Lives of Girls Who Became Famous

Earth's noblest thing, a woman perfected. -- James Russell Lowell.
Sow good services; sweet remembrances will grow from them. -- Madame de Staël.
To My aunt Mrs. Martha W. Miller Whose culture and kindness I count among the blessings of my life.
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.

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.