"Leavenworth
"My first visit to Leavenworth was a stay of a couple of hours between trains, on my way to southern Kansas. Short as this was, it yet brought to my acquaintance two new friends, and to my remembrance two old ones. Of the new friends, the first seen was Rev. Edward Sanborn, the Unitarian minister of the place. Mr. Sanborn met me at the comfortless depot, and insisted upon taking me to his lodgings, where Friend Number Two, in the shape of his amiable wife, added herself to the list of my well-wishers. Mr. Sanborn had just been burned out. His house took fire while he and his wife were spending Christmas Day with a neighbor, and burned so quickly that no article in it could be saved. He had found in the ashes the charred remains of his manuscript sermons, and had good hope of being able to decipher them. As the pleasant minutes passed in easy conversation, I could not help reflecting on the instinctive hospitality of Western life. This cosy corner in a mere hired bedroom had given me a rest and a shelter which I should have been unwilling to ask for in some streets of palaces which have been familiar to me from my youth up."
The Association for the Advancement of Women was a pioneer society, and did vital work for twenty-five years. During the greater part of that time she was its president. She never missed (save when in Europe) one of its annual congresses, or one of the mid-year conferences (of officers only) which she considered of high moment. She worked for the Association with a loving enthusiasm that never varied or faltered; and it was a real grief to her when the changing of the old order resolved it into its elements, to take new shape in the larger and farther-reaching work of the General Federation of Clubs, and other kindred societies.
Many of these may be called the children of "A.A.W." The greatest service of the latter was in founding women's clubs throughout the country. Wherever they went, to conferences or conventions, its leaders called about them the thoughtful women of the neighborhood, and helped them to plan local associations for study and work.
There was still another aspect of the Woman Question, dearer to her even than "A.A.W."
A woman minister once said: "My conviction that Mrs. Howe was a divinely ordained preacher was gained the first time that she publicly espoused the question of woman suffrage in 1869."
We have seen that little Julia Ward began her ministrations in the nursery. At eight years old she was adjuring her little cousin to love God and he would see death approaching with joy. At eleven she was writing her "Invitation to Youth":—
Oh! let thy meditations be of God,
Who guides thy footsteps with unerring eye;
And who, until the path of life is trod,
Will never leave thee by thyself to die.
When morning's rays so joyously do shine,
And nature brightens at the face of day,
Oh! think then on the joys that shall be thine
If thou wilt early walk the narrow way.
We have followed her through the Calvinistic period of religious gloom and fervor; through the intellectual awakening that followed; through the years when she could say to Philosophy,—
"... The world its plenitude
May keep, so I may share thy beggary."