her life. At first she
rebelled against her sufferings, but when he died in her girlhood she
was able to see that they lent strength to her efforts for her sex. It
was the rumor of what we were doing in this country for women that
first drew her hither. It is not the fashion for Miss Bremer's friends
fully to recognize her position in this respect. I owe my own
convictions on the subject of suffrage to the reflections she
awakened. When I told her that my mind was undecided on this point,
she showed her disappointment so plainly, that I was forced to
reconsider the whole subject. Miss Bremer did not hurry her work. She
had a serene confidence that she should be permitted to finish what
she had begun. She secured popularity by her cheerful humor, her
genuine feeling, her true appreciation of men, and her insight into
the conditions of family happiness, before she made any direct appeal
against existing laws. Those who will read her novels thoughtfully,
however, will see that she was from the first intent upon making such
an effort possible. From the beginning she pleaded for the social
independence of wives; asked for them a separate purse; showed that
woman could not even give her love freely, until she was independent
of him to whom she owed it. To a just state of society, to noble
family relations, entire freedom is essential.

Under her influence females had been admitted to the Musical Academy.
The Directors of the Industrial School at Stockholm had attempted to
form a class, and Professor Quarnstromm had opened his classes at the
Academy of Fine Arts to women. Cheered by her sympathy, a female
surgeon had sustained herself in Stockholm, and Bishop Argardh
indorsed the darkest picture she had ever drawn, when he pleaded with
the state to establish a girls' school. It was at this juncture that
Miss Bremer published Hertha. This book was a direct blow aimed at the
laws of Sweden concerning women. By this time she had herself become
in Sweden what we might fitly call a "crowned head." She was
everywhere treated with distinction, and her sudden appearance in any
place was greeted with the enthusiasm usually shown by such nations
only to their princes. She said of her new book: "I have poured into
it more of my heart and life than into anything which I have ever
written," and, verily, she had her reward. She was at Rome, two years
after, in 1858, when the glad news reached her that King Oscar, at the
opening of the Diet