Lives of Girls Who Became Famous

All of us have aspirations. We build air-castles, and are probably the happier for the building. However, the sooner we learn that life is not a play-day, but a thing of earnest activity, the better for us and for those associated with us. "Energy," says Goethe, "will do anything that can be done in this world"; and Jean Ingelow truly says, that "Work is heaven's hest."

If we cannot, like George Eliot, write Adam Bede, we can, like Elizabeth Fry, visit the poor and the prisoner. If we cannot, like Rosa Bonheur, paint a "Horse Fair," and receive ten thousand dollars, we can, like Mrs. Stowe and Miss Alcott, do some kind of work to lighten the burdens of parents. If poor, with Mary Lyon's persistency and noble purpose, we can accomplish almost anything. If rich, like Baroness Burdett-Coutts, we can bless the world in thousands of ways, and are untrue to God and ourselves if we fail to do it.

Margaret Fuller said, "All might be superior beings," and doubtless this is true, if all were willing to cultivate the mind and beautify the character.

S.K.B.

CONTENTS.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Novelist

HELEN HUNT JACKSON Poet and Prose Writer

LUCRETIA MOTT Preacher

MARY A LIVERMORE Lecturer

MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI Journalist

MARIA MITCHELL Scientist

LOUISA M ALCOTT Author

MARY LYON Teacher

HARRIET G HOSMER Sculptor

MADAME DE STAËL Novelist and Political Writer

ROSA BONHEUR Artist

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING Poet

"GEORGE ELIOT" Novelist

ELIZABETH FRY Philanthropist

ELIZABETH THOMPSON BUTLER Painter

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE Hospital Nurse

LADY BRASSEY Traveller

BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS Benefactor

JEAN INGELOW Poet

* * * * *

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

[Illustration: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.]

In a plain home, in the town of Litchfield, Conn., was born, June 14, 1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe. The house was well-nigh full of little ones before her coming. She was the seventh child, while the oldest was but eleven years old.

Her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, a man of remarkable mind and sunshiny heart, was preaching earnest sermons in his own and in all the neighboring towns, on the munificent salary of five hundred dollars a year. Her mother, Roxana Beecher, was a woman whose beautiful life has been an inspiration to thousands. With an education superior for those times, she came into the home of the young minister with a strength of mind and heart that made her his companion and reliance.

There were no carpets on the floors till the girl-wife laid down a piece of cotton cloth on the parlor, and painted it in oils, with a border and a bunch of roses and others flowers in the centre. When one of the good deacons came to visit them, the preacher said, "Walk in, deacon, walk in!"

"Why, I can't," said he, "'thout steppin' on't." Then he exclaimed, in admiration, "D'ye think ya can have all that, and heaven too?"

So meagre was the salary for the increasing household, that Roxana urged that a select school be started; and in this she taught French, drawing, painting, and embroidery, besides the higher English branches. With all this work she found time to make herself the idol of her children. While Henry Ward hung round her neck, she made dolls for little Harriet, and read to them from Walter Scott and Washington Irving.

These were enchanting days for the enthusiastic girl with brown curls and blue eyes. She roamed over the meadows, and through the forests, gathering wild flowers in the spring or nuts in the fall, being educated, as she afterwards said, "first and foremost by Nature, wonderful, beautiful, ever-changing as she is in that cloudland, Litchfield. There were the crisp apples of the pink azalea,--honeysuckle-apples, we called them; there were scarlet wintergreen berries; there were pink shell blossoms of trailing arbutus, and feathers of ground pine; there were blue and white and yellow violets, and crowsfoot, and bloodroot, and wild anemone, and other quaint forest treasures."