Besides this Miss Johnson has furnished monthly articles for various papers and occasional poems, for magazines. Thus we see her very busy life has been fruitful of unusual results.
Mrs. Julia McNair Wright.
Mrs. Wright has already been mentioned among Novelists and Story-Writers. For the following graphic sketch, we are indebted to one of our writers, Mrs. Julia R. Cutler.
"One of the authors whose sojourn in our 'beautiful little town', as she calls it, was of a comparatively brief period, from 1881-'83, but whose writings, as showing deep research in many fields of thought, both scientific and historical, entitle her to more than a brief mention, is Mrs. Julia McNair Wright.
"Her husband, the Rev. Dr. William J. Wright, is President of and, Professor of Metaphysics, in a Western College. Much of Mrs. Wright's time is spent in visiting different large cities, at home and abroad, where she can have access to libraries and gain information on various subjects connected with her books.
"While in Morristown, she wrote, at the request of the Presbyterian Board of Publication, her book on "The Alaskans" and also a short work on the religious life, called "Mr. Standfast's Journey", besides preparing for the press a book entitled "Bricks from Babel", which she had previously written while visiting London and the British museum. The Rev. Joseph Cook fully endorses this book, and calls it 'a most admirable compendium of ethnography.' A set of religious biographies were, also, about this time, published in Arabic.
"These works written and prepared for the press while she was occupying her quiet cottage home on Morris Plains, would alone have entitled her to a prominent place among the authors of whom Morristown has reason to be proud. But these are but a small portion of her literary labors. Judging from the number of books which appear over her signature, she must indeed be gifted with the 'pen of a ready writer.'
"Among the more prominent works are 'The Early Church in Britain'; 'The Complete Home', of which over one hundred thousand copies have been sold; 'Saints and Sinners of the Bible'; 'Almost a Nun'; 'The Priest and Nun'; 'A Wife Hard Won', a novel published by Lippincott; 'The Making of Rasmus'; 'Rasmus a Made Man'; and 'Rag Fair and May Fair'. The last deals with social questions in England, and is being re-published in London, as indeed a number of her other books have been, as well as translated into the French language.
"Mrs. Wright's latest work, completed during a recent visit to the British museum, is a Series of Readers on Natural Science, called 'Nature Readers, Seaside and Wayside', which are having a large run in this country, in England and in Canada and which are a new invention in school books. They have been more warmly received than any books for our schools, for the past twenty-five years.
"Very few persons have the talent of dealing with so many subjects and doing it so well. Even the Temperance cause owes much to Mrs. Wright, as its earnest advocate, and many of her thrilling stories on this subject have touched the hearts and inspired the actions of those who have read them. Nor has she, amid her multitude of duties, forgotten the young, as the large number of volumes on the shelves of our Sabbath School libraries, bearing her name can testify.