P.—PRENTISS, ELIZABETH.
IN a volume of nearly six hundred pages, the husband of this gifted woman tells the story of her life, or rather he lets her tell it in extracts from her letters and journal. In the little space allotted me for a sketch of Mrs. Prentiss, I can only give you a few facts of her life. When you are older you must read this volume and learn more about her. She was the daughter of a clergyman, a highly gifted man, and one who was no less remarkable for his piety than for his learning, and after reading a sketch of Edward Payson, one is not surprised that the daughter of such a man should develop into a remarkable woman. Mrs. Prentiss was born at Portland, Maine, October 26, 1818. You would like to know about her as a child? She is described as “a beautiful child, slender, dark-eyed, light-footed, very quiet, evidently observant, saying little, affectionate, yet not demonstrative.”
She was devotedly attached to her father, and the impression which the teachings of his beautiful, godly life made upon her childish mind was never effaced. Though he died when she was only nine years old, her recollections of him are said to have been remarkably vivid.
She could tell how he looked and talked and acted, things he said and did. Once coming upon him suddenly she found him engaged in prayer, and so lost in communion with God that he did not become conscious of her presence; and she afterwards said that she never forgot the scene, neither did its influence upon her cease while she lived. She was never strong, having inherited a nervous temperament along with a feeble constitution. Once when she was grown to womanhood she said, “I never knew what it was to feel well.”
At the age of twelve years she was very ill with a fever, so ill that the family thought the hour had come when they must part with Elizabeth. But she was spared, perhaps in answer to the mother’s prayers, for that mother recorded in her journal the circumstance of her illness and restoration with a comment upon God’s goodness in sparing the child, wondering whether it might be to the end that she would one day devote herself to the Saviour and do something for the honor of religion. And in the spring of the following year, this child of many prayers, publicly confessed her faith in Christ, and was enrolled among his people.
She grew to girlhood developing a lovely Christian character, also showing a marked talent in composition. She contributed when quite young to the Youth’s Companion. As she passed on through her girlhood into womanhood she became her mother’s faithful friend and assistant, thoughtful for her comfort, and also a tender sympathizing friend towards her brothers.
I want to copy for you a little bit of verse which she wrote for the Youth’s Companion, which I think will please some of our little folks.
What are little babies for?
Say! say! say!
Are they good-for-nothing things?
Nay! nay! nay!
Can they speak a single word?
Say! say! say!
Can they help their mother’s sew?
Nay! nay! nay!
Can they walk upon their feet?
Say! say! say!
Can they even hold themselves?
Nay! nay! nay!
What are little babies for?
Say! say! say!
Are they made for us to love?
Yea! yea! YEA!!!
A friend says of her: “Human nature seems to have been her favorite study. There seemed to be no one in whom she could not find something to interest her, none with whom there was not some point of sympathy.”
And now I wonder if you have guessed, or if you knew all the while that this remarkable woman was the author of some of your favorite books!
The Susy books! ah! your mothers will tell you that these books were their favorites as well as your own! Susy’s Six Birthdays was published thirty-three years ago, then followed the others of the series, and Flower of the Family, and Peterchen and Gretchen, and Tangle Thread, Silver Thread and Golden Thread, besides many others, up to twenty-five volumes. The book which has been more widely read than any other of her works is probably “Stepping Heavenward.”
More than seventy thousand copies have been sold in this country, and the work has also been translated into the French and German languages.
Mrs. Prentiss’ books were all written after her marriage to Rev. George L. Prentiss, which occurred in 1845. Mr. Prentiss was the pastor of a church in New Bedford. Afterwards they lived in New York and, in the year 1866, they went to a quiet place among the Green Mountains to spend the summer, and so delighted were they with the beauties of Dorset that they made it their summer home, building a cottage there in which Mrs. Prentiss died about twelve years later.
It is impossible to give you any account of the varied scenes of her life in such a brief sketch. She was called to pass through many sorrows. The death of the father to which I have already referred; later the loss of her mother, sister, brother and children.
These bereavements came one after another, yet her Christian character only shone out the brighter.
“Though the death of her children tore with anguish the mother’s heart, she made no show of grief, and to the eye of the world her life soon appeared to move on as aforetime. Never again, however, was it exactly the same life. She had entered into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and the new experience wrought a great change in her whole being.” She was remarkably happy in the children spared to her, and in all her home life. A friend has written of her:
“I have ever regarded her as favored among women, blessed in doing her Master’s will and in testifying of Him, blessed in her home, in her friends, in her work and blessed in her death.”
Faye Huntington.
SLEEPY LITTLE FELLOWS!
Volume 13, Number 43. Copyright, 1886, by D. Lothrop & Co. August 28, 1886.
THE PANSY.
NORMANDY WOMAN IN WOODEN SHOES.