 
 fashioning my character as a teacher. Surely the 
 stamp of it is upon me, and, in my way, I am dissemi- 
 nating the lessons of what I am still happy and proud 
 to consider my Alma Mater. 
 
 "Let us fear nothing. Clouds and darkness are 
 around me when I look earthward, but I am permitted 
 a little to penetrate beyond, and all is bright and peace- 
 ful. One question trembles in my deepest heart some- 
 times, when oppressed with pain and weakness I have 
 to yield all efforts. Why so many, such burning as- 
 pirations in my heart, and I ever denied their gratifica- 
 tion ? 
 
 "I received a letter from M. A. yesterday. It con- 
 tained no news ; only a plan for me to go and visit her 
 this week, which I think I cannot do. Miss N. is 
 nearly ill, and I dare not leave her. There is some 
 sickness in our town and our school has diminished of 
 late. We close our first quarter and commence an- 
 other next week. To the strong and courageous, I 
 think prospects are encouraging. Our school is inter- 
 ested and good and happy. We do not have reports, 
 and I am growing to believe that it is better so. Almost 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 97 
 
 no communications, nor indolence, are among us. I 
 really find it pleasant to govern a school, and feel very 
 happy amid the happy faces of my pupils. I shall be 
 glad to abide with them. 
 
 " The cholera is about, in most of the river towns, 
 but it can scarcely be said to have reached us. One or 
 two cases have been reported here, but they were of 
 persons just come up from down the river. 
 
 " Where do you room, dear Miss T.? Whom do you 
 have with you, and whom does Miss H. have with her? 
 Do you take any walks ? How are your children ? 
 Do they remember me, and my visit of last sum- 
 mer? Do you know anything of the Genevans? 
 
 " I have just been reading over your letter. I think, 
 after all the doubts and darkness, you will come off tri- 
 umphant. Read Carlyle, and he will show you, in 
 burning characters on your heart, that mean people 
 cannot triumph, that honesty and truth alone can suc- 
 ceed. 
 
 "I am becoming notorious I fear. One of the 
 
 editors has a great liking for dragging us poor ladies 
 into the papers. I am figuring, — very flatteringly, to 
 be sure, — once more this week. 
 
 "O dear ! what a shallow world this is." 
 
 Ere long that insidious foe, cholera, took posses- 
 sion of Ottawa, as it had done of towns below at 
 the date of the foregoing letter. Miss Mortimer 
 knew not what fear was, and when, in some sec- 
 tions of the village, almost every house contained 
 the dead or dying, she addressed herself with hero- 
 8 
 
98 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ism to the help of the suffering. But her own 
 health was too uncertain to bear the strain, and 
 soon she herself entered the penumbra of that aw- 
 ful shadow. Rallying, by the advice and entreaty 
 of friends, she left the town, as the event proved, 
 no more to reside there. Already, a factor, hith- 
 erto unseen, had entered into the forces which were 
 shaping her life-work. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 CATHERINE BEECHER EDUCATION. 
 
 Catherine Beecher, eldest child of Rev. Lyman 
 Beecher, was born in her father's parish at East- 
 hampton, L. L, in the year 1800. Her mother, 
 Roxana Foote Beecher, was a woman who in a 
 remarkable degree, combined rare culture, strength 
 of character, and sweetness of disposition. Some 
 of her letters to Mr. Beecher, written before their 
 marriage, are masterpieces of theological discrimi- 
 nation, and later in life he was heard to say that 
 his wife was the most potent opponent in argument 
 whom he had ever met. 
 
 The young Easthampton pastor and his wife be- 
 gan life together in their Long Island parish on a 
 limited salary, and Mrs. Beecher, notwithstanding 
 the cares of a young family of her own, ' ' opened 
 a family school, receiving a select number of 
 young ladies to study under her direction and 
 that of her sister, a lady of great beauty, elegance 
 and refinement." Thus the child Catherine, before 
 she was sent to any school, was surrounded in her 
 home by an atmosphere at once womanly, elevated, 
 stimulating, refining. When she was about ten 
 years old, her father removed to Litchfield, Conn., 
 
 [99] 
 
100 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 a town already famous through its Law School, 
 which numbered eminent men among the profes- 
 sors, and youth from every part of the country 
 among its students. Perhaps not less pervasive 
 and abiding was the influence of Litchfield through 
 its Female Seminary, a school at that time without 
 a peer. It was under the charge of Mrs. Sarah 
 Pearse, a well-educated and superior woman, " but 
 its real head and guide " says Rose Terry Cooke, 
 herself afterward a pupil of Mr. Brace, ' ' was a 
 nephew of the Principal, Mr. John Pearse Brace, a 
 teacher still held in grateful remembrance. No 
 teacher can ever have educated his pupils in the 
 true sense better than Mr. Brace ; less of a martinet 
 and drill-master than the modern schoolmaster, he 
 understood by some subtle intelligence the way to 
 influence every mind in contact with his own ; he 
 knew what we were and what we needed with in- 
 fallible instinct, and made study a keen delight 
 when he taught, whatever was the subject. Under 
 the name of Jonathan Rossiter, Mrs. Stowe has 
 described him in the latter part of ' Oldtown Folks ' 
 with a vigor and detail that point him to the life." 
 
 Mrs. Stowe wrote of him in a letter to her 
 brother : ' ' Mr. Brace was one of the most stimulat- 
 ing and inspiring instructors I ever knew." In this 
 school and under these teachers, Catherine Beecher 
 received her education. 
 
 Says her sister, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe : — 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 101 
 
 " She was vigorous, energetic, and possessed of a 
 decided talent for music, painting and versification. 
 Her poems, published while she was still under twenty, 
 in the Christian Spectator, drew the attention of the 
 noble and gifted Prof. Fisher of Yale College, and they 
 became engaged, with the highest prospect of earthly 
 happiness. Prof. Fisher, soon after, was lost with the 
 vessel on which he sailed for Europe, and his young 
 fiancee was plunged in the deepest agony, aggravated 
 by the preaching of Dr. Emmons, whose service she at- 
 tended while on a visit to Prof. Fisher's family. 
 
 "Miss Beecher kept up a vigorous correspondence 
 with her father, in which the prevailing current of New 
 England theology was discussed from every point of 
 view. At last she came to the conclusion to let these 
 insoluble problems alone, and devote herself to the 
 simple following of Jesus Christ in a life of practical 
 usefulness. She came back to Litchfield, united with 
 her father's church, and selected the field of education 
 as the one to which she would hereafter devote her 
 energies." 
 
 The foundations of New England education were 
 laid by educated men, within thirty years after its 
 settlement. There never was a time when educated 
 and refined women were not found in some New 
 England families of superior culture and means. 
 But this was not the rule. The town histories 
 show that in the eighteenth and the early part of 
 the nineteenth century, education had fallen into a 
 low state, particularly during the revolutionary war 
 
1 02 MAR Y MOR TIMER. 
 
 and the hardships attendant upon the pioneer settle- 
 ment of the country. 1 
 
 But the moral soil of the original colonies was 
 underlaid by rock on which the percolating waters, 
 slowly, through storm and stress, were gathering 
 energy to spring up under more favoring condi- 
 tions in many an overflowing spring of blessing, at 
 about the same time, and in widely sundered com- 
 munities. 
 
 The need of education, especially for girls, was 
 very great. The law, it is true, made obligatory 
 the maintenance of schools " for children " in every 
 community of a given number of families. But the 
 popular, practical interpretation of the law ordi- 
 narily recognized only boys as 'scholars in the public 
 schools. Girls were taught at home, or in private 
 " dame's schools" to read and sew, and to know 
 their Bible and Catechism. "Some girls learned 
 to write, but postoffices were few, and women 
 commonly had little need of the pen." It is said 
 that at the close of the Revolutionary War, there 
 were women of high social position in Boston who 
 could not read. An aged woman in Hatfield, Mass. , 
 used to relate that when a girl, she was in the habit 
 of going to the school-house and sitting on the door- 
 step that she might listen to the recitations of the 
 boys in a building whose threshold no girl might 
 cross as a pupil. 
 
 1 See " History of Higher Education for Women in Massachusetts," 
 Bulletin of U. S. Bureau of Education. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 103 
 
 In 1780, Thomas Jefferson laid the foundation of 
 public education in all grades, in the State of 
 Virginia, 1 and the common schools were opened to 
 both sexes. After the close of the Revolutionary 
 War, changed conditions in the labor-market threw 
 open new and more remunerative employment for 
 young men, and women began to be employed as 
 teachers. Only "masters," however, were recog- 
 nized by law as teachers in the public schools. If 
 a woman ventured to teach, her payment was a 
 voluntary matter with the town officers, as she had 
 no legal right to collect her wages. 
 
 In 1790, Boston began to admit girls to its public 
 schools, but only in the summer-time, when there 
 were not boys enough to fill them. This lasted 
 until 1822. 2 With the increasing number of women- 
 teachers, girls began to be admitted to the schools 
 in other parts of the country. In 1792, a Massa- 
 chusetts town was indicted for voting "not to be 
 at any expense for schooling girls," and forced to 
 admit them in the summer-time. In Bristol, R. I., 
 girls did not attend the public schools until 1828. 
 
 "From the time when reading, morals and manners 
 were required to be taught in the public schools, 'with 
 writing if contracted for/ there was constant improve- 
 ment in the curriculum. The study of Arithmetic, 
 Geography and Orthography became common, and 
 other reading-books took the place of the New England 
 Primer. At first, Arithmetic and Geography were taught 
 
 1 Boutell's "Thomas Jefferson, the Man of Letters." 
 
 2 Vide "Quincy's Municipal History of Boston." 
 
104 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 only in the winter, as a knowledge of these branches 
 was deemed superfluous for girls. When Colburn's 
 Mental Arithmetic was introduced, girls were not ex- 
 pected to study it. But they persevered, and were not 
 far behind their brothers in reaching the mathematical 
 goal of the times — the Rule of Three." 1 
 
 As the demand for women-teachers came, they 
 felt a need of higher schools where women might 
 be educated and teachers might be fitted for their 
 work. Several academies founded late in the eight- 
 eenth century admitted girls. In 1803 the academy 
 at Bradford, Mass., was opened, at first for both 
 sexes. Before this, in the spring of 1 800, a Ver- 
 mont frontier community, having been permanently 
 settled but little more than ten years, had begun 
 a Female Seminary which was an offshoot from 
 that of Litchfield, Connecticut. One of the public- 
 spirited citizens of this young community, at Mid- 
 dlebury, Vermont, was the Hon. Horatio Seymour, 
 formerly of Litchfield, Conn. He took an active in- 
 terest in establishing a school of high grade for the 
 daughters of the pioneers, and deeded land as a site 
 for the needed building. He was acquainted in 
 Litchfield with a young lady who had been educated 
 in Mrs. Pearse's already celebrated school, and was 
 empowered by the citizens of Middlebury ' ' to invite 
 her to establish a similar school there. " The school 
 thus established by Miss Ida Strong at Middlebury 
 in 1 800, ' ' soon rose to such reputation as to attract 
 
 1 Vide " Introduction to History of Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 105 
 
 pupils from nearly all parts of the State. In the 
 winter of 1802-3 the citizens formed an association 
 in aid of the school, and in the summer of 1803, 
 the requisite stock was raised, and a building for the 
 use of the school erected. " It is worthy of note," 
 says Mrs. Emma Willard, ' ' that this Academy was 
 one of the very first in the country which was built 
 for that special object" — the education of girls. 
 The nearest, if not the only school of reputation, to 
 which Vermont girls could resort, before the found- 
 ing of this school, was Mrs. Pearse's school at 
 Litchfield. 
 
 The school so auspiciously begun in a region 
 almost a wilderness was not only among the earliest, 
 but it was, in an important sense, the link between 
 the Litchfield school and that which afterward at- 
 tained so wide a fame under Mrs. Emma Willard at 
 Troy, N. Y. Miss Strong kept her school in 
 Middlebury in successful operation until her health 
 failed. She died in the autumn of 1804, having 
 evinced by her success that ' ' she was a woman of 
 no common talents, education and energy. " 1 The 
 school languished until the summer of 1807, when 
 a young but successful teacher, also from Connecti- 
 cut, Miss Emma Hart, afterward Mrs. Willard, 
 was invited to take charge of it, and accepted the 
 invitation. She wrote: "The winter of 1807-8 
 was one of exceeding hardship for me. Though 
 very cold, with frequent storms and much snow, I 
 
 1 Swift's "History of Middlebury, Vermont." 
 
106 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 had to walk from Dr. T. 's, where I boarded, to the 
 Academy, and when there, to keep my school in a 
 large, long room, formed like an ordinary ball- 
 room, occupying the whole upper story, while the 
 only means of gaining warmth was from an open 
 fire in a small fire-place at the north end. . . . 
 When it was so cold that we could live no longer, I 
 called all my girls on to the floor and arranged 
 them, two and two, in a long row for a contra- 
 dance ; and while those who could sing would strike 
 up some stirring tune, I, with one of the girls for 
 a partner, would lead down the dance and soon 
 have them all in rapid motion." When sufficiently 
 warmed in this way, the pupils would return to their 
 studies. 
 
 At the end of two years' conduct of the school, 
 which gained high and increasing reputation, Miss 
 Hart married Dr. John Willard, an eminent phy- 
 sician and politician of Middlebury. After a few 
 years the financial crisis accompanying the war of 
 1812 swept away Dr. Willard's fortune, and Mrs. 
 Willard, in 1814, opened in her own elegant home, 
 another school for young ladies, which she main- 
 tained in Middlebury for several years, drawing to 
 it patrons from all parts of the State and from 
 New York. Through the parents of some of her 
 pupils in the latter State, her school, for which, 
 with great study and indefatigable perseverance she 
 had matured large plans, was brought to the notice 
 of Gov. DeWitt Clinton. Through his influence, 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 107 
 
 and with the hope held out of State aid, which was 
 not however fully realized, Mrs. Willard, with the 
 co-operation of her husband, removed her school 
 to New York, where ii was finally located at Troy 
 in the year 1821. Here Mrs. Willard, with wise 
 benevolence, betook herself to the training of 
 teachers, and sent forth to different States, two 
 hundred teachers before one was educated in any 
 public normal school in the United States. 
 
 " It was in Middlebury," says Mrs. Willard " that 
 the stream of lady-mathematicians took its rise, 
 which afterward went out from Troy Seminary to 
 every part of the Union." It is related that while 
 in Middlebury, Mrs. Willard introduced the study of 
 Physiology, but so great was the innovation that at 
 the examination, the entire audience, shocked at 
 the indelicacy of teaching such a subject to girls, 
 rose and left the room. The first examination of a 
 young lady in Geometry was by Mrs. Willard in 
 Waterford, N. Y. , and called forth a storm of 
 ridicule. 
 
 These years from 18 10 were also those in which 
 Catherine Beecher was studying at the Litchfield 
 school, which was the original fountain whence the 
 healing streams of Middlebury and Troy Seminaries 
 had flowed. 
 
 Massachusetts meantime had not been idle. In 
 a small community in the north-eastern corner 
 of the State, the Rev. Joseph Emerson was pon- 
 dering deeply the need of woman's education. In 
 
108 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the very year when Mrs. Willard opened the school 
 in her Middlebury residence — 1814 — Mary Lyon 
 was teaching her first school in Buckland at ' ' sev- 
 enty-five cents per week and boarded round." 
 
 In the years 1818-24, Rev. Joseph Emerson 1 
 drew to his school in Byfield, Mass. , many young 
 women of earnest purposes and strong desires for 
 improvement. Among them were Misses Z. P. 
 Grant and Mary Lyon. Mr. Emerson's views and 
 plans on the subject were largely in advance of his 
 times, but they took root in the hearts of some of 
 his pupils and bore abundant fruit. He said to 
 Miss Grant : — 
 
 "If you can put into operation a permanent school 
 on right principles, you can well afford to give up your 
 life whenever you have done it." 
 
 ' ' The germ of the Seminary founded by Miss 
 Lyon" [1837] savs Pres. Hitchcock in his memoir 
 of that lady, ' ' may probably be found in this re- 
 mark." 
 
 In 1823 the Adams Female Academy was en- 
 dowed at Londonderry, N. H. It was the first 
 incorporated school of its kind in New England in 
 which the course of studies was prescribed, the 
 classes arranged as in our Collegiate institutions, 
 and diplomas given. It was at this place that Miss 
 Grant and Miss Lyon originally adopted the plan 
 
 1 " Life of Rev. Joseph Emerson." 
 
THE LIFE IV OR A'. 109 
 
 afterward carried out by them at Ipswich and 
 South Hadley. 1 
 
 A course of study especially designed for young 
 women was provided at the founding of Oberlin 
 College in 1833. Both the first and the second 
 principal of that department were pupils of the Rev. 
 Joseph Emerson and Miss Grant. Thus the stream 
 of influence which has flowed over America and the 
 world through the women of Mt. Holyoke and 
 Oberlin, took its rise in a small community of 
 Massachusetts in the closing years of the first quar- 
 ter of this century. 
 
 Meantime Miss Beecher was carrying out, at 
 Hartford, Conn. , her own scheme of education for 
 girls. In the "History of Hartford" it is stated 
 that early in 1823, Miss C. E. Beecher of Litch- 
 field, with her sister Mary [afterward Mrs. Perkins], 
 opened a school for young ladies in a small room 
 over a store on Asylum St. , with an attendance of 
 seven pupils. In the autumn of the same year it 
 was announced in the Hartford C our ant that 
 "Misses C. and M. Beecher will commence their 
 winter term November 20. No scholar under twelve 
 years of age need apply, and none will be received 
 for less than one quarter. " " Attendance rapidly in- 
 creased from seven to one hundred. The principal 
 soon saw the necessity of better equipments. By 
 persistent appeals to the mothers of her pupils, she 
 
 1 "History of Londonderry, N. H." p. 120. 
 
HO MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 succeeded in bringing fifty public-spirited citizens 
 of the town into an organization for the erection 
 and equipment of such a building as she wished. " 
 This was in 1827, ten years before the erection of 
 Mt. Holyoke Seminary. With no knowledge of 
 what Mrs. Willard was doing at Troy, and Misses 
 Grant and Lyon at Ipswich, ' ' Miss Beecher strove 
 to realize her ideal of education, and until her health 
 broke down, she maintained an institution not infe- 
 rior to any in the country, which became the model 
 for many others, and attained the highest reputation. " 
 
 The edifice of the " Hartford Female Seminary" 
 was opened by an address on education by the 
 Rev. T. H. Gallaudet. Miss Beecher's own views 
 of education were embodied in a paper printed in a 
 pamphlet in 1829, entitled, "Suggestions Respect- 
 ing Improvements in Education, Presented to the 
 Trustees of Hartford Female Seminary," which had 
 an extended circulation and a wide influence. 
 
 The new building contained a hall to accommo- 
 date one hundred and fifty students, for study and 
 general exercises, six recitation rooms and a room 
 for chemical laboratory and lectures. 
 
 "In her 'Suggestions on Education' [writes Mrs. 
 Stowe] Miss Beecher forcibly compared the provis- 
 ion that had hitherto been made for the education of 
 men with those which had been deemed sufficient for 
 the other sex. For the brothers of a family, the well- 
 endowed college with its corps of professors, each 
 
THE LIFE WORK. Ill 
 
 devoted to one department of knowledge, and with 
 leisure to teach it in the most complete manner; — for 
 the sisters of the family only such advantages as they 
 could get from one teacher in one room, who had the 
 care of teaching in all branches ; and she asked what 
 but superficial knowledge could be the result of such a 
 system. The article was vigorously written, and excited 
 much attention. It was favorably noticed in the North 
 American and in the Revue Encyclopedique, and drew 
 instant attention to the system that was being carried on 
 in the Hartford Female Seminary. 
 
 " Surrounded by young life, enthusiastic in study 
 and teaching, Miss Beecher recovered the buoyant 
 cheerfulness which had always characterized her. . . . 
 She had under her care some of the brightest and most 
 receptive minds, and the results, as shown in the yearly 
 exhibitions to which parents and friends were invited, 
 were quite exciting. Latin and English compositions, 
 versified translations from Vergil and Ovid, astonished 
 those who had not been in the habit of expecting such 
 things in a ' female school. ' 
 
 "Miss Beecher succeeded in imparting her enthu- 
 siasm both to her teachers and scholars, and there was 
 scarce a week in which the school was not visited by 
 strangers desirous to observe its methods." 
 
 Her system (see "History of Hartford") was 
 carried out by her assistants in similar institutions 
 in different parts of the country, notably in New 
 Haven, Conn., Huntsville, Ala., Springfield, Mass., 
 and Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
1 1 2 MAR Y MOR TIMER. 
 
 "The efficiency and energy" [continues Mrs. Stowe] 
 that Miss Beecher displayed at this period of her 
 career was the wonder of every one who knew her. 
 With all the cares of between one and two hundred 
 pupils, many from distant States of the Union, Miss 
 Beecher's influence was felt everywhere, regulating the 
 minutest details. She planned the course of study, 
 guided and inspired the teachers, overlooked the dif- 
 ferent boarding houses, corresponded with parents and 
 guardians. She prepared an Arithmetic and a Mental 
 and Moral Philosophy, and printed them for the use of 
 her school. She constantly enforced upon her teachers 
 that education was not merely the communication of 
 knowledge, but the formation of character. Each 
 teacher had committed to her care a certain number of 
 scholars whose character she was to study, whose af- 
 fection she was to seek, and whom she was to strive, 
 by all means in her power, to lead to moral and relig- 
 ious excellence. The first hour of every morning was 
 given to a general religious exercise with the school, 
 and the results of these exercises, and of the whole system 
 of influences was such that multitudes can look back to 
 the Hartford Female Seminary as the place where they 
 received influences that shaped their whole life for this 
 world and the world to come. 
 
 " She kept up systematic exercise on horseback, the 
 practice of music as a recreation, furnished an oc- 
 casional poem for the Connecticut Observer, and re- 
 ceived on one evening of each week, her own friends 
 and those of her pupils to a social gathering enlivened 
 by music and conversation. The weekly levees of the 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 113 
 
 Hartford Female Seminary were a great addition to the 
 social life of Hartford. 
 
 "For some years it seemed as if there was no limit 
 to what she could plan and accomplish. As the making 
 money was no part of her object in teaching, so every 
 improvement which money could procure was added to 
 the many advantages of the Seminary. A lecturer on 
 history was employed who introduced charts of ancient 
 and modern history; afterwards used as the basis of in- 
 struction. A lady who first brought into use the system 
 of Calisthenics gave a course in the Seminary, and thus 
 the exercises became a daily part of the school duties. 
 Dr. Barbour, afterwards Professor of Elocution in 
 Harvard College, was hired to give a course of instruc- 
 tion in his department, and his book was introduced 
 into the school. So many were the teachers employed, 
 so many the advantages secured to the pupils, that Miss 
 Beecher, at the head of it all, made no more than a com- 
 fortable support, and laid up nothing for the future." 
 
 After a number of years, Miss Beecher's health 
 failed, and she relinquished the school to her old 
 Litchfield teacher, Mr. John P. Brace. When her 
 father removed to Cincinnati in 1832, Miss Beecher 
 went with him, and, assisted by her sister Harriet, 
 commenced a school for girls in that place. But 
 henceforth, Miss Beecher left her place in the 
 schools to be filled by others, while she addressed 
 herself to the larger task of inspiring and directing 
 the course of education over wider areas. 
 
 9 
 
114 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 4 'She formed a league " says Mrs. Stowe, "for 
 supplying the West with educated teachers." 
 About 1846, ex-Governor Slade of Vermont was 
 employed as Corresponding Secretary and General 
 Agent of the "Board of National Popular Educa- 
 tion " (the league referred to). Mrs. Stowe says, 
 " Gov. Slade of Vermont, as agent for this Asso- 
 ciation, traveled and lectured, and as the result, 
 many teachers were sent West, and many schools 
 founded. It was planned to erect one leading Semi- 
 nary in every Western State, where teachers should 
 be trained to supply the country, and the plan was 
 successfully carried out in some cities." 1 
 
 Miss Beecher had fully formulated her plan of 
 education and professions for women, and devoted 
 some of her time to the preparation of works which 
 should help forward her plan. Her works on Edu- 
 cation and Domestic Economy, published in 1845 
 and 1846, under the care of the Harpers of N. Y., 
 had a wide circulation, and brought her an income 
 which she freely spent in the promotion of her edu- 
 cational schemes. The latter part of the work men- 
 tioned by Mrs. Stowe, the founding of schools in 
 the West, with an especial view to the training of 
 teachers, was carried out by Miss Beecher at 
 Milwaukee, Wis., Dubuque, Iowa, and attempted 
 in other places. 
 
 141 The first two classes of teachers sent out by this Board were 
 prepared under the superintendence of Miss C. E. Beecher, whose 
 connection with the Board terminated with the year 1847." Vide 
 Gov. Slade's Report, dated Jan. I, 1852, p. 13. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 MISS MORTIMER AND MISS BEECHER. 
 
 Ill health, the trial of past years, had come 
 again to Miss Mortimer. The cholera, mentioned 
 in the last letter from Ottawa, in the strain it 
 brought upon her physically, mentally, and in feel- 
 ing, was but an occasion for the old foe, lurking in 
 ambush, to spring forth from its hiding place and 
 try her faith and patience once more. 
 
 In this year, 1849, Miss Beecher made an educa- 
 tional visit to the West. 
 
 Miss Mortimer wrote from — 
 
 "Ottawa, June 12, 1849. 
 
 '* Last week I received a letter from Miss Catherine 
 Beecher which might amount to something, if I were 
 not so independent a soul. Miss Beecher professes to 
 have taken a liking to me, and builds an 'air-castle,' as 
 she calls it, in which she puts me as ' leading spirit/ 
 and goes on to tell us that for such a plan as she pro- 
 poses she can pledge us money enough, and even adds 
 that she will not be strenuous for her favorite notions 
 save one or two which she considers essential to the 
 permanency of the school. 
 
 "She wishes, if I fall in with her ideas, that I go to 
 Hartford this summer, to visit schools, talk over plans, 
 etc. I replied to Miss B., stating the condition of my 
 
 [115] 
 
116 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 health, and my consequent unfitness to undertake any 
 great enterprise. I told her of my love of indepen- 
 dence, my dislike of worldly policy, thanked her for 
 her kind intentions, and assured her that I warmly re- 
 ciprocated her feelings of regard, and should be happy 
 to make myself useful in the great work in which she is 
 engaged. I spoke of worldly policy, because I wanted 
 her to understand me on this point " [referring to con- 
 versation " when she was here "]. 
 
 "In 1849," says W. W. Wight, Esq. (see " An- 
 nals of Milwaukee College"), Miss Beecher "was 
 seeking contributions in the East to establish en- 
 dowed professional schools for young women in 
 which their distinctive duties should be made a 
 science and a remunerative profession, as were the 
 liberal professions for men. In many a parlor and 
 lecture-room Miss Beecher grew eloquent over her 
 favorite theme. Many a young teacher became 
 enthusiastic as Miss Beecher unfolded in private 
 audience the merits of her plan ; many an elder 
 instructor, perusing Miss Beecher' s ' The True 
 Remedy for the Wrongs of Women ' and other 
 volumes, warmed to her theories and sought for 
 closer intimacy with them. One of these books 
 particularizing her educational theories fell into the 
 hands of Mrs. Parsons of Milwaukee, who, with her 
 associates and leading citizens, examined and ap- 
 proved it. The result was a correspondence be- 
 tween Miss Beecher and Mrs. Parsons which 
 attracted the former lady's interested attention, 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 117 
 
 and resulted in an earnest invitation to her to visit 
 Milwaukee, and to address the citizens in behalf of 
 a permanent school of a high order. This invita- 
 tion. . . . Miss Beecher accepted," and in the 
 autumn of 1849 submitted her plans to citizens of 
 Milwaukee. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's long previous acquaintance with 
 Mrs. Parsons at Le Roy, her visit to Milwaukee on 
 her first coming West in Sept., 1848, just as Mrs. 
 Parsons was opening the school there, and Mrs. 
 Parsons ' invitation, twice repeated in the winter of 
 1849-50 to Miss Mortimer to give up the Ottawa 
 field, and join in teaching the increasingly prosper- 
 ous Milwaukee school, have been gleaned by the 
 attentive reader from the correspondence quoted. 
 
 No reference in the letters of Miss Mortimer is 
 made to a place of location for the ''air-castle" 
 which Miss Beecher built for Miss Mortimer after 
 having become acquainted with her at Ottawa in 
 the first half of the year 1 849. It was more impor- 
 tant that Miss Mortimer should be won as a co- 
 adjutor in carrying out Miss Beecher's educational 
 plan than to settle immediately upon a location in 
 the wide field Miss Beecher sought to influence ; 
 especially as Miss Mortimer was slow to yield her 
 independence, and felt, also, that her weakened 
 health was a serious objection to her acceptance 
 of Miss Beecher's proposals. 
 
 But Miss Beecher, with characteristic energy and 
 benevolence, set about the removal of this chief 
 
118 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 obstacle, and the autumn of 1 849 saw these two 
 ladies for a brief period together at Round Hill 
 Water Cure, Northampton, Mass. 
 
 Miss Mortimer, after vacation-visits to her friends 
 in Phelps, Auburn and Elmira, N. Y., writes: — 
 
 "Oct. 25, 1849. 
 
 "I had so busy a week that I made my arm lame. 
 The day after this, I received a letter from Miss 
 Beecher. It was very kind,* expressed much interest 
 and confidence, but still lacked clear, distinct state- 
 ments in regard to the future. She closed with a wish 
 for a full history of my ailments, and expressed a hope 
 of being able to take me to a Water Cure Establishment, 
 She said nothing about time, except that in a fortnight 
 I should receive definite word as to ' time, place and 
 plan. ' 
 
 " One week afterward, instead of two, came a second 
 letter, wishing me to set off immediately for this place. 
 I hesitated and pondered. E. objected, and my caution 
 seconded his objections. But I could seem to see how 
 Miss Beecher would obviate all these objections, and I 
 feared it would be treating her ungenerously to refuse to 
 come. . . . 
 
 " I yielded ; set off on Tuesday and after a prosper- 
 ous journey reached the delightful town of Northampton 
 yesterday. I took a carriage to this establishment and 
 received a kind greeting from Miss Beecher who is here 
 under hydropathic treatment. The good lady has just 
 reminded me that I must not write ; I must obey. All 
 looks pleasant here." 
 
 Seven weeks later, Miss Mortimer writes from — 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 119 
 
 "Glen Haven Water Cure, 
 
 "Tues. eve., Dec. n, 1849. 
 
 "Here I am, about two hundred and fifty miles 
 nearer you (Elmira, N. Y.) than when I last wrote you, 
 and with six more weeks ' experience in the Water Cure. 
 Glen Haven is a lone spot between two lofty ridges of 
 hills, at the head of Skaneateles Lake. It is very pleasant 
 in summer, with the beautiful, placid lake in front, the 
 hills covered with verdure, and nature, in her wildness 
 and beauty, on either hand, — but now it is rather 
 dreary. In the volume of the future, however, unre- 
 vealed, lies my fate. I have wandered about rather 
 strangely, very unexpectedly, for the last year. When 
 and where I shall go next, I know not. 
 
 "... 1 rejoice in the good news from you and I 
 trust you will be prospered more and more. As to my- 
 self, I met Miss Beecher at Round Hill as I wrote F. I 
 anticipated. We talked over matters, and, owing to 
 my crippled condition, and to the probability that Miss 
 B. would soon leave the (Northampton) Water Cure, 
 concluded that I would better come to this place, which 
 is not very far from my friends. With considerable 
 difficulty I persuaded Miss B. that I could come alone. 
 She wrote letters to the railroad conductors, and to the 
 proprietor of the Delevan House at Albany, to secure 
 to me all needed attention. She wrote also to the 
 Doctor's wife here, recommending me to their care. 
 She packed my trunks, and with a ' God bless you ' 
 dismissed me Wednesday morning. My journey passed 
 off finely. Everything was done for me. I passed 
 the night at the 'Delevan' and reached Auburn Thurs- 
 day, and made arrangements to come to this Haven 
 
120 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the next day. I think I never felt more deeply under 
 obligations to friends than now. Miss Beecher has 
 been so kind, so benevolent, so thoughtful, and my 
 brothers and sisters have been so sympathizing and 
 kind and helpful. I have no words to express my 
 gratitude. God bless them all. . . . 
 
 " M. came here with me. My foot and arm are bet- 
 ter, still I am very lame. The doctor gives me consid- 
 erable encouragement in regard to a cure. He thinks I 
 must have rather moderate treatment for a while. . . . 
 
 "Let me hear from you as soon as possible. I shall 
 need all the consideration of my friends, added to all 
 the heroism I can muster, to keep up my courage 
 through this dreary winter." 
 
 The next letter is dated "Auburn, Feb. 26, 
 1850," and gives a graphic description of her in- 
 valid life at the Glen Haven Sanitarium. From 
 the treatment there she had derived the greatest 
 benefit, so that she was never again crippled in her 
 foot by the recurrence of the lameness. 
 
 She writes : — 
 
 "I can but wish, that just as an illustration of the Water 
 Cure, and as a satisfactory explanation of all my past 
 aches and pains, miserable feelings and lamenesses, you 
 could have seen me this winter. . . . Some of the 
 Water Cure patients think Job never arrived at the 
 climax of human trials. ... I like the treatment very 
 well, but only in the bright hope of a restoration to 
 health, could I have borne it so well. Blessings on the 
 water ! I feel enthusiastic about it." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 121 
 
 But the enforced leisure from accustomed occu- 
 pation had not allowed the teeming brain to be 
 idle. A time of thought and feeling, of growth, 
 the " dreary winter" had evidently been. 
 
 Under the same date Miss Mortimer writes : — 
 
 " There is something more delightful to me than I 
 can express in the ideas of light and truth. I love to 
 dwell upon them, but sometimes I dare not ; my spirit 
 gets too much excited for my body to bear, — indeed, I 
 believe this is always the case. ... In some way I 
 have a sense of emancipation of late which is very de- 
 lightful. All winter, the idea of liberality has been 
 gradually developing itself to me. Party-spirit, sec- 
 tarianism, bigotry, narrow-mindedness, have always 
 been very hateful to me. I have sought and intended 
 to be free from them, but have failed, partly because 
 of my evil, headstrong nature, partly because I did 
 not see. 
 
 "■ I seem to see now, as I have not seen before, how 
 people may differ very much, and yet be working for 
 the same end, tending toward the same result,— nay, 
 more, that it is best they should work differently. All 
 sorts of good qualities need to be developed in us and 
 in others; characters differently constituted will pro- 
 duce different effects, and thus each do good in its 
 place. Again different natures can work but under 
 different influences. Some people are Methodists by 
 nature ; it would be a pity, even admitting Presbyteri- 
 anism to be nearer the truth, to drag them into the 
 Presbyterian ranks — they would in reality believe the 
 same, have the same characters, but being out of their 
 
122 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 element, would be trammeled in their feelings and 
 actions. Some people are born abolitionists (you will 
 smile and say among this class is your friend M.). 
 Some are not. Different parties, different sects, are, 
 to a great extent, expressions of differences of human 
 character. I cannot think they will ever trouble me so 
 much as they have done, yet I cannot believe myself, 
 comparatively, ever to have been very bigoted. I do 
 not think, dear Miss T., that I have made myself very 
 clear ; but do not fear that I am getting reckless of the 
 distinctions between truth and error; that I am falling 
 upon the pernicious theory that ' it is no matter what a 
 man believes so long as he is honest.' I do see, more 
 and more, or seem to see, that we know almost nothing; 
 that principles which, to our short-sighted vision, ap- 
 pear opposite, in the light of Heaven may be shown 
 to be in beautiful harmony ; that shades of difference 
 about which parties and sects and individuals contend 
 violently, bitterly, and as if truth were at stake, in that 
 same light may appear too insignificant to be worthy of 
 notice." 
 
 The correspondence between Mrs. Parsons, the 
 citizens of Milwaukee, and Miss Beecher, had re- 
 sulted in alliance and a change of name for the 
 Milwaukee School. It had now become " The 
 Milwaukee Normal Institute and High School " and 
 gathered both day pupils and boarders into the 
 double house on the corner of Milwaukee and 
 Oneida streets. The faculty, as it was now ar- 
 ranged, was to consist of * 4 a board of co-equal 
 teachers," Mrs. Parsons, Miss Mortimer, Miss E, 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 123 
 
 B. Warner, and Miss Newcombe, late Miss Morti- 
 mer's associate at Ottawa. 
 
 Under date of March 28, 1850, Miss Mortimer 
 writes from Buffalo, where she is en route with Miss 
 Beecher for her first work as a teacher in Milwau- 
 kee : - 
 
 "Your very kind letter reached me yesterday, and at 
 the same time a line from Miss Beecher charging me to 
 meet her in Geneva last evening, preparatory to setting 
 out for the West at six o'clock this morning. This was 
 agreeable to the arrangement we made last week. . . . 
 Miss Beecher has been writing a book which I hope 
 you will see as soon as may be. It will probably be 
 out in a few weeks, — is entitled 'Truth Stranger than 
 Fiction/ and will be, I doubt not, noticed in some way 
 in the Obsei-ver. . . . Write me, immediately, at 
 Milwaukee, what you wish done. . . . We reached 
 here at one p. m. No boat leaves to-night, so we shall 
 be obliged to remain. The ' Queen City ' is announced 
 for to-morrow at 10 a. m. We purpose to take passage, 
 spend the Sabbath in Detroit, and proceed on Monday 
 as fast as may be to Milwaukee, spend next week there, 
 and the week after, go to Ottawa, Jacksonville, Quincy, 
 etc., returning, — I do not know when. After this I 
 expect the school [in Milwaukee] will be re-organized ; 
 then Miss Beecher expects to return (East) and I shall 
 be school-ma'am again." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MILWAUKEE SCHOOL. 
 
 After reaching Milwaukee and conferring with 
 the friends of the school there, Miss Beecher and 
 Miss Mortimer proceeded to visit the young cities 
 in Illinois to which Miss Mortimer's last letter refers. 
 This was in pursuance of Miss Beecher's plan to 
 establish schools for young women in promising 
 centers in the Western States in order that the 
 teachers needed for this region might be raised up 
 and trained on the ground, thus, in time, obviating 
 the expensive plan of importing them from the 
 East. 
 
 In a letter written May, 1850, to her sisters while 
 on this journey, Miss Mortimer says : — 
 
 "At Quincy, we were quite the lions, and were 
 treated to the best cheer. The evening of the day after 
 our arrival, we met a number of the gentlemen of the 
 city. I read [a paper] and Miss B. talked. The next 
 day Miss B. talked with the ladies, and they, as well as 
 the gentlemen, seemed very much interested in Miss 
 Beecher's plans and proposals to them. We saw a good 
 many people, had fine opportunities of seeing the city 
 and surrounding country, and found all very promising 
 and interesting. All needful arrangements were made 
 [124] 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 125 
 
 preparatory to opening a school in the fall. Quincy is 
 very finely situated, — is a beautiful city containing a 
 large number of fine buildings and beautiful gardens. 
 The country outside of the city is also very fine, and 
 seems to be settled by people of property and some 
 refinement. The city contains a valuable library. Miss 
 B. thinks she shall want me to go to Quincy again in 
 the fall, to aid in the organization of the school. 
 
 "After a visit of three days, we took a steamer 
 for St. Louis, at which city I was obliged to part with 
 Miss Beecher, she taking the steamer for Cincinnati, I 
 for the Illinois river. My respect for the good lady 
 has been increasing during our journey, and I have 
 seen several old acquaintances of hers. My impres- 
 sions are confirmed by what they tell me. 
 
 " I have not yet heard that Miss Beecher's book is 
 published, but I have had the privilege of completing 
 its perusal, and am anxious to learn that others are 
 reading it. 
 
 "My sail from St. Louis to Ottawa was not par- 
 ticularly eventful, only, as often occurs, we were de- 
 layed to the utmost extent of our patience. 
 
 "At Peru, I learned that the slaves which escaped 
 from the steamer on which we went to Naples, were 
 not retaken. The Ottawa people, However, or rather, 
 a small part of them, had a very serious struggle to out- 
 wit their pursuers. 
 
 "I received a very kindly greeting at Ottawa; have 
 been there five days. ... It gives one a free, wild feel- 
 ing to go over these broad prairies and see the heavens 
 and the earth meet, with nothing to obstruct the 
 
126 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "I do feel sorry that our school there is among the 
 things that were. Some of the people mourn over its 
 death, mourn almost with a determination not to be 
 comforted. I left this morning (by canal) and find myself 
 in a little the closest quarters in which I have ever been. 
 I am afraid we shall stifle to-night. We reach Chicago 
 to-morrow morning, if no accident befalls us on this 
 roaring canal. I purpose to spend one day in Chicago, 
 and go to Milwaukee on Friday. There we have very 
 comfortable arrangements made for our accommodations 
 in the way of rooms. . . . This is Miss Beecher's 
 planning. Our school rooms are to be carpeted and 
 furnished as nicely as if they were 'down East/ — our 
 yard to be set out with flowers, etc. 
 
 " I will try to send you the Prospectus of our school. 
 It was written by Miss Beecher. 
 
 "I am now feeling quite strong. My foot seems 
 almost well now. . . . We commence school next 
 week." 
 
 To Miss Thurston : — 
 
 " Milwaukee, May 18, 1850. 
 
 [After detailing some unforeseen obstacles in the way 
 of the school.] 
 
 "One of the Trustees called last evening. I had a 
 talk with him and felt somewhat encouraged. We have 
 a smaller number of pupils than was expected, — and 
 four professors of our dignity ! We in the faculty are 
 all agreed warmly and fully in desiring to see Miss 
 Beecher's undertaking for the West triumph. The 
 family is pleasant, and we are very happy together. Be 
 not anxious, we shall triumph, I trust; certainly we 
 shall, if we are true to the trust put in our hands. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 127 
 
 "I have not been to church much yet; presume I 
 shall settle at the New School Presbyterian. Our city 
 is very dry, excessively dusty, — weather cold, trees 
 hardly yet leaved out. Tlie season is of course very 
 late." 
 
 Mrs. Parsons adds a note in which she says : — 
 
 " I have, many times this winter, wished to write you, 
 but I have been driven and pressed with cares and 
 duties, and, for some time, ill. Now, by the new ar- 
 arangement, I am greatly relieved." 
 
 To Miss T : — 
 
 "July ii, 1850. 
 
 "In Milwaukee I have fallen in love with its sunsets, 
 the beautiful weather, and our glorious lake. I wish 
 you could come and take a walk with me to its banks, 
 next moon. And a sail, too, for I expect John, and 
 then we shall have somebody to take care of us and row 
 for us. 
 
 " Have you seen Miss Beecher's book? Do propose 
 to some one of your booksellers to send for it. It can 
 be had in New York or Boston. 
 
 "Miss Beecher has issued two circulars; — one to 
 the clergymen of New England ; one to the ladies 
 generally. I will ask her in my next to send you one 
 of the latter, and I trust you will be able to do some- 
 thing in the good cause. . . . 
 
 " Miss Beecher writes me that she wishes me to go to 
 Quincy in the fall if I can be spared here, — not other- 
 wise. . . . She proposes to make something of a stir in 
 the fall. She comes in the early part of September, 
 
128 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 and expects Miss , the heroine of her book, to ac- 
 company her. 
 
 ". . . Mr. P. has received an invitation to go to 
 Ottawa and settle as pastor of the Presbyterian church. 
 He may accept in the fall, but it is uncertain. Mrs. P. 
 says she will abide here until next spring. . . . 
 
 " Our term closes two weeks from next Wednesday. 
 At its close I shall probably go to visit my brother in 
 Michigan and return the first of September. We expect 
 to open our fall term the second week in September. 
 
 " My prospect for health is, on the whole, encourag- 
 ing. I have. . . . worked hard this summer, still am 
 much stronger than at the beginning of the term. My 
 foot is not quite well yet, but it is better than it has 
 been these seven years in warm weather." 
 
 "Milwaukee, Aug. 24, 1850. 
 
 "Do you know, dear Miss T., how glad we will be to 
 see you? M. A. and L. A. and your sister Mary, — and 
 how much good it will do you to see us and our broad, 
 beautiful lakes, our wide-spreading prairies, our rising 
 cities, and much else ? 
 
 "You can come in three days. At Buffalo, buy a 
 ticket of the R. R. line through to Milwaukee. It will 
 be only eight or nine dollars, and you will be brought 
 to our door two days after you leave Buffalo. The 
 autumns are delightful here, the lakes are beautiful for 
 sailing. 
 
 "Let us hear very soon what you will do about com- 
 ing, but do not decide against us. . . . Our next term 
 commences Sept. 11. We expect Miss Beecher about 
 a week before." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 129 
 
 Mrs. Parsons adds : — 
 
 "Do set out upon the expedition you have so long 
 talked of to the West. It is surely more important for 
 you to see the West than the South. Please give my 
 best love to Miss C. and assure her that I am very de- 
 sirous to see her here with you. Her presence will 
 quite complete the happy arrangement. . . . M. has 
 probably told you of our circumstances and prospects. 
 If you delay your visit to another year, I may be far 
 from here." 
 
 To Miss T. and Miss C. : — 
 
 " Milwaukee, Sept. 6, 1850. 
 
 " I think our beautiful autumn weather has com- 
 menced, and our cholera seems to have nearly bidden 
 us adieu. We have had a great storm, almost a freshet, 
 but our sky is clear and beautiful to-day, our air is 
 fresh, invigorating and cool. I took a long, long walk 
 this morning, went to the lake. How glorious it is with 
 the dazzling morning sun upon it ! You will come and 
 see it, will you not ? . . . After you have sent me your 
 decision, I will send you all sorts of directions about 
 the journey. . . . 
 
 "We expect Miss Beecher to-night, — are likely to be 
 crowded with boarding pupils if not day pupils. ... I 
 send you a (bad) picture of Milwaukee, hoping even 
 this may be of some interest to you. Our city thinks 
 exceedingly well of itself, notwithstanding doing itself 
 so little justice on paper. May you have a glorious 
 time, dear F., if you go to hear Jenny Lind, — worth a 
 thousand times the money it will cost. I am feeling 
 almost well — mean to do something in our world yet. 
 10 
 
130 MARY A/OR TIMER. 
 
 Tell me, F., how you like Dickens' Ballad which I sent 
 you. I read Emerson on my last journey from 
 Chicago. . . . 
 
 "Have I not sent you word that we keep a ' Normal 
 Institute and High School' and not a 'Ladies' Semi- 
 nary ' ? " 
 
 "On Sept. ii, 1850" says Mr. Wight, "Miss 
 Beecher delivered an address at the Institute rooms, 
 for the purpose of expounding the plan of educa- 
 tion which her long experience had taught her to 
 be the best. ' 1 How the plan impressed one listener 
 appears by the following extract from an anony- 
 mous newspaper letter of the time. 
 
 " 'Such a school as Miss B. proposes is exactly 
 in keeping with the character and wants of this 
 thriving city, and its citizens would be committing 
 a sort of educational suicide by permitting this op- 
 portunity for establishing a school of the first order 
 to pass unimproved., 
 
 ' ' Within a month after this visit, another gifted 
 woman — Frederika Bremer — called at the school, 
 saw many handsome young girls, made them a 
 speech, and congratulated them on being Americans. 
 {Homes of the New World, I, 615.) This was not 
 the only connection of the author of The Neighbors 
 with this institution. The system of calisthenics 
 hereinafter described was introduced as the result 
 of a conference between Miss Beecher and Miss 
 Bremer. The latter lady explained the Swedish 
 
 1 Annals of Milwaukee College. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 131 
 
 method of gymnastic exercise for women, which so 
 commended itself to Miss Beecher that she caused 
 its introduction here. It is curious to observe that 
 this system . . . has recently been critically ex- 
 amined in Sweden by an American educator with a 
 view to its introduction into the schools of Milwau- 
 kee, as a novelty" — forty years after it was intro- 
 duced by Miss Beecher at Milwaukee College ! 
 
 To her friend and former pupil, Miss M. E. Hill, 
 Miss Mortimer writes from — 
 
 " Milwaukee, Sept. 16, 1850. 
 'You may perhaps have learned that I have become 
 a teacher in this city, in a school organized by Miss 
 Beecher, or rather, by us on Miss Beecher's plan, 
 which accompanies this letter. In this plan and its 
 author, I have become very much interested, and feel 
 sure you would be equally interested were you ac- 
 quainted with them. 
 
 "We are prospectively in .want of teachers, and I 
 write to inquire if you can give us any hope of obtain- 
 ing your services. I send you a pamphlet containing 
 Miss B's. general plan, and a paper containing our plan 
 in particular. From these documents you will gather 
 that each teacher on this plan holds a more important, 
 independent and satisfactory place than do assistant 
 teachers in any school, and at the same time has less 
 care, responsibility and labor than a principal. It is 
 proposed that each teacher shall teach only about four 
 hours per day. . . . 
 
 "For the present we are in want of such a character 
 as yourself, to spend the winter with us, to give us 
 
132 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 some aid, to learn our system, and to qualify herself to 
 take in the spring the first or second departments in the 
 school. 
 
 "Allow me to add, dear Miss H., that we are a 
 pleasant company, and our situations as teachers are 
 among the most pleasant and improving possible. If, 
 therefore, your parents can consent to spare you, I can 
 but think you would like the situation. Our distance 
 from you is not formidable, and I think I am not exag- 
 gerating when I say we are enlisted in one of the noblest 
 and most important enterprises of the age. Think care- 
 fully and decide benevolently, and reply to this as soon 
 as possible." 
 
 To the same : — 
 
 "Nov. 6, 1850. 
 
 "... Should you come you would be expected to take 
 one of the four departments described in the prospectus 
 I sent you, — perhaps my own, which is that of Govern- 
 ment and Moral Instruction, — and be responsible for 
 it. You would be expected to teach four or five hours 
 a day, and when school hours are over, if the proposed 
 boarding-plan goes into operation next spring, to be 
 pretty much free from care. . . . 
 
 " Our path is not all plain before us yet, — our enter- 
 prise is not fully appreciated, — not so fully as I think 
 it will be by next Spring. I do not like to take the re- 
 sponsibility of saying promising things about our pros- 
 pects, or in any other way of urging your coming. 
 . . . We are teaching on what we believe to be a more 
 thorough and liberal plan than is adopted in schools 
 generally, and the first year here needs to be one of 
 training and preparation. Perhaps I shall not flatter 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 133 
 
 myself if I say that I have for years taught more inde- 
 pendently of my text-books than the generality of 
 teachers, still I find it necessary to study carefully and 
 much, to teach as I am now teaching. 
 
 "I am giving my services this year for one hundred 
 and fifty dollars or less, and I may add, I have never 
 had more than two hundred. I do not consent to such 
 terms because I think, compared with other professions, 
 this is a fair compensation. I think teachers are not 
 paid enough. I can illy afford to give my time and 
 strength as I do give them, but there are other and 
 weightier considerations. Please think over this sub- 
 ject again, in the clearest light of Christian benevo- 
 lence. Our enterprise is young, is unappreciated. It 
 cannot afford high salaries, — it needs teachers who care 
 for higher rewards than the salaries men can give, and 
 such I believe you to be, therefore I hope Providence 
 will point out the way for you to come. 
 
 " Our school numbers a little more than one hundred. 
 We have a very valuable library, mostly historical and 
 literary, and a philosophical apparatus. . . . 
 
 " Miss Beecher proposes to me to take the normal de- 
 partment, which it is expected will be added to our 
 school next spring or fall." 
 
 To Miss T : — 
 
 " Milwaukee, Dec. 20, 1850. 
 
 ". . . Our term has closed now, and we have a little 
 respite. ... It was precious to us, dear Miss T., that 
 dear little visit, — and you comfort us in the thought 
 that it was pleasant and healthful to you. The great 
 West, with its faults and its virtues, is well worth look- 
 ing at. 
 
134 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Our term has passed away profitably on the whole. 
 I get more and more interested and attached here. . . . 
 I get some pretty warm friends among the pupils, after 
 so long a time, and think some good has been done. 
 . . . Our church is increasing in size, in usefulness, in 
 vitality, I trust, under Mr. Spencer's care. He is a 
 very good man, I think, though I fear he and I will not 
 agree. Our Historical Society has made some good 
 impression I think, and I hope much from it in the 
 future. . . . 
 
 "A day or two since, Dr. S. called to see us, — ex- 
 pressed himself very friendly. By some means he 
 gained admittance to our public Historical meeting. 
 ... I gave an address to the Historical Society which 
 I hear he is extolling very much. . . . 
 
 "Our next term promises well. I am to write a 
 speech to be presented to the Trustees." 
 
 Mrs. Parsons adds a note in which she says, 
 "We [herself and husband] may remain a year or 
 more." 
 
 The trustees referred to in Miss Mortimer's letter 
 of the winter vacation, 1850, are there first men- 
 tioned. The enterprise had then been changed 
 from one of a private nature in Mrs. Parsons' hands 
 to one on Miss Beecher's plan, and Mrs. Parsons 
 had surrendered the entire control of the school to 
 a board of trustees who were incorporated by the 
 Legislature of Wisconsin. 
 
 The enabling act, approved March 1, 185 1, 
 names nine prominent citizens of Milwaukee as 
 trustees, with power to increase their number to 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 135 
 
 fifteen, and constitutes them and their successors 
 ,l a body corporate and politic " " for the education 
 of females" "and for that purpose to remain in 
 perpetual succession. " 
 
 They are to have the directing, prescribing, and 
 appointing powers usually lodged in such a body, 
 and ' ' power and authority to grant such literary 
 honors and degrees as are usually granted by col- 
 leges and seminaries of learning in the United 
 States, and in testimony of such grants, to give 
 suitable diplomas under their seals, which diplomas 
 shall entitle the possessors respectively to the 
 immunities and privileges which by usage or 
 statute are allowed to the possessors of similar 
 diplomas granted by colleges and seminaries of 
 learning." 
 
 ' ' Supplied with this charter, the Trustees issued 
 their first circular Aug. I, 185 1. It states that 
 the institution ' is in successful operation, having 
 over two hundred names upon its roll during the 
 last four terms, and having a full and able faculty 
 of instruction. ' Further we read : — 
 
 "The institution is organized upon the college plan, 
 which, for securing the efficiency and permanency of 
 literary institutions, is doubtless the best that has yet 
 been discovered. A normal department is prominently 
 mentioned by the Trustees, and . . . much importance 
 is attached to this subject. Miss Beecher's guiding 
 hand appears from the following clause in the cir- 
 cular : — 
 
136 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " 'The institution is entirely free from any sectarian 
 or denominational character or control. It throws it- 
 self upon the sympathies of the entire community. The 
 great principles of truth as laid down by the Bible and 
 echoed from every man's reason — principles lying at 
 the base of our American institutions, and of all genuine 
 virtue — will be carefully inculcated.' 
 
 "The Trustees then state what the Institute has, what 
 it needs, and what it expects : — 
 
 "'The institution has already an endowment of 
 $1000 in library and apparatus. This was given through 
 Miss C. E. Beecher by a number of the friends of edu- 
 cation. ... It was given, not upon the condition that 
 the institution should be controlled by foreign influence, 
 but that it should be organized upon the superior plan 
 of colleges, and that the citizens should provide its 
 accommodations. The institution is greatly in need of 
 a spacious, convenient, and commanding location and 
 building. The Trustees are now confidently assured that 
 if the citizens of Milwaukee will do liberally themselves, 
 Eastern friends, who hope much for the intelligence 
 and-true prosperity of our country from such institutions, 
 will cheerfully contribute the balance necessary to com- 
 plete the desired building. ... As friends of Milwau- 
 kee and the cause of education, we invite your sympathy 
 and co-operation. ' 
 
 "While the trustees were thus appealing to the 
 citizens of Milwaukee, Miss Beecher was addressing to 
 a wider audience the Appeal which embodied her 
 plan." 
 
 This circular is evidently the same as that to 
 which Miss Mortimer refers in her correspondence 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 137 
 
 of the preceding year. It is an undated pamphlet, 
 entitled ' ' An appeal to American Women in Their 
 Own Behalf." 
 
 Its design was to commend the Milwaukee 
 School and to set forth its claims upon the be- 
 nevolent. The institution is therein said to be — 
 
 I. Non-Sectarian. 
 
 Miss Beecher says under this head : — 
 
 "The grand difficulty in our newer settlements is 
 the multiplicity of sects, and the difficulty of bringing 
 them to harmonize in the support of schools. . . . 
 
 "The method adopted at Milwaukee has been en- 
 tirely successful and is briefly this : An offer was made 
 to the citizens to furnish them four good teachers, and 
 one thousand dollars' worth of library and apparatus, 
 on condition that they should hire temporary quarters 
 for the school, furnish enough pupils to sustain the 
 teachers, raise a fund to be drawn upon for the support 
 of these teachers in case the income from the school 
 were inadequate, and finally that the institution should 
 be organized on the college system ; that is, that there 
 should be a faculty of co-equal teachers, instead of a 
 principal and subordinate teachers. This served as a 
 stimulus to exertion, the terms ottered were complied 
 with, and the result was that a very large school of the 
 highest order has been sustained nearly two years, 
 while every Protestant minister and church of the city 
 unites in recommending and sustaining it. There is a 
 Board of Trustees created, in which most of the de- 
 nominations of the place are represented, and the 
 pledge is given that every denomination shall have equal 
 
138 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 privileges, and that the peculiar tenets of none shall be 
 urged upon the pupils." 
 
 The appeal is enforced by these further consid- 
 erations upon which the writer enlarges : — 
 
 II. The economical method employed in apply- 
 ing benefactions. 
 
 III. The use of the college plan. 
 
 IV. The leading object, to educate women for 
 their profession. 
 
 V. Its proposed assistance to women seeking em- 
 ployment in their profession. 
 
 Miss Beecher's idea of "woman's profession" 
 was that it comprised — 
 
 i. The care and development of the human body 
 in the earliest period of life. 
 
 2. The training of the human mind. 
 
 3. The conservation of the domestic state. 
 
 "The normal department was to be an active, aggres- 
 sive agency in preparing women for, and assisting them 
 to employment, especially as teachers. 
 
 "The Rev. W. L. Parsons, who had previously 
 resigned his pastorate, was appointed secretary and 
 financial agent of the Board of Trustees. He now 
 devoted himself to soliciting assistance for the most 
 pressing need of the young and prosperous school, that 
 of a home. It was still domiciled in the straitened 
 quarters at the corner of Milwaukee and Oneida streets, 
 where " desks were impracticable, except in a large back 
 room used only for drawing and writing. The few 
 pupils in painting wrought by the light of an east win- 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 139 
 
 dow — the study their teacher's bedroom. Amid all 
 these disadvantages how rich were some of the instruc- 
 tors in inventing pleasant surprises to make more at- 
 tractive the daily routine ! . . . Lessons in history 
 were emphasized by evening gatherings for reading or 
 by historical tableaux. Yet into all that served to 
 make the school days such happy ones entered also 
 most tender solicitude for the development of that 
 which was of highest moment to each one. There was 
 the little journal, in which every afternoon before leav- 
 ing some note was to be made of desires awakened or 
 hopes cherished, of bad defeats or victories gained. 
 One room above became a hushed and hallowed place, 
 as each week, teacher and taught knelt after close of 
 school, that deepest yearnings and new-found purposes 
 might have the seal of heaven." 
 
 In the summer of 185 1 Miss Mortimer spent her 
 vacation in New York State with her old friends. 
 To Miss Hill, who had not yet yielded to Miss 
 Mortimer's invitations of the previous year, she 
 wrote, on the eve of returning to Milwaukee. 
 
 "Le Roy, Sept. 2, 1851. 
 " . . . I am on my way to Milwaukee. I expect we 
 shall need a teacher, and still my preference is for you. 
 . . . Our prospects, we think, are becoming fixed and 
 prosperous. We fully expect to see a fine building 
 erected next summer." 
 
 Mrs. Parsons was now in the East with her hus- 
 band, assisting to bring the school and its needs to 
 the notice of the friends of education. Miss 
 
140 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Mortimer, after arriving in Milwaukee, writes again 
 to Miss Hill, under date of — 
 
 " Sept. io, 1851. 
 
 "We want you immediately; the terms I mentioned 
 last winter. ... I hope, dear Miss H., you will be 
 quite decided to join us as soon as you receive this. 
 . . . Mrs. Parsons will be absent for some weeks, 
 so that we shall be in greater need than six weeks 
 hence. 
 
 " I have no fears of your fitness unless you have been 
 retrograding since I had the pleasure of teaching you. 
 Come with an earnest, free, trusting heart, determined, 
 by the strength and wisdom which cometh from above, 
 to be a light and a blessing, and all will be well. We 
 shall put no trammels upon you. We wish you to have 
 a mind of your own and to use it. 
 
 " Our term opens to-morrow." 
 
 With excellent teachers the school was prosper- 
 ing, and foundations seemed to be laid for perma- 
 nent advance. For a few weeks in the autumn of 
 185 1 Miss Mortimer was forced to leave her 
 work, now growing so dear, for recuperation, in the 
 family of one of her Chicago pupils. 
 
 The winter of 185 1-2 passed pleasantly away. 
 Miss Cornelia Bradley and Miss Morilla Hill had 
 become members of the faculty. An invitation was 
 extended to Miss Mortimer's dear friend of many 
 years, Mrs. Charles Bradley (formerly Miss M. A. 
 Bradley) to become associated with this band of 
 remarkable teachers. Had Mrs. Bradley's health 
 
THE LIFE WORK. \\\ 
 
 allowed her to accept, it would have completed an 
 arrangement most satisfactory to Miss Mortimer 
 and the friends of the school. 
 
 The anniversary exercises, until two or three 
 years subsequent to this time, were held in the 
 spring. Two young ladies were graduated in the 
 spring of 185 1. There was no senior class in 
 1852, the last year in which the school was con- 
 ducted in its original quarters. 
 
 This was a period of great activity among the 
 special friends of the Institution, both East and 
 West. In Milwaukee this culminated in the spring 
 of 1852 in the purchase of the present fine site of 
 the College at the corner of Milwaukee and Division 
 streets (now Juneau avenue), and preparations for 
 the immediate erection of a building suited to the 
 needs of the school. This building was designed 
 for the accommodation of day pupils only. Both 
 Miss Beecher and Miss Mortimer were opposed to 
 the plan of gathering large numbers of girls under 
 one roof, out of school hours. After the breaking 
 up of the home and school in the double house on 
 the corner of Milwaukee and Oneida streets in the 
 spring of 1852, there was no boarding department 
 connected with the school for some years, although 
 both teachers and pupils from abroad felt the need 
 of better provision for a home than was accessible. 
 
 In regard to this point, Miss Beecher was not 
 blind. Yet her aversion to large boarding schools 
 was greater than to the present lack of suitable 
 
142 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 home accommodations for teachers and pupils from 
 a distance. 
 
 The early days of April, 1852, find Miss Mortimer 
 at the East, whither she had gone that she might 
 be with Miss Beecher for consultation during the 
 summer intervening between the closing of the 
 school in its old quarters and its contemplated 
 autumn opening in the new edifice. 
 
 To Miss Hill Miss Mortimer writes from — 
 
 "Hartford, April 7, 1852. 
 
 "I have tried to gather some definite information to 
 send you, but all seems rather airy as yet. Miss B. 
 has great plans and visions, and I can but believe she 
 has great power also. I think in the course of a month 
 I shall be able to judge something of our prospects in 
 this direction. . . . Whatever may be the result, . . . 
 we shall want you. ... I hope you will be most ear- 
 nest to take care of your health. . . . 
 
 " God grant we may be wisely guided, and kept from 
 all evil and selfishness. 
 
 " I reached Boston last Friday. Miss B. joined me 
 on Saturday, and on Monday we left to go into the 
 country, to spend two weeks or so in correspondence. 
 We shall then, perhaps, go to New York. . . ." 
 
 The month of May, 1852, was spent by Misses 
 Beecher and Mortimer chiefly in New York City, in 
 consultation with leading ladies of that city and vi- 
 cinity. As a result of Miss Beecher's incessant ac- 
 tivity in negotiations, and of the correspondence 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 143 
 
 from Hartford in which Miss Mortimer and her- 
 self had been previously engaged, an ' ' American 
 Woman's Educational Association " was formed at 
 this time. 
 
 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, with her husband 
 and family, had removed from Cincinnati to Bruns- 
 wick, Maine, on the acceptance by Prof. Stowe in 
 1850 of the Professorship of Natural and Revealed 
 Religion in Bowdoin College. Both Prof, and Mrs. 
 Stowe had large and successful experience in teach- 
 ing and profound interest in educational matters. 
 Under a commission from the State of Ohio, Prof. 
 Stowe had investigated the subject of Education in 
 Europe, and made a report which excited wide 
 interest, and was published by several States of the 
 Union. Mrs. Stowe had been first a pupil in Miss 
 Beecher's Hartford school, and later her associate 
 in teaching, and was in profound sympathy with her 
 elder sister's educational aims and methods. Mrs. 
 Stowe since her return to New England had written 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin." This work had recently 
 been issued in book form, and the world was trem- 
 bling with the excitement it produced. 
 
 To the home of Prof, and Mrs. Stowe under 
 these circumstances Miss Beecher and Miss Morti- 
 mer were invited for the summer of 1852, or so 
 much of it as it should suit their convenience to 
 spend there, while maturing the educational plans 
 so dear to their hearts, and in which both host and 
 hostess took so great an interest. 
 
144 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's letters are almost entirely occu- 
 pied with matters pertaining to the educational 
 enterprise. 
 
 To Miss Hill, Miss Mortimer writes : — 
 
 11 Brunswick, Me., June 8, 1852. 
 
 " We were gratified that you feel so much interest in 
 our school, and believe 'it will succeed whether Miss 
 Beecher does or not/ That is right. The school is 
 needed, and with time and health, we can make it suc- 
 ceed, whether wise ladies in the East help us or not. 
 
 " Since I wrote you last, the ladies at Miss B.'s in- 
 stigation, have formed an Association of which I send 
 you the Constitution and list of the Board of Managers. 
 The organization was formed in New York, where I 
 was nearly four weeks. I had some intercourse with 
 Mrs. [Caroline M.] Kirkland and liked her very much. 
 The Association is of a highly respectable and influen- 
 tial character. Most of the ladies of the Board have 
 been heard from since their appointment. They ex- 
 press much interest in the objects of the Association, 
 and profess to feel highly honored in their appointment. 
 
 " Beyond this I do not feel that any thing positive has 
 yet been done. Miss Beecher proposes as the next 
 step that the Executive Committee issue a circular, 
 which she thinks will bring some money. May it be 
 so. You must decide now what you can. I am skepti- 
 cal rather than sanguine in my character, and am liv- 
 ing on, hoping something will come, but deciding 
 nothing. 
 
 "We came to this place from Boston last week. . . . 
 In regard to school next winter, Mr. Parsons writes us 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 145 
 
 ( ground is broken' toward the new house; ' brick will be 
 laid next week.'' This was two weeks ago. 
 
 " We have retired to a quiet town and here propose, 
 as fast as possible, to get a course of study arranged. 
 . . . Miss Beecher is proposing to have our Executive 
 Committee call a convention of teachers (ladies) to be 
 held in a quiet, private manner about August, to dis- 
 cuss the course of study we propose, and various other 
 topics relating to female education. Mrs. Gen. Gould 
 has written, urging that the Convention be in Roch- 
 ester." 
 
 To the same : — 
 
 "Brunswick, Me., June 21, 1852. 
 
 ". . . Your letter made me sad as to the state of 
 your health, and the almost certain prospect that you 
 cannot return with me. I know too well the hazard, 
 the misery of attempting to do a teacher's duty with 
 broken health to press you, though I shall not willingly 
 change you for any one else.' . . . 
 
 "We shall get this course of study definitely and 
 somewhat minutely arranged, I think. I am hoping it 
 will diminish our care and labor. When the Normal 
 Department gets endowed, I think your aunt would like 
 to take charge of one of the departments in it, and that 
 we should like to have her, and more too; — that we 
 can give her a situation congenial to her tastes and 
 which will not ruin her health. When we women get 
 half such good times as professors in college have, we 
 shall not need to make such havoc with our health as 
 we now do. 
 11 
 
146 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "The circular which accompanies this will give you 
 an idea or two. ..." 
 
 The circular referred to was soon published. 
 After contrasting the opportunities open to young 
 men for education and professional studies with the 
 very inferior opportunities offered to young women, 
 it enumerates some of the consequent evils, and out- 
 lines a plan for the Institution which has been al- 
 ready given. The organization which puts forth 
 the circular is known as the American Woman's 
 Educational Association, and its constitution pro- 
 vides that the- whole control of the business and 
 funds shall be in a Board of Managers, who shall 
 appoint their own officers, agents, and executive 
 committee. This Board shall have power to per- 
 petuate and increase itself, but the number from 
 any one religious denomination shall never exceed 
 one fifth of the whole. Not less than seven differ- 
 ent denominations shall be represented in the 
 Board, and a majority shall be ladies who are or 
 have been practical teachers. 
 
 The following are the Managers appointed by 
 the meetings above-mentioned : — 
 
 BOARD OF MANAGERS OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN'S 
 EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION. 
 
 Mrs. Z. P. G. Bannister, Newburyport, Mass. 
 Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, Hartford, Conn. 
 Mrs. Sarah J. Hale, Philadelphia, Pa. , 
 Mrs. Emily C. Judson, Hamilton, N. Y. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 
 
 147 
 
 Miss P. Fobes, Monticello, 111. 
 
 Mrs. Gen. Gould, Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 Mrs. Rev. S. Seager, Buffalo, N. Y. 
 
 Mrs. E. Ricord, Newark, N. J. 
 
 Mrs. E. Dyer, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Mrs. H. B. Stowe, Brunswick, Me. 
 
 Mrs. C. Van Rensselear, Burlington, N. J 
 
 Mrs. Prof. Conant, Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 Miss C. E. Beecher, Boston, Mass. 
 
 Miss C. M. Sedgwick, New York. 
 
 Mrs. Prof. Van Norman, New York. 
 
 Mrs. Marcus Spring, New York. 
 
 Mrs. E. L. Magoon, New York. 
 
 Mrs. C. M. Kirkland, New York, 
 
 Mrs. Prof. Webster, New York, 
 
 Mrs. A. H. Gibbons, New York, 
 
 Mrs. C. W. Milbank, New York, 
 
 Mrs. James Beattie, New York, 
 
 Miss Mary Field, Stockbridge, Mass., 
 
 Miss Mary Mortimer, Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 Rev. William L. Parsons, ) 
 
 Mrs. L. A. Parsons. 1 Secretaries and Agents. 
 
 Mrs. Prof. Webster, Treasurer. 
 
 Executive 
 Committee. 
 
 It is added : — 
 
 "The most important features of the plan here pre- 
 sented have been tested by experience. Two years ago 
 the citizens of Milwaukee accepted and carried out the 
 first condition, and an institution of over one hundred 
 pupils conducted on the College plan, has so secured 
 universal confidence that all the Protestant clergymen 
 of the city unite in recommending it. The citizens are 
 
148 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 now erecting a handsome building for two hundred 
 pupils as the fulfillment of the second condition, and 
 the immediate object now before this Association is to 
 raise the $20,000 for the endowment of the Normal De- 
 partment of that Institution. 
 
 "The Executive Committee of the American Wo- 
 man's Educational Association issue this circular, its 
 object being two-fold : first, to seek aid in raising this 
 endowment, and, secondly, to obtain counsel in devis- 
 ing a course of study and training in which woman's 
 profession shall have its proper regard. 
 
 "To effect this, the Executive Committee hereby 
 appoint Mrs. H. B. Stowe, Miss C. E. Beecher, and 
 Miss M. Mortimer as a Committee of Correspondence, 
 requesting them to adopt such measures as they may 
 deem expedient for effecting the above objects. 
 
 "By direction of the Ex. Com. of the A. W. E. A. 
 " C. M. Kirkland, Sec'y. 
 
 "New York, June 22, 1852. 
 
 " This plan in its broad compass " says W. W. 
 Wight, Esq., the historian of Milwaukee College, 
 ' ' was the one adopted at Milwaukee, and had the 
 plan been fully wrought out to a successful issue, 
 doubtless this College would have been the pattern 
 and model of all Colleges for the instruction of 
 women all over the country." 
 
 The appointment of Secretary to this Associa- 
 tion withdrew the Rev. W. L. Parsons from special 
 connection with the Milwaukee school, but Mrs. 
 Parsons continued to teach there until, in 1854, at 
 
THE LIFE WORK. U9 
 
 the request of the Association she undertook the 
 organization and conduct of a similar school in 
 Dubuque, Iowa. 
 
 To Miss Hill, Miss Mortimer again writes from -A 
 
 "Brunswick, July 28, 1852. 
 
 "... I hear from Milwaukee that the walls of the 
 new building are up and the roof on, that it 'shall be 
 done for the fall term ' (I expect, a late one), and the 
 trustees hope the teachers will hold themselves in 
 readiness to return. 
 
 ". . . The Teacher's Convention is to be in Newark, 
 N. J., during the week of the National Education Con- 
 vention, which opens in that city, Aug. 10th. Our 
 meetings will probably be Wednesday and Thursday. 
 We hope for the presence of a number of 'wise 
 women.' " 
 
 To Miss Thurston : — 
 
 "Brunswick, Me., July 19, 1852. 
 "... There is a great commotion now, in relation 
 to improvements in female education. . . . Our teach- 
 er's meeting is decided to be at Newark, N. J. This 
 decision is made mainly on account of the fact that the 
 -' American Association for the Advancement of Educa- 
 tion,' at the head of which is Bishop Potter, holds its 
 annual session at Newark, and we wish to attend, and 
 thought others would have the same desire. . . . 
 Doubtless we may be able to gather up some wisdom 
 from the gentlemen,— among the most distinguished, as 
 they are, in the country. . . . We expect to get to 
 
150 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Newark and put up at the Rev. Charles Beecher's the 
 Saturday evening before. 
 
 li I have a good many pleasant things this summer. 
 Still, I am often tired. ... I am too sensitive and in- 
 dependent, and love quiet too well, to enjoy this man- 
 ner of life, but I pray for patience to do what is my 
 duty. . . . 
 
 "I shall hope to see you in Newark. I do n't know 
 when I shall return your way. Miss Beecher seems to 
 have no idea of letting me off till the last minute." 
 
 To Miss Hill : — 
 
 "Newark, N. J., Aug. 12, 1852. 
 
 ". . . The meetings of the gentlemen have been 
 very interesting and improving, and the ladies, in a 
 very quiet way, have interested themselves. . . . 
 
 "My summer's somewhat changeable and fluctuating 
 life is nearly over. I expect to retire into obscurity in 
 a few days, and I pray that henceforth I may be so 
 happy as to be permitted to live in retirement." 
 
 Mrs. Parsons adds a note : — 
 
 " I am sorry you are not well, not able to take vigor- 
 ous hold of a great work with us again this winter. I 
 have no idea of giving up Miss Mortimer, yet I know 
 she must not be burdened with any more than her own 
 appointed duties, in order to live and last at all. She 
 must not undertake anything more than the few things 
 others cannot do. Perhaps you will be able to join us 
 at a future time, if not now, — perhaps yet take my De- 
 partment. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 151 
 
 " Our building is going up and is very fine. We an- 
 ticipate a very large school and plenty of hard work to 
 do." 
 
 i 'The Institute took possession of its incomplete 
 school building early in October, 1852. Then the 
 pupils began their labor of love in finishing. The 
 gathering twilight of those autumn days found many 
 willing fingers sewing on shades for the windows 
 and on the solitary piece of carpeting for the plat- 
 form. . . . All sorts of entertainments — ■ recep- 
 tions, tea-parties, concerts, art exhibitions, private 
 theatricals — followed one another in quick array, 
 each contributing its quota of funds. . . . The fami- 
 lies of the Trustees . . . are mentioned among 
 many others in the early days, the efforts of whose 
 members to raise money were assiduous and un- 
 tiring." * 
 
 The hope of Mrs. Parsons to " relieve Miss 
 Mortimer from all except the few things others 
 could not do " was not realized, as the following 
 letter from Miss Mortimer will show. 
 
 To Miss Hill : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Oct. 23, 1852. 
 
 [After bemoaning the absence of two of her trusted 
 associates.] 
 
 ". . . I hoped to see you on my way back, but at 
 last was so hurried that I had hardly time to take 
 breath. Mrs. P. wrote me that she was almost broken 
 
 1 Wight's " Annals of Milwaukee College." 
 
152 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 down, and Miss W. was attacked with a fever that laid 
 her helpless on her bed. Since my arrival in this city 
 two weeks ago, I have been still more hurried, for 
 very many things have needed to be done about our 
 new building, and then, the very first day of school, 
 Miss L. was taken ill, and has been unable to be in 
 school since. I am almost broken down already, but 
 hope to keep from being completely so, as prospects 
 are brightening. Miss L. expects to be in school on 
 Monday next, and we are hoping Miss W. will join us 
 in the course of a week, and with her, I am looking 
 for C. 
 
 " Our building is very beautiful and commodious. We 
 number one hundred and twenty pupils. 
 
 "Tell me how you like our course of study. . . I am 
 boarding at Judge Smith's on Spring St. Hill, and like 
 the arrangement." 
 
 The weariness and pressure of this great burden 
 of labor and care find expression in a letter to 
 Miss Thurston, dated — 
 
 " Milwaukee, Nov. 27, 1852. 
 " . . . Truly I find this is a weary world to live in. 
 I feel sometimes my trust in it, my hope, my elasticity, 
 my energy, almost gone, and I wonder, as I think of 
 those who have traveled farther in the journey, and 
 fought longer the battle, how they have borne it all. 
 You, my dear friend, have fought bravely and borne up 
 nobly in the conflict which in one way and another 
 overcomes so many. I trust no sickness or other mis- 
 fortune will come to crush you now. . . . 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 133 
 
 "I reached here safely, but to find things here in a 
 sorry condition ; the building unfurnished, and worse 
 still, unfinished, a fair under way, and terribly bad 
 weather. 
 
 " The fair was rather a failure, — the weather was so 
 bad, — only one hundred dollars being realized. We 
 stirred about and commenced school two days after the 
 time. We opened very well as to numbers, but the 
 very first day Miss L. was taken ill, and Miss W. I had 
 left at home very sick. Miss L. returned in a week and 
 a half, and no sooner was she in school again than Miss 
 F. gave out. I lived through it all, however, and at 
 last, after I was somewhat the worse for wear, all the 
 teachers took their places. 
 
 " The building is very handsome and convenient, — 
 we are still suffering for want of sufficient furniture, but 
 hope to get this deficiency made up in time. 
 
 ". . . Mr. P. is in N. Y., and reports favorably. 
 The ladies [of the Association] think the twenty thou- 
 sand dollars can be raised in New York. They have 
 voted $400 per annum to me, which I shall perhaps 
 get." 
 
 The citizens of Milwaukee had responded gener- 
 ously to the calls for money to erect the new edi- 
 fice, and the mothers and daughters, as we have 
 seen, were indefatigable and ingenious in assisting 
 to furnish the building. Miss Beecher gave a per- 
 sonal contribution at this time of $400, and there 
 were favorable reports as to the prospect of endow- 
 ment for the Normal Department from the East. 
 
154 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 And yet the strain and discomfort attendant upon 
 this year, so varied, and so full of struggle, were 
 very great. 
 
 The teachers addressed to the Trustees in the fall 
 of 1852 a letter in which they call attention to some 
 of their pressing needs : — 
 
 " Our building is very meagerly furnished. The 
 furniture dealer sends us no chairs. We have no evi- 
 dence that they are even begun. The desks are not all 
 fastened down ; the inkstands are not all inserted. We 
 have been kept in confusion the whole term by his fail- 
 ure to keep his engagements." 
 
 The Faculty add : — 
 
 " From the Ladies' Association at the East we receive 
 very flattering prospects in regard to the endowment. 
 There seems very little doubt now that the whole will 
 be speedily secured. The income from it — fourteen 
 hundred dollars — for the present year, is pledged, and 
 the principal nearly so. This of course will neither pay 
 your debt nor furnish your building, but it will secure 
 the permanence of your school, do much to elevate its 
 character and diminish its expense to you. It does 
 seem to us it would be for the pecuniary profit of the 
 school, as well as for its good name, to get a loan and 
 furnish the building [in a manner] corresponding to 
 itself and to the prospects of the school. Is it best, in 
 order to escape a debt, that we drag along in our pres- 
 ent unfurnished, uncomfortable condition ? ... In 
 conclusion, gentlemen, we crave your patience with our 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 155 
 
 reiterated plea for < more,' even after you have furnished 
 us with spacious and beautiful halls. Alas ! their very 
 beauty and spaciousness but the more impressively re- 
 mind us of their nakedness." 
 
 "The early fifties," says Mr. Wight, "were very 
 difficult times for Milwaukee. Taxes for municipal 
 improvements were heavy, much money was re- 
 quired for developing the railroad facilities of the 
 city, and a general feeling of poverty pervaded the 
 citizens. " 
 
 The change of name to "Milwaukee Female 
 College" was made by Legislature in the winter of 
 1852-3. 
 
 The plea for furniture for the new building was 
 not offered by the teachers before some, at least, 
 of their number, had made sacrifices toward the 
 same end. 
 
 One of the pupils of these days writes : — 
 
 "For salaries so small how devotedly those first 
 teachers labored ! Miss Mortimer exercised great self- 
 denial for the College, and would draw at times from 
 her own pocket to add to its furniture a curtain, a bell, 
 a table, and even a carpet." 
 
 The autumn which had seen Miss Mortimer so 
 worn down by the illness of most of the teachers 
 was followed by a winter in which her one veteran 
 associate was disabled. And yet the climate of the 
 West aided her indomitable will to assert its su- 
 
156 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 premacy most successfully, and Miss Mortimer was 
 enabled to remain at her post. 
 
 The First Annual Report of the officers and 
 pupils of the College was issued in the spring of 
 
 1853. 
 
 The Board of Instruction recognized five heads 
 of Departments, of which Miss Mortimers was 
 named Department of Superintendence of Instruc- 
 tion and Teacher of Normal School, and the names 
 of nine others who had taken part in instruction 
 during the year are given. The number of pupils 
 was one hundred and sixty-six. Two young ladies, 
 both residents of Milwaukee, were graduated this 
 year. 
 
 One of these, Mrs. Mary (Selleck) Rogers, gives 
 the following beautiful tribute to her teacher and 
 friend : — 
 
 "Joyfully would I contribute to the treasury whence 
 you are to draw ; and regret that it is only a mite in 
 comparison with the amount which I feel confident will 
 come to you from other sources. 
 
 " Miss Mortimer was for so many years, so much a 
 friend and counselor that I have thought more of her 
 as such ; still my recollections of her as a teacher are 
 vivid and can never be otherwise. 
 
 " It was in the spring of 1850 that she came to Mil- 
 waukee with Miss Newcombe (afterward her sister-in- 
 law) under the auspices of the Woman's Educational 
 Association, whose work at the West was forwarded by 
 the personal efforts of Miss Catherine Beecher. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 157 
 
 "Mrs. Parsons' school, which had for about two 
 years been in successful operation, was merged in this 
 enterprise, Mrs. P. and Miss Warner remaining as 
 teachers under the new administration. Having en- 
 tered this school during its first year, I had formed a 
 very strong admiration for, and attachment to, Mrs. P. 
 (she was also our minister's wife), and felt, as her new 
 co-adjutor entered the field, that she could not have a 
 warm place in my heart,— so opposite were they in 
 manner and method. I missed the suavity of manner, 
 the more graceful bearing, and very gentle tone of the 
 former, — but O how soon time disclosed the grandeur 
 and strength and warmth underlying the plainer and 
 less attractive exterior of the latter ! 
 
 " How pleasant were her Compositon and Literature 
 classes, with her novel ways of drawing us out and 
 forcing us to like to write, in spite of our dislike ! 
 Listening to the recitations of younger girls I could not 
 fail to appreciate her peculiar method of teaching them 
 fractions, when out of her table-drawer would come 
 oranges and apples to be divided and subdivided and 
 the divisions so thoroughly explained that the dullest 
 brain must needs comprehend. 
 
 " In Bible and Mental Philosophy classes, how often 
 would she suffer us to lose ourselves in the labyrinth of 
 metaphysics, and then carefully seek to guide our way- 
 out into the light of truth. It seemed sometimes as 
 though she sought to make us strongest doubters, that 
 we might prove more sincere believers. 
 
 " And were ever History lessons made so intensely in- 
 teresting? With what delight we listened, at the close 
 of recitation, to some selection, or to a short lecture, 
 
158 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 prepared with special reference to the lesson. Well do 
 we remember with what enthusiasm afterward we made 
 diligent search in the library for material for our ( dia- 
 logues/ or to find hints for costumes and all the acces- 
 sories to successfully arrange our historical tableaux, — 
 and the greatest pleasure of all was it to know that 
 these very things were the fruit of our own suggestion. 
 
 " A search for specimens for the Botany class would 
 take us to the bank of the river, where, after a joyous 
 ramble, we once seated ourselves in Jthe glowing sunset 
 and gaily chatted over our lunch-baskets. Suddenly 
 our ears caught the sound of distant singing, and soon, 
 from the foliage emerged two little fairies, bearing be- 
 tween them a tiny basket containing a bouquet and a 
 note for each, — ' To the gentlest ; ' 'To the most studi- 
 ous/ etc., which were read aloud and awarded by a 
 vote of acclamation. We needed not a glance at the 
 handwriting to assure us that all the pleasure of the 
 hour was the outcome of the kind thought of our dear 
 Miss Mortimer. 
 
 " Thus delightful little surprises were always await- 
 ing us. She never forgot that we were young and buoy- 
 ant, and so was not content with simply filling out the 
 school hours with their own measure, but sought in 
 all happy, simple, and wholesome ways to make us 
 feel that we had her heartiest sympathy, — that our 
 school days should remain a beautiful memory, and the 
 love of inquiry and study an ever-abiding delight. 
 
 "Was it not this oneness with her pupils, this idealiz- 
 ing as she taught, and her intense earnestness, that so 
 drew us to her as a teacher? — this same sympathy, and 
 entire truthfulness which bound her to us as an un- 
 changing friend ? 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 159 
 
 " Of this last trait, she has made the deepest impres- 
 sion. I think none of her pupils, as they recall her 
 words, given to develop a spiritual rather than a mental 
 activity, can remember any cant phrases, or even ex- 
 pressions peculiarly her own, — yet the words chosen 
 were best fitted to time and place, — few, pointed, ear- 
 nest. We do recollect her once saying that were she to 
 sum up all virtues in one word, it should be ' truth.' 
 
 " What power there often was in her simply reading 
 a passage of Scripture in the devotional exercises of the 
 morning; when, perhaps without any comment, she 
 knelt down, and with voice trembling in its earnestness, 
 she pleaded for us. We learned then something of 
 those words, < With groanings that cannot be uttered.' 
 
 " Her getting at the heart of a pupil was in the most 
 quiet, unobtrusive manner. A few lines of counsel writ- 
 ten in the little daily 'journal' or ' report-book ' which 
 we kept for her eye alone, or of approval at the end 
 of a composition, would reveal a heart alive to our 
 best interest, and kindly appreciation of our feeble 
 endeavors. 
 
 " Dear friend ! as I write I" feel how poor and un- 
 worthy is my attempt to portray the beauty and nobility 
 of such a character. More and more as the days go 
 on, and I miss her warm greeting and wise counsel, do 
 I feel the power of the Psalmist's words : 'The memory 
 of the just is blessed.' " 
 
 The other member of the class of 1853 was Miss 
 Mary Frances Smith, a daughter of Judge Smith of 
 Milwaukee, with whose family Miss Mortimer found 
 a delightful home during this school year, and often 
 in later years. 
 
160 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 We have seen how heavy were the burdens un- 
 der which Miss Mortimer was holding on her way ; 
 — the feeling that Miss Beecher's principles were 
 true and her plans desirable, yet that the whole 
 movement was in its incipiency and that the 
 obstacles to its progress were almost mountain- 
 high ; the financial embarrassments of the enter- 
 prise ; the failure to secure the return of two of the 
 teachers on whom she had leaned the previous 
 year, and the confusion introduced at the very 
 outset of the school year by the severe illness 
 of several of the teachers ; the newness of the 
 building and its unfurnished state, and the neces- 
 sary absence, for much of the winter, of Mrs. Par- 
 sons, the one associate who had been conversant 
 from the beginning with the history, plans, and 
 prospects of the school. 
 
 We have seen in Mrs. Selleck-Rogers ' tribute to 
 Miss Mortimer what she was as a teacher. What 
 she was as a friend and a member of the household 
 where she abode during this troublous time, we may 
 learn from a paragraph in the oft-quoted ' ' Annals of 
 Milwaukee College." 
 
 "A picture of Miss Mortimer, in her home life with 
 Judge Smith's family has been vividly preserved in the 
 memory of those who were brought in contact with her 
 cheerful domestic disposition. She was a great part 
 of any household in which she abode, and upon her re- 
 turn from harassing duties at school, was ever eager for 
 the relaxation that brought rest. If the children were 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 1G1 
 
 pre-occupied with their lessons, if Judge Smith was not 
 at hand for the evening backgammon, then, in her 
 quiet nook, . . . she chatted with those who were at 
 leisure, or beguiled the time with her favorite peg-soli- 
 taire. She was ready in its season for any romp or 
 sport, especially if instruction were interwoven with the 
 amusement. But she was also ready, when routine hour 
 arrived, for the morning ride or trudge to school, and 
 for the rigid discipline of the recurring day." 
 
 The ideal home was to Miss Mortimer "all of 
 Paradise that has survived the Fall." She had no 
 expectation of reaching this ideal for herself, but 
 she never failed to impress on her pupils that 
 home-making was the highest achievement possible 
 to women. This womanly ideal was the counter- 
 part of her great-hearted, motherly nature, and the 
 crown of all her teaching. 
 
 The summer vacation of 1853 found Miss Morti- 
 mer in Milwaukee, preparing to enter upon house- 
 keeping for herself, one block from the College 
 building. But the strain of the year previous was 
 now making itself felt, mentally, spiritually, phys- 
 ically. 
 
 To Miss Thurston she writes : — 
 
 " Milwaukee, June 19-July 6, 1853. 
 " . . . The winter has passed away, and the summer, 
 warm and oppressive, has come upon us. I have often 
 felt myself full of cares and trials, and wished myself 
 far away in some quiet nook where I might forget a 
 world which I fear I love too little, but I am still strug- 
 12 
 
162 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 gling on. ... I would rather stand on my own feet, 
 and rely, under God, on myself, but Providence seems 
 to have led me here, and Providence has not yet, I be- 
 lieve, released me, so I must struggle on. . . . 
 
 "I think our school will increase next term. I am 
 thinking again quite strongly of taking a house — must 
 decide soon. . . . Will you not come and see me set 
 up as head of a family ? I have sundry misgivings in 
 view of taking so high a position." 
 
 To Miss Hill : — 
 
 " Milwaukee, Oct. 23, 1853. 
 
 ". . . I was so worn out with being unsettled, that 
 I determined if I must stay, that it should be a long 
 stay. So here I am, settled in 'my family,' determined 
 to fight and conquer. 
 
 "I wish you were here. . . . Mrs. P. has returned in 
 great strength and energy, and Mrs. W. is with us ; and 
 Sister J. ; and Miss Mann, a niece of Horace Mann ; 
 and Miss M. ; our school numbers over a hundred. 
 Mr. P. writes encouragingly of the prospect in New 
 York. Mrs. P. talks of going to Dubuque in the spring. 
 
 I have one teacher and five pupils with me [in my 
 home]. Housekeeping goes along pretty well." 
 
 To Miss Thurston : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, April 14, 1854. 
 " . . . It seems to me sometimes of late that I have 
 involved myself too much in what is distasteful to me ; 
 but there is strength enough above, if we only lean upon 
 it. . . . Mrs. P. is off to Dubuque next week. I be- 
 lieve she is hoping much. The prospect looks fair. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 163 
 
 . . . We are just through our examination which passed 
 off very well. We have dismissed three graduates. 
 Next year we are likely to have a larger class. . . . 
 
 "Our troubles are by no means over, yet I hope we 
 shall go on with fewer trials after this." 
 
 The ' * trials " referred to were doubtless chiefly 
 financial, and in character such as beset most 
 young educational enterprises. The loan on the 
 College property, made in response to the plea of 
 the teachers for furniture two or three years before, 
 had accumulated interest, and there was no money 
 with which to discharge the debt. This default in 
 interest-payments matured the mortgage before the 
 principal was due. 
 
 The Association at the East had lost the endow- 
 ment of $20,000 promised to the College, through 
 the business failure of the gentleman who had sub- 
 scribed it and paid the interest thereon for two 
 years. This failure the Association found it difficult 
 to make good, indeed only partially succeeded in 
 doing so, and that after years of effort. As a con- 
 sequence, the professional school (the Normal De- 
 partment only having as yet a name) was kept in 
 the background for lack of endowment. 
 
 Mrs. Parsons, actively connected with the school 
 from the beginning, had now taken her long antici- 
 pated departure to inaugurate the second school on 
 Miss Beecher's plan, at Dubuque, Iowa, and Miss 
 Bradley, whose return to one of the departments 
 had been confidently hoped for at Milwaukee, went 
 
1G4 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 instead to the aid of the new Iowa enterprise. Miss 
 Mortimer trustfully turned in this emergency to 
 Miss Hill, who, with health improved, gladly pre- 
 pared to go to the assistance of her friend and of 
 the school in whose prosperity she had become 
 much interested through her connection with it in 
 185 1-2. On the eve of setting out, sudden be- 
 reavement in her family circle kept Miss Hill from 
 Milwaukee, and Miss Mortimer " struggled on" as 
 she had done in troublous times before, bearing 
 heavy burdens, without the assistance she had ex- 
 pected. 
 
 To Miss Hill : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, June 28, 1854. 
 
 "I was made very happy on the reception of your 
 letter with the assurance it gave me that you would re- 
 turn to us at the beginning of next term. I have very 
 little time to write, but must tell you I am looking for- 
 ward with great hope and satisfaction to your coming. 
 . . . Our next term commences about the middle of 
 September. . . . 
 
 "We use Smyth's Algebra and Trigonometry, — Bow- 
 doin College books. . . . 
 
 "Let me know if you wish to domicile with me. I 
 believe that you told me you did." 
 
 With an almost entire change of instructors ex- 
 cept Miss Mortimer, Milwaukee College opened its 
 fourth year on Sept. 20, 1854. 
 
 Miss Mortimer was practically its chief executive, 
 although she ever shrank from acknowledging the 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 1G5 
 
 superiority of her position to that of her associates 
 whom she desired in the full sense of the word to 
 form with herself a "band of co-equal teachers." 
 She was made glad by the return of Miss M. E. 
 Hill, a tried friend and an accomplished teacher, 
 and by the accession to the school of Miss S. E. 
 Huntington, formerly of Canandaigua, N. Y. , who 
 quickly became, and remained to the close of Miss 
 Mortimer's life, her most intimate friend. 
 
 In company with another friend, Miss Mortimer 
 had previously purchased the modest house on the 
 corner of Milwaukee and Knapp streets which had 
 been her home since the summer of 1853. House- 
 keeping brought its too heavy cares, in addition to 
 the overwhelming burdens of the school, but it was 
 "homelike," and this was a luxury for which Miss 
 Mortimer's motherly heart was willing to pay dear. 
 
 It was a pleasant home, and the family circle was 
 just large enough and varied enough to be com- 
 panionable and, to the extent of desirability, free 
 and informal. The parlor opened to the right of 
 the entrance hall, its piano, its books and pictures, 
 its easy chairs inviting the presence of any member 
 of the family when school duties gave leisure. On 
 Saturday holidays and Sabbath holy days, on quiet 
 afternoons and at the evening twilights, there was 
 stirring discussion of the times, of the great names 
 in the literary world, past and present, or low and 
 quiet communings on the highest themes. Every 
 evening at nine o'clock the family assembled for 
 
166 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 prayers, in which we were usually led by Miss 
 Mortimer's earnest voice and where it often seemed 
 that we could feel her very heart-throbs. 
 
 Her own room, after a little shared by Miss 
 Huntington, was on the opposite side of the hall, 
 and back of both, the dining room where, usually 
 to the number of six or eight, we gathered about 
 the generous and home-like table, and the most 
 stimulating and diverting talk, with many a witty 
 sally and cheerful laugh, added piquancy to the 
 viands. 
 
 It was the earliest experience of the writer of 
 these pages away from her father's roof, when she 
 arrived at this home on the evening before the Col- 
 lege year was to open. The journey had been a 
 weary one and not without its mishaps, but at nine 
 o'clock in the evening Miss Mortimer led the 
 stranger to the cosy tea-table spread with whole- 
 some and tempting food, and, apparently as free 
 from care as a happy child, charmed away the 
 strangeness and the incipient homesickness by her 
 cheerful chat and homey ways. But it was easy 
 to see that the absorbing object of Miss Mortimer's 
 life was school, and only school. 
 
 Just previous to the opening of the College year, 
 proceedings to foreclose the mortgage on the edifice 
 had been begun, and the College property was 
 advertised for sale. 1 "This critical condition 
 aroused citizens and Trustees to action. A public 
 
 1 " Annals of Milwaukee College." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 167 
 
 meeting was called, eloquent speakers pictured the 
 situation in graphic terms, and a subscription paper 
 began its rounds and did not stop until more than 
 eleven thousand dollars was subscribed. The mort- 
 gage was paid in full, with a balance remaining in 
 the treasury. 
 
 Additional legislation during the winter of 1854-5 
 enabled the Board of Trustees to issue stock, in 
 shares of $25, each share entitling its possessor to 
 one vote in the election of trustees, and the num- 
 ber of the latter was increased to fifteen. 
 
 In the spring Miss Mortimer writes that she finds 
 herself "bereft of much of her early enthusiasm," 
 but otherwise gives an excellent account. 
 
 To Miss. T., under date of March 18, 1855 : — 
 
 " Our matters here have come to a promising point, 
 at last, still I cannot say that I feel much elated. Our 
 school is confessedly the school of the city, with no op- 
 position and no rivalry. , The sum of ten thousand 
 dollars proposed to the citizens to be raised has been 
 exceeded by the subscriptions. Our debts are paid, 
 and I believe more than three thousand dollars are left 
 in the treasury. This sum will, I suppose, be expended 
 mainly in furnishing and improving the school prem- 
 ises, and in increasing the library and apparatus. Miss 
 Beecher made us a long visit in December and brought 
 the matter to a crisis. We have a new Board of Trustees. 
 . . . Our city is thriving for good, I trust, as well as 
 getting more wealth and power. . . . Our school num- 
 bers one hundred and fifty. You have heard that Miss 
 
168 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Hill is with us, I presume. I have had a pleasant 
 family, but since C. left me, I have concluded my cares 
 are too many, and I am going to resign housekeeping 
 at the close of the present term. . . . My health has 
 been decidedly better than it used to be, but I feel 
 worn, and am longing for rest." 
 
 Miss Mortimer's needed rest she found in a meas- 
 ure in her contemplated trip to the East in the 
 summer and autumn of 1855. 
 
 The late autumn finds Miss Mortimer visiting 
 friends, at Lima, N. Y., whence she writes Mrs. 
 John Mortimer : — 
 
 "It is a beautiful Sabbath morning in that most 
 beautiful of summers, — the Indian Summer. I am in a 
 charming place to which I have taken quite a liking, 
 and feel that I should be very grateful for so much 
 beauty, — so much to lead me above the trials of our 
 common life. Gentle, calm, enlightening, loving, like 
 the words of Jesus, does this sunlight fall over the land- 
 scape, over the fading foliage, more gorgeous in its de- 
 cay than in its noontide glory. Among many lessons 
 does it not whisper to us this, that we, too, should in- 
 crease in glory and excellence as life wanes ? Are not 
 the glories which are to be revealed growing nearer? 
 And this light, — O ! what unutterable things it says of 
 Him who is its Source. Why is it that we do not love 
 Him more, and lose all anxiety, all desire for aught 
 else, in this blessed conviction — 'I am His; He is 
 mine ; and in Him I have all things ' ? 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 1G() 
 
 "What matters it where He leads me, of what I am 
 deprived? 'He doeth all things well/ and if His arm is 
 about me, it is all-sufficient." 
 
 The school went on prosperously, even in Miss 
 Mortimer's temporary absence, so thoroughly was it 
 organized and so capable and efficient were the 
 teachers in charge of the different departments. 
 For several years at this period, it numbered over two 
 hundred and fifty, much the larger part of the pu- 
 pils, however, belonging to the preparatory depart- 
 ments. The number in the college classes was 
 now about fifty. 
 
 To Miss T. Miss Mortimer writes from — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Jan. 13, 1856. 
 "Miss Beecher has been here again, to make arrange- 
 ments for building one of those famous cottages. She 
 has the money for the building, but wants the people 
 here to buy the land. They talk of doing so. Miss 
 Beecher's system of exercise we have introduced into 
 our school and feel quite interested in it and so do the 
 pupils. I think it will be useful and hope as soon as the 
 book, ' Physiology and Calisthenics ' is out, you will 
 see it." 
 
 The teachers addressed to the Trustees, in Feb- 
 ruary 1856, a paper in which they refer to the con- 
 dition and prospects of the school, and state that 
 for the first time since its organization it can be 
 reported that ' ' as regards the building and furni- 
 
170 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ture the school is in comfortable and respectable 
 circumstances," and that it "is believed to be in a 
 more complete state of organization and subor- 
 dination than are most female schools, even of the 
 higher grade." 
 
 With the prosperity of the school seemingly on a 
 sure basis, and a considerable balance in the treas- 
 ury, the Trustees and Miss Beecher conferred as to 
 the best means of providing the home so much 
 needed for teachers and pupils from a distance, and 
 of developing at the same time, features of Miss 
 Beecher's original plan for the Institution which 
 financial stress had hitherto kept in the back- 
 ground. Buildings for the health and domestic 
 departments Miss Beecher felt were imperatively 
 needed, and, with the department for the training 
 of the mind already so well established, would fully 
 complete her plan. 
 
 Her intention was first, and immediately, to 
 erect a cottage for the domestic department. ' ' It 
 was to be a model of good taste in architectural 
 proportion and finish, and yet be very economical. 
 It was to be so arranged that the teachers should 
 have the quiet and comfort of an independent 
 home, should not be forced to have a room-mate 
 unless congenial, and should not be crowded into a 
 great family of boarding scholars. This cottage 
 was to be connected with the school by a building 
 for the health department " containing a hall for 
 gymnastic exercises. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 REST AND CHANGE. 
 
 This is not the place for a discussion of the 
 merits of the controversy which arose about this 
 time between the Educational Association as repre- 
 sented by Miss Beecher, and the Trustees of the 
 College. 
 
 The difficulties of the enterprise during the earlier 
 years were, naturally, mainly of a financial charac- 
 ter. After this, they were chiefly differences be- 
 tween the Trustees and the Association as regarded 
 the carrying out of the original plan of the institu- 
 tion ; and these differences, to Miss Mortimer, who 
 from her position, stood between the two, were far 
 more trying than the poverty and overwhelming 
 labors of the earlier years. 
 
 The success which the school had achieved, the 
 high rank in instruction, scholarship and organiza- 
 tion it had attained and maintained, the property 
 of thirty thousand dollars it had accumulated within 
 six years, amid all the stress and strain of society 
 in a young city struggling for existence, its present 
 income of more than four thousand dollars, over 
 three fourths of which was from tuition, all at- 
 
172 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 tested alike the generosity of its friends and the 
 severe and self-denying toil of its teachers. 
 
 Miss Mortimer had never sought a part in this 
 arduous undertaking, but had relinquished plans 
 that were dear to her, because she believed that 
 Providence pointed out a work for her here. Life 
 in a city was not her ideal — her whole soul longed 
 for the simpler, more unworldly life of the country. 
 She believed that she might now safely leave the 
 work here to other hands, and seek to carry out her 
 ideals in other and more congenial surroundings. 
 This thought, now that she had reached the point 
 of middle life, mingled with her desire for a home 
 which she felt she ought to be making for herself 
 while strength remained to her, runs through her 
 private correspondence in these years. 
 
 The differences referred to were a sore trial to 
 her and she sought withdrawal the more earnestly 
 and thoughtfully on this account. 
 
 To a pupil (S. M. B.) who had been withdrawn 
 from school on account of bereavement and conse- 
 quent family cares, Miss Mortimer wrote from — 
 
 " Milwaukee, April, 22, 1856. 
 ". . . We should have been very glad to have held 
 you here, but a wise Providence seemed to order it 
 otherwise. I trust the school in which you have been 
 placed since you were here has done as much to de- 
 velop and form your character (which should be the 
 aim of all education) as anything we could have done 
 for you. ... 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 173 
 
 "I have never intended to settle in Milwaukee, and 
 hope to arrange something else before very long. Last 
 week I went out of your city toward the west, and was 
 more pleased with the place than I have ever been be- 
 fore. If through your father or other friends you 
 could give me any information in relation to land along 
 the west bank of the river I should be glad." 
 
 To Miss Hill, in the summer of 1856, on present- 
 ing the "Life of Sterling : " — 
 
 "Few things are so soul-cheering in the weary pil- 
 grimage of life as the knowledge, brought home to one's 
 heart, of the life and triumphs of genius and goodness. 
 If the "Life of Sterling" shall do this for you, I shall 
 have gained my point, which was to afford you a joy- 
 ful association with your absent friend, and to tell you 
 something of what you have been to her. 
 
 "That the best blessings may go with you wherever 
 you go, is the prayer of 
 
 "Yours in the truest attention and confidence, 
 
 " M. Mortimer." 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Sept. 7, 1856. 
 "... Every day's reflection deepens my conviction 
 that we should labor in some capacity to the extent of 
 our ability, because thus alone can we develop our- 
 selves and bless the world, but, as we injure our own 
 development and unfit ourselves to bless others by over- 
 work, it is equally our duty not to overwork. Whatever 
 might have been your duty in regard to the term open- 
 ing before you when you wrote, there can be no doubt, 
 it seems to me, that you should be arranging your af- 
 
174 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 fairs as speedily as possible, to relieve yourself from so 
 much care and labor as you must have while in charge 
 of such a school as yours. 
 
 " I find my loss of freshness, of vigor and enthusiasm 
 in the daily routine of teaching, a reason for changing 
 my manner of life, for I cannot bear to bring less than 
 these to my noble work, than in my earlier life. Yet my 
 health is much better than when I taught with you. 
 
 "I should think you would experience the same 
 [weariness] but I do not know that you do. At all 
 events I wish that in your present condition your nerves 
 could rest, but I can do nothing in the matter that I 
 see. I. wish I could. My grateful desire to make 
 some return to your declining years for the good you 
 have done me, has never abated. 
 
 "God grant I may yet be able to prove my grati- 
 tude to you, my oldest and best friend. 
 
 ". . . May I urge you, for the winter before you, if 
 still you go on as you have done, to begin your term by 
 a fair and wise division of responsibility as well as of 
 labor, — such a division as will relieve you, except from 
 a general and not laborious oversight. We do it here. 
 Each teacher considers herself responsible for her de- 
 partment ; but it had to be put upon them at first. 
 
 " I am hoping to withdraw myself, perhaps by de- 
 grees, from school, during the next six months or year. 
 Several teachers we have lost, among them, Miss Hill, 
 but her aunt takes her place, and other teachers of 
 character and experience are engaged, and enough so 
 that I think there will not be much need of me. I am 
 hoping to do some studying this winter." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 175 
 
 To Miss M. E. Hill : — 
 
 "Phelps, N. Y., Feb. 17, 1857. 
 
 "I have actually left Milwaukee. . . . All things 
 were going on prosperously in school. There has been 
 much religious interest of late in the school, and in sev- 
 eral of the churches. I trust it is deep and true. Your 
 aunt [Miss Sarah B. Hill] proves herself a most efficient 
 and valuable teacher, but I fear she has found her situa- 
 tion quite uncomfortable. She has suffered, as we all 
 have, on account of the difficulty of getting board, and 
 I suspect it is a little harder for her to bear. I hope 
 things in this direction will improve, but you know I 
 have hoped long. Miss H. and myself have been very 
 pleasantly situated at Mrs. M.'s. I have rather run 
 away, — I could not seem to get away otherwise. I am 
 away "on trial," hoping to get released, but not 
 knowing. 
 
 "To you and to Miss B., I wrote from a full heart, 
 but not a word of reply have I received. Nevertheless, 
 you have both been to me faithful and true helpers and 
 friends, and my heart will always throb with affection 
 and gratitude as I think of you. I have, too, to thank 
 you for a shining 'jet' incased in gold, for which, Miss 
 H. told me, I am chiefly indebted to you. It is beau- 
 tiful in itself, and still more so to me, as your and her 
 gift. Pearls and gold I have not been given very much 
 to prizing, but One infinitely wiser than I has used 
 them as emblematical of the highest beauty and joy, 
 and I trust I have the power so to regard them. 
 
 "Believe me, my once dear pupil, my still very dear 
 friend, anything from you will be emblematical of love 
 and truth. ..." 
 
17G MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 To the same : — 
 
 "Auburn, March 7, 1857. 
 
 "I think now, if I stay so long, I should like to go 
 to Lima to the Commencement, which occurs June 25, 
 and I have engaged a room for us at that time. . . . 
 The news from Milwaukee is good. I met Mr. and 
 Mrs. P. on the train, on the way to Lima, and went on 
 to Le Roy with them. They have about seven thou- 
 sand dollars engaged [on the endowment of the 
 College]." 
 
 To the same : — 
 
 "Phelps, April 12, 1857. 
 
 ' ' I am trying to keep cheerful, as one of the virtues 
 I need especially to exercise, but the longing to think, 
 to work out thought, to learn the thoughts of the wise, 
 to be getting that long-wished-forhome, will rise in my 
 heart. And yet, what matters it? Our Father, when 
 it pleases Him, can give us more wisdom than the 
 wisest have, — and with all our efforts we can get only 
 the shadow of a home, — the real one being above. My 
 future lies all uncertain before me. I have settled 
 nothing, can settle nothing yet, as I see." 
 
 To Miss S. B. Hill : — 
 
 "Phelps, April 14, 1857. 
 "Your letter of March 17 reached me in due time, 
 informing me of your departure from Milwaukee and 
 the sad reason. Many lamentations on account of your 
 departure have reached me, still I think it was quite 
 right that you should go, and I hope your visit, what- 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 177 
 
 ever may be its termination, will afford you some satis- 
 faction. I scarcely know how to write this morning, 
 for I have not a glimmer of intelligence as to how you 
 found your sister. It seems not likely that she can be 
 alive. Whatever may be your circumstances, however, 
 you know where to look for comfort and guidance, and 
 I gratefully leave you and yours in His hands 'who 
 doeth all things well,' and maketh ' all things work for 
 good to them who love him.' 
 
 " My head continues to trouble me quite seriously. I 
 do not know what to do with it, — believe there is noth- 
 ing but to stop thinking and feeling. 
 
 " I shall never lose my interest in Milwaukee College, 
 and, still less, in female education, to which I long ago 
 desired to dedicate my life. I have no wish or thought 
 of changing that dedication. The only question is how 
 I can best effect it. I hope I shall be able to decide 
 upon my future course before long. 
 
 "Miss M. E. Hill will be gladly accepted as your 
 substitute if one must be had, for it is seldom we can 
 find so desirable a teacher as she. However, you will 
 of course arrange this with the teachers on the ground. 
 They were getting very anxious, I thought, last week, 
 when I learned that they had not yet heard from you. 
 The examination had commenced well, and all things 
 were getting on very well, I gather from Miss H.'s let- 
 ters, and from those of several young ladies who have 
 written me." 
 
 To Miss Thurston : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Aug. 4, 1857. 
 "I reached here in safety, found Miss H. better, and 
 things quite in shape for me to leave, as I have so 
 13 
 
1 78 MAR Y A/OR TIMER. 
 
 long desired. We expect to set out for the East to- 
 morrow. . . . Sometime next month I think we shall 
 both make you a visit, and perhaps I will stay with you 
 right along then. 
 
 I will take your school on the terms we talked over. 
 . . . Tell me, if any of the teachers wish to leave ; if 
 anything has occurred, or is likely to occur, to change 
 your plans." 
 
 To S. M. B.: — 
 
 "Lima, N. Y., Aug. 10, 1857. 
 
 "Since your letter was written, I have been to Milwau- 
 kee and returned to this place, therefore did not receive 
 yours till two or three days since, when I was tired, 
 travel-stained, and absorbed with seeing friends. I em- 
 brace the opportunity to thank you, and to answer 
 your questions. 
 
 " I have bidden adieu to Milwaukee, and, for the next 
 year, at least, expect to be at Elmira in this State, in 
 charge of the Female Seminary there. This is a tem- 
 porary engagement, for the sake of obliging my friend, 
 Miss Thurston, who owns this Seminary, and to occupy 
 myself till I can settle more definitely than my circum- 
 stances at present will allow." 
 
 Somewhat more than a year was passed by Miss 
 Mortimer in charge of the school of her friend in 
 Elmira, during which she had the satisfaction of 
 affording Miss Thurston opportunity for complete 
 and much-needed rest, and of discharging in part, 
 the debt of gratitude she felt to the always loved 
 and revered teacher of her girlhood days of doubt 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 179 
 
 and weakness. This period in Elmira, though not 
 a settled one, was one of comparative freedom from 
 obligations to a wide public, east and west, under 
 which Miss Mortimer had labored at Milwaukee, 
 and she much enjoyed, in many respects, the rela- 
 tion which she sustained to her Elmira pupils. 
 Over and above the rest and pleasure brought to 
 her by this change, was the friendship she there 
 formed with the Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, pastor 
 of the Congregational Church. Thenceforth to 
 the end of Miss Mortimer's life, she much prized 
 the public utterances and the private friendship of 
 Mr. Beecher, and none who heard her quotations 
 from his sermons, his conversation and his letters, 
 could doubt the inspiration they brought her. 
 
 Many requests for her services in educational 
 work came to Miss Mortimer during these months, 
 for she had become widely known. From the 
 East, from the South, from the West came invita- 
 tions, but, although comparatively refreshed by her 
 year's change of scene and environment, and under 
 heavy pecuniary obligations which she had most 
 generously and unselfishly assumed for the good of 
 others, and which made her feel that she ought to 
 lose no time in settling again to her chosen work, 
 experience had rendered her cautious, and it was 
 not until some months later that she at last, after 
 much prayer and deliberation, decided upon a 
 location. 
 
180 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 In the autumn of 1858, Miss Mortimer wrote : — 
 
 "A number of situations have offered, but like all 
 things in this world, to each of them there has been an 
 objection. To Milwaukee, from which came an appli- 
 cation [to return] the old objections existed. 
 
 " I have had a long letter from 'the Executive Com- 
 mittee of Baraboo Seminary/ notifying me of my 
 appointment to the Principalship of the same, and con- 
 taining a sheet full of argument, under five heads, why 
 this is a desirable post , but alas ! I dread publicity, 
 and corporations." 
 
 "Boston, Nov., 1858. 
 
 " I am unsettled, and wish this winter to decide 
 upon something if possible. ... I have a pressing 
 application from Wisconsin, which must be an- 
 swered soon. Miss Thurston also wishes me to take 
 her school. . . . 
 
 "I am spending some weeks with Miss H. in this 
 city." 
 
 To the Elmira School : — 
 
 "Boston, Nov. 15, 1858. 
 
 [After describing her journey by way of New York, 
 Long Island Sound, and Fall River to Boston.] 
 
 " The hubbub and noise and struggle of New York 
 are so disagreeable to me that I always feel a groan 
 of distress rising within me whenever I come in 
 sight of this great city, and yet, there are great things 
 and good all the time rising up out of the din and 
 bustle. . . . 
 
 " I have sat down and felt at rest, of which some of 
 
THE LIFE WORK 181 
 
 you, I am sure, will be glad, for life is a troubled scene, 
 a time of labor and care, and an interlude of rest is 
 good. Of course I have not seen much yet. We went 
 to the Public Library on Saturday, and I was delighted 
 to find a large, beautiful building, fitted up with all 
 sorts of conveniences for reading and writing. One 
 elegant room furnished with arm chairs and round 
 tables is assigned to ladies, and I was already dreaming 
 about spending pleasant hours there, looking at books 
 I cannot get in the country, when I was informed that 
 the library had but lately removed into this, its future 
 pleasant and elegant home, and was not yet properly 
 arranged, and books could not be drawn for a month 
 yet. So disappointments come, — but the delightful 
 fact remains that this valuable library in its spacious 
 and beautiful halls is to be thrown open, free of charge, 
 to all well-behaved citizens of Boston, and here all who 
 can get the time may come and make acquaintance with 
 the wisest and best of many nations and ages. I could 
 but think what a blessing to you and your town would 
 be such a fountain of wisdom among you ; and even 
 there, standing as I was in such a hall, massive and 
 splendid in architecture, I believed what I have told 
 some of you, that you might make for yourselves a 
 small fountain, which gradually drawing to itself many 
 little streams, would by and by grow to be large, and 
 a blessing to thousands. 
 
 " I went twice to church yesterday, and heard two 
 Boston celebrities, but hardly felt the privilege greater 
 than I enjoy in your town, — still they were fine ser- 
 mons." 
 
 To Elmira pupils : — 
 
182 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Boston, Nov. 27, 1858. 
 
 [After a humorous address to the younger girls]. 
 
 " I have spent some time since I have been here 
 in looking at pictures and statuary, and wish I could 
 tell you about them as I cannot. As I looked, and 
 the spirit of beauty seemed to peep out upon me, I 
 thought of you and others, and longed that to you that 
 spirit might come in full measure, inspiring you with 
 beautiful thoughts, affections, and impulses. Let me 
 urge you, dear children, to look at something beautiful 
 every day, — so look that you shall drink in something 
 of its beauty. You can always do this, for all that God 
 has made is beautiful, the sky above you, the earth be- 
 neath, the hills around, with their ever-changing hues 
 and shadows. 
 
 "On Saturday we went to see the Bunyan Tableaux. 
 Probably you have seen or will see them, and I will not 
 stop to describe them, — but only tell you to go and see 
 them if you have an opportunity. 
 
 "Finally, dear children, you know those wishes and 
 charges which parents and teachers give you so often 
 that you weary of them. I shall not need to repeat 
 them, but do not forget, you need to think of them 
 every hour." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 "Boston, Nov. 27, 1858. 
 
 "I have just heard a very fine sermon. . . . 
 
 " Slavery on the one hand, freedom on the other, 
 were beautifully set forth. More and more, I believe 
 as we progress in our Christian life, shall we rise into 
 freedom, the freedom of love, so that the time shall 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 183 
 
 come when we shall no longer refrain from evil through 
 fear and obey God from a sense of duty ; but we shall 
 rise above fear, and still more, above duty, above law, 
 — love shall be all and in all, and then life, even here, 
 shall be blessed, clouds shall be light to us, . . . pain 
 shall become pleasure, for it shall be borne for Him. 
 . . . How strange and inconsistent it is of us that we 
 do not trust and be at rest always. It is one of the 
 heaviest things, I believe, that will rise against us in the 
 great day of accounts, that in the face of all that has been 
 done for us, in the face of our knowledge and profes- 
 sion, we yet go on our way doubting, fearing, anxious, 
 cast down. How, in view of all, ought we to rejoice, to 
 overflow with peace and gratitude. It seems to me I 
 will arise and put on the garments of praise, and mourn 
 no more. . . . 
 
 " The letter which you forwarded . . . was full of 
 arguments and entreaties that I should go to B. An- 
 other letter from my Milwaukee pastor has come, too, 
 with the ' volume of arguments,' and offering himself to 
 look over the ground with me, — and lastly, they have 
 all decided it is my solemn duty to go, etc." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 "Boston, Dec. i, 1858. 
 
 "... I feel encouraged by the offer at Baraboo, and 
 
 by S. C.'s advocacy of it, so that I am more willing to 
 
 try it than when I left you. Still I am not decided. 
 
 ... I think I shall have to say \ yea ' or « nay ' in the 
 
 course of two weeks. I shall probably agree to go there 
 
 about the first of February, if at all. ... I feel that I 
 
 must decide soon and act vigorously on my future 
 
 course." 
 
184 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Other projects were open to Miss Mortimer, her 
 family friends were east of the Great Lakes, and 
 worn with the toil of the Milwaukee enterprise, it is 
 not strange that she hesitated before undertaking 
 another new and unendowed school. 
 
 She wrote from — 
 
 "Boston, Dec. 10, 1858. 
 "I shrink, for more than my own sake, from taking 
 that irrevocable step of writing, I zvill go to Baraboo. . . . 
 As another urgent letter came, I have answered, saying 
 I would decide in a week or ten days. ... I can hesi- 
 tate no longer. I am very desirous to so settle this 
 matter with you and some others that we shall not re- 
 gret the step I take. The Baraboo enterprise looks 
 hopeful to me and interesting, — even Miss H. is im- 
 pressed that I would better go, — still I have a shrink- 
 ing sometimes. We are weak creatures are we not? 
 May God give us the simple trust in Him that shall be 
 better than all earthly wisdom. . . I have had a whole 
 package of letters from the Milwaukee girls this week." 
 
 " Boston, Dec. 18. 
 
 "... I write to-day that, on conditions which I 
 presume will be accepted, I will go to Baraboo, subject 
 to this proviso, that if things do not look promising 
 when I get there, I may retreat if I choose. I do not 
 dread the labor very much — I must work and it is 
 best. I am anxious about you, and wish I could help 
 you . . . but see not what to do. As you say, it is 
 brighter beyond. God bless you, my dear friend, and 
 guide you. . . . 
 
 "I shall not go West before February." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 185 
 
 To the Elmira School : — 
 
 " Last week was Thanksgiving, and I heard a beauti- 
 ful sermon which thrilled me with hope and gladness. 
 < Our Father,' the preacher said, Ms too great to need 
 to look at us in masses. He knows us each one ; 
 treasures each tear from each eye, knows each smile of 
 each child ; long ages ago planned each little flower to 
 grow that it might bless you and me,' and he urged us, 
 at the close, to single out some one blessing and look 
 back and see through what a process of preparation it 
 had come to us, and be thankful for it. Immediately 
 my heart said, 'I will be thankful for this sermon."' 
 
 To the Young Ladies at Elmira : — 
 
 " Boston, Dec. 18, 1858. 
 ". . . Since I wrote last I have been through the 
 Custom House, — a fine fire-proof building which cost 
 more than a million dollars. We went, also, over the 
 State House, which, in some parts, is quite quaint and 
 curious, and from the top we 'viewed the landscape 
 o'er.' It was a fine view of sea and land, interspersed 
 with sails, masts, brick walls, and trees, but even while 
 I gazed on that fine prospect, as my eye fell on the 
 brick walls, high and crowded with their steep, sharp 
 roofs just below me, I was thankful that it would still 
 probably be my lot to live where the pure air of heaven 
 and the glorious canopy above could bless me, as it 
 cannot the dwellers in these narrow streets, some of 
 which are scarcely wider than a carriage. Still, I like 
 Boston, considering that it is a large city. It is very 
 clean and orderly, and one therefore feels great comfort 
 and security in going about. 
 
186 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " Tuesday evening we had a very Emersonian lecture 
 from Mr. R. W. Emerson himself upon Fate. ... It 
 represented nature as an immense wheel forever revolv- 
 ing on its destined course, unheeding the good or the 
 harm it might do us, and we, taken along with it, in a 
 great degree powerless, resistless. But as nature is 
 circumstance which must come, so we, with free will, 
 are power to overcome. A fine illustration Mr. Emer- 
 son gave us in steam, which ages ago was found to be 
 so great a force that every pot and kettle had to be 
 made with a hole in the top to let the steam escape in 
 order to save explosion and destruction. But by and 
 by, Watt and Fulton and others began to ask if this 
 force could not be used to overcome space and time 
 and gravitation and cohesion, and so man conquered 
 nature by turning it against itself. ... I will add, 
 about the lecture only this, — it had no Father above 
 who controls all the destines, numbers even the hairs of 
 our heads, and allows not even a sparrow to fall to the 
 ground without His notice. ... I thought how much 
 better and brighter and dearer was that Thanksgiving 
 sermon of which I wrote in my last. Yesterday, we 
 went to the Athenaeum, and saw some fine pictures and 
 statues. I am not an artist, you know, and so cannot 
 tell you much about them, but I found it very delight- 
 ful to look at some of them. I hope you will have the 
 same privilege some day, and will so improve your op- 
 portunities now, that when the time comes for seeing 
 and hearing the great things, you will have eyes to see 
 with, and ears to hear with. 
 
 " Last evening I heard Mr. Everett lecture. It hardly 
 becomes me to offer an opinion upon a gentleman of so 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 187 
 
 wide and settled fame as his, but since I live, just now, 
 so near the ' Cradle of Freedom ' perhaps I may be per- 
 mitted to say that I have heard speakers who thrilled 
 me far more. Of course Mr. Everett is graceful, schol- 
 arly, eloquent, and all that, and gave a fine eulogy on 
 his friend, . . . and fine and beautiful sentiments, but 
 not like some men did he thrill his hearers with new 
 and burning truths, or with old truths brought forth 
 into so clear a light that the hearer must see and feel 
 too. ..." 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BARABOO FEMALE SEMINARY. 
 
 No part of Miss Mortimer's career gave her more 
 pleasure than the years she spent in Baraboo. 
 
 At the time when she was so unexpectedly invited 
 to take charge of the school there by the Synod of 
 Wisconsin, it had been in operation for nearly two 
 years, but the time had come when the interest felt 
 for it was to crystallize in new and larger plans for 
 its future. The town, about one hundred miles 
 west of Milwaukee, bears the Indian name of the 
 river on which it is situated, a large and beautiful 
 stream, which, now loitering, now tumbling in haste 
 over huge rocks, now winding between wooded 
 bluffs dotted with Indian mounds, now stealing in 
 shadow between towering cliffs at the ''Narrows, " 
 now circling and eddying about the giant water- 
 wheel of a ruined and isolated mill, now whirling 
 through "The Skillet," a well which its own waters 
 had worn in the solid rock, and now dimpling and 
 laughing past "The Pewit's Nest," — a cove of its 
 own creation, — was everywhere "a joy forever " 
 as it hastened to its junction with the wide and 
 majestic Wisconsin, not many miles away. A spur 
 of the Laurentian Hills, a true mountain range, 
 
 [188] 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 189 
 
 geologically the oldest land in North America, loses 
 itself in peculiar formations of bold and picturesque 
 bluffs which give to the horizon of Sauk Prairie, vis- 
 ible from some portions of the town, a unique and 
 fascinating outline. But the most weird and attract- 
 ive feature of this wondrously beautiful region is 
 known as "Devil's Lake," an irregular body of 
 water half a league in length, half a mile in width, 
 and in places of great depth, lying in a rift of rocks 
 piled in gigantic confusion hundreds of feet in al- 
 most perpendicular height on the eastern and west- 
 ern shores of the lake, where evergreen and other 
 trees have taken root and stand like sentinels gaz- 
 ing on the Titanic proofs of past convulsions of nat- 
 ure. At the northern entrance to this wonderful 
 gorge, the family of an English gentleman was do- 
 mesticated in a beautiful cottage on a lovely lawn 
 beside the water ; at its southeastern termination, 
 reached by boat along the water's sinuous length, 
 was a cultivated fruit-farm; with a huge ' ' serpent- 
 mound " and other animal forms thrown up by the 
 aborigines near the beach. 
 
 This rare spot was otherwise unmarked by man, 
 its coy delights unsullied by the smoke and un- 
 broken by the screech of the locomotive, and un- 
 touched by the advent of the summer visitor, and 
 for years afterward no railroad penetrated this 
 romantic region to within a nearer distance than 
 ten or twelve miles. 
 
 The village, two or three miles from the lake, was 
 
190 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the county seat, with a population at that time of 
 about fifteen hundred intelligent and enterprising 
 people, but a young community, and not homo- 
 geneous in its composition. 
 
 Though unsettled, Miss Mortimer hesitated long 
 and painfully before consenting to take the charge 
 of the school here which was urged upon her in 
 the autumn of 1858 while in Elmira, and later in 
 Boston. She was devoted to an ideal of feminine 
 education which should be first of all Christian, 
 but a school under the management of any denom- 
 ination of Christians, even that one with which her 
 lot had been cast and to which she was ever loyal, 
 was not to her mind. 
 
 But the arguments and entreaties of many 
 friends of the plan, with the assurance that nothing 
 should stand in the way of her entire freedom in 
 the maintenance of an unsectarian school, that its 
 church connection should be wholly for help and 
 not for hindrance, together with the attractions of 
 the country, and her own longing to be at work, 
 combined at last to overcome her scruples and led 
 her to undertake the precarious work of building up 
 an unendowed school. 
 
 This project was beset with even greater diffi- 
 culties than those which generally encumber an 
 educational undertaking in its infancy. Miss Morti- 
 mer's early letters after her arrival speak of greater 
 financial weakness than she expected, and of diffi- 
 culties in the way which, to most persons, would 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 191 
 
 have seemed formidable enough. But, like the in- 
 visible part of an iceberg, much the larger portion 
 of the troubles in store for the new venture were 
 hidden below the surface of the great ocean of the 
 future. 
 
 It was early in the year 1859 that Miss Mortimer 
 arrived upon the scene, but she was not committed 
 to remain unless she should choose to do so when 
 she should have had opportunity to look at the 
 conditions face to face. 
 
 Her journey from Boston to Baraboo was begun 
 in January and completed in February, but as to 
 time, and the comforts of travel, was in favorable 
 contrast to her first journey from Western New 
 York to the West by the upper lakes, little more 
 than ten years before. 
 
 The summer of this year is memorable for finan- 
 cial troubles which undermined many a fair social 
 fabric and ruined many a prosperous business. It 
 was the year too, which was fraught with issues too 
 vast for human forecast in connection with the 
 coming conflict for the life of the Union. The 
 President of the Board of Trustees of the Baraboo 
 Female Seminary and many of its nearest friends 
 were Virginians in training and in feeling, although 
 they did not approve of slavery, and had removed 
 to the North on this account. But when the John 
 Brown raid at Harper's Ferry had excited public 
 feeling, and the mutterings of coming thunderbolts 
 began to be heard in the approach of the storm- 
 
192 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 cloud of Civil War, these devoted friends of the 
 school sympathized to some extent with their old 
 friends and neighbors in the South, and the flash- 
 ing up of Northern feeling two years later in favor 
 of "war to the knife and the knife to the hilt," did 
 not tend to harmonize and promote the interests of 
 the new school. Still, such was the power over its 
 pupils and friends which Miss Mortimer began to 
 exercise as soon as she became known in the school 
 and the community, and such the good sense and 
 influence of its chief supporters, that, amid the ex- 
 citements and failures of the eventful years of 
 1859-61 the frail bark rode onward over rough 
 seas and did excellent service. 
 
 As though these trials in the nation and the com- 
 munity were not enough, the furnace of trouble was 
 heated seven-fold by threatened dangers to Miss 
 Mortimer's nearest friends. In the midst of- prepa- 
 rations to enter upon new housekeeping for the 
 school home, and all the distractions of the year of 
 Mr. Lincoln's first election to the presidency, and 
 the consequent secession of the Southern States, a 
 fatal disease was threatening the life of the idolized 
 sister who for many years had held almost a moth- 
 er's place in her affections. Soon, at the summons 
 of this sister, she flies from the midst of distracting 
 cares and anxieties for the school to New York, to 
 be her stay and help in that agonizing period of 
 uncertainty and of struggle for life which charac- 
 terizes the onset of disease usually fatal, but from 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 193 
 
 which there is still a possibility of escape. There 
 she met another sister, disabled by disease of the 
 eyes, and took both to the Geneva Sanitarium, 
 where, for weeks, improvement in the case of 
 either was scarcely perceptible ; while her eldest 
 and only remaining sister was at her home not far 
 away in a state of hopeless invalidism. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's most intimate friend was watch- 
 ing beside an invalid brother in Boston, and 
 thither, when she can be spared for a little from 
 the side of her sisters in Geneva, she goes to ad- 
 minister help and sympathy, and to receive into her 
 own devoted heart the comfort of doing so. 
 
 Returning from these vacation trips to the open- 
 ing of her second full school year in Baraboo, she 
 leaves her sisters no better, and takes up the 
 double cares of school and household, with young 
 assistants in the school, and without the sis- 
 ter on whose fidelity in the charge of the house- 
 hold she had expected to Jean. 
 
 Nowhere does the grandeur of her character bet- 
 ter appear than in this heated furnace of trial. A 
 figure like unto the Son of Man walked beside her. 
 The smell of fire did not cling to her garments, but 
 its brightness illumined her character, and that 
 companionship divine inspired her life. Even be- 
 yond her wont, she was radiant before her pupils in 
 that ever-to-be-remembered year. As the furnace- 
 fires rose higher, her spirit grew strangely luminous, 
 and there seemed supernal power to rest upon her. 
 
 14 
 
194 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 As one State after another severed its connection 
 with the Union, and men's hearts were failing them 
 for fear, Miss Mortimer's heart was crushed by the 
 sorrow of her idolized sister's hopeless illness at 
 Geneva. In the winter vacation she again took the 
 long journey eastward, that she might say a last 
 farewell. 
 
 She returned, to send the sister now with her to 
 the aid of the dying sister in New York; to face 
 the gloomy prospect as to school and country, and 
 to graduate her first class in Baraboo, two of whom 
 were former pupils in Milwaukee College who had 
 followed her hither, and four of whom were among 
 the most promising of the early pupils she gathered 
 around her here. 
 
 Miss Mortimer brought to her work at Baraboo 
 the full maturity of her powers, enriched by her ex- 
 perience of twenty years as a teacher, nearly ten of 
 which had passed since the beginning of her ac- 
 quaintance with Miss Beecher, and her mastery of 
 the principles and details of Miss Beecher's remark- 
 able work as an educator. Intensely original as 
 she was, her humility and docility yet enabled her 
 to graft upon her own ideals every good and fruitful 
 scion which opportunity brought her, and to test 
 everything by practical experiment. The course of 
 study which was instituted at Baraboo was essen- 
 tially the same as that at Milwaukee College, and 
 what may be said of one was equally true of the 
 other, — while Miss Mortimer herself was one of the 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 195 
 
 chief features of each. The grade of teaching was 
 of the very best, its principles were deep laid, its 
 methods unique, and successful in arousing in pupils 
 the highest enthusiasm in study and the deepest af- 
 fection for teachers, and a quiet, but strong religious 
 impulse was given to many lives. The Bible was, 
 from the first, made a text-book, and studied thor- 
 oughly by all pupils in classes adapted to their 
 advancement, throughout the preparatory and colle- 
 giate courses. 
 
 History was taught in a five years' course begin- 
 ning in the Preparatory Department, philosophic- 
 ally, in the later years, and always with a depth and 
 comprehensiveness which the writer has never 
 seen equaled, nor even approached, elsewhere. In 
 Metaphysics, as in History, Miss Mortimer was the 
 chief teacher, and it was hard to tell in which de- 
 partment pupils caught most of the enthusiasm and 
 inspiration of their gifted leader. The evidences 
 of Christianity were taught by Miss Mortimer on a 
 most comprehensive scale. It was her custom to 
 deliver a series of lectures which she called " Truth 
 Lessons " to her classes in the last term of the 
 school year preceding their entrance on senior 
 studies. The lectures were from eight to twelve in 
 number, beginning with the question ''What is 
 Truth, " and taking up successively, "The Difficul- 
 ties of the Subject," " Man a Truth Seeker," "The 
 Common Ground," " Guidance for the Search," 
 " The Great First Cause," "Religion the Highest 
 
196 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Truth, and Man a Religious Being," and a defini- 
 tion of the line along which man's "Search" 
 must progress. 
 
 This was, first, Human Consciousness. At this 
 point a text-book in Mental Science was introduced, 
 at the beginning of the Senior Year, with much 
 collateral reading, which indeed had been begun in 
 connection with the previous Truth Lessons. 
 Schlegel's "Philosophy of History," Mrs. Child's 
 "Progress of Religious Ideas," and Plato's Socratic 
 Dialogues were daily companions of the class, in 
 study, library, and class-room, while a great number 
 of other works frequently threw side lights on the 
 subject. Hickok, Mansell, Sir William Hamilton, 
 were favorites with one part of the class, and the 
 chief lights of the opposite school in Metaphysics 
 supported the opinions of the other portion, while 
 they paused in the search for truth in human con- 
 sciousness in a thorough study of Mental and Moral 
 Science. The search in physical nature took up 
 the study of Natural Theology, and daily recitations 
 for many weeks in these three lines of "search" 
 were as thorough and accurate as though there were 
 no larger scheme of training of which these studies 
 were but a part. 
 
 From the Search in Nature, and individual Con- 
 sciousness, the students turned to History, or Uni- 
 versal Consciousness, where in this class they were 
 led to find, as the most important phase of history, 
 Systems of Religion. In the study of the Chinese, 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 197 
 
 Indian, Egyptian, Persian, Grecian and Roman, 
 Hebrew and Christian Systems, they were taught 
 to ask what questions men in all ages had most 
 anxiously pondered. These were found to be, God 
 and our relations to Him, the Future Life, Rewards 
 and Punishments, Origin of Evil, Sacred Books, 
 Modes of Worship. The Class took up Butler's 
 Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion in rela- 
 tion to the first four of these topics. Nowhere did 
 Miss Mortimer's peculiar power as an educator 
 more fully show itself than in the enthusiasm she 
 would arouse in the study of this difficult book, and 
 the power which it exerted, under her guidance, on 
 the minds and hearts of her pupils, extending, with 
 many of them, through a lifetime. 
 
 " Bishop Butler," says Matthew Arnold, 1 " was, 
 on the whole, the man of greatest intellectual 
 power in the Church of England during the eight- 
 eenth century. His Analogy has lost popularity not 
 because of any discovered weakness in its contents, 
 but simply because of the shifting of the grounds of 
 unbelief. " 
 
 4 ' The book demands and repays attentive study. 
 ... It has long been a text book in our colleges, 
 and may retain its place still longer. But even if 
 it ceases to be thus used, it will always be a quarry 
 whence apologists can derive arguments, a discipline 
 by which mental strength can be increased." 2 
 
 1 " Essays on Church and Religion," 1877. 
 3 " Schaff-Herzog." 
 
198 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 It was both as a means of strengthening belief in 
 the probability of revealed religion, and as a men- 
 tal discipline, that Miss Mortimer wielded this pow- 
 erful book, and there are .passages in it which some 
 of her pupils can never read without deep emotion, 
 as they recall her clear vision and fervid feeling of 
 the truths they impressed. 
 
 But this unique " Search for Truth" was not yet 
 closed. For its completion, the closing weeks of 
 the Senior year were given to a brief study of tech- 
 nical "Evidences of Christianity," and " Church 
 History " that answers might be found relating to 
 ' 'Sacred Books" and " Modes of Worship" in the 
 Christian Religion. 
 
 The oral examination conducted by Miss Morti- 
 mer over this whole ground sufficed to bring to the 
 Anniversaries, from far and near, gentlemen from 
 all the professions, as well as many non-profession- 
 als of sound mind, and a crowd of interested friends 
 and listeners. 
 
 "The best teaching of my life," she said, not 
 long before her death, to a member of the first class 
 of Baraboo Seminary, " I did with your class." A 
 clergyman writing of the examination of this class, 
 which was different in no important aspect from 
 that of all her Milwaukee and Baraboo "Truth 
 Classes," said ; "It was not simply the repetition 
 of views set forth in one text-book, but the broad 
 field of truth was ranged over. No distinction was 
 made with reference to any one religion as having 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 199 
 
 peculiar claims upon man in view of its origin and 
 authority ; but the various systems were examined 
 and sifted as to their intrinsic merits, their solution 
 of the questions of the human mind, and their 
 adaptation to the wants of man, — and that the 
 Christian religion most fully met these requisites 
 seemed very conclusive. . . . Any one listening 
 attentively to the lucid statements, the searching 
 analysis of all the conclusions accepted, could not 
 but believe that had all our youth passed through 
 such a discipline, walked with such a teacher 
 through the field of Truth, there would be little 
 danger of their being led hither and thither by 
 crude notions in religion, — we should not have so 
 many hobbling after every shallow novelty of the 
 day. " 
 
 The first circular issued at Baraboo, and the 
 Seminary Catalogue of 1 86 1-2, give the ripened 
 convictions of Miss Mortimer as an educator : — 
 
 "We believe that the course of God in the great 
 world-school in which all are pupils, as this course is 
 revealed in nature, in history and in human conscious- 
 ness, is the proper model for any school. 
 
 "We believe this course to be an opening, developing 
 process, exciting the learner first to bodily activity, to 
 the exercise of the senses and powers of observation ; 
 then a gradual leading of the mind from the outer and 
 sensuous to the inner and spiritual, from details to 
 principles, from the exercise of the senses and memory 
 to that of reflection, reason and conscience, — thus in- 
 
200 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 volving the education, not of the intellect alone, but of 
 the whole being, and giving to the faithful student 
 himself, in the full light of consciousness, and with full 
 power of self-control. 
 
 "We believe the course of nature shows that the 
 leading business of a teacher is not so much to impart 
 knowledge as to prepare the mind for its reception; 
 that knowledge is the. means, rather than the end of 
 education. The details of science will fade from the 
 memory in later life and in the infinite future ; none the 
 less, nature designs them to be, and the wise teacher 
 will make them, a double treasure. By their aid he 
 shall so develop and strengthen the power of his pupils 
 that they can gain noble and beautiful characters, and 
 the sciences shall become to them indices of truth — 
 the proper object of human life and effort, the food 
 of the spirit, the light of the universe. 
 
 "We believe, further, that in the course of nature, 
 man is the central object, the connecting link between 
 the visible and invisible creation, exhibiting in himself 
 the connections of science as no other object does, con- 
 nections which are so intimate that even a child has 
 glimpses of all. While, then, if time and circumstance 
 will allow, no study should be overlooked or neglected, 
 it would seem that the science of humanity ought to be 
 especially prominent. 
 
 "We believe that nature shows the special vocation 
 of woman to be that of an educator and a homemaker; 
 that her necessities, as regards discipline are the same 
 as those of the other sex, but as regards knowledge they 
 are somewhat different, and as nature varies her gifts to 
 each created thing according to its necessities, so the 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 201 
 
 knowledge imparted to the one sex may very properly 
 differ somewhat from that imparted to the other. As 
 the mother, — in an especial sense the educator and 
 civilizer of the race, — woman needs above every other 
 knowledge that of human nature. 
 
 "In accordance with the foregoing principles, this 
 Course of Instruction commences with the training of 
 the bodily powers, the senses and the verbal memory, 
 and ends with studies requiring the exercise of the lofti- 
 est faculties. It gives an unusual prominence to the 
 study of History, designing it to be taught not simply 
 as a narrative of political events, but as giving the life 
 and progress of the race, and, by illustration, the deep- 
 est lessons of morality, religion, and philosophy. It 
 aims to give a like prominence to the sciences which 
 treat of the human body and mind and their connec- 
 tions, and to cultivate the taste, imagination and moral 
 faculties equally with those generally regarded as more 
 purely intellectual. In Mathematics and Language, 
 studies especially adapted to discipline the intellectual 
 powers, the aim is to give a thorough, rather than an 
 extensive course, and in Natural Science, so far as prac- 
 ticable, to make nature the text-book." 
 
 In Mathematics, Miss Mortimer often taught, 
 because of her enjoyment in it, a class in Geometry, 
 and the course ended under other instructors with 
 Trigonometry, Conic Sections, and applied Mathe- 
 matics in Olmsted's Astronomy (Yale College edi- 
 tion). In the Classics, Latin was pursued with 
 thoroughness in the foundations as Grammar, and 
 with zest as Literature, especially in the poetry of 
 
202 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Vergil and the prose of Cicero. In German and 
 French, Schiller and Goethe, De Stael and Pascal 
 were the favorites, with selections from dramatists, 
 critics, and historians. 
 
 In a course formulated and taught by Miss Morti- 
 mer in ^Esthetics — Beauty in Nature and the Fine 
 Arts and in Architecture and Landscape Gardening 
 — much enthusiasm was felt, especially by her 
 Baraboo pupils. Faithful drill in the English Lan- 
 guage beginning in the Preparatory school was 
 carried through the Collegiate department, much 
 critical reading and study of English Literature 
 being one of the delights of the later years. Polit- 
 ical and Physical Geography was always taught in 
 connection with History, and Physics, Chemistry, 
 Geology, Botany, and Astronomy were made pleas- 
 ant and practical, rather than extended studies. 
 
 The extracts which follow, from Miss Mortimer's 
 correspondence, will give most vividly the setting 
 of the eventful years at Baraboo. 
 
 To Miss T. she writes from the home of O. H. 
 Waldo, Esq. : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Feb. n, 1859. 
 ". . . My good-bys were so many before I left your 
 State that I really grew quite heavy-hearted, especially 
 as I do not much like my prospect of being under the 
 Synod. I left you, dear Miss T., cogitating on your 
 future and my own. ... I reached here at 1 p. m. on 
 Saturday. I found myself very warmly greeted in this 
 city. . . . Still am I beset with entreaties to stop here, 
 
THF LrFE WORK. 203 
 
 [in the College] but I see no good reason for doing so. 
 I spent Tuesday morning in school, and had a very 
 pleasant time with the girls, but the number is small. 
 ... Of course the Milwaukeeans, outside of our 
 church, at least, think it a great absurdity for me to go 
 to B. I have nothing specially new about the place or 
 school since I came, except, quite to my vexation and 
 mortification, the Trustees have been getting a College 
 Charter. I am dreading the journey there, a little, 
 though I have taken worse ones, and I am afraid I shall 
 break with the Presbyterianism." 
 
 To Miss T : — 
 
 "Baraboo, April 16, 1859. 
 
 "Many thanks for the books you are to send. Our 
 library at present contains fifty volumes. 
 
 "The income of our school will probably run behind 
 its outgo from $400 to $500 this year, but at the close 
 of that time we feel quite certain that we shall be able 
 to draw from six hundred to one thousand dollars from 
 the State. . . . Things look very hopeful here I think, 
 only this spring, Wisconsin is in need of ready cash. 
 There are very intelligent people here, I think, and a 
 very unusual interest in school seems to exist. ... I 
 hope we can get Mr. [Thomas] Beecher to come and 
 lecture for us." 
 
 " Baraboo, July 17, 1859. 
 
 " Some days I feel bright and hopeful, and then again, 
 I am cast down. Our new (school) house, containing 
 four large rooms and two small ones, and a clothes 
 room and hall, is nearly done, still it will be of little 
 service this term. My first quarter's salary is paid. 
 The school is nearly sixty this quarter. The girls are 
 
204 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 good. The people are interested in the school, some 
 of them very much, but I do not know yet on what to 
 depend. It seems sometimes that they cannot raise the 
 money to do what they propose. . . . I do not know 
 what to think, — wish I did. Miss Beecher has sent me 
 six varieties of aster seed improved by herself and 
 desires me to plant them, and when they grow, think of 
 her, — and charges me not to fasten myself here for she 
 1 k flows y I shall return to Milwaukee. This week I 
 have received a note from our new Chancellor (Hon. 
 Henry Barnard, LL. D.) asking me if I am at liberty to 
 listen to a proposition to make Madison my teaching 
 home. . . . The people here seem good and intelligent, 
 but have not shown themselves more disposed to get 
 acquainted than the Elmireans, and I do not know them 
 very well. ... I do not know that I can improve by 
 changing. . . . We close our term four weeks from 
 to-day." 
 
 " Baraboo, Sept. 20, 1859. 
 " . . . Our matters are going on prosperously. . . . 
 We have a fair prospect of numbering eighty or ninety 
 young ladies, in the main very studious and well-be- 
 haved. We have now a prospect of graduating eight or 
 ten a year from next July. Our new teachers are doing 
 well. ... I found myself obliged to take classes 
 enough to nearly fill my time in school ; expect Miss 
 B. to assist me next week, and then shall have a little 
 more leisure. Now I am very busy, especially as we 
 are hastening to get up the ' Fairy Trial.' . . . Please 
 send me my Shakespeare, and Hickok's Mental Phil- 
 osophy, and Plutarch's Lives. . . . Sybil has written 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 205 
 
 me a beautiful letter, as to her frame of mind, but say- 
 ing nothing as to her bodily state." 
 
 October 29, Miss Mortimer writes, chiefly by 
 the hands of two of her assistant pupils, that she is 
 crippled again in her right hand, through overwork, 
 and wishes her former physicians in Elmira to pre- 
 scribe for her "quickly." The " Fairy Trial" was 
 reported a beautiful success, and the coming on of 
 a "Teacher's Institute " at which she is invited to 
 11 make a speech " is noted. 
 
 " Baraboo, Dec. 29, 1859. 
 
 " My arm has continued getting better since I wrote 
 to F. but it is weak yet. . . . We had a Christmas-tree 
 and a great gathering at our school-room last Saturday 
 evening. We illuminated, gave presents and received, 
 though, as we are poor country people, they were not 
 costly. We were just as happy as though they had been 
 so. This week we have school, but give next Monday 
 for a holiday and close four weeks after. 
 
 "Did I write about Miss Beecher? I think her do- 
 ings in Milwaukee are bringing forth no new fruit. I 
 do not expect to change, although things here are not 
 certain by any means. However I feel more hopeful, 
 and think I shall like to stay here, if we can get along 
 and accomplish what we have set out to. 
 
 " M. writes that she thinks S. is not so well. I see 
 that she is full of fears, and I am, too. . . . 
 
 "This is finished Saturday the last day of 1859. I 
 wish you all a very happy New Year." 
 
206 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Baraboo, Feb. 28, i860. 
 
 "We have progressed two weeks on our spring term. 
 . . . I am encouraged in this respect, that our people 
 do not seem to be at all cast down, — their faith seems 
 to grow stronger rather than otherwise, and I continue 
 to like to stay here. We are proposing to try to get 
 some endowment. We have a pleasant school. We re- 
 tain our most advanced classes, and have a prospect of 
 graduating seven a year from July. ... I feel very sad 
 about my sisters, . . . but perhaps light and strength 
 will arise. I must try to get all the courage and strength 
 I can for the emergency." 
 
 " Baraboo, May 5, i860. 
 
 " It is summer here, — what is it with you? I trust 
 you are comfortable and peaceful. ... It is very hard 
 for me to resolve that I cannot go and see you, and so, 
 decide to stay here [in vacation], yet I think it must be 
 done. Wisconsin is very poor, and will be for some 
 time yet, I fear. 
 
 "We are getting on slowly, and yet not so slowly, 
 all things considered. We received one hundred and 
 twenty dollars' worth of excellent apparatus last week in 
 fine order, and with it a dozen nice volumes for the li- 
 brary from some friends of Mr. B. in Boston. . . . We 
 feel quite decided to have a school-home next fall, and 
 M. has agreed to come and take charge of it." 
 
 "Baraboo, July 9, i860. 
 
 "... Perhaps S. has written you that she has sent 
 for me to go to New York with her for a consultation. 
 I expect to reach Lima the middle of next week, and I 
 suppose we shall go on immediately." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 207 
 
 To S. M. B. : — 
 
 " Milwaukee, July 14, i860. 
 
 " . . . I am hastening East now, to go to New York 
 with another sister for medical treatment. . . . 
 
 "Our term closed very pleasantly on Wednesday 
 last." 
 
 To Miss T. : -~ 
 
 "Boston, Aug. 4, i860. 
 
 "I thought, as M. was better, I would leave Geneva 
 Monday morning, but she was worse again, and I re- 
 mained over that train and the next. S. promised to 
 send some one Tuesday, and as M. was again better, 
 we concluded I had better come [to Boston]. I reached 
 this mansion at one o 'clock Wednesday morning. . . . 
 Miss H.'s brother is rather better than he has been, but 
 he seems in a very miserable state of health. ..." 
 
 To S. M. B. : — 
 
 " Geneva Water Cure, Aug. 17, i860. 
 "Yours of the 2nd instant was delayed. I am still 
 kept by sick people. This week I have had three pa- 
 tients. My sisters are scarcely better, and it is really 
 getting very serious ; but even as you have to endure 
 and look up, believing all is well, so must I. . . . 
 
 "I hope to reach Baraboo the last of next week. 
 With the hope that we may have a pleasant and profit- 
 able year together, I am as ever, 
 
 " Yours affectionately, 
 
 " M. Mortimer." 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 "Baraboo, Sept. 12, i860. 
 "I do not know but you have wondered at my si- 
 lence, and yet I presume you can easily account for it. 
 
208 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 After my return to Geneva I found myself occupied 
 with the sick and some other matters, and then there 
 was the leaving which was sad enough, with both my 
 sisters still so helpless, and scarcely any better, and I 
 obliged to leave. 
 
 " There has been considerable small-pox here during 
 vacation, and school has not opened so large as I hoped. 
 ... It seemed very pleasant to get back, however, the 
 people are so friendly, and the place so quiet and 
 retired. 
 
 "We are somewhat settled in our new home and find 
 ourselves quite cosy and comfortable. 
 
 "Since I came, I have heard several times from Ge- 
 neva, but my intelligence about S. is not at all encour- 
 aging. Her husband writes very sadly and despairingly 
 about her, and M. not much more hopefully. She 
 gains no strength, — cannot be gotten up without the 
 greatest suffering and exhaustion. I fear I may not see 
 her again, but hope. M. is better, — wrote a few lines, 
 but I do not think there is any great improvement, even 
 in her case. . . . 
 
 "This housekeeping uses up a good many odd min- 
 utes." 
 
 "Baraboo, Nov. 8, i860. 
 
 "... I have some anxious hours over our prospects 
 in school, and fear I may yet have to leave here. . . . 
 
 "We have our house furnished very comfortably, — 
 indeed I think it looks quite well." 
 
 A note addressed en route to one of her Baraboo 
 pupils in February, 1861, shows Miss Mortimer on 
 her way East that she may bid a last farewell to the 
 sister whose lovely character had filled her life with 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 209 
 
 joy, and who, from the time when their mother 
 was taken from their sight, had been the object of 
 Miss Mortimer's tenderest affection. The journey 
 was begun in mid-winter, and was too formidable 
 to allow of the teacher's return to her duties 
 promptly at the beginning of the second term. To 
 the Senior Class she addressed the following letter 
 on the way: — 
 
 "Detroit, Wednesday, Feb., 1861. 
 
 "My Dear Young Ladies : Here am I when I ought 
 to be almost to Suspension Bridge, and as I have to 
 wait four or five hours yet, I will write you what I have 
 been thinking about your Butler class. 
 
 " We ran into a train last night, but it was no great 
 affair, except that it has caused us twelve hours delay. 
 I have eaten my dinner, and been up into the city to 
 get something to read, but will write before I begin to 
 read, lest I should become too much interested in my 
 book afterward. 
 
 " I trust your compositions are fully under way ; that 
 you are writing with all courage and earnestness. You 
 will do better for my absence, at least so I think, for 
 you must rely upon yourselves. Do not delay, make 
 good use of your afternoons, and do the very best you 
 can, and all will be well. 
 
 "And now, as to Butler, I want to suggest a few 
 thoughts about its relations to our studies thus far. 
 You remember that we reached this conclusion, — that 
 the Christian religion must be the true one ; yet we did 
 not come to this conclusion so fully and clearly as I 
 desired, and we shall go back by and by and seek his- 
 15 
 
210 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 torical proof that Christ was a true Teacher sent from 
 God. Meantime, however, if you have carefully re- 
 ceived and kept the arguments and facts we have con- 
 sidered, you have a very strong proof, it seems to me. 
 That we may confirm this in every way, we consider in 
 Butler the objections often urged against the general 
 doctrine of religion, as well as against that of Christian- 
 ity. If you are carefully and earnestly attentive to 
 Butler's argument, you will find that these objections 
 one by one fade away, as the mist before the sunlight, 
 and you will find your own minds strengthened. 
 • " These objections, too, you will notice, are such as, 
 to a greater or less extent, have come to your own 
 minds, and they are answered in such a way as to carry 
 you quite above the habit of regarding morals, nature, 
 religion, as separate things. 
 
 ' 'We have said, you remember, that Truth is one. 
 Butler will aid you to see and feel this, for he shows, 
 with a power unequaled by others, all things, the small- 
 est as well as the greatest, connected in the same great 
 scheme, so that the wonderful declaration of Christ, 
 'Even the hairs of your head are numbered,' becomes 
 clear and certain by a logical argument. I trust you 
 will dwell upon this, that it will grow clear and rich to 
 you, and above all, I trust you will make a personal 
 application of the truth that we study. I have said less 
 in this direction than I might, hoping you would your- 
 selves make a more powerful application than I could. 
 
 "If Truth is so glorious and man was made for it; 
 if religion is its highest development, and man is most 
 distinctively a religious being ; what are our obligations 
 to be religious? If Christ came into the world, as He 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 211 
 
 says, to teach us Truth, and to save us, what are our 
 obligations to him? 
 
 "Some of you, yes, all, have admitted the force of 
 these obligations. Why should any of you delay to 
 yield obedience to them ? The simplicity, the practica- 
 bility of religion, Butler will set before you. It is no 
 strange, remote subject, but, in the decisons and acts it 
 requires, is like your common life. 
 
 "I wish you to improve all your spare time in writ- 
 ing an analysis of Butler. 
 
 "Do not neglect to read < Fine Arts/ and treasure up 
 in your minds all you can. Have Miss F. come into 
 the class. 
 
 " With earnest prayers for your highest good, believe 
 me Always yours, 
 
 <<M. M." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 " Baraboo, March 19, 1861. 
 
 ", . . S. still lies so placid and cheerful that it is, I 
 believe, more pleasant than painful to think of her. I 
 had to control myself as I looked at her six weeks ago, 
 fearing that it was for the last time, for her lips quiv- 
 ered and her eyes filled with tears. But day after day 
 I had watched her, with her eyes full of light, her voice 
 of kindness. What a memory these days will be to me? 
 She is almost an angel, I think. I feel more like prais- 
 ing God that He has given her to us so long than like 
 murmuring that He may soon take her to Himself. 
 
 t( I was very glad to get your far-away, letter from 
 the South, where they do not believe in the Union, and 
 where I did not like to have you go. I am glad again 
 to hear that you are safe back. . . . And now, in these 
 
212 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 days of doubt and trouble, how glad I should be to 
 hear about the feeling and the real condition of the 
 South from yourself. What is to become of them, and 
 of the nation ? What do you wish the government would 
 do ? What can it do? I cannot see any hope that the 
 Southern States will return. . . . If the speeches and acts 
 of their public men and of their papers, religious and 
 secular, are to be trusted, then slavery, now and for- 
 ever, slavery there, slavery everywhere, is the sole con- 
 dition of peace. The breaking of the Union is sad and 
 disgraceful enough, but the reason is almost infinitely 
 sadder and more disgraceful. . . . 
 
 "I wish sometimes that I had faith enough to say / 
 will stay here, and take things as they come, for better 
 or worse, but I do not quite reach that point yet. I 
 cannot tell about our prospects, — the national affairs 
 cast a cloud over everything. Wars and rumors of wars 
 offer poor encouragements to educational enterprises. I 
 wish I knew what I ought to do, but light will break in 
 upon the path as I need it, if I look up, and I will try." 
 
 These were indeed stirring days in Baraboo, where 
 circumstances combined to make feeling run as high, 
 at times, as in the border States themselves. 
 
 With the opening of spring amid all the dear 
 delights of this beauteous region, the strange sounds 
 of drum and fife were soon heard in the streets 
 and on the village green, with the tramp of the mili- 
 tary company now forming in response to the call 
 for troops, passing the doors of the Seminary in 
 daily drill. Ere long came the farewell in the pub- 
 lic square ; school was dismissed that daughters and 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 213 
 
 sisters might take a last look at fathers and brothers 
 going forth to war, with a suddenness which was 
 more in semblance of dreams than like living real- 
 ity. In the bright light of that spring morning, the 
 green of the grass and the trees is mingled in our 
 memories with the blue of uniforms, the glitter of 
 epaulettes, the scarlet of sashes, and the gleam of 
 swords and bayonets ; the quiet chirp and warble 
 of the birds is lost in the stirring strains of military 
 music. Two of the Executive Committee of the 
 Board of Trustees of the Seminary stepped, as we 
 gazed, a little aside from the crowd. One was of 
 Northern blood and principles, and his commanding 
 form bore the insignia of military rank, with sword 
 and sash dangling by his side. One was an honest 
 Virginian, his kind face troubled beyond measure, 
 and his true eyes clouded with doubt. The two 
 men clasped hands, and he who was going to the 
 front left with the Southerner in a few low and 
 heartful words, "in case anything should happen," 
 the charge of his young family now to be left with- 
 out their natural protector. The two men did not 
 see all things alike, but they were townsmen, neigh- 
 bors, friends, and Christians, and they trusted one 
 another, even amid their doubts and anxieties. 
 
 Intensely feeling and clearly seeing the issues be- 
 fore the country and the world, and with the poign- 
 ant arrows of keenest family sorrows piercing her 
 heart, Miss Mortimer rose to the heights of un- 
 wonted strength and radiance in the closing months 
 
214 MARY A/OR TIMER. 
 
 of the school year. The last Sunday evening but 
 one before the close of the term, she asked the 
 class about to graduate to meet her in the school- 
 room at six o'clock. She stood before us with a 
 sense of the solemn responsibilities of life we were 
 about to meet, and gave us, from a carefully pre- 
 pared manuscript, with the look and tone of an in- 
 spired or angelic being, her parting counsel. She was 
 both beautiful and graceful in that uplifting hour, 
 and a halo seemed almost visible about her. In an 
 intimate acquaintance and friendship of nearly a 
 quarter of a century, the inspiration of that hour 
 had for one of her pupils no parallel, and others 
 saw and felt the same. 
 
 This summer brought Miss Mortimer's friend from 
 Boston to visit her in Baraboo, and later the be- 
 reaved husband of her translated sister came bring- 
 ing his little boy, who was to be left in her charge. 
 Invitations to take up work elsewhere were press- 
 ing ; Miss Mortimer took one hurried jonrney to a 
 distant State, and returned, to spend a little time in 
 Milwaukee and Boscobel with family friends. 
 
 She writes from — 
 
 "Baraboo, Aug. 15, 1861. 
 
 ". . . The year, I fear, is going to be the hardest 
 we have known. . . . We hope for good things, but 
 must prepare for hard times, and bear them cheer- 
 fully." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 215 
 
 "Baraboo, Sept. 7, 1861. 
 
 ". . . Our sister has faded away, but left a halo 
 more glorious than the brightest sunset. Surely we will 
 not mourn for her. Still I did feel it more than I 
 thought I should, but not to repine. God be praised 
 that so gently he took his beloved to Himself, that He 
 gathered her children about her to see her pass away to 
 the better land, that He has given us such a treasure in 
 her memory. My heart is full of gratitude, though the 
 tears will come that I can see her no more here. Ed- 
 mund [her sister's son] has joined the army. ... I 
 went to since I wrote, and was disgusted posi- 
 tively, — such pretense and show and parade of piety I 
 believe I never saw equaled. . . . 
 
 "Baraboo seemed like an oasis in the desert to me 
 when I returned. ... I hope I shall not have to leave 
 here. I like Baraboo and my school. We have 
 opened the term very well. . . . Though my heart is 
 sad, I yet feel thankful and happy. God is very good 
 to us. 
 
 "I have had a very hard summer, for, besides hav- 
 ing both house and school to look after, Miss W. was 
 quite ill nearly a month, and that hurried and exciting 
 journey tried me exceedingly. . . . 
 
 "I should very much "like to hear more about your 
 Georgia experience. . . . The West generally is fierce 
 for the War and the Union." 
 
 "Baraboo, Oct. 27, 1861. 
 "We have had barely a hint that something bad has 
 happened down in Pennsylvania. I hope Ed. will fight, 
 if fight he must, heroically for his country." 
 
216 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 To her Baraboo pupils : — 
 
 ''Milwaukee, Nov. 12, 1861. 
 
 "My Dear Young Ladies : It is eight days since I 
 left you, and I am getting anxious to return. 
 
 "Of the city I promised to write you something, and 
 must hasten to redeem my promise. Miss C. said to 
 me the other day, 'Doesn't Milwaukee seem pleasant 
 to you ? ' The question set me to thinking, and I con- 
 cluded it did not seem so pleasant to me to get here, as 
 to get to Baraboo. Still Milwaukee is pleasant, and it 
 is very pleasant to meet some here who love me still. 
 But I find they have trials very like ours in the country. 
 
 "For instance, I met several [of the College girls] last 
 week who were lamenting in dolorous tones their busy 
 life and the difficulty of keeping up interest in their So- 
 ciety ? I listened, and thought what the trouble was. 
 Poor children! they lack faith and courage and system; 
 and I wondered if we, your teachers, shall be able so to 
 teach you that you shall not lack these. . . . 
 
 "I should be very glad if we could learn and show 
 forth all the taste and grace of the city without its ex- 
 travagance, its frivolity, or its artificiality. Surely, 
 nature is more graceful than the city, and, surrounded 
 by it, I believe if we drink in its spirit, we shall attain 
 its higher grace. 
 
 "The chief event which has occurred, I think, since 
 my arrival, was the departure of the Tenth Regiment, 
 which went off in fine style Saturday morning. A thou- 
 sand men well-dressed, marching in order through the 
 streets to the sound of fine music, is an exhilarating 
 sight, but my thoughts as I gazed upon them, wandered 
 to their future, and the sight grew so melancholy that I 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 21 
 
 concluded that I wished to see no more regiments de- 
 part for the war. 
 
 " Milwaukee hardly seems so gay to me as formerly. 
 I wonder that, in the state of the country, we can be 
 engaged as we are, but human beings have a wonderful 
 faculty of springing from pressure, and so we go on, 
 eating and sleeping, dressing and attending to our 
 pleasure and business, about the same as though no 
 half million of men in our own once peaceful country 
 were in arms for the purpose of destroying each other, 
 and covering this fair land with desolation. I still hope 
 we shall gain enough to pay the fearful cost of the strug- 
 gle, but the future only can show. Let us not be 
 thoughtless and careless, for there are most earnest 
 admonitions coming to us. Pride, boastfulness, go 
 before destruction. Principle is worth more than life — 
 how much more than the wealth, station, display, we 
 have so earnestly sought, I have no words to tell. 
 
 "I began to write you about the city, but you can- 
 not but see that it is not an interesting subject to me, — 
 my pen keeps running away. . . . 
 
 "I was made happy Saturday evening by an excel- 
 lent report from you, and I feel the fullest confidence 
 that you are prospering, and that you are faithful to my 
 injunctions. Would that you were all equally faithful 
 to the good Father to whom you owe all your blessings. 
 I hope to see you next week, and that we shall have so 
 pleasant and profitable a winter together that Old 
 Boreas cannot, in the least, disturb our peace or 
 progress. 
 
 "This is a poor letter, my dear children. If I were 
 not so dull I would burn it up and begin again. As it 
 
218 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 is, you must put up with it, and believe that I love you 
 just as well as though I had shown it more eloquently." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 " Baraboo, Dec. 26, 1861. 
 
 ". . . My letter wouldn't go on, for Christmas was 
 coming, and came, and I had to stop writing. 
 
 "Some weeks ago, the ladies, stirred up by Mrs. B., 
 put down a very nice carpet on the floor of my recita- 
 tion-room, all secretly ; and now, at Christmas, the 
 gentlemen surprised me with a nice and very comfort- 
 able chair for the same room, and various other things 
 came from my pupils. So, kind and beautiful deeds 
 keep coming. 
 
 "Our school-house was crowded at our Christmas 
 Eve celebration, and our tree heavily laden, with many 
 things also under it. 
 
 "We are troubled about the state of the country, 
 afraid of a war with England, and so forth. But the 
 Lord reigns, and we must trust Him. I hope, and yet 
 fear dark days, — many, and very dark. This precious 
 Christmas was a bright interlude. 
 
 "Frank has had a very interesting letter from his 
 brother, E., telling us of his camp life, etc. He seems 
 to be in a very proper state of mind for a soldier, brave 
 and patriotic and contented." 
 
 To S. M. B. at Ottawa, 111. : — 
 
 "Baraboo, May n, 1862. 
 "My Dear M. : The prospect from my window is 
 exquisite to-day, the blending of color almost equal in 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 219 
 
 variety to the autumn, but so different, — the brightest, 
 most delicate green, the softest brown. I wish you 
 could look at it, but probably your landscape is even 
 brighter, for you are nearer the southern skies, and. I 
 remember those bluffs upon which you now gaze, as 
 very beautiful. . . . 
 
 "God bless you, dear M., and make you calm and 
 strong, peaceful and abundantly successful in all noble 
 works. 
 
 "Your going away was quite inopportune, but we 
 must make the best of it." 
 
 To Miss T : — 
 
 "Baraboo, May 14, 1862. 
 
 " , . . I, too, am tired and anxious, but shall try to 
 rest and trust and be cheerful. Indeed, amid all the 
 labors and trials, there is so much that is bright in life 
 that I cannot despair. God is good, and He reigns. 
 That ought to be enough to keep us calm and peaceful, 
 whatever happens. . . . 
 
 "May 30; Before I finished my last sentence, our 
 last year's graduates, who voted that each would write 
 something for the close of the year, came to consult. 
 Then one of our Trustees came to talk about school, 
 and then, — I had a cold and a headache. I feel a 
 good deal better this morning, and now hope to stir 
 about and get something done. . . . Our term is draw- 
 ing to a close, only five weeks to examinations, and 
 then — I do not know what. I have been thinking and 
 talking about prolonging my vacation, for I do not 
 want to get old and decrepit a minute before it is neces- 
 sary. . . .. 
 
220 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " Our prospects of permanent buildings and endow- 
 ments are dubious, — this horrid war interferes with all 
 good things. When will it end and how? God only 
 knows. I am not so sanguine as many. So far as I can 
 see, the Southerners have n't the least idea of giving up, 
 and the hot weather, and yellow fever, and I know not 
 what horrors are before us. But the Lord reigns and 
 we must trust Him. Edmund was in the hospital in 
 Philadelphia the last we heard from him, sick from ex- 
 posure in the advance on Yorktown. His father was 
 expecting him home, but as we hear nothing further 
 about it, and he is better, I fear this has not been per- 
 mitted. 
 
 " Things go on quite smoothly with us as a school, 
 still I do not know but we may resolve to give up our 
 ship. I hope not, for I still like to live here. ... In 
 religious matters the town is divided and distressed, 
 but the Lord reigns. Truth is mighty and will pre- 
 vail." 
 
 It was the darkest period of the war, and the 
 smoke of the battles of the summer of 1862 spread 
 a pall of gloom over the North. The Rev. Z. M. 
 Humphrey, D. D. came from his Chicago pastorate 
 to deliver the Anniversary address, and the white- 
 robed graduates and post-graduates discussed their 
 themes on graduation day in the beautifully trimmed 
 church, amid a throng of interested friends. The 
 "moral uses of dark things" was a subject on 
 which more than one mind sought light, and in 
 various aspects. The outlook, for the country and 
 the school, was wholly changed since Miss Morti- 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 221 
 
 mer took up her abode in this idyllic retreat 
 three and a half years before. Still beauty was 
 there, and loyalty and love, though hope was de- 
 parting, and Miss Mortimer, visiting at Milwaukee, 
 Janesville, Watertown, in vacation, courageously 
 faced the uncertainties of another school year. 
 
 At Milwaukee, where College affairs were, if pos- 
 sible, lower and more involved than those of the 
 Seminary at Baraboo, Miss Mortimer tarried a few 
 days in the latter part of July, — " very busy and 
 very tired." "The Alumnae of the College," she 
 wrote, ' ' have coaxed me into giving them a 
 speech, which I agreed to, if they would wait till 
 to-day." 
 
 To S. M. B. : — 
 
 "Milwaukee, Aug. n, 1862. 
 "... I trust all things in the future will be pleas- 
 ant, though that is rather a large hope. 
 
 "The year before us looks more uncertain than any 
 previous one. Mr. H's. house (additional) is engaged, 
 though I fear, since this draft is established, we shall 
 not need it, and I regret having encouraged the taking 
 of it in case we do not. But it is impossible to decide 
 anything, and we must run some risks. I think now 
 that we will not furnish the house till I know more 
 about our numbers, and the consequence may be that 
 we shall be in some confusion at the beginning of 
 the term, but it will not be serious. . . . 
 
 "I think you would better take what the catalogue 
 has arranged as the Second Department." 
 
222 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " Baraboo, Aug. 25. 
 ".I do feel more than heretofore doubtful about con- 
 tinuing long in Baraboo. . . . 
 
 " God bless you, and keep you in perfect peace." 
 
 To Miss T : — 
 
 "Baraboo, Sept. 13, 1862. 
 
 " . . . These are very sad days and it is only in re- 
 membering that the Lord reigns, that comfort and hope 
 come. We must learn to put our trust in Him and be 
 at rest. . . . 
 
 "I want to hear about Mr. F. and if you think he 
 would be a very valuable acquisition for the Milwaukee 
 College, and whether you think he could be obtained. 
 
 "... I have been thinking about getting away from 
 school for a time this fall, and going to visit you and 
 some other Eastern friends, but as yet, I am doubtful. 
 Should I go, I now think it would be about Nov. 1, but 
 all is uncertain. . . . 
 
 "We have at length, more than a month after it 
 occurred, heard of Edmund's death, alone, among 
 strangers, in a hospital in Maryland. It is unspeakably 
 sad to us, but how many surfer as we do ! When will 
 it end ? Why is it that as a Christian people we do not 
 cry out more earnestly and constantly to the Father of 
 all mercies to lead us out of this dreadful war ? " 
 
 En route to the East. 
 
 "Oct. 24, 1862. 
 
 "To the School : I am having rather a sad visit, 
 with a sorrowing young widow whose husband died 
 alone among strangers, a victim to this terrible war. I 
 was very tired when I reached here, and it was almost 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 223 
 
 too much for me, meeting the brother and the wife of 
 our lost Edmund. She looks very sad and sweet. . . . 
 "The prayer has been rising in my heart all the 
 morning that you will be so true and noble that this 
 dreadful war with its blights and sorrows shall not be 
 needed to punish you." 
 
 "Boston, Nov. 25, 1862. 
 
 " My Dear Pupils : You have heard perhaps by this 
 time of my lame arm, which tells me now I must not 
 write, — but I cannot resist writing a little. 
 
 "Last night my heart was so full of you, — I cannot 
 tell you all I felt. That nice letter from the little girls 
 came and made me very proud and happy — and then 
 the Senior Class wrote, and one of the teachers also, 
 and you were all before me, and I was so grateful, to 
 you, dear children, and to your teachers, and to the 
 Good Father above who puts it into the hearts of my 
 far-away children to be so loving and true." 
 
 "Dec. 5, 1862. 
 "Boston seems to be very, active and prosperous, in 
 spite of the war. ... I think the sober New Eng- 
 land people have never been so extravagant, consider- 
 ing their circumstances, as we Western people are. They 
 do not walk so fast, do not look so excited, do not 
 jump to conclusions so quickly, — but they are very 
 fierce on the slavery question, some of them, and hate 
 England with a fervent hatred. I heard a gentleman 
 say, the other day, that the chief article in his religion 
 was hatred to England. . . . People seem to feel a good 
 deal of courage about the war, notwithstanding its diffi- 
 culties." 
 
224 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Boston, Dec. 30, 1862. 
 "Last Sunday I heard Professor Park again, and was 
 as much delighted as the Sunday before. The Mental 
 Philosophy Class, at least, will understand me if I tell 
 you that the professor's eloquence led me into the emo- 
 tive state too soon for me to have the power to give a 
 good sketch of the sermons, but I think they will help 
 me to teach you better. There was so much thought 
 crowded into them, and it was so suggestive, that I 
 sometimes seemed so overwhelmed as almost to raise 
 my hands to hold back the flood, which was well-nigh 
 too much to bear. I have heard nothing since I left 
 you, so delightful, so true, as I think." 
 
 It was the time of the darkest outlook in the 
 war, when irreparable financial embarrassments 
 came upon the Baraboo Seminary through the 
 business failure of some of its most self-sacrificing 
 friends. Miss Mortimer's health had been such 
 as to necessitate considerable absences from the 
 school for recuperation. Still she clung with love 
 to the simple life, the satisfactory intellectual work, 
 the intense loyalty and faithfulness of friends and 
 pupils here ; to the communion with nature she 
 here enjoyed, and to the high ideal, the possibility 
 of realizing which this experiment had done so 
 much toward confirming. 
 
 But the combination of disaster was too much 
 for the survival of her hopes, and sorrowfully she 
 bade adieu to Baraboo in the summer of 1863, her 
 own health so precarious that she could not look 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 225 
 
 forward to further teaching without an extended 
 period of rest. 
 
 Once more, in July, 1864, former teachers and 
 pupils gathered there in reunion, for their hearts 
 clung to the place where together they had shared 
 so much happiness and inspiration. But no 
 hope remained of attaining the objects for which 
 the school had been established. Miss Mortimer, 
 and her former teachers and pupils tarried for a 
 little at the parting of the ways in loving remem- 
 brance, to rejoice in the welcome accorded by true 
 and faithful hearts there, and to revel in the de- 
 lights of nature. High communion they had of 
 things which can never die, and delights which can 
 never fade away, and then they parted, refreshed 
 by this draught at life's Elim, but not again to 
 tarry beside those wells of comfort together. 
 
 The difficulties between the trustees of Mil- 
 waukee College and the Educational Association, 
 which had led to Miss Mortimer's withdrawal from 
 this institution to whose founding she had devoted 
 the energies and the toil of so many years, were by 
 no means settled. Miss Beecher, as the represent- 
 ative of the Association, bore the brunt of the bat- 
 tle. The question now was in regard to the 
 $20,000 endowment promised by the Association on 
 certain conditions. These conditions, Miss Beecher 
 maintained, had not been met. Five thousand 
 dollars of the promised endowment had, however, 
 been paid in. 
 
 16 
 
22 G MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Miss Mortimer writes from — 
 
 "Andover, Mass., Aug. 31, 1863. 
 
 u l received a letter from Miss Beecher yesterday. 
 She is nothing daunted, — is going on to raise the en- 
 dowment, she says, and expects we will take possession 
 of the college next year." 
 
 Miss Mortimer, however, was not so sanguine, 
 and even if she had desired to return to Milwaukee, 
 the state of her health, and the recent bereavement 
 of her friend in Boston, combined to keep her for 
 the present in the East. Without making a defi- 
 nite arrangement to do so, and with the occasional 
 diversion of visits to friends in New York, Miss 
 Mortimer remained with her friend, Miss Hunting- 
 ton, in Boston and vicinity for nearly two years 
 after leaving her work at Baraboo. Most of this 
 period was spent in Auburndale, then a beautiful 
 young suburb of Boston, where, either in the semi- 
 nary there, or in the home of Miss Huntington, 
 Miss Mortimer constantly had classes of young la- 
 dies under her instruction in advanced studies, with- 
 out the care and labor attendant upon a permanent 
 settlement for herself. 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 " Auburndale, June n, 1864. 
 
 "I am teaching Butler, Evidences of Christianity, 
 and Geometry, and enjoy it very much when I am well 
 enough to enjoy anything .... With gold at 200 per 
 cent, and Richmond not yet taken, and the South stiff- 
 necked as ever, our sky looks cloudy. But the Lord 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 227 
 
 reigns. May He subdue us all to Himself, at whatever 
 cost." 
 
 To S. M. B. : — 
 
 " AUBURNDALE, Oct. 20, 1864. 
 
 "... . I look back longingly to those Baraboo days 
 and labors. ... I do not at present expect to return 
 to Wisconsin, though, so far as my own feelings are 
 concerned, I should prefer it. . . . It is very grateful 
 to my feelings that all my pupils appear to look back so 
 affectionately to their days at Baraboo. It is blessed 
 to have helped anybody to flowers and sunshine." 
 
 To Miss T. : — 
 
 " AUBURNDALE, Nov. 20, 1864. 
 
 "Did not the election pass off triumphantly ? The 
 order preserved gives me more hope of the country, and 
 pride in it, if I may so express myself, than almost any- 
 thing else has done. It is grand, and now I hope Mr. 
 Lincoln will prove equal to his day, and liberty and 
 law will have a great triumph." 
 
 To S. M. B. : — 
 
 "AUBURNDALE, Nov. 27, 1864. 
 
 "... My spirits are rising of late. My health is 
 improving wonderfully. I am not so strong and buoy- 
 ant as I would like to be, but am so much better than 
 heretofore that I feel like rising and doing large things. 
 Then, our election was so triumphant, not more in that 
 the right party triumphed, than that the other be- 
 haved so well ! Surely the Lord smiled upon us. I 
 had a glad and thankful Thanksgiving, heard an appre- 
 ciative sermon which greatly delighted me, and I have 
 set up my banner. Thus far the Lord has helped us, — 
 
228 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 has shown the value of freedom. . . . My dear M., I 
 hope our best lessons together bring forth blessed fruit 
 in your heart and life. ... I am reading — too hastily 
 — Herbert Spencer's New Philosophy. He divides all 
 Knowledge into the Knowable and the Unknowable, 
 and shows that the knowable in all departments rests 
 on the unknowable. Science and religion are alike in 
 this, and come together, by the last analysis we can 
 attain, on Force. He advances a little in one respect 
 on some positions of Sir William Hamilton, and the 
 author of l Limits of Religious Thought,' while with 
 them he says that Space, the Infinite, Absolute Cause, 
 and so forth, are not thinkable. Yet we must assume 
 them without knowing them, for their existence is 
 reached by a fair indication from what we do know. 
 
 "I cannot tell what the book is to come to. It 
 deals with the material universe and inductions from 
 its phenomena, and these, carried through everything 
 from minerals up to man as an individual, and in so- 
 ciety. I get the impression that it will lead practically 
 to fatalism and atheism. The author never uses the 
 word God, nor any but the most abstract word that can 
 be substituted for that. He gives religion great praise 
 for having everywhere and always contended for a 
 grand mystery underlying all knowledge, — which sci- 
 ence has almost eschewed. But aside from this, sci- 
 ence has reasoned better, at least I think this is his 
 idea. . . . 
 
 "I have read also 'Nineteen Beautiful Years' with 
 much interest and pleasure. Your Cousin Mary's 
 Journal shows a beautiful and wise character, and the 
 compiler has done her work gracefully, I think. . . . 
 
 " I do not know when I have written so long a letter. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 229 
 
 It, and Church, and Herbert Spencer have made me 
 desperately tired." 
 
 " Lasell Seminary, 
 
 " Auburndale, Jan. 5, 1865. 
 
 "My Dear M. : . . . As for the main question, it 
 does not seem to me that it would be wise for you to 
 go into the hospitals. Your health is not sufficient, 
 and then others, who could not do the work you can 
 do in other fields of action, can do as well, — and with 
 more health, perhaps better, — for the Sanitary Com- 
 mission. . . . 
 
 "Your post as teacher, an interesting and useful one, 
 sought you, — should you go, you would turn from it to 
 seek other work. 
 
 "lam glad our home in Baraboo keeps a warm spot 
 in your hearts. ... To keep your heart warm ? love, 
 always love, first the Father above, then His children, 
 everywhere, and dear M. also. 
 
 "Yours with trusting affection, 
 
 "M. M." 
 
 To S. M. B. : — 
 
 "Auburndale, Dec. 28, 1865. 
 
 " My Dear M. : Christmas morning there came to me 
 an exquisitely beautiful gift — beautiful in itself from 
 any stranger, even, but to me, from her who sent it, so 
 much more so ! How full of precious memories, of 
 sweet, plaintive associations of the past ! Do I flatter 
 myself too much, as I look upon that cross in its ex- 
 quisite surroundings of leaf and flower, — made as it 
 seems by fairy fingers, — that I seem to see into the 
 heart behind, and find every movement of the fingers 
 dictated by fervent, enduring love for Truth and Beauty, 
 
230 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 and for the teacher who, so feebly, in the past, tried to 
 teach you of them ? 
 
 "I seem to see there the best lessons of our past 
 together stamped indelibly, and the light nickering 
 through the garniture which surrounds that heart, even 
 as it flickers through this snowy material which gives 
 the shape of that which light makes, — glorious, beauti- 
 ful light, emblem to us of the highest and best. 
 
 11 Thanks, many and fervent, my dear M., for your 
 beautiful work, for this sweet expression of your love, 
 for this exquisite crystallization, as it were, of our best 
 past together, — thanks, especially, as I realize how 
 your time and strength must have been taxed besides. 
 
 "I have made no special progress as regards future 
 arrangements since I wrote you. Mr. Waldo writes 
 very hopefully about College matters, and though I like 
 New England very much, I shall return very cheerfully 
 to Wisconsin if thereby I can save the College to what 
 seems to me its rightful object, — especially as much 
 the larger number of my friends is West. 
 
 "And our old friend, who was so wise and true, so 
 faithful to her Master, has gone ! Mr. B. has had 
 inscribed over my sister : — 
 
 " ' He giveth His beloved sleep.' 
 
 "To Morilla, too, it is applicable. It is good for 
 her, but what a loss for husband and children, and 
 for many besides. 
 
 "I have been lying still this afternoon, looking at the 
 light as you let it come to me in beautiful leaves and 
 flowers, bodying forth the emblem of Him whose pres- 
 ence has, I trust, made your Christmas a blessed sea- 
 son, and will give you a happy New Year. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 SECOND ADMINISTRATION AT MILWAUKEE COLLEGE. 
 
 Nine years had passed since Miss Mortimer's re- 
 tirement from active participation in the instruction 
 and management of Milwaukee College, though in 
 this time she had not ceased to feel the deepest 
 interest in its successful progress, nor intermitted 
 such general efforts in its behalf as her benevolent 
 heart, and her abiding feeling for woman's higher 
 education, rendered necessary and imperative. 
 
 She had made frequent visits to the school, es- 
 pecially while it was under the charge of her 
 successors and friends, the Misses Chapin, and had 
 sometimes accepted invitations to address the 
 Alumnae and the pupils, or to attend and take part 
 in its examinations. 
 
 In Miss Mortimer the public had unwavering 
 confidence ; some of the most influential and promi- 
 inent Trustees, with their families, were her warm 
 personal friends ; and more than all, Miss Beecher 
 had ever regarded Miss Mortimer's presence and 
 participation in the affairs of the College indispens- 
 able to the success of her plan. 
 
 From the time when Miss Mortimer was released 
 from Baraboo Seminary, Miss Beecher's hopefulness 
 
 [231] 
 
232 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 seems to have prompted renewed endeavor for a 
 settlement of the controversy between the Educa- 
 tional Association and the Trustees as to the 
 College Plan, and to regard Miss Mortimer's return 
 as a matter of course, as indeed she had always 
 affirmed it to be. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's resignation had been received 
 by the Trustees of the College ' ' with reluctance, 
 and accepted with regret. " l "At the meeting of the 
 Association in the spring of 1865, Miss Mortimer 
 was appointed its agent to settle its affairs at the 
 College." 
 
 ' ' Peaceful and compromising counsels prevailed. 
 The Trustees, influenced by an almost unanimous 
 public sentiment, and actuated by a sincere desire 
 to adopt the course that would ensure harmony, 
 . . . held a meeting April 21, 1866, and unani- 
 mously appointed Messrs. Waldo, Brigham, and 
 Van Dyke a committee to negotiate with Miss 
 Mortimer concerning resuming the management of 
 the College." 
 
 i ' This was the end of the controversy. The 
 Association, backed by public sentiment, secured 
 the return of Miss Mortimer, and a partial recur- 
 rence to the early plan." 
 
 " On June 13, 1866, the Board ordered the exe- 
 cution of a lease with Miss Mortimer, and the ap- 
 pearance of the Catalogue of 1866-7, with her 
 name at the head of the faculty of instruction. " 
 
 1 Wight's " Annals of Milwaukee College." 
 
THE LIEE WORK. 233 
 
 Nothing new, either in principle or practice, char- 
 acterized Miss Mortimer's resumption of her old 
 position at Milwaukee College. The aims and 
 methods of education there from 1866 to 1874, 
 were identical with those she had endeavored to 
 carry out in the same institution from 1850 to 1857 
 and at Baraboo Seminary from 1859 to 1863 ; the 
 course of study was essentially the same, and above 
 all, the same potent personality exerted its stimu- 
 lating formative force upon plastic character. At 
 the first, two of her associate instructors were for- 
 mer pupils at Baraboo ; two were most accom- 
 plished teachers from the East. 
 
 From time to time, changes were made in the 
 personnel of the faculty, by marriage, bereave- 
 ment, or other vicissitudes, but so carefully did 
 Miss Mortimer make her selections with a view to 
 individual adaptations to the work, that several of 
 the leading teachers remained for years, not only 
 supplementing her work and influence, but making 
 their own most marked and enduring impressions 
 upon the characters of their pupils. 
 
 One of these associate teachers has now for 
 many years been successfully endeavoring in Asiatic 
 Turkey to uplift and bless its degraded and op- 
 pressed daughters. In reply to a request for some 
 glimpses of the life of the teachers associated with 
 Miss Mortimer in these years, this lady writes in a 
 preliminary note : — 
 
234 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "You know nearly all the persons who shared in 
 that life at the College-home in Milwaukee are living. 
 I could do nothing without individualizing them a lit- 
 tle. There was plenty that was entertaining and inspir- 
 iting if one had either the power or the liberty to speak 
 with any plainness and personal discrimination of the 
 members of that household. I only send you what I 
 have written to show you that in all sincerity I did set 
 myself to review the life there and to express my 
 thoughts upon it. ... I want to thank you for setting 
 my thoughts at work on such a subject. It has done 
 me good to think of, and to recognize to myself what I 
 did not know how to express, — Miss Mortimer's in- 
 voluntary and inevitable sympathy with every form of 
 earnest life." 
 
 Taking up the subject as requested, this writer 
 continues : — 
 
 LIFE AT THE COLLEGE-HOME. 
 
 "The women who formed a part of that life were 
 drawn there to live and work together, in part from 
 Miss Mortimer's personal interest and faith in them, in 
 part from the failure of original plans and combina- 
 tions and the necessity for calling in, sometimes, un- 
 known elements. 
 
 "The teachers were mostly women in the maturity 
 of womanhood, and if any one characteristic belonged 
 to them, collectively, it was a sturdy independence in 
 thinking and acting. There was a great deal of mental 
 activity among them, — a keen zest for the work they 
 had in hand individually, and much mutual stimulus, 
 with very little mutual warmth. For several years it 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 235 
 
 must have been quickly evident to any one visiting the 
 home, that organic unity in whatever pertained to the 
 social life there was wanting. On the other hand there 
 were a number of groups, in each of which there was 
 strong mutual affection, intensity of feeling and intel- 
 lectual life. Every instrument was keyed high. In 
 the class-rooms, the work of the day was absorbing. 
 At night, the relaxation was a chapter of Emerson or 
 Goethe, Carlyle, or Cousin, or Dante, or some stirring 
 discussion in which there was the most fearless freedom 
 of speech. No one's self-love was wounded because 
 another entertained different views from her own. 
 There was indeed a remarkable freedom from those lit- 
 tle personalities which are apt to creep in where there 
 is vehement feeling, and keen and persistent advocacy 
 of opposing views. There was also a refreshing ab- 
 sence of explanations and timid qualifying of expres- 
 sions, lest some one should fancy something was meant 
 that was not fully said. 
 
 "It was interesting to note how one of these groups 
 stimulated another. Nothing was welcome that was 
 not, in some sense, intense, — a master of thought, a 
 poet thrilling with passionate utterance, or, if philan- 
 thropy were considered, it must have integrity, simplic- 
 ity, and an utter absence of self-consciousness. 
 
 "It was a time of growth and education to those 
 women that few of them at the time realized, — the after 
 look revealed this. Miss Mortimer herself, more often 
 unconsciously than consciously, intensified the life of 
 every one about her. To some, this was for a time a 
 source of pain ; it must be always so where there is 
 much greater strength on the one side than on the other, 
 
236 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 with perhaps imperfect mutual sympathy. Doubtless 
 there was more of real growth in character, the charac- 
 ter itself was a more varied product and a stronger one, 
 than if there had been more of mutual adaptation and 
 less of individuality. 
 
 "To Miss Mortimer it was in some sense necessary 
 that she have such elements about her. The loving 
 devotion that centered everything in her and only 
 asked to know her thought in order to adopt that 
 thought for its own, would have given her a sense of 
 satiety. She, in turn, required to live in an atmosphere 
 of vigorous thought. Not infrequently, when she sat 
 down to a solitary game of backgammon in her study, 
 playing one hand against the other, the problem behind, 
 that sharpened every perception, was how, without 
 abating the individuality of any one, to concentrate and 
 bring to bear upon the school the sum total of power 
 and willingness in those about her. P. L. C." 
 
 The following letter gives both a humorous de- 
 scription of Miss Mortimer from her own point of 
 view, and characteristic references to her associ- 
 ates. 
 
 To S. M. B. N. , while en route in Wisconsin : — • 
 
 "My Dear M. : Your long-looked-for letter came at 
 last, some time ago, making us very happy in your hap- 
 piness. The sea (in sight did you say?), a pleasant 
 home, kind people, dear children, and a husband one 
 with you ! Surely your cup runneth over. Alas for 
 lonely me ! Nothing but a car to sit in, nobody, — not 
 so much as a cat, or even a mouse for company, — too 
 many children, too many cares, teachers thinking I am 
 
THE LIEE WORK. 237 
 
 getting to be a worldly business woman, no husband, 
 not even the poor substitute of a woman one with me. 
 Call up all your sympathy and pity me, — poor old 
 lady! 
 
 "Well — the news? The M. F. C. is flourishing. 
 The Professor of Natural Science remains as she was, 
 the most equable and admirable of helpers, — is quite 
 inseparable with the Artist. . . . 
 
 "The Professor of History is substantially the same, 
 but she gains ground. She takes care of our finances 
 
 admirably, and has boarded at all the year or 
 
 nearly so. 
 
 "The Professor of Literature, as doubtless she has 
 informed you, has taken quarters at the College, and 
 likes them very much I believe. She grows in herself, 
 I think, and in the estimation of others. 
 
 " The Professor of Latin, whom you do not know, 
 is straight, good, intelligent, vegetarian, but is reserved, 
 and lives too much in herself. I esteem her highly, 
 but have rather given up the attempt to gain her confi- 
 dence. 
 
 "Our school, especially the upper part, has kept up 
 better than last year. I have on the whole, not found 
 my cares much lightened, but have no reason to com- 
 plain." 
 
 In January, 1871, the way seemed at last open 
 to Miss Mortimer to realize the dream of her life, 
 — to look once more upon her native land, and to 
 revel amid the delights of that European civiliza- 
 tion whose history and philosophy she had so long 
 profoundly studied and eloquently expounded. 
 
238 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 The College was in no special need, to suffer by 
 her absence ; the inspiration of her presence with- 
 drawn was, to some extent, compensated by the 
 regular arrival of her vivid letters to the school ; 
 and the love and loyalty of pupils was stimulated 
 toward both the absent Principal and the able fac- 
 ulty of teachers who remained. Two of these, Miss 
 Helen F. Brace, and Miss Helen M. Phillips, had 
 been associated with Miss Mortimer for years, and 
 were to enjoy yet other years of opportunity to 
 assist in carrying out her ideals and at the same 
 time of impressing their own strong individualities 
 upon the school. 
 
 It was a faithful and an industrious school family, 
 — one fitted to profit by the opportunities which 
 the absent traveler constantly shared with them, 
 and by the kind and loving advice which perchance 
 was more fully and carefully given than if she had 
 remained with them. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's practical plan of travel differed 
 somewhat from the ideal of many travelers. In 
 anticipation of this tour she said : " I do not wish 
 to be gone more than a year, nor to spend more 
 than a thousand dollars. I have no wish to travel 
 incessantly, nor to see everything." After naming 
 the countries and places in which she felt especial 
 interest, she added, ' ' I wish to settle down in about 
 four countries, England, France, Germany, and 
 Italy, and live long enough to absorb something of 
 the spirit of the people, and to look out upon life 
 through their eyes." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 239 
 
 To one of the younger teachers, who was studying 
 in Europe, Miss Mortimer wrote after her own trip 
 there and return. 
 
 " Milwaukee, Dec. 8, 1872. 
 
 "My Dear Miss J. : . . . I am very glad for this 
 widening and deepening of your life, and that you ap- 
 preciate it so keenly. Let me caution you against one 
 of the dangers of travelers, which is to draw too hasty 
 conclusions concerning the people whom they see. 
 Open yourself, as I think you are doing, in all beautiful 
 charity, to the virtues of others, in whatever strange 
 guise they may appear, and to customs also, and gov- 
 ernments, and all sorts of things. There is so much 
 for us, — who have spent all our lives in so new a coun- 
 try as this, — to see and feel in so old a country as Eu- 
 rope, countries that have been the theater of so varied 
 and great events. 
 
 "And one must have time for reflection and feeling, 
 — time to digest, as it were, — all this which comes in 
 so thick and fast upon one. I trust that you will take 
 in much, not as a mathematician and logician, but as a 
 child, an artist, a poet. Give rein to your imagina- 
 tion, turn away from your past, and dwell with those 
 who are around you in their thoughts and feelings, 
 their atmosphere and their past. 
 
 "To let it come itself and float in on one, and fill 
 one, and so to live in all time and among all peoples, 
 that is what we need to do. Though one cannot do 
 this, yet a glimpse, an effort toward it even, is some- 
 thing that will enrich life. May yours be enriched. 
 "Sincerely and affectionately, 
 
 "Your friend, 
 
 "Mary Mortimer." 
 
240 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's friend and former associate 
 teacher at Milwaukee, Miss Huntington, was re- 
 siding in Switzerland when Miss Mortimer left 
 America. For this reason she traveled rapidly 
 until she reached the shores of Lake Geneva, de- 
 ferring a more extended tour in England until her 
 return. 
 
 The plan made before leaving home was carried 
 out, but with some modifications. France, — Paris 
 even — on account of war with Prussia and its con- 
 sequences, was omitted from the program, and 
 the time of absence was thus somewhat shortened. 
 The attractions of Dresden and Berlin were reluc- 
 tantly given up and travel in Central Europe sub- 
 stituted. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 241 
 
 EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 THE SPHINX. 
 
 glad girl faces, hushed and fair, 
 How shall I sing for ye ? 
 
 For the grave picture of a Sphinx 
 Is all that I can see ! 
 
 Vain is the shining of the Land, 
 
 And vain the de serfs art, 
 The years strive with her, but she holds 
 
 The lion in her heart. 
 
 Baffled or fostered, patient still 
 
 The perfect purpose clings, 
 Flying or folded, strong as stone 
 
 She wears the eagle's wings. 
 
 Eastward she looks ; against the sky 
 
 The eternal morning lies, 
 Silent or pleading, veiled or free, 
 
 She lifts the woman's eyes. 
 
 1 grave girl faces, listening kind, 
 Glad iv ill I sing for ye, 
 
 While the proud figure of the Sphinx 
 Is all that I can see ! 
 
 — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 
 
 17 
 
242 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 The extracts from her European correspondence 
 which follow are selected not so much with a view 
 to itinerary or description as to show the impres- 
 sions made by these scenes on Miss Mortimer's mind 
 and heart. 
 
 " Grosvenor Hotel, London, Feb. 9, 1871. 
 
 " Find Liverpool on your atlases, and remember there 
 we are, — you as well as I, for you were to travel with 
 me, — on the morning of February 7. We make a nice 
 breakfast before a bright fire in our own room, on ex- 
 cellent chop and delicious bread and butter, and take 
 the train at 10 a. m., on one of those dark, rainy days 
 for which England is proverbial. 
 
 " We glide on through a manufacturing region in a 
 northeast direction, amid many factory-like buildings, 
 tall chimneys and smoke, and every now and then, little 
 crowded villages of red brick houses, — not attractive. 
 But then again such smooth grassy hills, such clean 
 fields, such solid, arched bridges ! Everything is mas- 
 sive and strong, not showy. 
 
 " My thoughts ran back to the days of Hengist and 
 Horsa, and the old Saxons, brave, sturdy, beef-eating, 
 beer-drinking race. I thought what a different England 
 this from that they found, and with hard and sturdy 
 and long-continued blows, conquered. I seem to see 
 them everywhere, — their courage and resolution, their 
 love of the true and substantial. Ah ! what a changed 
 England. How much man can and does do ! Ah ! if 
 the doings were only always good. 
 
 "We reached Bradford, a manufacturing town of 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 243 
 
 150,000 inhabitants at 1 : 15, and received a very cor- 
 dial welcome to the pleasant home of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Selleck. Mr. S. is our Consul at this place. . . . 
 
 "At 12 -.40 the next day we took the train for Lon- 
 don, — your maps will show you our direction. Now 
 we pass through a more agricultural country. What 
 clean, beautiful fields! how carefully drained, — what 
 plowing ! We see many wind-mills, which add pictur- 
 esqueness to the landscape, and come to Grantham, a 
 town of funny little red brick houses. Then the coun- 
 try becomes hilly, — soft lawny hills, — and we pass 
 through Peterboro' where is a cathedral. . . . 
 
 "At the promised time, 6 : 30, we reach the great city. 
 
 "There was an interesting and exciting drive of three 
 miles, but London did not seem more crowded, — I 
 think less noisy, — than New York. Arrived at our 
 hotel, we made ready and went to tea in a spacious and 
 beautiful dining room, with a bright open fire, with mir- 
 rors and pillars looking like porphyry, and with lights 
 gleaming from chandeliers of glittering glass. 
 
 "We were close by Victoria station, to which we 
 went next morning, bought through tickets to Basle, 
 then proceeded to the American Legation to have our 
 passports made right. A gentleman there told us the 
 Queen was that very day to go in grand procession to 
 open Parliament, and we would better go about one 
 o'clock to St. James' Park, not far away, to see the sight. 
 We were of course, quite delighted. . . \ As it was 
 only about eleven o'clock, we hastened to Westminster 
 Abbey, just around the corner, and had an hour of 
 deep, grand life, which I cannot write about to-day. 
 
244 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "On the way from the Abbey to St. James' Park we 
 found ourselves in a constantly increasing crowd ; we 
 had a long waiting on the spot across which Charles I. 
 walked, more than two hundred years ago, to his exe- 
 cution. Now we waited to see his descendant pass in 
 state to the same Parliament which condemned him, — 
 yet not the same, and she is its honored Queen. 
 
 "At length, armed, handsomely-dressed guards be- 
 gin to come, and the Middle Ages begin to rise from 
 the past. Steel and silver, and gilt, and plumes, and 
 glitter ! White, spotless dress, with steel helmets and 
 armor, and black horses richly caparisoned ! These first 
 troops were stationed, one by one, at short intervals 
 each side of the street, right among the people who 
 stood close to the horses' heels without fear. 
 
 "Again we waited. Many policemen were about. 
 The crowd was very quiet, except for conversation. 
 At length, other soldiers, still more dressed, carriages, 
 and richly liveried drivers and footmen, — still no 
 queen. 
 
 " Other troops, guards of honor, — and then, a close 
 carriage with six horses in gorgeous trappings. « The 
 Prince of Wales ! ' Again we wait. 'The Prince must 
 be ready to receive the Queen,' some one says. Many 
 carriages, all gold and glitter, other and still more richly 
 dressed guards, — the Queen's own guards, — and at 
 last, the Queen, with the Princess Louise, in a plain, 
 close carriage. The window is open, however, and I 
 see a rather fine head, erect, wearing a small crown. 
 This carriage is drawn by eight magnificent horses, with 
 gorgeous trappings and outriders, and men walking on 
 either side, and then more guards, some in the dress of 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 245 
 
 the days of Henry VII.,— called Henry the Seventh's 
 guards, — and then the crowd follows. 
 
 "There was no cheering, only raising of hats and 
 waving of handkerchiefs, and this hardly general. An 
 outburst of artillery while we were making our way 
 through thronging crowds back to the Abbey, announced 
 the arrival of the Queen at Parliament. We were at the 
 Abbey when the procession returned. The chimes 
 pealed triumphantly as the Queen passed, and the 
 charming notes continued for fifteen minutes, after 
 which we went in under those wonderful arches to the 
 Vesper service of the English Church. How tired I 
 was, and how thrilled ! How those prayers moved me, 
 — and I sat and looked up, up, among the arches and 
 saw the light falling through gorgeous stained windows, 
 falling down, down on the monuments of the mighty 
 dead whose memories, if not their spirits, haunt the 
 place, and music reverberated through my heart. That 
 Abbey I hope to return to, and tell you about by and by. 
 
 "We left London at 8 : 30, sped to Dover, where I 
 fancied I saw the chalk cliffs which rose before Julius 
 Caesar so long ago. We stepped aboard a nice little 
 steamer at eleven, and watched the moonlight on the 
 sea. . . . 
 
 "From Ostend I must leap over the miles to this 
 place, Veyteaux, where, worn and weary, we arrived at 
 10 p. m., the second evening from London." 
 
 "Veyteaux, Switzerland, Feb. 17, 1871. 
 
 " My Dear Young Ladies : " Sunday morning I first 
 looked out on these mountains and this lake. How 
 shall I describe them ? Before me was a chain covered 
 
246 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 with snow, glittering in exquisite silvery light. . . . 
 Below lay the soft crystal lake, to the left, other 
 mountains, green almost from base to summit. . . . 
 This range continues around our pension, with oc- 
 casional gorges through which we see other snow- 
 clad mountains. . . . The light upon the mountains 
 changes from silvery white to grey and golden purple. 
 A speck of an island is before me in the lake, and 
 nearer, the gloomy, yet beautiful castle of Chillon. 
 Vines cover the hillsides, and winding paths take you 
 in all directions. Cottages and more pretentious houses 
 are scattered at intervals to the very top of the mount- 
 ains that are green ; villages, smaller or larger, are 
 scattered all along the margin of the lake, and among 
 the openings in the mountains. 
 
 "Later: We have been first to the Castle. ... I 
 will not tax you or myself with writing my thoughts 
 and feelings as I stood in those gloomy dungeons, and 
 as to the history of the castle, I think you can find it 
 in some Encyclopedia. We walked on, thankful for 
 our better days. The lake was on one side of us, and 
 terraced vineyards, up, up the heights on the other. 
 An opening in the mountains showed us another snowy 
 one, and the light from behind the mist which rested 
 on the mountains lighted up the craggy heights of the 
 far-away, snow-capped Alps. We sat on a stone by the 
 wayside and gazed in wondering delight, and then 
 walked on, past running streams coming down from the 
 mountains, making charming little waterfalls. On we 
 went, to the quaint old town of Villeneuve, . . . and 
 returned by the Hotel Byron, a charming place over- 
 looking the lake." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 247 
 
 " Feb. 21, 1871. 
 
 "A French gentleman who came from Paris two 
 days ago says they must make peace, — they have no 
 army, no power to go on. . . . 
 
 "We all propose to set out for the old city, the 
 grand, the Holy City of Rome, next Tuesday, stop the 
 first night at. Chambery, then over Mount Cenis to 
 Turin, then to Genoa, where we propose to stop a day, 
 and then on to Rome." 
 
 "Genoa, Italy, March 3, 1871. 
 
 "Tuesday morning we took the train at seven for 
 Geneva, — mountains all the way, Alps on Alps. 
 
 The lake retains all its beauty at Geneva, and the 
 city shows to very fine advantage from it. . . . Much 
 of the city is modern and handsomely built, but there 
 are very quaint old parts. We rode through narrow 
 and through wider streets, — one I noticed, marked 
 Rue des Philosophes, and I thought of Calvin, and 
 Rousseau, and many more famous men who have lived 
 here. . . . 
 
 "Poor France! Humbled, sore, rent, and riven, 
 and with no fully established government ! When, how 
 can she rise from this crushing fall ? What a lesson is 
 she giving to the world ! Surely they that take the 
 sword shall perish by the sword. Oh ! my far-away 
 children, I pray you to learn the lessons set before you 
 in life, and make your lives blessings to yourselves and 
 others. 
 
 "Sunday, March 5: I cannot tell you in this about 
 our fearfully grand ride over Mt. Cenis, nor our journey 
 thence to this wonderful old city of Genoa. . . . 
 
248 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "We propose to take a steamer for Leghorn to-mor- 
 row evening, thence by rail to Rome, which we hope to 
 reach the following evening." 
 
 " March io, 1871. 
 
 " I left off with « Oh ! Oh ! ' which I feel inclined to 
 repeat as I think of that magnificent Rhone valley. 
 Some houses of refuge we noticed in some of the wild- 
 est places. . . . 
 
 " I wish it were in my power to describe that ride, — 
 the mountains, the chasms so grand and fearful, on 
 whose very verge we hung, then whirled along a short 
 curve and rushed up in another direction, following a 
 kind of zigzag road. How thrilling were the scene and 
 the thoughts it excited ! How daring the genius who 
 attempted the work, how patient and grand the per- 
 severance that accomplished it ! We stopped often, 
 apparently to get up steam for a steeper ascent. And 
 the mountains still rose higher and higher, yet still the 
 villages were scattered about, and men, women, chil- 
 dren, and donkeys lived in them. The track of wagons 
 wound along on ledges wide enough for only one 
 wagon, on the edge of the most fearful precipices. Still 
 we go up, up. The twilight and the shadows come, 
 but then the moon rises to cast a strange, weird light 
 over the scene. . . . 
 
 "At last the mountains seemed to disappear, and a 
 sea of glittering ice was around us. It was grand and 
 awful — that scene — the thought of where we were, the 
 wide waste of snow, the solitude, the dim, silvery light, 
 the puffing engine so in contrast with the stern, uncon- 
 quered, unconquerable nature. 
 
 "There rose to my imagination dim visions of strug- 
 
THE LITE WORK. 249 
 
 gles between mighty giants, — one at the center of the 
 earth, holding all things with an iron grasp down, — 
 another, lighter than air, resisting the giant at the cen- 
 ter, resolving to lift burdens up these lofty heights, and 
 the fight between the giants pictured itself dimly before 
 me. 
 
 "Aswe passed up, finding human habitations all the 
 way, my wonder grew. I remembered the days of tyr- 
 anny and persecution, when men were hunted like wild 
 beasts, and I comprehended how these wilds were ex- 
 plored. Virtue, fleeing from injustice, and crime flee- 
 ing from justice have alike opened the wild places of 
 the earth and been pioneers for those who came after. 
 And so, good has come out of evil, the wrath of men 
 has revealed the wonders of God's creation, and led to 
 the union of peoples separated by what seemed to be 
 impassible barriers. 
 
 ". . . Daylight soon came, and with it sunny Italy 
 broke upon us. I cannot tell you the contrast between 
 this ride and that of the day before. The mountains 
 fade in the distance, and soft, graceful plains spread 
 before us. The people,' the buildings, all things 
 change. . . . 
 
 "Turin and its surroundings impressed us as ex- 
 tremely beautiful. . . . And now the Appennines ap- 
 pear, and the climate changes again, grows snowy and 
 chilly. At length we emerge from among rocks and 
 tunnels, in Genoa, the strangest, quaintest, oldest look- 
 ing city that we have seen. 
 
 "The churches are wonderful, — most precious mar- 
 bles everywhere, — crowded with statues of saints and 
 angels and covered, ceilings and all, with splendid 
 
250 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 paintings, till one tires of gazing, and wonders where 
 the treasure ever came from to pay the cost. Then 
 there rise to me visions of oppressed down-trodden 
 millions out of whom it was ground. Oh, children, be 
 thankful for the broad lands your Father in Heaven has 
 bequeathed you, and for freedom, and let us try every 
 day to understand the true freedom better, and true 
 beauty and riches. . . . 
 
 "Old Genoa is a dream of the far past, to remain 
 with me as long as I live. . . . 
 
 "One thing which delighted me most of all I think I 
 have not mentioned. It was a magnificent monument 
 of Christopher Columbus. I will send you a photo- 
 graph of it. There are many memorials of Columbus 
 about the city. 
 
 "At nine p. m. we sailed out of the fine harbor of 
 Genoa by the light of the full moon, between the light- 
 houses which have guided mariners for so many ages. 
 I wish you could have seen the lighted, semi-circular 
 city, rising for hundreds of feet above the level of the 
 sea, gradually fading from our sight." 
 
 "Rome, March 14, 1871. 
 "(The Hereditary Prince's Birthday.) 
 "My Dear Friends and Children of the House- 
 hold : I have for weeks wanted to say a word to you in 
 your separate capacity. Often at night I find myself 
 something like a quiet homesick child who finds a heart- 
 ache within and the tears ready to come, yet hardly 
 knows why. You meet at table, at study hour, you tap 
 at each others' doors, and at the evening hour you meet 
 and sing the hymns I love so well, but see me not in 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 251 
 
 my accustomed place. I trust you realize some spirit- 
 ual presence, for my heart is with you, and every sight 
 I see and every sound I hear is for you as well as me. 
 
 " We are in Rome, like Paul of old, in our own hired 
 house. Our rooms overlook the Piazza di Spagna. . . . 
 Save our lack of language we are very comfortable now, 
 
 — a family by. ourselves. Our Italian maid speaks a 
 little English. . . . This gala-day she has hung flags 
 out of all the windows, and has been teaching me to 
 say, 'Viva Victor Emanuel /' I said 'No ! I shall cry, 
 < < Viva liberie ' a" Italie. "' < No ! No ! ' she said, < Viva /' 
 Italia libre. . . .' 
 
 " You can hardly imagine how bright our square and 
 the streets are with the tri-colored flag of Italy, — red, 
 white and green, with a cross and crown in the center, 
 
 — hanging out of all houses in each story, and there are 
 red banners, edged with silver or gold. The streets are 
 full of people and carriages, and an occasional laden 
 donkey. . . . 
 
 "It is springtime here. Oranges and lemons are 
 hanging ripe on the trees, cacti are growing in the open 
 air to the height of twenty feet or more, palm-trees, 
 and tropical plants, too numerous to mention if I knew 
 their names. By the time this reaches you, you will 
 begin to think of spring. I hope our vines will not be 
 forgotten nor neglected, and that some flowers will 
 bloom before our house, and especially in all our 
 hearts. You have not the climate of Italy, but your 
 land is the land of hope and progress for all that. 
 
 "And now, to one and all of you I stretch out my 
 hand in loving greeting. At bed-time I shall come to 
 bid you good-night. In the morning I shall be there 
 
252 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 to greet you, and at evening to ask a blessing upon 
 you. . . . 
 
 " The festal preparations still go on. If you could 
 only come, we would spare you two of our windows 
 and you could see these sights. . . . But my dear ab- 
 sent friends, there are better things than this, and pray- 
 ing for you the better things, believe me, always, 
 
 " Your loving friend, 
 
 "M. M." 
 
 "Rome, April 6, 187 1. 
 
 ". . . My first view of St. Peter's and my second 
 one were very painful. Its gorgeousness obtruded itself 
 upon me most. The lofty arched ceiling and domes are 
 nearly covered with gilding, and the effect, to me, is 
 neither beautiful nor dignified. ... It is difficult, for 
 us probably impossible, to realize its vast size and 
 height. The whole seemed to me a grand display of 
 pomp and power. . . . 
 
 "There is a statue of Christ, wonderful in majestic 
 serenity and love, at sight of which one remembers that 
 His kingdom is not of this world. He pronounced the 
 meek, the poor in spirit, the mourner, the pure in heart, 
 the persecuted for righteousness' sake, — not the proud, 
 the splendid, the rich, — to be blessed. . . . 
 
 "What a mingling of splendor and superstition is St. 
 Peter's. There seems to me the utmost violence done 
 to good sense and taste. . . . 
 
 " In these churches what impresses me as most ad- 
 mirable is that the poorest and meanest seem quite at 
 home in them. . . . 
 
 " We went yesterday (Holy Wednesday) to the Church 
 
THE LIFE IVOR A'. 253 
 
 of St. John Lateran. . . . You have heard of the 
 Sacred Stairs. . . . Two fine statues at the foot of 
 the stairs impressed me very much. . . . We stood 
 and watched the scene. ... A mother, with a son 
 about seventeen and a daughter of seven or eight, came 
 in and knelt down and began the ascent. I watched 
 with much interest. The little girl bowed her head to 
 the steps and kissed them again and again, and the young 
 man too. Slowly saying their prayers they went their 
 painful way, and I tried to enter into their conscious- 
 ness. They believed these were the real stairs up which 
 on this day Christ, the Holy One, went to suffer for us, 
 and now they, in love and hope and humility, would 
 follow, expressing that love by kissing the ground 
 on which he trod, that humility by going on bended 
 knee, and their longing desire for the benefit of his suf- 
 fering by lingering on those steps of humiliation to 
 Him. I could have knelt and gone up myself, and I 
 am glad of the vision which helped me to a charitable 
 view of what seems to us a superstitious observance. . . . 
 
 " Westminster Abbey was to me grand, awe-inspir- 
 ing, — these churches are gorgeous, rich, filling the ob- 
 server with admiration at the treasures of art in them, 
 and with sorrow and mortification before the emblems 
 and services of superstition. 
 
 "Now I want to take you back to old Rome again. 
 Last evening we went to see the Colosseum by moon- 
 light. The sky was without a cloud. We rode past the 
 ruins of the Forum and the Palace of the Caesars, past 
 columns and arches. How weird and grand they 
 looked in the moonlight ! How noble and beautiful 
 this grand old monument of ancient times, — the de- 
 
254 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 facements not visible by the dimmer light, the beauty 
 and picturesqueness more impressive. 
 
 "We climbed up many stairs. . . . The sight when 
 we reached the highest platform was grand beyond all 
 description. The size and grandeur of the building 
 were, in some good degree, apparent now. 
 
 "Where are the men who built it, and those who re- 
 joiced in its bloody pleasures? Echo only answers 
 'Where?' It stands a type of pride and power, of 
 human skill and human hate. Over it now broods 
 silence and decay, but also God's canopy of blue, and 
 that beautiful moon which shines the same as in other 
 days when all was wild commotion here. . . . 
 
 " O my children ! I wish it were in my power to give 
 you any adequate picture of that glorious scene, and of 
 the thought and feeling it should excite, but you have 
 imaginations, and the best part of the scene is with you 
 every full moon. 
 
 "Look at a picture of the Colosseum, try to appre- 
 ciate its size and then its history, and imagine your- 
 selves on one of its highest tiers of seats, with your sky 
 over you and your moon the same as this shining upon 
 us, and see the lights and shades, the circling seats 
 crowded with eager faces, the troubled scene below ; 
 listen to the shrieks of the victims, the roar of wild 
 beasts, and the mad cries of the excited thousands 
 above, and then let your thoughts pass down the ages 
 to the time when the cross took possession of this place 
 of persecution ; — pass on to the present, when it stands 
 in majestic silence under that soft light falling on 
 Crumbling arch and tower, pouring a flood of silver 
 light through arches and over broken moss-grown walls, 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 255 
 
 lighting up the cross and the chapels still there, and re- 
 member that beyond lies the city with other ruins, and 
 its palaces and temples, and still beyond, fading away 
 in the distance, the Roman Campagna filled with ruins 
 of temples and palaces, aqueducts and tombs. 
 
 ^Evening: I have been again to St. Peter's, and I 
 do not like what I have written of it. The impression 
 it makes upon me remains much the same, but the 
 church impresses me more as grand every time I see it. 
 
 . . Hundreds of people were there to-day. ... I 
 fell into the spirit of the scene in some small degree, 
 and hoped a blessing might come from Him who hear- 
 
 eth prayer." 
 
 " Rome, April n, 1871. 
 
 " (This letter is for the girls and children ; you may 
 let the older ones hear it) 
 
 << My Dear Children : Your two packages of letters 
 came yesterday just as E. and I were going out to see 
 the Mamertine prison, which (if you do n't know) dates 
 away back to the time of Tarquinius Priscus, almost 
 2500 years ago. I had a very nice time reading your 
 letters, I assure you, though' I had to put on my glasses 
 for some of them. 
 
 "Altogether they were very nice notes, and I am 
 much obliged to the writers for them. One girl sent 
 over the ocean all the way to Italy 'wright' for 'right.' 
 That was a pity, was n't it ? . . . I hope the W. B. 
 G. G. Society will do all it promises, especially for the 
 little girl who says she is not 'so awful bad as she 
 was,' and for the other one who is growing better be- 
 cause she has begun < to-day by not whispering.' 
 
 "Old Rome, you know, was heathen, worshiping 
 
256 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, and a host of fanciful beings. 
 Old Rome persecuted and massacred the Christians by 
 thousands. Then the power in Rome became Chris- 
 tian, and Rome became the Capital of the Christian 
 world, its bishop the supreme ruler of the Roman terri- 
 tory, and the head of the Church in all Christendom. 
 It was suitable then and grand to indicate here in this 
 state .ruled by priests that they, having been able by 
 Christ's power to take all from heathen Rome, gave all 
 to Him. Everywhere you are reminded of the Rome 
 of the Caesars, but still more that that has passed away, 
 and that He who was despised and crucified by the 
 authority of these same Caesars, now rules over all, and 
 Rome, as you know, has come to be called the Holy 
 City. . . . 
 
 " However, this city does not seem holy to me, but 
 very unholy. The good and evil are fearfully mingled 
 here, and the power of the church seems to be falling. 
 
 "The pope no longer rules Rome. . . . The king is 
 to make this city his capital and remove his court here 
 in June, and great changes may be coming. 
 
 " We went yesterday to the Appian Way. . . . From 
 the Baths of Caracalla ... we looked back from the 
 high walls to Rome, which now you must do. There 
 it lay with its domes and towers, its arches and obelisks 
 and ruins, and its seven hills, — grand, brave, devout, 
 mean, cowardly, infidel Rome, — the Sphinx, telling 
 riddles to all the world, but neither the world nor my 
 little girls have guessed them yet. If you do not know 
 about the Sphinx and the riddles, you must find out, 
 for I cannot afford time to tell you. The W. B. G. G. 
 Society can investigate the subject. . . . 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 257 
 
 "Perhaps you would like to enquire how my favor 
 ites, the donkeys, are getting on. They are not quite 
 so nice and interesting, nor so many, as in Genoa, but 
 I see the poor patient little things laden with straw, 
 wood, bags, men, tubs and baskets, — or drawing big 
 carts or funny little ones, with two or three large men 
 in them, or a load of goods. I want to cry, Shame on 
 you / and go and pet the donkeys and give them some- 
 thing to eat." 
 
 To Mrs. O. H. W. : — 
 
 "As yet, nothing interests me like Italy; there, 
 Rome most of all. Tell Mr. W. it is the place to exer- 
 cise the imagination. It holds me fast, stirs me, asks 
 me endless questions, sings vague, dim songs in my ears. 
 It sets all history, and man in his double nature of ma- 
 terial and spiritual, of angel and demon, before you as 
 no other place can, I think, . . . 
 
 11 I have hope for Italy that she will do in the future 
 at least as well as other nations. Would that under her 
 beautiful skies, amid the graceful vines and flowers, with 
 the thrilling past everywhere speaking to her, she might 
 do better, and show us what men and nations ought to 
 be, as she has shown us what they ought not to be. I 
 hope you will come here as a family, and that you will 
 not let anything interfere with your all getting the po- 
 etry and the moral lesson of grand, wicked, brave, im- 
 becile, devout, frivolous, beautiful, deformed old 
 Rome." 
 
 In soliloquy, Miss Mortimer wrote after her re- 
 turn to America : — 
 
 18 
 
258 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Some wanderings up and down the older world 
 than ours, especially a sojourn of two months in Rome, 
 have so stirred me that I wish to speak of it. The in- 
 describable contrast offered by all I saw as compared 
 with what I had seen, seized on my imagination, op- 
 pressed me with vague, mysterious yearnings. I wan- 
 dered up and down its streets, went into its churches 
 and galleries, gazed upon its monuments and ruins. I 
 am not artistic, — could not properly appreciate the 
 wonderful art of the old city, but there came to me a 
 dim and indistinct feeling, rather than an intellectual 
 perception, that something which I must find was hid- 
 den under all this that appeared, and one day as I 
 mused, the old Sphinx story came to me as a sort of 
 revelation. I saw the old Theban Sphinx, sitting on 
 the highest of the seven hills, at her old business of 
 propounding riddles and crushing those who cannot or 
 will not answer. And the Sphinx seized me, thrilled 
 me, startled me with questions I was in no condition to 
 answer. Rome, with its wondrous monuments, its still 
 more wondrous ruins, every hour grew more impress- 
 ive, more mysterious. I could not think, — I could 
 only feel, and dream vague dreams, but the Sphinx 
 would not leave me. Before fountains presided over 
 by Greek gods, beside Roman arches surmounted by 
 the cross and inscribed Pontifex Max., the Sphinx held 
 the traveler fast and shrieked in her ear, What is 
 this ? " 
 
 "Florence, April 30, 187 1. 
 
 "I thought I would write a little about Florence to- 
 day, but Rome clings to me. I wish I could return 
 there to-morrow. It lingers in my heart and memory, a 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 259 
 
 dream, dim, dirty, priest-ridden, beggarly, yet inde- 
 scribably fascinating,— a myth, a poem. 
 "I cannot bear to say good-by to Rome ! " 
 
 "May 12. 
 "I have already said Florence is beautiful. We were 
 more than ever impressed with this yesterday when we 
 went into the royal gardens, and viewed the city and 
 surrounding country. . . . These gardens must be hun- 
 dreds of acres in extent. There are lofty heights and 
 deep valleys, open spaces and secluded nooks, and the 
 wildest, darkest, most secret forests, hedges of roses, 
 and a great variety of flowers, beautiful and magnificent 
 trees in endless variety, and much and expressive stat- 
 uary. . . . 
 
 "We went on, far up, sometimes by winding paths, 
 sometimes by steps, and came to such beautiful out- 
 looks ! Florence with its domes and towers and pal- 
 aces, and the Arno, lay below, and around on the 
 heights, lovely villas, and beyond, and higher still, the 
 beautiful mountains under the softest and deepest blue 
 haze,— over all, the most- exquisite sky, blue, with 
 bright fleecy clouds. 
 
 " The sky is so beautiful everywhere that I ever lived! 
 I cannot see that it is much more so here, but I think it 
 is, — a little." 
 
 "My Dear Pupils : ... My last date to you was 
 June 3, from Florence, and now I must write Aug. 21, 
 in London. Shall I give you a little sketch of the in- 
 tervening time ? Not many days after my last letter, 
 Miss Carrie, Nellie, and I took the train late one even- 
 ing for Venice. It was a gala day in Florence, and 
 
260 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 there was a splendid illumination. The Gothic roof of 
 the great Cathedral shone with innumerable lights. It 
 was a glorious sight, but the cars soon took us from it, 
 and we sped on through tunnels and villages and cities, 
 to that romantic one of which you have all dreamed. I 
 cannot stop now to tell you of its gondolas, its gorgeous 
 palaces and churches, its glittering spires and columns, 
 its wonderful square of St. Mark, its Rialto bridge, or 
 its ' Bridge of Sighs ' ; its prisons or its pictures, or our 
 charming sails, but I will say we enjoyed Venice ex- 
 ceedingly. Next to Rome, it was to me the most inter- 
 esting place I have seen. . . . 
 
 "We had stayed longer in Florence than we intended, 
 and so felt obliged to hasten from Venice, ten days 
 after we arrived. A beautiful, yet sad night it was when 
 we went and took our last look at the brilliant square, 
 and then, accompanied by Miss H. and S., went on 
 board the steamer bound for Trieste. Leaving Venice 
 was leaving so much, not only itself, with all its present 
 interest, and its past, but for us, it was leaving Italy 
 and our friends, and going forth to a strange land, with 
 our tongues tied and our ears stopped. . . . Our sail, 
 however, was quite charming. We reached Vienna 
 without any serious difficulty. ... It is, you know, a 
 large, grand city. It abounds in beautiful parks and 
 gardens, of which I have brought away very pleasant 
 memories, especially of the gardens of Maria Theresa, 
 a little out of the city, and also of the beautiful spire of 
 St. Stephens, and of its cheerful, social people. . . . 
 
 "From Munich we passed on through Augsburg and 
 Ulm to Stuttgardt. Here Miss W., whom some of you 
 will remember, joined us, and persuaded me to go back 
 
THF LIFE WORK. 261 
 
 to Munich and thence to Oberammergau to see the 
 1 Passion Play.' . . . 
 
 " On to Heidelberg, and then, through Mannheim and 
 Darmstadt to Mayence, . . . where we were soon aboard 
 the Rhine steamer. I do not think the river and its 
 banks any more beautiful by nature than our own Hud- 
 son, but when you take into account art and history, it 
 is quite another thing. Its hill-tops are surmounted by 
 ancient ruins, its banks are lined with historic old 
 towns, and the valleys among its mountains are full of 
 romantic interest. At ten in the evening we reached 
 Cologne. . . . 
 
 " Our first interest after breakfast was the Cathedral, 
 the wonderful, the beautiful Cathedral, — by far the 
 most so to me of any that I have seen. One might 
 very well be excused for shedding tears of rapture, 
 while sitting under its glorious arches and listening to 
 the reverberations of its grand organ. After the Cathe- 
 dral, I could feel no further interest in Cologne. At 
 three we left for Aix-la-Chapelle, . . . where we went 
 to the old church of Charlemagne which, though not so 
 beautiful, interested me, even more than the church of 
 Cologne, on account of its historical remains. . . . 
 The priests were at the altar, in a new part, gorgeous 
 with painted windows, and above was a fine organ well 
 played. I stood and listened, leaning against one of 
 those old pillars, and the spirit of the past came down 
 upon me. A thousand years ago Charlemagne built 
 this church, and here he and his mailed knights as- 
 sembled to worship the same God and Saviour whom 
 we worship, and ever since prayers have been uttered 
 and songs of praise chanted here. Here the great 
 
262 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Emperor was buried, clad in armor studded with gold 
 and jewels, seated on a stone chair or throne covered 
 with plates of gold, and with a crown of gold on his 
 head. In 1165, this throne was taken from the vault, 
 and the emperors of Germany have been crowned upon 
 it from that day to the present century. . . . 
 
 "Brussels is sometimes described as a small Paris, 
 and as we decided not to visit the latter city [devastated 
 by the war and the commune] we were a little the more 
 anxious to come to Brussels. Some of the churches 
 there are quite gorgeous, especially with beautiful win- 
 dows, but they scarcely interested me so much as the 
 square where Egmont and Home were executed in 1568 
 by order of Alva, the cruel governor of Philip II. of 
 Spain. On the spot where this crime was committed, 
 in front of the Maison du Roi and opposite the Hotel de 
 Ville, one of the finest public buildings in Europe, now 
 stands, a noble monument to these martyrs to their 
 country. [Since removed to the Petit Sablon. — Ed.] 
 I stood beside it, and walked twice around the grand 
 old square, amid the busy throng, trying to catch the 
 spirit of that past when tyranny and freedom had their 
 deadly strife. . . . 
 
 "We took the train there for Antwerp, of which I 
 shall not write now, remained there two days, and then 
 took a steamer for this largest and richest city of the 
 world." 
 
 To M. B. N. : — 
 
 " Stuttgardt, July 15, 1871. 
 
 ". . . I wish I could tell you in intelligible terms 
 what interests me most. The old Sphinx and Rome 
 have become strangely commingled and they haunt me. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 263 
 
 Nothing thoroughly interests me since Rome. It holds 
 all that other places have and more, and much more im- 
 pressively. Imperial Rome and papal Rome stand 
 there together, alike in their vital spirit, but very unlike 
 in their outer manifestation. Power, grandeur, self- 
 gratification, they both sought and gained, but papal 
 Rome held a deeper truth than the other, and every- 
 where worked on man through his religious nature. 
 
 " It seems to me a new and most impressive book 
 may be written on the ' Evidences of Christianity found 
 in Rome.' Honest men who had been more divinely 
 taught than by the Theban Sphinx first told the story of 
 the Crucified, of divine and saintly love and suffer- 
 ing, but the Alexanders, and Julius and the Leos, — 
 men who cared only for what the old Caesars sought, — 
 continued to have that story told, spent millions to 
 have it told ! What cared the Roman princes and po- 
 tentates for Him who died for them, for saints and 
 martyrs whose lives were a constant reproach to them ! 
 But a divine instinct forced them to perpetuate the truth. 
 They knew that man could be satisfied and governed 
 through his religious nature as through nothing else. 
 How could this be, only as it is his deepest and truest 
 nature ? 
 
 "St. Peter's, a gorgeous temple built to manifest the 
 pomp and power of papal Rome, stands to-day, it seems 
 to me, its true type. The Crucified and the cross meet 
 you on every side, and that type of gentle, beautiful 
 womanhood, the Virgin Mother, and saints and mar- 
 tyrs; but their spirit is not the spirit of the place; rather 
 the marble and gold and precious stones, the crowns 
 and keys and thrones and popes in priestly panoply. 
 
 "The Colosseum with its thrilling exhibition of intel- 
 
264 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 lectual as well as material power . . . speaks of imperial 
 Rome, and hundreds of acres of ruined palaces, trium- 
 phal columns and arches, testify to the power and grand- 
 eur of that nation which was conquered by Christianity, 
 — and even false and cruel men found this to be the most 
 powerful Name in which to hold Rome and go forth to 
 fresh conquests. 
 
 "I cannot tell you how it impresses me, and most of 
 all that Rome, through all the ages having answered the 
 Sphinx-riddle of life by declaring power and self-grati- 
 fication to be its end and aim, has proved in the most 
 fearful agonies and destructions, the utter falsity of the 
 answer. 
 
 "Yet all the nations, regardless of the lesson that 
 Rome is shouting in their dull ears, give the same an- 
 swer to-day, and the churches, alas ! too nearly agree 
 with the nations." 
 
 "Oberammergau, July 29, 187 1. 
 "... I wish I could tell you what a ride we had, 
 how glorious the mountains were, what a nice talk I 
 had with the English ladies about England, how good 
 and honest our driver was ! At length ... a cone- 
 shaped rock rose before us above the surrounding 
 mountains, and the driver soon pointed around it and 
 said, ' There is Oberammergau.' 
 
 "It was a rest to one's spirit to be in this simple vil- 
 lage where everybody seemed to be honest, and to 
 be unconcerned about the conventionalities of this 
 world. . . . 
 
 "Once in ten years the Play is given every Sunday 
 through the summer, and it has been kept up for two 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 205 
 
 hundred years. ... It is very wonderful, considering 
 that it is all managed and performed by simple villagers. 
 The characters are very finely maintained, many of 
 them, the Christ most of all, and the scene of the cru- 
 cifixion is fearfully real. 
 
 " Our host was one of the Roman soldiers, and the 
 next house where we took our dinners, furnished Pilate, 
 John, Mary the Mother, and one of the principal sing- 
 ers, yet so quiet are they that the evening before, the 
 Mary and the singer went with us to a Tyrolean con- 
 cert. . . . 
 
 " They go through the performance as a religious serv- 
 ice. It did not excite me so much as I expected. The 
 simplicity and sincerity of the people saved the exhibi- 
 tion from being repulsive, . . . but the exhibition did 
 not move me so much as the story does without the 
 exhibition." 
 
 " London. — British and S. Kensington Museums. 
 
 " Policemen and others guard these treasures but 
 place no hindrance in the way of men, women, and chil- 
 dren going anywhere and everywhere, free of charge. 
 King George IV., of whom f do not remember to have 
 heard any good before, gave a large and valuable li- 
 brary to the Museum. I was glad to know it, though 
 perhaps it was no great sacrifice to him. There, that 
 suspicion is mean ! Let us rejoice in any good we see 
 in any one, and give full credit for it, too." 
 
 " WINSDOR CASTLE. 
 
 ". . . Around the banqueting table were portraits 
 of many kings of England which seemed to me very 
 like the characters we learn of them in history. Charles I. 
 does not look like a true man, and his son ! 
 
266 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 " George III., from whom the American colonies re- 
 volted, looks no wiser than any American critic would 
 represent him, and his son looks the profligate dandy 
 that he was. Alas ! for royalty. It makes but a poor 
 figure when the trappings are laid aside. . . . 
 
 "st. george's chapel. 
 
 11 Saw the tomb of Princess Charlotte, the daughter of 
 George IY ? through whose early death Victoria came to 
 be Queen of England. ... I did not at first like the 
 statuary group, but it rather grew upon me. . . . The 
 church did not please us especially. It is quite large, 
 but there are only a few benches in the main body of 
 the church. Beyond, almost shut off from it, seems to 
 be the place for the court to worship, and this is very 
 rich with carving and armorial bearings, and besides 
 this, over the seats of the nobility are their banners, and 
 I was disturbed that in the House of God this poor 
 earthly rank must obtrude itself." 
 
 "Oxford, Sept. 22, 1871. 
 
 " . . . In one of the great general libraries, — 
 each college has its own besides, — I saw 65 large folio 
 volumes of catalogues ! . . . The Oxford of to-day is a 
 different Oxford from that of the days of Alfred or 
 Elizabeth, — and England is so different from what it 
 would have been had there been no Oxford ! 
 
 "This room of which I have spoken was used for 
 the sittings of Parliament during some of the troublous 
 times in English history. Now it is a hall for examina- 
 tions, and back of it is the room where the officers 
 of the College meet to do business, and to confer di- 
 plomas on the students. At one end, under a canopy 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 267 
 
 and on a raised platform, the Chancellor is seated and 
 below him the Vice Chancellor and the Proctors. The 
 candidates for degrees wait in a room beyond till called 
 for, when they pass in one by one to the Chancellor. 
 There is no one great day of conferring degrees, but 
 several times each term degrees are conferred upon 
 those who can pass the required examinations. 
 
 "We visited a very pleasant and intelligent family in 
 York, and a lad of eighteen, who is preparing for the 
 University perhaps, asked me if girls studied Algebra 
 in America. When I answered, they do, he wanted to 
 know what proportion of them. He declared that vul- 
 gar fractions is the extent of a girl's ambition in Eng- 
 land, and his mother joined in the assurance that they 
 had no educated female teachers, — yet I see, even from 
 the admissions of this family as well as many other 
 signs, that all this is passing away. Schools for girls 
 are taking a higher stand, and women are waking up to 
 their own necessities and capacities. We visited a 
 public school which interested me much. The gentle- 
 man at its head is evidently a fine teacher and has his 
 heart in his work. His boys recited Mental Arithmetic 
 with great fluency, but in other things I thought did 
 not excel our girls. 
 
 "YORK CATHEDRAL. 
 
 "We will walk down the nave to the grand entrance 
 and view from there the whole length of the Cathedral. 
 It is wonderful, the grandeur and impressiveness of that 
 long series of arches. . . . Our guide took us into the 
 chapter-house, which is high and large and grand, and 
 ornamented with carved leaves. He said he believed 
 all English leaves were represented there, and we walked 
 
268 MARY MOR TIMER. 
 
 around the spacious room and failed to find two leaves 
 alike. 
 
 "The old workers on these cathedrals put their souls 
 into their work in a wonderful manner. . . . We take 
 a seat in view of the grand old columns and arches, as 
 the morning service begins. As the beautiful tones of 
 the organ and the well-trained choir swell up through the 
 lofty arches, we remember that this same service has 
 been chanted here, day by day, for ages, and a flood of 
 feeling comes over us. How many have sat, as we now 
 sit, and listened to these prayers and psalms and les- 
 sons, — how many have lifted up their souls in this serv- 
 ice to Him who alone is able to bestow upon us the 
 blessing we need ! Surely these prayers have been an- 
 swered, and though there has been much evil, yet not so 
 much as there would have been had these prayers not 
 been uttered. 
 
 "I visited to-day, in Edinburgh, a school of 1300 
 girls. ... It was very suggestive." 
 
 "Windermere, Oct. 19, 1871. 
 
 " My Dear Pupils : I sit down to write my last letter 
 from this side the great ocean. It is nine months 
 since I left you. . . . 
 
 "As my last letter stated, we left the beautiful and 
 interesting city of Edinburgh on Monday morning, — 
 Edinburgh, with its castle on the rock, guarded by 
 Highlanders in full Highland costume, and its palace of 
 Holyrood sacred to the memory of the unfortunate and 
 not good Queen Mary, and all its other treasures. . . . 
 We sped along toward the old city of Carlisle. . . . 
 The old Norman pillars and arches of the Cathedral 
 here are strong enough, apparently, to stand a thousand 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 269 
 
 or two thousand years more. ... We steamed off 
 again for Keswick through the misty, drizzling rain. 
 ... At the Tower Hotel we ordered tea on our arrival, 
 and it was brought into a charming room down stairs, 
 — the nicest, cosiest tea! and we ate from the most 
 delicate china by the help of the brightest silver. After 
 tea we entertained ourselves with books from the book- 
 cases, containing the finest of prints,— after which we 
 went to our luxurious beds. The next morning ... we 
 arranged to go by row-boat up the Derwentwater to the 
 falls of Lodore. . . . Soft and clear the lake lay before 
 us, clothed with islands rejoicing in the beauty of au- 
 tumn tints, and set in a frame of multiform mountains, 
 down which, here and there, rushed a silvery cascade. 
 How beautiful it was I cannot tell you ! . . . 
 
 a\v e left the boat near Lodore and passed over a lit- 
 tle bridge and soon found ourselves before the rushing, 
 roaring cataracts which Southey has described so well. 
 Returning to our pleasant hotel, we bade our 
 friends good-by, ... the coach appeared, and as be- 
 fore in Edinburgh, we mounted to the top. Away we 
 went, past the Derwentwater, past Thirlmere, past St. 
 John's Vale, and the mountains, Helvellyn, and many 
 others, past Grasmere, a beautiful lake and village 
 nestled in a charming valley, and Rydal Water, where 
 Wordsworth and Coleridge lived and dreamed and 
 wrote. A part of this scene we saw in the sunlight, 
 and really it seems to me, when we combine it with its 
 associations, the world holds few places more attract- 
 ive. But soon the clouds gathered again and the rain 
 began to fall. I pulled the cape of my cloak over my 
 head, and the apron of the coach over my lap, and 
 
270 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 concluded I would not be disturbed. Miss Thurston 
 went inside the coach and we rode on to Ambleside. 
 It seems to me the poets must have given the names 
 here', they are so musical. In less than an hour after 
 the coach left us at the station in Windermere, we were 
 comfortably settled in lodgings. After dinner we 
 passed through a winding way to an eminence which 
 overlooks this, the largest of the lakes, and all the 
 country round. The gray, leaden mist hung over all, 
 yet it was indescribably beautiful. Ah ! what pains, so 
 to speak, our Father has taken to give us joy, to elevate 
 and refine us. Surely we may never neglect the beauti- 
 ful. Study your lessons in the exact sciences, — we can 
 never overrate their importance, but do not fail to culti- 
 vate your tastes and imaginations. Admire, love, re- 
 joice in all beautiful things. . . . 
 
 "Surely if poetry were in one, these scenes would de- 
 velop it. . . . We have resolved to sail up and down 
 the lake, rain or shine, to-morrow. ..." 
 
 "Liverpool, Oct. 22. 
 
 "We sailed all around the lake from Bowness to 
 Lake Side, where we stopped a few minutes, then sailed 
 the whole length of the lake to Ambleside where we 
 landed, and rode and walked to Rydal Water, . . . went 
 into Rydal Church, and then to Rydal Mount, the home 
 for thirty-seven years of Wordsworth, of which I will 
 try to tell you at some future time. 
 
 "In two weeks I hope, through the blessing of our 
 Father, to step on our own shores, which, after all, I 
 would not exchange for any foreign land. I do not 
 think I shall wish ever again to take so long a journey, 
 though this has been, on the whole, very charming, and 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 271 
 
 has, I trust, done me good, and you, too. The rest I 
 must tell you face to face. 
 
 "I have not told you how for nearly two weeks our 
 hearts have been aching for the suffering north and 
 south of you [by fire], but now let me express the ear- 
 nest hope that you are every one studying what you 
 can do for the poor sufferers. We must not stop, — all 
 the winter we must stretch out our hands and divide our 
 little or much. I fear the sufferers by the Wisconsin 
 fires are not thought of much, because of the greatness 
 of the Chicago disaster, but Milwaukee, of course, will 
 consider them. How many of you may be mourning 
 the loss of friends or worldly goods, I hardly dare try 
 to think. . . . 
 
 " There is much beautiful sympathy manifested here. 
 A notice was given out in church this morning that a 
 collection for the Chicago sufferers would be taken up 
 next Sunday. 
 
 "That He who. loveth us with an everlasting love 
 may have us in His keeping and bring us together in 
 peace to rejoice together in His loving-kindness is the 
 prayer of 
 
 "Your very affectionate teacher and friend, 
 
 "M. M." 
 
 To her associate teachers, Miss Mortimer wrote 
 words of sympathy and suggestion from London 
 and elsewhere : — 
 
 " Of your work I need say nothing, — you appreciate 
 its magnitude, its interest, its difficulty. . . . You are 
 every one noble and true women, with earnest purposes 
 to do your work, to fulfill your life's duties well and 
 
272 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 faithfully. Life is a difficult path for us all, and a 
 teacher's life is full of trial as well as joy. We need 
 sympathy more than any words of mine can express. 
 So I beg you will meet often together, and be in affec- 
 tionate sympathy. . . . 
 
 " Do not study and be anxious all the time ; be so- 
 cial, cheerful, go out, walk, and have plenty of recrea- 
 tion and sleep. Do not try to think how much you 
 can require of the girls, — we require too much, — but 
 see that your requirements are reasonable and then 
 insist they shall be met. . . . It is a great danger, 
 especially of zealous young teachers, to over-work 
 themselves and their pupils. Science is infinite and 
 there is infinite temptation to launch out on this side 
 and that, to add more and more every year to the 
 lessons. Resist this temptation. The more you know 
 the better, if you lose not that which is more valuable, 
 as health, vigor, cheerfulness ; but you need not try to 
 make young girls know it all, — they are not equal to 
 it." 
 
 As in every large city with pupils drawn chiefly 
 from its homes, social gaiety in Milwaukee was a 
 temptation to the College students in their later 
 years of study. The College catalogues and circu- 
 lars sometimes refer to this, and Miss Mortimer's 
 kindly and earnest expostulations were to some 
 extent effectual with both mothers and pupils. 
 
 To the outgoing class of 1871 she wrote from 
 Florence : — 
 
 "My Dear Faithful and Kind Children: How 
 shall I ever requite you for all the pleasant and loving 
 
THE LIFE WORK 273 
 
 memories you will leave for me in the very walls and 
 atmosphere of the old College ? How shall I tell you 
 the sadness of the thought that I shall meet you no 
 more in the daily intercourse of my school-life, that I 
 may not even witness your departure from those halls? 
 Still more, what shall I say for my last message while 
 still the golden cord which binds us together is un- 
 broken, — and how shall I say it? 
 
 "I know it is very easy to excite your emotions in 
 these days of change and parting, very easy for you to 
 make resolutions to leave that which is weak and evil 
 behind you, and go forth to fight a noble battle, to 
 climb glorious heights. But when you shall have 
 passed the threshold of your womanhood, and school 
 and its lessons shall grow dim with distance, when the 
 cares and noise, the ambitions and allurements of this 
 world shall be upon you, then it will be so easy to for- 
 get the resolution, and you will find that the battle of 
 life is but just begun. . . . 
 
 "Your connection with school is closed with a social 
 gathering. That is a sort of link joining school to the 
 outer world for you, — a doorway from one to the 
 other. Already the temptations of the outer world will 
 be upon you ; the noble resolutions, the tearful long- 
 ings for a spiritual life, the pain of the parting will be 
 fading. Flattering attentions and youthful dreams will 
 carry you away. You cannot well help it, but, my dear 
 children, the morrow will come, a day of weary re-ac- 
 tion when some of you will long for rest and quiet, 
 when all of you, I think, will feel, more or less, in a 
 maze, and have a painful sense of responsibility in the 
 future and unfitness to meet it. 
 
 19 
 
274 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 "Then, — may I beg of you, — go alone with God, 
 who alone can fit you for life, and look to the founda- 
 tions on which you stand ; see what you have of the best 
 lessons of the past. Make a few notes with pen or 
 pencil for the sake of forcing yourselves to clearness 
 and definiteness, and, in the full consciousness that 
 school and the regular set lessons which demanded all 
 your time are gone by, that your responsible woman- 
 hood has begun, renew your best resolutions. . . . 
 
 " Almost every conscientious youth is disappointed, 
 often grievously so, with the first year after leaving 
 school. They probably are least so who go forth to 
 earnest responsible labor, and I congratulate those of 
 you who, from choice or force of circumstances, shall 
 do this. 
 
 " Some of you will have enough to task all your ener- 
 gies at home ; some will probably teach. Be grateful 
 for these helps to an earnest and useful life. . . . Oth- 
 ers society will claim. You know, perhaps better than 
 I, how young ladies thus situated spend their time and 
 energies. Alas ! for most of such, society is a weak, 
 vain round. . . . 
 
 "Others will be very industrious. But, dear children, 
 more is requisite. We must be industrious, and our 
 industry must bring forth good fruit which shall de- 
 velop and feed ourselves and those around us. You 
 will all probably find enough to do, — the question is 
 whether it will be profitable, soul-satisfying work. 
 
 "You know all the world condemn the usages and 
 principles of society, yet are usually governed by them. 
 In all earnestness I put the question to you — What will 
 you do ? 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 275 
 
 "You will feel that you cannot stem the tide and 
 stand alone, resisting fashion and extravagance. But 
 you can be the last, rather than the first, to follow a 
 bad fashion ; you can refrain from an excessive follow- 
 ing ; if your neighbor has been extravagant, you can be 
 less instead of more so. When late hours are fashion- 
 able, if you have not strength or think it not courteous 
 to go home at proper hours, you can, at least, go with 
 the first, instead of the last. 
 
 "You can rise above that weak and foolish pride 
 which incites one to do inconvenient, uncomfortable 
 and evil things, to prove that one knows the fashions of 
 society and is a fashionable and cultivated lady. 
 
 " Or if this is too much, you can give some faint in- 
 fluence to the better way, by being slow to follow evil, 
 by being in haste to follow good fashions, by giving 
 your influence to encourage those who dare to do right 
 and be sensible, in spite of fashion. 
 
 "The time hastens when a terrible sifting shall come. 
 He whose right it is to reign shall come and separate 
 those who love this world from those who love Him 
 and His truth, and many who now fancy themselves His 
 will not be accepted. . . . 
 
 " How fearful that we who have named the Name of 
 Christ . . . should so live that we cannot be distin- 
 guished from this vain and evil world, — its practices 
 we follow, its spirit guides us. How much, let us each 
 look into our own heart, and see, and seek for deliver- 
 ance. . . . 
 
 "And now I want to urge upon your affections and 
 your best efforts, the fostering mother you leave. 
 Nearly or quite one hundred children, when you depart, 
 
276 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 will she have sent forth, with such honor as she can be- 
 stow. She stands where light and help are needed ; 
 she needs help that she may impart to others. Her 
 children can give it better than any one else. They 
 will be epistles from her, by which she will be 
 judged. 
 
 "You will help us also by often coming to see us. I 
 cannot tell you how pleasant it is for us to see the old 
 faces, and you too will need this connection with the 
 past. Come and hear the old lessons for your own 
 sakes; come to gladden the hearts of your old teach- 
 ers ; come to manifest your interest in your old school- 
 mates, and in the new ones who shall come. Exert a 
 wise and powerful outside influence as you may, in our 
 behalf. 
 
 "I ask this of you for your own sakes, for that 
 of Milwaukee and the West, for the sake of woman, 
 and of education. Let our College be a tangible 
 bond of union for us, through which we will work 
 for the cause of education and the progress of 
 society. . . . 
 
 "Keep up some intellectual pursuit, each by herself, 
 and also socially, keep bright the bond which binds you 
 eleven together. . . . 
 
 "And now, dear children, good-by and good cheer 
 for the future. Be not too much lifted up with high 
 hopes if you have them ; be not too much cast down 
 if care and sorrow come upon you. 
 
 "Look up and trust. God is able, and will, out of 
 your weakness bring forth strength, out of your dark- 
 ness bring forth light, and you shall go forth, if you 
 trust Him, to win ever nobler and more blessed vie- 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 277 
 
 tories. I am happy, my dear children, to send you 
 forth, despite the sadness of parting. 
 " God bless you always, now and ever. 
 
 "Your loving and faithful friend, 
 
 "M. M." 
 
 No one was ever more staunch and uncom- 
 promising in fidelity to principles than Miss Morti- 
 mer, but she was a practical philanthropist who 
 believed that it is better to attain the best that can 
 be reached in following principle, rather than to 
 lose all by insisting on standards impossible of 
 attainment for actions which are not sinful per se ; 
 and she recognized the fact that in many things 
 society must be elevated, so to speak, by a set of 
 screws, and not hoisted by a derrick. 
 
 To the undergraduates of the school she also 
 wrote a message at this time, in which the following 
 passages occur : — 
 
 " Our life is as if we were chained to an ever moving 
 wheel. If we move along every instant, as we can and 
 should, the chain will not bruise or even press us, but if 
 we fall behind, the chain will become heavy, burden- 
 some, will press our flesh, drag us, bruise us, and if still 
 we fail to rise and hasten with energy and cheerful alac- 
 rity on our appointed course, we shall be dragged on 
 none the less, bruised, faint, and bleeding, it may be, 
 but with the wheel we must go. Would that I could 
 make you see and feel it all before any more years flee 
 past you. 
 
 "It shall be noble and blessed to go on hour by 
 
278 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 hour beside that wheel, the chain which binds you to it 
 shall become a silken cord, leading you ever to glorious 
 victory, to green pastures and beside still waters, if with 
 cheerful alacrity you keep pace with it, but if you fail, 
 then shall come weariness, wreck, and ruin. 
 
 "And now a word as to traveling. Some of you 
 seem to have grown a little excited about it of late. 
 There is a great deal of indescribable interest to see, but 
 there are many trials also, and I am more and more 
 impressed that traveling without intelligence, without 
 care and labor and study, without maturity and general 
 knowledge, without large views and firm principles, is 
 calculated to do harm rather than good. 
 
 "To be sure, we can, if we are wise enough, be gath- 
 ering all this in the act of traveling, but if we are not 
 industrious and interested to get knowledge and strength 
 at home, we shall be less likely to do so abroad. 
 A. met a young lady in Rome, who had seen almost 
 nothing of its real treasures. She bought jewelry, 
 dressed fashionably, and went to parties and balls, of all 
 which she will doubtless have much to say when she 
 returns to her native country, but she will not, I think, 
 be happier or wiser ; she will not be a better Republican, 
 nor love her country more. The best things are always 
 with us. They only are wise or good or happy who 
 open their eyes to the good things they always have, 
 and rejoice in them, instead of looking out with longing 
 discontent for that which is beyond their reach." 
 
 A circular describing a contemplated educational 
 tour to Europe in 1875, contains the following para- 
 graph from Miss Mortimer's pen : — 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 279 
 
 "Our age may justly be called the Age of Travel. 
 Traveling is certainly one of the best means of culture 
 open to us, yet from it often comes evil rather than 
 good. To guard against the evils, among which may 
 be reckoned vanity, discontent, ill-health, and contempt 
 for labor; to secure the benefits, — wiser and wider 
 views of life, grateful appreciation of our own country 
 and its institutions, knowledge of the world and its in- 
 habitants, of history and art, to cultivate the taste and 
 the imagination, the powers of observation and reason- 
 ing, and the moral faculties, will be the aim of this 
 tour." 
 
 Before Miss Mortimer's European journey, she 
 was the originator of a movement which resulted in 
 radical changes in the Board of Trustees of the 
 Milwaukee College. This was doubtless in part 
 owing to the needs of the College, and in part to 
 Miss Mortimer's conviction that women should have 
 some share in the responsibility and management of 
 an institution for the education of their own daugh- 
 ters and friends. It is only to be wondered at that 
 Miss Beecher, with all her advanced ideas on the 
 subject of education for women had not herself in- 
 augurated women in the trusteeship, at the incep- 
 tion of the enterprise. That she did not, was 
 doubtless owing in part to lack of precedent in such 
 office, and in part to the lack of business training 
 and experience in women at that time for the duties 
 of trustees. When in 1870, Miss Mortimer, in her 
 capacity as stockholder in the College, offered the 
 
280 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 names of three of the most prominent and efficient 
 ladies of Milwaukee as candidates for vacancies in 
 the Board of Trustees, they were at once elected 
 and their number was increased to five in the suc- 
 ceeding year. This movement infused new life and 
 interest, and gave rise in 1873 to an effort to pay 
 off a small indebtedness on the College property. 
 More than this, it paved the way for still greater 
 changes in the not distant future. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 WILLOW GLEN I LAST DAYS. 
 
 When Miss Mortimer had given to the College 
 her toilful and self-denying labors for many years, 
 — it was now about a quarter of a century since 
 she began her work at Milwaukee, — it became 
 evident to her that she must have relief from the 
 heavy responsibilities connected with it, which with 
 every year seemed to grow more onerous. She 
 was not unwilling, indeed she hoped, to continue 
 her work in an institution which had grown dear to 
 her by the labors, the prayers and tears which had 
 cemented, as it were, its very stones, — an institu- 
 tion in which she lived again in the person of its 
 Alumnae, many of the most gifted of whom owed 
 to her more than to all others, the richest in- 
 spiration of noble womanly lives. Miss Mortimer 
 was now in the later fifties, more affluent than 
 ever before in thought and experience, but with a 
 felt need of release from her heaviest responsibili- 
 ties if she would retain health and freshness and 
 ability to do her best work in the serene afternoon 
 of life. 
 
 A quaint and attractive estate in the northern 
 suburb of Milwaukee, retired and yet accessible, 
 
 [281] 
 
282 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 with cottage, trees, shrubbery, and river at its gar- 
 den's foot, attracted her attention, woke her Eng- 
 lish longing for country life, — if it had ever slept, 
 — and she purchased it in the autumn of 1873. 
 
 To M. B. N.: — 
 
 " Milwaukee, Jan. 18, 1874. 
 
 " I have resigned and bought a farm ! — of two acres, 
 and propose to retire to it next July. Are you glad ? I 
 am, but perhaps I may be sorry. We mortals spend 
 our lives in making and repenting of false steps and try- 
 ing to do better. Still, as yet, — and it is two months 
 or more that I have held this title deed, — I do not re- 
 pent, but rejoice moderately. 
 
 "As for the College, nothing is decided yet, and I 
 have no idea what will be. In order to get released, I 
 seemed driven to this positive step I have taken, instead 
 of holding on, hoping to arrange the future before I 
 should resign." 
 
 The following account is given in the * ' Annals of 
 Milwaukee College : " — 
 
 "But Miss Mortimer's loyalty to that college where 
 her later days were spent was unquenched. She ex- 
 hibited great interest in the choice of her successor. It 
 will be remembered that in 1857 she had known Charles 
 S. Farrar, in Elmira, N. Y. 
 
 "That Professor Farrar [then of Vassar College] 
 might make the personal acquaintance of the Trustees 
 and citizens, the Board, in March, 1874, upon the sug- 
 gestion of Miss Mortimer, invited Prof. Farrar to spend 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 283 
 
 his spring vacation in Milwaukee and deliver a brief 
 course of lectures. He accepted the invitation, and in 
 April, at the College, he discussed The Application of 
 Chemistry to the Art of Living, — a subject assigned 
 him by Miss Mortimer. While he was still in Milwau- 
 kee, the Trustees offered him the charge of the institu- 
 tion beginning with the summer of 1874. The offer 
 was accepted on condition that the property be freed 
 from all debt and placed in good repair." 
 
 "In the effort to secure the ten thousand dollars 
 deemed necessary for the absolute needs of the College, 
 Miss Mortimer was most assiduous. Her personal ef- 
 fort procured some subscriptions, her contagious en- 
 thusiasm made her friends solicitors. When at one time 
 the subscription had reached $5000 and it was feared 
 further labor was useless, the influence of this lady 
 secured $1100 each from Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Plank- 
 inton, and the task was as good as finished. 
 
 "The force of teachers was greatly changed. Prof. 
 Farrar took the classes in natural philosophy, chemis- 
 try, and astronomy. Of the faculty of 1873-4, there 
 continued only Miss Helen F. Brace, instructor in 
 geography and history, and Miss Mathilde Hsehnel, in 
 French and German." 
 
 In view of the departure of Miss Mortimer, the 
 Trustees, on June 25, 1874, entered the following 
 memorandum : — 
 
 " In view of the resignation by Miss Mary Mortimer 
 of the trust which she has so long held in connection 
 with the College, the Trustees desire to place on record 
 
284 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 their high and grateful sense of the signal ability, the 
 devoted fidelity, the lofty and singularly unselfish 
 aims which have characterized her administration. 
 They feel that Miss Mortimer can point, with a just 
 and honorable pride, to large numbers of young women 
 who have gone forth from this institution under her 
 moulding hand to adorn and bless the community in 
 which they live. In this fact Miss Mortimer's labors 
 receive their proudest recognition, and in it she will 
 find her noblest reward. The Trustees hereby tender 
 to Miss Mortimer their best wishes for her future health 
 and happiness." 
 
 Miss Mortimer's hope and expectation of continu- 
 ing in a lectureship or professorship at the College 
 was not realized, to the keen regret of herself and 
 her many friends. But " her interest in the College 
 and in the city peopled by its pupils, never abated. 
 She wrote lectures for such scholars as could listen 
 to them, devised and endeavored to promote a 
 post-graduate course, and took the initiatory and 
 successful steps toward the establishment of the 
 Woman's Club, now luxuriously resident at the 
 Athenaeum." 1 
 
 Miss Mortimer's enjoyment of her new home was 
 very great, notwithstanding she sorely missed the 
 occupation of mind and heart for her pupils which 
 nearly forty years of experience had made a part of 
 her best life. 
 
 To M. B. N. she writes from — 
 
 1 Wight's "Annals." 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 285 
 
 " Among the Pines and Willows, 
 
 " iooo Humboldt Ave., June n, 1876. 
 
 "Your very welcome letter reached me duly, and 
 should have been answered before had I supposed you 
 were going wandering so soon. But I was and am very 
 busy, besides having been in a trance of delight with 
 the country and my country home. I have been sorry 
 for myself, and for all other poor mortals who have 
 had, or now have, to live in cities, and still more sorry 
 for them if they like city life better than the country ; 
 that is, I have been sorry when I could spare a minute 
 from being glad and thankful for what was spread 
 around me. 
 
 "The freshness and fervor of my youth, and of the 
 precious Baraboo days are coming back. God be 
 praised that though man is vain and hard, nature is 
 ever the same, — full of Him and His truth, goodness 
 and beauty. Oh, Life ! how grand and beautiful it is, 
 how glorious, even this foretaste ! What shall that be- 
 yond be ? . . . " 
 
 To Mrs. O. H. W. : — 
 
 " Willow Glen, July 1. 
 
 "... I grow more and more impressed that our 
 simple life and my mingling labor of the hands and 
 head, gardening with reading and thinking, is the true 
 life." 
 
 ToM. B. N. : — 
 
 "The Pines, Humboldt Ave., Nov. 12, 1876. 
 "The pines I see from my chamber window are 
 very green, the willows are yellow, the sky is half-hid- 
 
286 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 den with a soft haze, the leaves, save the evergreen, 
 have nearly all fallen, but I can see the farther, and 
 this is charming. The river gleams brightly; the 
 winter is close at hand, and nature has made ready for 
 it, yet is she beautiful and restful, and I am thankful 
 for a home so abounding in nature. 
 
 " I am glad the Baraboo days still warm the hearts of 
 those who enjoyed them, — it is an assurance that good 
 was done there. I too have had a letter from Miss 
 
 , a very delightful one from her inner self, and she 
 
 remembers Baraboo, — says the sense of personal re- 
 sponsibility stirred there has been deepening in her 
 ever since. Her soul and life are rich, — seldom has a 
 word from any one given me such a sense of richness 
 and depth. A hero is in her, and in these troublous 
 times she may have opportunity for grand outgrowth. 
 
 "I have heard through the papers and otherwise 
 
 of H.'s settlement at Wellesley, and Miss also. 
 
 I send my congratulations, though I fancy that high 
 and beautiful place has its draw-backs like most 
 others. . . . 
 
 " I have not been to the Milwaukee College this year, 
 but intend to go. . . . An observatory is being built. 
 
 " The summer has passed with plenty to do in my gar- 
 den and among my books. . . . Mrs. M. applied to me 
 in August, while I was busy preparing some lessons on 
 the History of Art, to give a Course of Lessons on Eng- 
 lish History at her house. She invited a class, mostly 
 of my old pupils, kept us all to lunch every time, took 
 us in Director's car to Chicago Exposition, feted us, 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 287 
 
 etc., and so made a very pleasant time till near the 
 close of October, when she was to go to Philadelphia 
 and on to Florida. She told me she should wish to 
 renew the lessons on her return next summer. . . . 
 
 " Partly incited by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who has 
 been here, we have discussed the formation of a 
 Woman's Club, and have organized one, — have now 
 twenty-one members, with Mrs. M., President, several 
 Vice Presidents, and myself Secretary. 
 
 "... I drew up a basis to start on, making the 
 main point to elevate and purify our civilization, which 
 all seemed to accept cordially, and things look promis- 
 ing. A longing, again and again expressed in a discus- 
 sion at our last meeting, for light and help toward more 
 simple living, for power to make the world wiser and 
 better, gave me much hope. 
 
 11 We propose to have rooms devoted exclusively to 
 the Club." 
 
 To M. B. N.: — 
 a iooo Humbolt Ave., Milwaukee, April 8, 1877. 
 
 ". . . Your papers have interested me much, though 
 for myself I cannot yet deliver myself from the old con- 
 viction and feeling that Home Missionary work is espe- 
 cially the work for us. We have Indians and Blacks, to 
 whom we owe a great debt ; we have Mormons and Chi- 
 nese; we have the refuse of all nations, and destitute 
 western settlements. Our foreign work is crippled by 
 our want of Christian civilization at home. I do not 
 wish to hinder the foreign work, do not wish to argue 
 with those who have taken it up that they should turn 
 from it to the home work, but for myself, my convic- 
 
288 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 tions hold me here, and I pray that we may not forget, 
 any of us, the duty we owe to our own country. 
 
 " 1 long unspeakably for a higher, deeper life, for the 
 conscious presence of the Divine One. Life still rises 
 to my vision infinitely blessed and glorious, but I am 
 not living it as I wish, am not influencing others as I 
 long to do. I have kept myself tolerably busy for a re- 
 tired schoolma'am, but yet I do not feel satisfied. 
 There is so much lack of organization of strength and 
 ability in our world, that, I suppose, most of us feel we 
 go largely to waste, while the fields are white for the 
 harvest. 
 
 " I have been gone from home two months, — to De- 
 troit and St. Louis, as you heard. . . . 
 
 "Yes, I expect to remain in my 'sylvan retreat' this 
 summer, but am none the less grateful for your kind in- 
 vitation that I feel I cannot accept it. Neither my 
 time nor my purse will allow me to take so long and 
 pleasant a journey. I wish you could look in upon me, 
 and sit under my trees, and muse and talk. 
 
 "I have been reading Lord Bacon a little, with 
 much interest, and Macaulay and Thackeray, and do 
 not get very lonely in our quiet. I hope to divide the 
 summer months between gardening, a little housekeep- 
 ing, reading, and writing, besides a little outside work." 
 
 The last extract from Miss Mortimer's corre- 
 spondence shall fittingly be from a letter to one of 
 her earliest and dearest friends. It was written in 
 the early summer of 1877. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 289 
 
 To Mrs. F. C. B.: — 
 
 ". . . Since I came home, I have enjoyed the spring 
 more than I can tell. 
 
 " How restful and beautiful nature is ! I have sat 
 looking at the river and the scene beyond, and won- 
 dered what the river of Paradise and the Tree of Life 
 must be, and felt sometimes that I longed to open my 
 eyes upon that blessed scene, where there will be no 
 more misunderstandings, no more sin, and no sorrow 
 to break one's heart." 
 
 The days at this beloved home, which she had 
 now named "Willow Glen" were drawing to a 
 close. 
 
 On July 2, she wrote : " There is nothing special 
 to report from this peaceful glen," and inquired if 
 the friend to whom she addressed this message on 
 the shore of Cape Cod, would "be there in Sep- 
 tember." On the fourth of July, her valued friends, 
 the Waldo family, came. at her invitation to spend 
 the day at Willow Glen, and she was the life of the 
 party. On the sixth she was seized with an in- 
 scrutable malady which, after baffling the skill of 
 friends and physicians, was on the eighth pro- 
 nounced malignant. Thenceforward she was at- 
 tended by the loving and beloved sister who alone 
 of her mother's daughters was spared to her, and 
 by the faithful brother from Michigan who came at 
 her call. Other friends ministered, as far as they 
 might, of sympathy and help ; but the suffering of 
 
 20 
 
290 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the early days of illness soon lapsed into uncon- 
 sciousness, and she passed to higher service on the 
 fourteenth of July, 1877. 
 
 The following threnody for another grand soul, 
 written by " H. H.," fitly frames our thought of 
 her who vanished so suddenly from our mortal 
 sight. 
 
THE LIFE WORK. 291 
 
 I. 
 
 But yesterday it was. Long years ago 
 
 It seems. The world so altered looks to-day 
 That, journeying idly with my thoughts astray, 
 I gazed where rose one lofty peak of snow 
 Above grand tiers on tiers of peaks below. 
 One moment brief it shone, then sank away, 
 As swift we reached a point where foot-hills lay, 
 So near, they seemed like mountains huge to grow 
 And touch the sky. That instant, idly still, 
 
 My eye fell on a printed line, and read, 
 Incredulous, with sudden anguished thrill 
 
 The name of this great queen among the dead. 
 I raised my eyes. The dusty foot-hills near 
 Had gone. Again the snowy peak shone clear. 
 
 II. 
 
 O, thou beloved woman ! soul and heart 
 
 And life, thou standest unapproached and grand, 
 As still that glorious snowy peak doth stand. 
 
 The dusty barrier our clumsy art 
 
 In terror hath called Death, holds thee apart 
 From us. 'Tis but the low foot hills of sand 
 Which bars our vision in a mountain land. 
 
 One moment further on, and we shall start 
 
 With speechless joy to find that we have passed 
 The dusky mound which shuts us from the light 
 
 Of thy great love, still quick and warm and fast, 
 
 Of thy great strengths, heroically cast, 
 
 Of thy great soul, still glowing, pure and white, 
 Of thy great life, still pauseless, full and bright. 
 
PART III. 
 
 RETROSPECT 
 
 " Few things are so soul-cheering in the weary pil- 
 grimage of life as the knowledge, brought home to one's 
 heart, of the life and triumphs of genius and goodness." 
 
 — Mary Mortimer. 
 
 [393] 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 MISS MORTIMER AND HER WORK. 
 
 In personal appearance, Miss Mortimer was be- 
 low middle height ; inclining to plumpness which 
 never became corpulence ; with most beautiful and 
 abundant chestnut-brown hair ; gray eyes ; light 
 complexion often flushed ; and beautifully formed 
 hands. Her most noticeable physical characteristic 
 was her remarkable head, large and with extraor- 
 dinary intellectual development. No one could see 
 her, even in the most casual manner, and fail to be 
 struck by it. 
 
 "I remember the day," writes Miss Frances E. 
 Willard, ' ' when she came to our quiet farmhouse, 
 when I was about fourteen years old. She was a 
 small, plump woman with an astonishingly impres- 
 sive head, — so high, so ample, so satisfying in its 
 curves and arches." 
 
 Though without special taste in matters of dress, 
 she was neat and fastidious, always knowing what 
 she did not want, and having a keen perception of 
 the modest, unobtrusive and appropriate. 
 
 In manner she was sensitive and diffident by nat- 
 ure, and her large experience and observation of 
 the world did not suffice to endow her with that 
 
 [295] 
 
296 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ready tact in small things by means of which some 
 natures place themselves and others in happy social 
 adjustment. She had no power to give " small 
 change " in conversation ; her absolute simplicity 
 and sincerity forbade the exercise of the little con- 
 ventionalities, not always false, of society ; and, 
 among comparative strangers, her dignified pres- 
 ence, unrelieved by urbanity, was often accom- 
 panied by constraint in social intercourse. All the 
 more she appreciated the grace and benignity of 
 others. Speaking of one of her early friends and 
 associates, she once said: "I would give her a 
 thousand dollars a year, if that could be, to walk 
 once a day through my schoolroom." 
 
 With pupils and intimate friends, and certain 
 other natures not her intimates, this shadow of 
 constraint vanished, as the sunshine of Miss Morti- 
 mer's spirit, forgetful of restraints, flooded their 
 intercourse as with the light of noonday, not al- 
 ways either in syllogisms or formulae, but in quick 
 repartee and contagious mirth. 
 
 For all meanness Miss Mortimer had instinctive 
 scorn. In financial matters she was frugal, and 
 had a sense of proportion as to the real values of 
 that for which money was to be exchanged. She 
 was also just ; the nicest sense of honor dominated 
 her, and her own interest and convenience weighed 
 as nothing in the scale as against right and personal 
 obligation. 
 
RETROSPECT. 297 
 
 In a large sense she was also generous. In her 
 early years of teaching, when her salary was small 
 and her health poor, she invited a friend, also a 
 teacher, to visit her from a distance, and in her 
 letter of invitation said that as she was to ' ' share 
 in the pleasure and profit of the visit it was but 
 right that she should have the privilege of sharing 
 in the expense " and wished to enclose ten dollars 
 toward it. She was never wealthy, but all good 
 causes shared in her benefactions according to her 
 perception of their importance, and her means. Of 
 her benevolence many affecting instances might be 
 given, although she was ever careful not to let her 
 right hand know what her left was doing. 
 
 Beyond justice, beyond generosity, she was ca- 
 pable of the largest self-sacrifice. Some of her later 
 years were burdened with the debts of others which 
 she expected to spend her life-time in paying, taken 
 upon herself gratuitously that thus she might pave 
 the way for higher good. 
 
 One of the most marked features of her charac- 
 ter was her appreciation of the good in others, and 
 of service rendered to herself. This is apparent in 
 her correspondence, where the kindness and unself- 
 ishness of brothers and sisters, of friends and pupils 
 constantly call forth her overflowing gratitude. 
 The quiet nooks and interstices of daily life also 
 witnessed many a quivering tone, a grateful sen- 
 tence, a thrilling kiss, a magnetic handclasp, the of- 
 
298 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ferings of her heart for little services rendered and 
 for manifested love. An act of heroism, of broad 
 Christian charity, or a sincere expression of noble 
 sentiments by others always called forth her warm- 
 est admiration, and would sometimes affect her 
 to tears. 
 
 With a vision clear and far-sighted, she could 
 not be blind to human sin and frailty, yet she was 
 an optimist, looking for and discerning good, not 
 only in its smallest manifestations, but even 
 through the evil and the failure, out of which she 
 was ever looking to see the good brought forth. 
 
 Over whatever was faulty in herself she desired 
 to spread no cloak. " You know that I am not a 
 patient person," she would say to her associates 
 sometimes, thus formulating for them what per- 
 chance long and intimate intercourse might not 
 have made distinctly a fault to their consciousness. 
 Whenever she conceived herself to have departed 
 from her high standard of honor or justice in her 
 relations toward others, she was prompt to acknowl- 
 edge it, without the slightest self-justification or 
 palliation. This scorn of what was base extended 
 to motive as well as act, and forbade alike self-ex- 
 tenuation, and false accusation or unwarranted sus- 
 picion of others. 
 
 Her ardent emotional nature led her through 
 heights of joy and depths of suffering which often 
 shook her like a tempest, but she was not demon- 
 strative. Those who shared her interest and felt 
 
RETROSPECT. 299 
 
 the throbs of her great nature in her prayers and 
 instructions can never lose the dynamic power thus 
 imparted to their own lives through the subtle law 
 of sympathy, but few, perhaps none, even of her 
 near friends and most loyal pupils, ever knew the 
 depths of that heart or measured its capacity. 
 
 Constantly, in talks to her pupils, would the 
 light of her gray eyes vail itself and her face flush 
 with feeling, as emotion flashed from heart to brain. 
 Often in prayer would her low tones quiver until 
 the whole atmosphere was charged with electric 
 influence. Sometimes, though rarely, her voice 
 would choke with unshed tears, followed by silence 
 that could be felt until associate or friend took up 
 the unspoken petition and finished the prayer. 
 Few of her most intimate friends ever saw her 
 weep. The beautiful hand shading the eyes or 
 magnetizing the unquiet brain as it supported the 
 brow, or the deep tones of feeling in her voice were 
 the chief evidences of emotion in her most sacred 
 moments. God's angels came to her ' ' with silence 
 as their benediction." Her earliest years were sur- 
 rounded by Methodist influence, but her birth- 
 right would have made her a Quaker. " I do not 
 know as I am a very good Presbyterian," she would 
 say to her pastor, ' ' but I am certainly not a good 
 any-thing-else. " 
 
 Her deep, emotional nature eminently fitted her 
 for sympathy, both in joy and sorrow, evidences of 
 which abound in letters too personal for publica- 
 
300 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 tion. All whose emotions were deeply stirred were 
 drawn to her. The young found in her a friend 
 ever young. No one, it seemed, ever listened to 
 tales of joy and sorrow as did she. Love stories 
 were a perennial delight to her, if only the love 
 were real and noble ; and she was ever the confi- 
 dante of her friends and pupils. 
 
 A friend who shared her inmost love for many 
 years, summing up in one sentence the most power- 
 ful impression received in that long companionship, 
 says : * ' In power of expressing affection Miss Mor- 
 timer was wonderful and unapproached." 
 
 Her friendships were many and enduring. No 
 length of time nor distance, nor estrangement even, 
 could blind her to the best qualities of those whom 
 she had once loved. This was because she saw so 
 truly the good, the beautiful in each, and loved it 
 for itself, with devotion that was in its nature im- 
 mortal. 
 
 " Keep your heart warm" said Arnold of Rugby 
 to one of his pupils who contemplated an intel- 
 lectual life-work, ' ' by intercourse with the poor, 
 and with little children." 
 
 Miss Mortimer needed to make no effort to win 
 the love of children. She was especially fond of 
 them, and generally managed to have a class of 
 them to teach, for the pure enjoyment it afforded 
 her. No letters which she sent from Europe made 
 a more vivid impression than her amusing epistles 
 to the children, level to their comprehension and 
 with instinctive adaptation to child-nature. 
 
RETROSPECT. 301 
 
 With the poor she mingled without a trace of 
 condescension. She reached out, not doivn, to 
 them. One example of her interest in childhood 
 and in the lowly was almost her latest work, the 
 large share she had in founding the Milwaukee In- 
 dustrial School for Girls. The tribute of her pastor 
 beautifully sets forth and illustrates these traits. 
 
 Another vivid illustration of her interest in hu- 
 manity was the friendship she felt for the Italian 
 maid who served her in Rome. " Teresina " was a 
 character brightly portrayed in her letters, and the 
 friendship between them, though only of a few 
 months' growth, was real, and based on intuitive 
 knowledge of each other's characters. Teresina 
 dearly loved her native land, and the freedom she 
 hoped for through the newly acquired unity of 
 Italy burned in her heart as on an altar. She 
 quickly discerned in Miss Mortimer the sympathy 
 and the love of liberty that was like her native air, 
 and she soon bestowed upon the stranger, with 
 whom she could communicate only in broken sen- 
 tences and by her vivid gestures, the name of 
 Libcrta. She felt, rather than saw, the fasci- 
 nation which Rome exercised over the strange 
 lady. 
 
 A touching picture is that of the English-Ameri- 
 can mistress and the Italian maid standing together, 
 looking down upon the hoary city from the Pincian 
 gardens, on the eve of parting. 
 
 "At the head of the Spanish stairs," writes Miss 
 Mortimer, ' ' Teresina began to say my farewells 
 
302 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 for me. ' Good-by, Roma, good-by, my dear, 
 good-by, my love ' she cried, stretching out her 
 hand. 
 
 ' ' ' You like Roma, you come back ? ' she said. 
 
 " 'Yes, I like Roma, but I cannot come back. 
 I am an old lady, and shall be finished soon ' (a 
 favorite expression of Teresina's for dying). 
 
 ' ' ' No ! No ! ' she cried. ' You young, you fresh, 
 you come back, LibertaS 
 
 * ' I fear Teresina's mother is not always kind to 
 her. It was a sad farewell, as they stood watch- 
 ing our departure. I kissed them both, and pressed 
 their hands together," she wrote in unconscious 
 self-revelation. 
 
 Although Miss Mortimer did not sing, she was 
 especially fond of sacred music, and fastidious in her 
 preferences. Both words and music of many com- 
 mon hymns were attractive to her, while from 
 others she instinctively turned away. Of the older 
 favorites, " While Thee I Seek, Protecting Power," 
 and "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," were often asked 
 for ; while one of Dr. Horatius Bonar's, ' ' I Was a 
 Wandering Sheep " was ever of the deepest and 
 most pathetic interest to her because of her per- 
 sonal experience which it depicted. The ' ' Plym- 
 outh Collection of Hymns " was her favorite for 
 devotional use in the family and the school. Her 
 especial favorites were choice rather than numer- 
 ous. She often asked for "The Crusader's 
 Hymn," and the " Paradise" of Faber. 
 
RETROSPECT. 303 
 
 Another, by Faber, was, to her, ' ' the most ex- 
 quisite hymn in the English language." 
 
 " SURRENDER. 
 
 "Thy home is with the humble, Lord ! 
 The simplest are the best ; 
 Thy lodging is in childlike hearts ; 
 Thou makest there thy rest. 
 
 "Dear Comforter ! Eternal Love ! 
 If thou wilt stay with me, 
 Of lowly thoughts and simple ways, 
 I '11 build a house for thee. 
 
 "Who made this beating heart of mine, 
 But thou, my heavenly Guest ? 
 Let no one have it, then, but thee, 
 And let it be thy rest ! " 
 
 This hymn was often read to her, but seldom 
 sung, as no tune could be found for it that satis- 
 fied her. 
 
 Heart history played a great part in her life- 
 drama. By her intense and affectionate nature she 
 instinctively attached herself to a few friends with 
 a passion they had no capacity to return in full. 
 This wrought in them caution, a dim perception of 
 a depth they could not fathom and an unwilling- 
 ness to give themselves up wholly to what they 
 could not comprehend or return, however much 
 they admired her talents and were fascinated by 
 the flame of her devotion. That unwillingness 
 wrought revulsion in her, and the passionate friend- 
 
304 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 ship burned itself to embers and left her desolate. 
 Again and again the flame burst forth, after she 
 had thought it vanished, but at length the chill and 
 the desolation would creep on and clothe the world 
 for the time in somber hues. But her heart, 
 though tired by the conflict, was not dead, albeit 
 time was required ere passionate love for another 
 friend could again spring up. 
 
 The very intensity of these soul-struggles fused 
 and mellowed her nature, glanced forth from those 
 gray eyes, clothed those mobile features, found ut- 
 terance in the tones of that sympathetic voice, and 
 laid a magnet in that beautiful hand. Joined with 
 an intellectual nature that commanded the homage 
 of all, this passionate soul held regal sway over the 
 best and deepest young natures with which she 
 came in contact. The very excitement of her own 
 inner struggles left her in a state to magnetize those 
 who had in them some of the elements of character 
 which were so grand in her. Immature, inexperi- 
 enced, aspiring, moved to admiration and love min- 
 gled with awe, these choice young spirits gathered 
 around her. They knew not what they did. She 
 knew that they could never be satisfied with the 
 measure of regard which she could give them ; her 
 sense of honor and justice held her back from tak- 
 ing their all of affection and giving less than all in 
 return. Yet she could not do more, for her impe- 
 rious nature selected its own by a mysterious law of 
 affinity, and would take no other, though she re- 
 
RETROSPECT. 305 
 
 spected, admired, and loved these pupils. The 
 deepest friendships of her life were with mature 
 women, who were often widely and almost hope- 
 lessly separated from her by the ongoings of life. 
 Yet she could not cast away the daily offered de- 
 votion of her pupils, though at times she held her- 
 self and them well in hand, fearing to give others 
 the pain she herself had suffered. At- other times 
 they were encouraged, drawn to her, fascinated as 
 with a view of heaven, which ere long, to their 
 distress, faded away, when her reason and prud- 
 ence reasserted themselves. 
 
 Everywhere and at all times, Miss Mortimer was 
 surrounded by an outer circle of those who admired 
 and loved her at a respectful distance, and by this 
 inner circle which yet reached not the inmost, but 
 fluttered with scorched wings around the flame 
 of her intellectual and emotional being; "which 
 proves," with Mrs. Browning, "that light is good 
 for motJis." 
 
 Over all this intense life-drama, Christ and His 
 Truth rose like a vision of overpowering excellence 
 and loveliness, and to this her passionate nature 
 turned with never-failing loyalty, though only at 
 favored times could she detach herself wholly from 
 earth, and revel alone in the heavenly glory. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's intellectual grasp was strong, 
 yet subtle. She thought independently and in no 
 beaten track. Pure Mathematics had for her a 
 charm, but Geometry, the branch of which she was 
 
 21 
 
306 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 most fond, was rather a relaxation than an occupa- 
 tion for her mind. Both in Geometry and in 
 Algebra her delight in reasoning led her to philoso- 
 phize and to dwell upon the metaphysical basis of 
 the science, which she would often do until the 
 glow of emotion suffused her teaching and inspired 
 her pupils. Her greatest power was in argument 
 and historical illustration along the loftiest lines of 
 theological thought. Her metaphysics was an in- 
 strument, not an end, — the means for finding truth. 
 She admired and exercised a scientific habit of 
 mind but she was not of a scientific turn. Her de- 
 light in nature was very great and in its companion- 
 ship she found inspiration, rest, and refreshment. 
 A simple flower, the spring tints, the forms and 
 hues of autumn leaves, the outlines of trunk and 
 naked branch and twig of trees against a wintry 
 sky, the magic of light and shade gave her — 
 
 " thoughts which lie too deep for tears." 
 
 One of her favorite modes of resting from the 
 weariness of school life was to lie on the grass in 
 some secluded nook and gaze up through the leaves 
 to the blue sky. With a single companion, — 
 friend or pupil, — to whom she could speak her in- 
 most thoughts, at such times she would discourse 
 of the profoundest problems in morals or philos- 
 ophy, or deduce the most practical lessons of life 
 with the ease with which a humming-bird dips into 
 
RETROSPECT. 307 
 
 the heart of a rose or an insect floats in the blue 
 ether. 
 
 She was fond of old English ballads, and her 
 presents to children were frequently illustrated 
 copies of some of these, or choice fairy tales. She 
 was accustomed to exercise her fertile imagination 
 in constructing dramas, which were full of incident, 
 with characters strongly drawn. These dramas al- 
 ways left their lesson, not with the cant of the pro- 
 fessional moralist, but like the events of real life. 
 
 Edward Everett Hale's story, "In His Name," 
 delighted her long before it had found its wider 
 fame, and she dramatized it for successful perform- 
 ance at the College in Milwaukee. In Baraboo, 
 her "Trial of the Fairies" before the Supreme 
 Court of Elfland, in which fairies, elves, wood- 
 nymphs and water-sprites were the defendants, was 
 held in the Court House before a great audience. 
 It combined the fascinations of story, poetry, and 
 music, with beautiful children waving their wings, 
 and older pupils wearing the ermine of judges and 
 the robes of prosecutors. Its Sequel, the succeed- 
 ing evening, was a pageant in which the Queen of 
 the Fairies, surrounded by her maids of honor, re- 
 ceived the petitions of her subjects for protection, 
 and an account of their beneficent labors, inter- 
 spersed with dreamy and beautiful music. 
 
 The frequent relaxations she provided for her 
 pupils were never given up to noisy merriment and 
 
308 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 unthinking enjoyment. One of the many picnics 
 given by the students at Baraboo was in a charm- 
 ing grove, where at the close of the banquet, two 
 winged fairies appeared in a tableau and an ad- 
 dress, and then distributed oak-leaf wreaths and all 
 manner of symbolic gifts which they took from the 
 overhanging trees, after which a troop of singing 
 fairies appeared and disappeared at intervals, en- 
 ticing the company along the river path, and finally 
 disappearing as if by magic. On other and similar 
 occasions sweet surprises grew under the feet of the 
 guests like flowers in their path, and sentiment, — 
 not sentimentality, — was stimulated and made to 
 throw a softening gleam over the scene. 
 
 Miss Mortimer's individuality is apparent in the 
 indications already given of her peculiar power of 
 clear thought charged with emotion, of strong 
 emotion controlled by thought. Her work in edu- 
 cation was in advance of the times, yet not so far 
 in advance that no fruit could be realized. Though 
 true romance was interwoven with every vital fiber 
 of her being, she was no visionary. Her wildest 
 dreams had in them a practical element, and were 
 often realized to some extent. 
 
 Her originality in methods was inseparable from 
 her unique personality. Whether these methods 
 sprang full-armed from her brain, or were the fruit 
 of suggestions caught from others by her docile and 
 eager spirit, they were brought into practice in a 
 
RETROSPECT. 309 
 
 variety of original combinations, and were alike 
 clothed with the potency of her thought. 
 
 The Socratic method of questioning was, in her 
 use of it, a fine art, and by means of it she would 
 entangle her pupils in doubt or in the mazes of ab- 
 surdity, only to lead them by the same silken cord 
 out of the labyrinths, and into the clear light of 
 conviction. Many plans for arousing the interest 
 of her pupils and their friends were in Miss Morti- 
 mer's thought and practice long before they were 
 patented and labeled twentieth-century methods. 
 Instruction by correspondence was one of her fav- 
 orite topics, and that on a wide scale. Scientific 
 excursions, summer schools, and travel were recog- 
 nized adjuncts to her instruction, and she published 
 attractive plans for the union of study and pleasure 
 in these ways. Her relations to the professional 
 men of a region, and to the mothers in a com- 
 munity where she lived, were responsibilities never 
 lost sight of, and privileges wielded with most 
 beneficial effect to the community and the school. 
 
 A recent prominent discussion of "The New 
 Education " informs us that the new differs from 
 the old "not in method merely or mainly, but in 
 purpose. It aims to create life, to endow with 
 power. Its first object is not to teach its pupils to 
 read but to observe and do. Therefore the 
 kindergarten. It uses the text book as little as 
 possible ; sets its pupils to study things, not the 
 
310 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 conception of things. Therefore the laboratory 
 and the out-of-door experimental classes in natural 
 science. It seeks to train the will, no less than the 
 intellect. Therefore the manual and industrial 
 classes and the gymnastic and military drill. It 
 seeks to develop the affections and the emotions, 
 faith, hope, love, reverence, conscience. Hence it 
 demands, not Milton for the sake of grammar, but 
 grammar for the sake of Milton ; not Homer for 
 the sake of Greek, but Greek for the sake of 
 Homer." All of which in education Miss Mortimer 
 foresaw, and a part of which she was and practiced 
 half a century before this promulgation. 
 
 An eminent authority has said of Thomas Arnold, 
 ."His proper field was education, and the chief 
 element of his educational method was religious." 
 His own statement reversed this, when, in early 
 manhood he said, ' ' I have fixed upon the ministry, 
 and upon that particular branch of it known as 
 education, as my proper field and chosen life 
 work." 
 
 Miss Mortimer was both seer and prophet, with- 
 out visible ordination. Never an imitator, nor 
 even a special student of the aims and methods of 
 any educator, she yet had closest sympathy with 
 such an ideal as that of Arnold. In her cast of 
 mind and aims in education she resembled Mark 
 Hopkins still more than she did her English com- 
 peer. 
 
RETROSPECT. 3] 1 
 
 ' 'Dr. Hopkins's conception of the college life 
 was a philosophic conception, and the scheme of 
 studies, the gradual development of the human 
 faculties under specific training, had regard to a 
 comprehensive philosophy. " * < ' Philosophy has been 
 the dominant chord in the harmony of collegiate 
 voices as heard in this institution [Williams Col- 
 lege]." 
 
 This philosophic conception which places man 
 the central object of study, and tests "all questions 
 of theology, of politics, and of sociology by the ap- 
 plication of the divine-human power" of love in its 
 relation to man ; which lays under tribute all his- 
 tory, all science, all poetry and art, to elucidate the 
 ground and scope of moral obligation, and to train 
 his threefold nature, this was the vision of educa- 
 tion which animated her life and inspired her work. 
 
 Her reading, necessarily extensive, was yet se- 
 lect, according to the deepest laws of spiritual and 
 mental affinity. The Bible, after she accepted 
 revelation, was her "pole-star," although she 
 thought ' ' inspiration, the most difficult of ques- 
 tions. " By its light she consciously walked, and 
 shuddered at the thought of the utter and outer 
 darkness in which she had groped without it. 
 
 Butler, as we have seen, was to her almost an 
 inspired guide. For many years, Coleridge was 
 
 Address at the dedication of Mark Hopkins Memorial Hall by 
 Horace E. Scudder. 
 
312 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 with her a daily text book. ' ' That which will 
 stand of Coleridge," says Matthew Arnold, "is this, 
 the stimulus of his continual instructive effort, 
 crowned often with rich success, to get at and lay 
 bare the real truth of the matter in hand, whether 
 that matter were literary, philosophical, political 
 or religious." This was the secret, doubtless, 
 of Miss Mortimer's profit in Coleridge, — they 
 were souls in search of the same great object. 
 His devout spirit was also her delight, and she 
 sometimes quoted to her advanced classes, enam- 
 ored of study, the sentiment attributed to Coleridge 
 that "one hour of devout prayer is better as an 
 intellectual discipline than a year's study in the 
 schools without it." 
 
 To Carlyle, as her correspondence reveals, she 
 was won by his burning hatred of shams, coupled 
 with his faith in the real and the true. His grand 
 poetic nature also strongly attracted her. ' ' With 
 the gift of song, Carlyle would have been the 
 greatest epic poet since Homer," says Lowell. 
 "The tree, Igdrasil " as drawn by Carlyle from the 
 ancient myth, was to her a fascinating picture. 
 For Emerson, she cared comparatively little. 
 Horace Bushnell, especially in ' ' Nature and the 
 Supernatural " was a suggestive friend. 
 
 Kingsley's " Hypatia " was to her a wonderful 
 book, not so much for its matchless portrayal of 
 life and philosophy in the fifth century, as for its 
 statement of the great and ever-abiding problems 
 
RETROSPECT. 313 
 
 whose solution was sought by that most finely- 
 drawn character, the Jew, and by Hypatia, whose 
 devotion to Truth and whose experience of its 
 blinding power fascinated Miss Mortimer's idealiz- 
 ing tendency. She preferred Thackeray to Dickens, 
 and Schiller to Goethe ; indeed Schiller and Carlyle 
 were to her for thirty years an inspiration. 
 
 She was an intuitive philosopher. Thought was 
 to her the proof and pledge of immortal existence. 
 The saying of Descartes, Cogito, ergo sunt, was 
 often upon her lips. Locke, Kant, Hegel, Cousin, 
 Compte, Hopkins, Hamilton, Porter, and many 
 more laid their tributes before her, and from each 
 she gathered material for her own metaphysics. 
 Great names passed for nothing with her, except 
 as her electric affinities gathered their thought to 
 the working of her own mind, like steel-filings to a 
 magnet. False reasoning and impotent conclu- 
 sions fled from the test of her consciousness, as evil 
 from the point of Ithuriel's spear. Some of the 
 German historical writers, especially Schmidt and 
 Schlegel, with Sir James Mackintosh, Henry Hal- 
 lam, and Guizot as judicial historians were her 
 guides, yet she delighted in the vivid advocacy and 
 greater picturesqueness of some other writers whose 
 conclusions she could not accept. 
 
 Her words, written in memory of a beloved pu- 
 pil, Miss Anna Taintor, a few months before her 
 death, unconsciously limned her own portrait. 
 
 ' ' She was an intense lover of truth and sincerity, 
 
314 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 a hater of all pretense and sham. The glitter of 
 this world, the tinsel which covers so much deform- 
 ity, the blindness which hinders so many from see- 
 ing the true beauty and goodness, seldom deceived 
 her. True to the core herself, she recognized truth 
 in others, and instinctively shrank from hollowness 
 and falsehood." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 TRIBUTES. 
 
 The Alumnae of Milwaukee College gave sub- 
 stantial form to their reverence for Miss Mortimer's 
 memory in the establishment at the College of a 
 11 Mary Mortimer Library," and, at the time of this 
 writing, are engaged in the endeavor to endow a 
 chair of instruction in her name. 
 
 In an alcove of the Mary Mortimer Library, a 
 beautiful mural tablet attests the affection of her 
 Baraboo teachers and graduates. 
 
 In the extracts from correspondence which fol- 
 low, initials only are given whenever express per- 
 mission to use names has been for any reason 
 unattainable. 
 
 Extracts from an Address before the Milwaukee Col- 
 lege Endowment Association. 
 
 BY MRS. HELEN BRACE EMERSON. 
 
 "What talisman could be more potent than the name 
 of the teacher who gave all that she was to the up- 
 building of Milwaukee College, — Mary Mortimer, — a 
 name which those of us who knew her best will hold 
 forever as well-nigh sacred. 
 
 "As the teacher, in this College and elsewhere, of 
 my girlhood, as the friend with whom I taught for 
 
 [315] 
 
31 G MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 nearly a decade of years, it is fitting that I should speak 
 briefly on this occasion of what she was as a woman 
 and a teacher. 
 
 "I have in mind her short and rather thick-set figure, 
 her energetic step, her shapely and expressive hand, 
 her remarkable head with its crown of abundant brown 
 hair, her republican simplicity of manner and dress. 
 
 "You know as I do, of her great motherly heart, 
 which made her pupils her children, of her quaint 
 humor, of her intense love of nature and the beautiful, of 
 her passion for flowers, for music, for birdsong ; of her 
 interest in art, in painting and especially in statuary. 
 
 "I cannot forget her contributions to my own life in 
 all these directions. 
 
 " The leafless trees of winter bring to my mind that it 
 was Miss Mortimer who called my attention to the 
 beauty of the barren branches and twigs against a 
 wintry sky and the full-robed earth of summer recalls 
 how she reveled in its affluence, while she seemed al- 
 ways with me in the galleries of Europe and in its ca- 
 thedrals. Amid its historical associations and its grand 
 natural scenery I felt her presence, and so in nature and 
 in art as well as in the deep things of the soul, she was 
 the guide and inspirer of her pupils. 
 
 " I can hardly trust myself to speak of her matchless 
 mind, a mind so royally endowed that words cannot 
 convey its riches ; for it was only as it was brought to 
 bear upon other minds that all its wealth was even 
 suggested. 
 
 "How she knew and could teach language! — 
 though language was not her chosen field of instruc- 
 
RETROSPECT. 317 
 
 tion. As a perplexed under-graduate teacher I once 
 appealed to her as to how I could simplify the intrica- 
 cies of our mother-tongue for a class of young girls. 
 The next day she handed me a small blank book, 
 partly filled, in which she had in the meantime written 
 in addition to her usual work and care, an English 
 Grammar ! I found it a sufficient guide and withal an 
 inspiring one to both teacher and class. That little 
 book is still one of my greatest treasures. 
 
 "How she loved Mathematics, and how she peopled 
 pure space for us with forms and formulae ! Who of 
 her pupils cannot remember how she spiritualized as well 
 as made real the truth and the science of Geometry? 
 And some of us can go farther back, to her table 
 drawers where long before kindergarten teaching came 
 into vogue, she kept squares, cubes, etc., by means of 
 which she taught Arithmetic to the children of the 
 primary department. I can see their eager faces now, 
 as they surrounded her, learning fractions from broken 
 sticks of candy, and divided apples and oranges, to 
 which she treated them at the close of the lesson. 
 
 "She was a devoted adherent of science, a close ex- 
 plorer along the lines of natural truth, and yet knowing 
 and loving mathematics, language, science, she did not 
 elect either as her department of teaching. This she re- 
 served for History and Metaphysics. These took her 
 nearer to the mind and heart of man and God, and to 
 them she gave the greater part of her teaching life. 
 
 "To have had her instruction as she unfolded the 
 stately steppings of God's providence along the lines of 
 History, to have been under her guidance in Moral and 
 
318 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 Mental Science, Paley and Butler and her own mar- 
 velous Truth-Lessons, until she brought one, in her 
 earnest and delicate way, to recognize the evidences of 
 Christianity, and the personal regard of a loving Sav- 
 iour, to have heard her pray in the school prayer-meet/ 
 ing, in the Study Hall at the opening of school, and at 
 family devotions, was an inestimable privilege that fob 
 lows one through life, Mike the benediction that comes 
 after prayer.' 
 
 "Incidentally, and as a part of these branches, she 
 gathered us, her pupils, twice a week, with note-books 
 in hand, and gave us what she called ' Talks upon 
 Esthetics. ' We were assigned the topics of Landscape 
 Gardening, Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music 
 and Poetry, to investigate as best we could in our little 
 library; and in keeping with her own philosophical 
 tastes, Cousin upon ' The Good, the True and the 
 Beautiful' was put into our hands. And so, without 
 text-books or photographs, she led us into the lofty 
 realms of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, showing how 
 all were allied and how there could be no approach to 
 a complete education without a knowledge of all. 
 
 "Her religious belief, born of an experience of 
 doubt, suggested only to her pupils that it was to her 
 the one most settled thing in the universe, and the real- 
 ity and stability of her belief in the Divine and Invis- 
 ible, gave her her greatest hold upon others. 
 
 "I have endeavored only to indicate Miss Mortimer's 
 mental, moral and spiritual superiority, for what she 
 was can never be told. Her unique personality, her 
 remarkable intellectual ability, her profound spiritual 
 insight, entered into the very life of her pupils, and 
 
RETROSPECT. 319 
 
 passing from them to others, they will be forever in the 
 realm of mind and heart an abiding, quickening power." 
 
 FROM MRS. CAROLINE JOHNSON COLEMAN. 
 
 "I find it not a little difficult to frame thoughts and 
 feelings concerning Miss Mortimer. 
 
 " She was so thoroughly an unusual woman that it 
 was very easy, I think, for others to mistake her, even 
 among those who could most keenly appreciate her 
 noble traits ; this might be due to a lurking self-con- 
 sciousness on their own part (which something in 
 Miss Mortimer would be sure to probe and wound, 
 though both sides might still perhaps remain ignorant 
 of the cause of the mental clashing) ; or it might be the 
 result of untoward circumstances or peculiar personal 
 relations. 
 
 "I express myself in regard to her with great diffi- 
 dence and distrust of my own explanation of phenomena 
 apparent to me. 
 
 " Her powers of analysis and generalization (as dis- 
 played signally in her philosophical insight into, and in- 
 terpretation of history) were so keen that after once 
 reviewing and arranging the details of any given practi- 
 cal matter, she was, as it seems to me, very impatient 
 of any recurrence to them, and so, unwilling to attend 
 to the many after-considerations which tease the most 
 of us in this mal-a-propos world. This made her less 
 successful in dealing with some every-day matters than 
 others far inferior to her in their type of character. 
 It also made disjointedness in some cases where in 
 deep ways, mind could keenly answer to mind. 
 
 "Miss Mortimers highly spiritual imagination, the 
 
320 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 lofty ideal and pure purpose of her life, could not but 
 exert a strong influence over every thoughtful, earnest 
 life with which hers came in contact, however little ap- 
 prehended it might be. 
 
 " In her walk and conversation she strengthened and 
 ennobled all high conceptions of the dignity and re- 
 sponsibility of living ; that she even aroused to some 
 sense of this the most irresponsive and apathetic of 
 natures, I firmly believe. 
 
 1 ' I cannot think that any girl who was ever within the 
 real reach of her influence, however shallow in character, 
 could go through after life without coming at some crisis 
 upon a germ of help which Miss Mortimer had left there 
 in bygone years. 
 
 " In my own relations with Miss Mortimer, as a com- 
 paratively young teacher, and one unacquainted with 
 her methods, I was always shown the most entire deli- 
 cacy and consideration in ways that betrayed her fine- 
 ness of feeling and regard for others rather than herself. 
 She often gave credit to others which belonged to her- 
 self. 
 
 " I always felt keenly her great loneliness of soul, and 
 the unrest which a nature so full of longings and aspira- 
 tions must suffer. . . . 
 
 "Her faith was strong and intense and unfailing, 
 and truly simple withal. ... 
 
 " I admired and honored and loved her also in tender 
 appreciation, but I always felt a downright girl's timid- 
 ity with her, — and behaved accordingly, I doubt not. 
 For this reason we never came into any close compan- 
 ionship, and I feel very incompetent in all that I might 
 say concerning her, and self-distrustful, even while I 
 
RETROSPECT. 32] 
 
 clearly have, to a certain extent, my interpretations of 
 her character." 
 
 FROM A BARABOO GRADUATE AND MILWAUKEE 
 ASSOCIATE TEACHER. 
 
 " In most complete self-forgetfulness, her soul went 
 out in response to every utterance of truth by another. 
 More than one of her pupils must surely remember the 
 increased courage she felt to express any thought that 
 came to her, no matter how awkward, stiff and incom- 
 plete her form of speech or written words, because 
 there was sure to be one who would understand, and 
 that one, her teacher. 
 
 " Mere fine writing was nothing and worse than 
 nothing to Miss Mortimer. Smooth and musically- 
 sounding essays with little thought in them were coldly 
 received, but any poorest expression of that which one 
 felt deeply, any merest hint of a new perception of 
 truth, or the natural play of wit that with a little en- 
 couragement would reveal itself; — all these were fos- 
 tered and encouraged. 
 
 " It often happened that girls who had almost all their 
 lives been at some signal disadvantage in school, — per- 
 haps dull in memory and slow thinkers, — found some 
 little native gift, it might be of humor or even of wit, 
 or it might be only a capacity for honest admira- 
 tion or devoted friendship, or some practical turn of 
 housewifery and domestic thrift, made much of by this 
 generous friend, so that there came to them a growing 
 self-respect, and a new happiness in the sense of social 
 value ; and little by little, the more dormant faculties 
 came into play and the whole being was quickened. And 
 22 
 
322 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 this, because of the existence in herself of primary im- 
 pulses toward them, tender sympathy, and a belief in 
 what was possible to them. 
 
 "What one had really felt or thought, her presence 
 gave courage to utter. What had been dimly assumed 
 as possible, her glowing face made real. All the en- 
 thusiasms of youth were cherished. 
 
 "The judgments of maturity confirmed these, and 
 looked with a more assured gaze, even far beyond what 
 youthful enthusiasms had seen. 
 
 " Miss Mortimer seemed to be able at once to detect 
 the difference between that which was received and ex- 
 pressed at second-hand and that which had been freshly 
 kindled in the soul itself. 
 
 "What a sympathetic listener she was, when from 
 the pulpit or the lecturer's platform, man or woman set 
 forth, in simple language or impassioned, the message 
 that had come to them in silence and alone ! What 
 earnest reverence she had for all true searchers after 
 truth, whether pagan, Jew or Christian, philosopher or 
 preacher. When she saw the work of God's spirit 
 moulding a character and breathing into it His own 
 life, she gave to that one her lowliest reverence, and the 
 more simple and unrecognized by others, the warmer 
 her allegiance. 
 
 "A sister-in-law who passed on before her, a woman 
 of great plainness and simplicity, of rare patience and 
 faithfulness and love, a Quakeress in religion, was the 
 object of a very warm attachment by Miss Mortimer. 
 * My sister Anna' — she would say, with a glow in her 
 face as though the sound of the name refreshed her in 
 her busy life, — 'my sister Anna would do' thus and 
 
RETROSPECT. 323 
 
 thus. She liked to repeat her very words, and to recall 
 her sweet spirit. 
 
 " In one of the later years of her life, Miss Mortimer 
 while visiting in the interior of Wisconsin, going to 
 spend an afternoon in the home of a lady then teach- 
 ing with her in Milwaukee, made the acquaintance of 
 that teacher's father. He was a man of the old Puritan 
 stock wonderfully preserved from the last generation to 
 this, transplanted from New England to the West, liv- 
 ing his own life of single-hearted devotion to God and 
 his church, in the midst of a careless and irreverent 
 community, uttering each morning his prayer that was 
 like a Hebrew psalm in music to the Most High God, 
 quoting daily the teachings of his old Professors, Woods 
 and Stuart, then for so many years in their graves ; liv- 
 ing the quaint New England life of fifty years before, 
 and as he went about the work of his little village-farm 
 or rode to visit his patients, keeping ever in mind, as a 
 subject for contemplation, some portion of Scripture 
 profitable for correction, reproof or instruction, — a 
 man the real sublimity of whose character was hidden 
 from the world, and himself quite unknown for what he 
 really was, except as he was honored as a pious and 
 honest man. 
 
 "It was a discovery to Miss Mortimer. That to 
 which others had been blind, she at once saw. It was 
 no unfitting return for years of loneliness and obscurity 
 faithfully lived out in an ever-growing sense of the 
 nearness of an Almighty Friend, that in this, one of the 
 last years of his life, one of the most gifted women 
 whom it had ever been his lot to meet, one whose name 
 he had himself long held in reverence, should meet 
 
324 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 him, and in the intercourse of a few hours, learn to 
 know him as none had done before. 
 
 " It was a meeting she never forgot, though oppor- 
 tunities for repeating it never came. 
 
 " Of Miss Mortimer's letters to me, that dated is 
 
 richly suggestive, and I feel the force of what it ex- 
 presses much more than when I first read it years 
 ago. 
 
 " So long as I was in America I always felt a peculiar 
 stiffness and constraint in writing to her, but in later 
 years, I could have said anything to her that I thought 
 myself, and could have been helped to better thinking 
 and far more earnest feeling by the very attempt to 
 say it. P. L. C." 
 
 FROM THE MOTHER OF ONE OF HER PUPILS. 
 
 "Nothing superficial could be thought of for a mo- 
 ment in connection with Miss Mortimer's course in 
 school. My husband thought highly of her as a thor- 
 ough teacher, and was especially in sympathy with her 
 discipline in the study of History, and her careful selec- 
 tion of thoroughly qualified teachers. C.'s letters home 
 from Baraboo Seminary and Milwaukee College were 
 gratifying. We discovered the influence over her of a 
 superior mind in everything, also a tact and skill that 
 created a confidence, familiar yet always respectful. 
 This influence of Miss Mortimer, with the thorough in- 
 struction of a superior teacher in Mathematics and 
 Latin, which C. had before received, gave her advan- 
 tages and a self-reliance that have made her eminently 
 capable of great enjoyment and usefulness. 
 
 <<M. A." 
 
RETROSPECT. 325 
 
 FROM MRS. O. H. W. 
 
 "I fear I cannot add anything to your work. I 
 think you have a just estimate of her character which, 
 to me, was most admirable in every way. I cannot tell 
 you how much Miss Mortimer was to me, especially 
 after my husband's death. She knew us all as a family, 
 and as individuals, as few persons did, and her appreci- 
 ation and sympathy were a comfort to me when I could 
 not endure that of any one else." 
 
 FROM A FOREIGN PUPIL, AND ASSOCIATE TEACHER. 
 
 " Spare me the pain to speak of Miss Mortimer, for 
 I am not yet reconciled to her loss. . . . You know 
 she was my counselor, my guide, my mother, here in 
 this country, and I feel utterly alone without her. 
 
 "M. H." 
 
 FROM MISS FRANCES E. WILLARD. 
 
 "I was never in an institution where the moral at- 
 mosphere was so clear and invigorating as that of the 
 Milwaukee College. We used to sit in the great study 
 hall without a teacher present, and any girl who misbe- 
 haved or laughed or whispered would have been looked 
 upon as beneath contempt. We were all 'upon honor ; ' 
 the teachers trusted us. I remember, on the first day, 
 I went to my class in Geology. Not knowing it was 
 against the rule, I spoke to a classmate about the lesson 
 as we were climbing the stairs toward our teacher, and 
 entirely away from supervision ; my schoolmate looked 
 at me brightly and kindly, evidently perceiving that I 
 intended no harm, and laid her taper finger on her 
 sweet, shy lips. I could not forget in a thousand years 
 
326 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 the majesty of the occasion as it impressed my mind — 
 the sacred sense of truth it gave me, and the determi- 
 nation that it deepened in my spirit to be just as trusty 
 and conscientious as she was. 
 
 " Miss Mortimer's conversation was more like that of 
 Margaret Fuller than any other to which I have yet list- 
 ened. She was philosophic, humanitarian, prophetic, 
 in every utterance ; incapable of commonplace, smitten 
 by the sense of God, of duty and immortality, and de- 
 voted to the unfolding of woman's mental capabilities. 
 To have heard her talk is an inspiration that remains 
 with me to this day. 
 
 " Miss Mortimer was a figure that, thirty years later, 
 would have become central in the pantheon of American 
 women." 
 
 FROM A MILWAUKEE PUPIL. 
 
 "There is nothing that I would rather do than render 
 some tribute to the memory of Miss Mortimer. If I 
 live long enough, the best thing I shall ever do will be 
 dedicated to her. . . . 
 
 "From peculiar circumstances she became the dear- 
 est friend on earth to me, — knew me as no other person 
 did or could know, — was my refuge in every difficulty. 
 It is a relief to tell you how I miss her, how bitterly I 
 feel that I can no longer confide in her. These woods 
 remind me daily of excursions with her, long talks on 
 life and truth, and discussions that will never be fin- 
 ished. 
 
 "She was a woman of broad vision, far in advance 
 of her generation. Among all the educators I have 
 known, President Angell of Michigan, President Adams 
 
RETROSPECT. 327 
 
 of Cornell, Prof. Woodward of manual-training fame, 
 Miss Freeman, President of Wellesley College, and 
 other teachers, Miss Mortimer would stand, in 1891, a 
 noble figure, the peer of any one in her grasp of educa- 
 tional problems, and in her unwavering belief in the 
 value of a triple culture for humanity, moral, mental, 
 and physical. 
 
 "What a keen contempt she had for shams of every 
 sort ! Polishes and stains never deceived her ; she was 
 always ready to cut down and find the grain of the 
 wood beneath." 
 
 Resolutions of respect and sympathy were passed 
 by the Board of Trustees of Milwaukee College and 
 by the Associate Alumnae. The Trustees attended 
 the memorial services in a body, as did also the 
 Alumnae. These services were held in Immanuel 
 Church, Milwaukee, on the next Sabbath but one 
 succeeding Miss Mortimer's decease. The felicitous 
 address of her pastor on that occasion showed his 
 rare appreciation of her unique character. A trib- 
 ute from the College Trustees has been given else- 
 where, and the following extract fitly voices the 
 feeling of the Alumnae. 
 
 FROM AN ADDRESS TO THE ALUMNAE AT THE ANNUAL 
 MEETING SUCCEEDING MISS MORTIMER'S DEATH. 
 
 " For the elder members of the Alumnae, those who 
 were the recipients of Miss Mortimer's thoughtful and 
 unceasing interest, no eulogy of her is needed. They 
 hold in grateful remembrance the influence which lifted 
 
328 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 school-life above a mere routine, which made of the 
 trivial daily duties 'stepping-stones to better things;' 
 whatever of good the later lives of her pupils may show, 
 they will not fail to place high among the results of the 
 teachings of Miss Mortimer. To the younger members 
 of our circle, whose personal knowledge is limited, we 
 commend the history of our College. Faithful, in the 
 most high and thorough sense of the word, persevering 
 in the face of all discouragements, sacrificing many 
 things for the sake of her beloved work, Miss Morti- 
 mer's devotion to the College should be held in loving 
 honor. . . . 
 
 "In the Cathedral of Strasburgh, far up in a gallery 
 which commands a view of the glorious edifice, is the 
 life-like figure of Erwin, the Architect. He sits in 
 thoughtful, watchful attitude, his head supported by his 
 arm which rests upon the carved rail before him, look- 
 ing down that marvelous vista in whose creation he had 
 so large a share ; a vista of clustered columns and 
 springing roof, radiant with the light of green and gold 
 and crimson, rich with the shadow of the cold gray 
 stone. Not as the sole creator does he overlook this 
 grand and noble work. Others had prepared the way, 
 gifted architects and patient artisans wrought long after 
 he finished his labors. The work has stretched down 
 the centuries, and is still unfinished. Yet there he 
 keeps his faithful, thankful watch, rejoicing in the 
 gradual perfecting of his life-work. . . . Even so, I 
 love to think, from a loftier, purer height does Miss 
 Mortimer look down upon the yet unfinished edifice for 
 which she worked and planned. Others labored before 
 
RETROSPECT. 321) 
 
 her, new hands have taken up the work, but from 
 foundation upward we find her thought and skill in- 
 wrought, and the pride and interest which filled her 
 heart while here, are with her there. 
 
 " Shall we leave the towers unfinished ? 
 
 "Isabel Flanders Dana." 
 
 from a milwaukee graduate (an address read 
 before the alumnae, 1892). 
 
 "It is only just to confess that hers was an inspiring 
 example, and that in the long years to come no teacher 
 of philosophy could have a better spur to effort than an 
 appreciation of the work of Mary Mortimer. It is not 
 an easy task to explain the method of her teaching. 
 Any description of it may seem fulsome and exagger- 
 ated, and be set down to a natural tendency to bestow 
 mythical qualities upon the figures of our youth. But 
 if a varied acquaintance with educators can act as a 
 corrective to this disposition, then some value may be 
 attached to the opinion that her self-devotedness was 
 as rare as her abilities were .exceptional. . . . 
 
 "Those who were fortunate enough to become her 
 pupils, to study psychology and ethics under her guid- 
 ance, had their own vision sharpened for the inner and 
 deeper matters of life. Under her rare exorcism con- 
 ventionalities vanished; ' cloth-webs and cob-webs' 
 faded away, and classmates looked around uneasily as 
 if to escape a flash-light photograph. But the illumina- 
 tion was seldom personal. The petty trials of girlhood, 
 its trickeries and vapidities were outlined in the picture 
 so aptly, that the semblance was somewhat perturbing. 
 
330 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 The contrast was given at a later lesson. Leading her 
 pupils away from their local life and surroundings she 
 would relate to them some touching story of noble de- 
 votion or earnest purpose. No moral was enforced, 
 but the scene was reproduced with such fervor and dis- 
 tinctness of detail that occasionally the class sat spell- 
 bound, even after she had returned to every-day life 
 and dismissed them. At other times they would arise 
 softly and go out, one by one, as if afraid a word 
 spoken might dispel the vision. 
 
 " Her fund of anecdote was apparently exhaustless. 
 Her illustrations were drawn not only from history, 
 which she taught inimitably for many years, but also 
 from a wide range of literature. ^Eschylus, Plato, 
 Dante, Goethe, Richter, George Sand, Victor Hugo, 
 George Eliot, the Brownings, Hawthorne, all in turn 
 supplied her with texts which she verified for us. . . . 
 The philosophy, poetry, and romance of many ages 
 were stored in her memory. . . . The object of her 
 teaching, however, was not to produce a transient emo- 
 tional effect upon the minds of her pupils, but to help 
 them to reason dispassionately and clearly, to forever 
 choose the right, regardless of appearances. She 
 strengthened the impression of her lessons by portrayal 
 of principles in action in a way that was not possible 
 by mere iteration of ethical distinctions. . . . There 
 was an unworldly philosophy that palliated no schem- 
 ing for place or power ; a philosophy old as the hills 
 and as everlasting, owned by no sect or race or time, — < 
 the simple theory of right thinking and right living. 
 
 » A. B. T," 
 
RETROSPECT. 331 
 
 From "A Tribute to the Life and Character of Mary 
 Mortimer" prepared for tlie " Woman' 's Club of Wis- 
 consin," by her friend, 
 
 MRS. WM. P. LYNDE. 
 
 "The Woman's Club of Wisconsin was organized 
 mainly through the influence and efforts of Miss Morti- 
 mer. She had given the subject much thought, and her 
 experience as a teacher, combined with the earnest study 
 of woman's nature and needs, enabled her to develop a 
 system suited to our condition and circumstances. I 
 believe that we now only faintly realize our dependence 
 upon her mind, with its power and leisure to think for 
 others, and to arrange plans and methods for the future 
 of the Club. . . . We all know how eloquent she be- 
 came when in her subject she had forgotten herself, and 
 how she had power to move her hearers, and to inspire 
 them with something of her own earnestness. 
 
 " Her generosity and forgetfulness of self were greater 
 than in almost any one I ever knew. They amounted to 
 self-abnegation that was almost martyrdom, yet, while 
 she was capable of a devotion as rare as it was entire, she 
 never affected heroism, or seemed to consider herself 
 anything but a common, every-day woman. Nothing to 
 me was more wonderful than this estimate of herself. 
 Knowing what she had made of herself and accom- 
 plished for the world, I cannot recall a single expres- 
 sion of self-laudation, or anything that would indicate 
 that she considered herself either great or unusual. 
 
 " She had in her heart the largest gift of motherhood, 
 greater than falls to the share of most women, and the 
 
332 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 rarer that it had not the real mother's compensations. 
 It was exercised toward each pupil, throughout her 
 life. She ever retained a wonderful knowledge and ap- 
 preciation of each individual character, carrying the 
 welfare of each in her own heart. . . . She had truth- 
 fulness, also, beyond any one I ever knew who had her 
 experience of the world, and intimate knowledge of 
 varieties of character. The distrust and suspicion of 
 individuals so often felt by men and women of the 
 world seemed impossible to her. She instinctively saw 
 and seized upon the best points of those with whom she 
 associated. . . . Her mind was like the ermine ; she 
 could not soil the pure white of its nature. . . . And 
 yet it was wonderful that she was not oftener deceived 
 or betrayed. . . . 
 
 "We mothers, whose children have been her pupils, 
 — how are we conscious that she has helped us to form, 
 develop, and guide them. For myself, I believe I 
 looked upon her as my teacher and counselor, and that 
 I have received from her more to inspire hope and to 
 strengthen and help toward the higher life, than from 
 any other friend. 
 
 "Her religious faith was one of the prominent traits 
 of her character. She clung to Christ and Christianity 
 with a firmness the more enduring because of the 
 doubts which had sometime encompassed her. . . . 
 She seemed to live by faith in the Unseen. . . . With 
 this experience of her own heart she felt for those who 
 differed from her in religious belief, the largest charity. 
 Indulgent concerning differences and doubts, she was 
 at the same time pained and grieved over friends who 
 
RETROSPECT. 333 
 
 were losing faith, and labored and prayed for them 
 with anxious thought such as few ever knew." 
 
 FROM THE WOMAN'S CLUB, MILWAUKEE. 
 
 "The first special meeting of the club is called to 
 give expression to the deep sorrow felt by its members 
 in consequence of the irreparable loss it as a Club, and 
 they as individuals, have sustained in the death of its 
 efficient Secretary and real founder, Miss Mary Mor- 
 timer. 
 
 Could her life have been spared to witness the health- 
 ful growth of the Club, and to see it becoming all that 
 her sound judgment, high aims and pure purposes would 
 have aided it to be, her own value would have been but 
 more and more clearly manifested, and the hour when 
 she could be spared more and more deferred. 
 
 "Self-reliant, and entirely above the reach of the 
 petty aims absorbing the best energies of so many 
 lives, she was yet always ready to learn from others, 
 ' as apt to learn as apt to teach.' 
 
 "No one could be more sensitive to, or more appre- 
 ciative of, the good in others, and the better, qualities 
 of all who knew her were brought out by her influence 
 as quickly but as surely as flowers turn toward the 
 light. 
 
 "Her childlike faith, her simplicity and sincerity, 
 kept her heart pure and fresh. In a time much con- 
 cerned with outward seeming, she cared only to be and 
 to do. 
 
 "She had that absorbing consecration to one idea 
 which characterizes genius. Her whole being, her 
 
334 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 powers, purposes and endeavors, were devoted to the 
 pursuit of good for others. ... So intent was she 
 upon sowing and watering the seed that she could not 
 care whose hand should bind the harvest sheaves. 
 
 "Asa teacher her first aim was to inspire each pupil 
 with a high ideal of character, and to impress upon her 
 a realization of her opportunities and responsibilities as 
 the architect and builder of her own life. That the 
 foundation should be of Truth, resting upon the im- 
 movable rock of the love of God \ that faults should be 
 cast aside as unworthy of place in such an edifice ; that 
 good qualities should be perfected, like stones polished 
 after the similitude of a temple, — the Sacred Temple of 
 the Saviour's life — that blessed pattern ever before her 
 own eyes, — this was the key-note of her teaching. 
 
 "Her life was a continual aspiration toward the 
 beautiful, and those who knew her best count her 
 among the world's unwritten poets. 
 
 "Much as she often conveyed to other minds, her 
 thoughts were often beyond her ability adequately to 
 clothe in language. She could in words give us but 
 glimpses of her soul. It is well for us that it was ex- 
 pressed in her life. 
 
 "Wholly unconscious of self, her life has been de- 
 voted to elevating the lives of all about her from the 
 narrow valleys of contracted belief and fog-covered 
 ignorance to the plane of wider horizon and a clearer 
 atmosphere. 
 
 "This Club, in its organization and aims is an ex- 
 pression of the absorbing purpose of her life. She 
 would have consecrated herself and us, not only to an 
 undeceived search after truth, but to an unceasing war- 
 
RETROSPECT. 335 
 
 fare against ignorance, disease and crime. She would 
 have had us teach poorer mothers how to prevent the 
 physical and moral disorders which affect themselves 
 chiefly, but which from their contaminating influence, 
 taint the very atmosphere we breathe. 
 
 "If we might have disregarded her spoken appeals 
 had her life been spared, can we be moved by the 
 voiceless eloquence of death, as it urges us to follow 
 faithfully and unfalteringly in the paths she tried to 
 show us ? 
 
 "Though we may rear no costly monument to her 
 memory, yet if, with her faith and enthusiasm we strive 
 to make this Club what she desired it to be, — not only 
 a means of truest culture for ourselves, but also a 
 source of comfort, help and light to the poor, the weak, 
 and the ignorant, then the hearts that have been 
 cheered, the minds that have been enlightened, and 
 the lives that have been redeemed, will form a living 
 monument of rarest beauty 
 
 "Sacred to the Memory of Mary Mortimer. 
 
 Mrs. Marion Wolcott Yates, 
 Mrs. Julia Pierce Ely. 
 
 Committee. 
 
 The Board of Managers of the Milwaukee Indus- 
 trial School prefaced their resolutions of sympathy 
 by the following tribute to Miss Mortimer : — 
 
 "We deem it due to ourselves and but a just tribute 
 to her memory, to give public expression to our appre- 
 ciation of her worth and our sorrow over her death. 
 She worked earnestly with us in establishing this Insti- 
 
33G MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 tution with an interest and labors of no ordinary char- 
 acter, and through her counsels much that is best in its 
 management has been established. Her great experi- 
 ence in teaching, her knowledge of the condition and 
 wants of the children, and attention to the details of its 
 management, have been of incalculable advantage to 
 both teacher and pupils, and contributed largely to the 
 success of the day-school. 
 
 "She has taken to her own home and kept for days, 
 some of the little ones, and so given them, perhaps, 
 their first experience of personal friendship and lov- 
 ing homes. We remember with grateful sadness that 
 one of the latest acts of her life, the very last of her 
 deeds of kindness for this school, was to invite to her 
 house some of the older girls, where she received with 
 genuine hospitality and entertained as honored guests 
 these wayside children of the 'lanes and streets of the 
 city ' who brought back with them the memory of (using 
 their own words) 'the pleasantest day of their lives. ' 
 And she had planned for another set a similar enter- 
 tainment." 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM THE MEMORIAL SERMON DELIVERED AT 
 
 THE EMANUEL CHURCH, JULY, 22, 1877, 
 
 BY HER PASTOR, THE REV. 
 
 G. P. NICHOLS. 
 
 "I shall not attempt on this occasion to render any 
 complete account of the character and career, whether 
 personal or professional, of the noble-hearted woman 
 whose name was so long intimately connected with one 
 of the educational institutions of this city. 
 
 "The true story of her life and life-work must come 
 
RETROSPECT. 337 
 
 from the lips of those pupils whom she loved so 
 intensely and in whose memories she holds so sacred a 
 place. Grateful pupils and fond friends there are, who 
 in due time will undoubtedly contribute the colors and 
 paint the picture. In the meantime they will suffer 
 one — especially if he ministered at the altar where she 
 loved to kneel — to come forward from a farther removed 
 and more distant point of observation and lay upon her 
 grave some expression of the universal respect and sym- 
 pathy which this mysterious Providence of her removal 
 denied to us all, and which in its deeper and more ap- 
 preciative form can only be uttered by the members of 
 that inner circle who knew her as the inspirer of their 
 minds, loved her as the friend of their lives, and who 
 revere her memory as that of a dear Spiritual Mother. 
 
 " Mary Mortimer was first of all herself. Affectation, 
 pretension, dissimulation found no place in her. She 
 conceded the least to fashion, to vogue, to mere con- 
 ventionalities of any kind. She could never bring her- 
 self to wear upon body or spirit the prison uniform of 
 those tyrants which put out the eyes of so many souls 
 and condemn them to spend their days grinding in the 
 mill of conformities. She was essentially a non-con- 
 formist, that is, she was a native, independent thinker 
 and actor. She trusted in the truth that was in herself. 
 She dared to be faithful to the Divine thought, which 
 she was created to represent, and so, instead of merely 
 showing us another reflector of society, another image 
 of servile complaisances, we were permitted to enjoy a 
 real original scintillation of the Divine mind, and to 
 have a new point of light added to our sky. 
 
 "Transparent is the great sun and plain, and such 
 23 
 
338 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 was she ; a grandly simple nature walking among us 
 erectly, and doing strongly before men and women 
 whatever she inly felt to be truth, beauty, and righteous- 
 ness. Add to this a certain idealizing tendency that 
 characterized her, and I think we have the secret of 
 much of her peculiar influence over young and ardent 
 minds. She was never satisfied with the actual attain- 
 ments of life. She was apprehending for herself and 
 for others the vision of a good surpassing the realities 
 of experience. She sought to keep in the secret soul of 
 every one around her the desire for an ideal perfection. 
 
 "But in putting forward this aspect of her character 
 first, as in truth I was bound to do, for it was my first 
 impression of her, I hope I am not leading any stranger 
 to think of Mary Mortimer as a cold, proud, self-reli- 
 ant, self-occupied person, without affection, holding 
 herself apart from the common sympathy and interest 
 of her kind. Her emotional nature was as intense as 
 her intellectual vision was clear. Her enjoyment of a 
 kindred spirit was like her enjoyment of truth. Re- 
 ports of her friendships touch one to the quick like 
 romances. 
 
 " She had a boundless heart. She loved nature with 
 the simplicity of a child. She never wearied of sitting 
 outside the door at ' Willow Glen/ gazing at the varied 
 aspects of cloud and foliage and winding river. Her 
 overflowing emotion projected its own conscious intelli- 
 gence upon objects around, and made them also con- 
 scious and sympathetic. The clouds took on faces and 
 looked at her, the waving grass nodded to her, the river 
 grew communicative and lingered to talk with her, and 
 all the birds in the boughs sang to her articulately. She 
 
RETROSPECT. 339 
 
 loved this communion with nature, and she loved equally 
 well from her earliest years communion with books. 
 She loved thought, loved beauty, loved purity, loved 
 the ideal in poetry and painting and architecture. 
 
 "Not abstractions, however, or inanimate things were 
 her real world, but hearts and persons. Her love for 
 her pupils was something remarkable. She loved 
 them as her own. She loved each one from the out- 
 set, ready at once to push the beginners, quick to 
 encourage the one winning her way, and greatly sympa- 
 thetic with her who was dull and slow. Her influence 
 over them went far beyond the mere teacher of books. 
 She took them with all their possibilities into her heart, 
 and there she ever kept them. 
 
 "Graduates passing away from the college were not 
 crowded out of her thoughts and care by new faces en- 
 tering. If I may convert a divine word to a human 
 application, 'Having loved her own, she loved them to 
 the end.' She followed them with her sympathies and 
 stimulating ideals into all their life relations and life 
 duties, and to no other did they on their part turn so 
 quickly for an adviser in their perplexities and for a 
 partner in their joys, a comforter in their sorrows. 
 
 "Miss Mortimer had a deep pity or rather a deep 
 sympathy, and not a barren one, for the poor and af- 
 flicted. A just, affectionate recognition of this trait has 
 been given us by her co-workers in the Industrial School. 
 It was not going about speaking proper words and doing 
 perfunctory kindnesses to the poor and needy, that 
 reached to the length of her desire. She did not so 
 much pity the neglected, she did not feel toward them, 
 she felt with them, shared in her own heart their priva- 
 
340 MARY MORTIMER. 
 
 tions and distresses, and by sharing perceived how to 
 lighten their burden. It was altogether a characteristic 
 illustration of her peculiar fellow-feeling with the strug- 
 gling, to which the ladies of the Industrial Charity made 
 allusion in their appreciative resolutions ; her invit- 
 ing to her own home sets of the children and taking de- 
 light in personally mingling with them and providing 
 entertainment for them. 
 
 "It may sound strange to some, but this same pro- 
 found sympathy she extended even to the wicked. She 
 had an intense moral sensitiveness. I do not suppose 
 any one ever brought to her notice any form of evil 
 without being made to feel how alien and revolting it 
 was to her nature. Her whole being recoiled at the 
 mention of crime. And yet what she could not bear to 
 hear, she would suffer under as if it were a personal 
 weight on her own soul. The worst sinner, the basest 
 wretch, would receive from her an anxiety of desire, and 
 if willing to accept it, the tendered hand of help. She 
 realized something of that grief of love which found ex- 
 pression in our Lord's tears over Jerusalem, . . . even 
 weeping in regard to those degraded beings ' who glo- 
 ried in their shame ' and those who were enemies of the 
 Cross of Christ. 
 
 "Another distinctive sympathy must not be wholly 
 passed over. I believe it is a characteristic of the 
 highest and best women to be holden by peculiar love 
 and devotion to those of their own sex. This interest 
 assumes different forms according to the convictions 
 and hopes, the tastes and aversions of the individual. 
 But if the individual be a true and great-hearted woman, 
 she is sure to be solicitous for her sisters. . . . 
 
RETROSPECT. 341 
 
 "She had a soul filled to overflowing with a sense 
 of women's possibilities and women's responsibilities. 
 Certainly I need not tell ladies of this city what high 
 spheres of sanctity and obligation she attributed to the 
 wife, the mother and the daughter, or with what ear- 
 nestness and persuasive tenderness she entreated them 
 to aspire to their true womanly distinctions. 
 
 "She was singularly open to the reception of all new 
 light and at the same time immovable in her implicit 
 faith on the Lord Jesus Christ as the mighty Son of 
 God, and merciful Saviour of men. Thinking of her 
 world-wide intellectual and moral sympathies, together 
 with her intrinsic loyalty to the faith once delivered to 
 the saints, I am reminded of a grand utterance of Nor- 
 man Mc Leod : 'I believe religion to be as broad as 
 the charity of Almighty God, and as narrow as his 
 righteousness, which divides the slightest shades of 
 truth and lines of right and wrong.' 
 
 "Such as I knew Miss Mortimer, I have tried to 
 describe her. Those who knew her better will feel the 
 absence of many dear and admirable traits. Those 
 who knew her best will perhaps best understand how 
 impossible it is to represent the full truth and tender- 
 ness, the modesty, reality, and fearlessness, the devo- 
 tion, fidelity, and unselfishness of such a character as 
 Mary Mortimer."