here was a taste for magnificence
in her that argued an un-Quaker strain in her pedigree. On her marriage
she had with alacrity transferred her allegiance from no-ceremony
Quakerism to liturgical Episcopalianism, the religion of her husband.
She gave herself credit for having in this made some sacrifice to wifely
duty, though her husband would have been willing to join the orthodox
Friends with her, for the simplicity and stillness of the Quakers
consorted well with his constitution. Mrs. Frankland did not relinquish
certain notions derived from the Friends concerning the liberty of women
to speak when moved thereto. No doubt her tenacity in this particular
was due to her own consciousness of possessing a gift for swaying human
sympathies. Such a gift the Anglican communion, from time immemorial,
has delighted to bury in a napkin--in a tablecloth, if a napkin should
prove insufficient. But Mrs. Frankland was not a person to allow her
talent to be buried even in the most richly dight altar-cloth. In her,
as in most of the world's shining lights, zeal for a cause was
indistinguishably blended with personal aspirations--honest desire to be
serviceable with an unconscious desire to be known. It is only healthy
and normal that any human being possessed of native power should wish to
show his credentials by turning possibility into fact accomplished.

Mrs. Frankland's temperament inclined her to live like a city set on a
hill, but the earlier years of her married life had been too constantly
engrossed by domestic cares for her to undertake public duties. It had
often been out of the question for the Franklands to keep a servant, and
they had never kept more than one in a family of four children. At first
this ambitious wife sought to spur her timid and precise husband to
achievements that were quite impossible to him. But when the children
grew larger, so that the elder ones could be of assistance in the care
of the house, Mrs. Frankland's opportunity came. The fame of such women
as Mrs. Livermore, Miss Willard, and Mrs. Bottome had long been a spur
to her aspiration. She did not set up as a reformer. Denunciation and
contention were not proper to her temperament. She was, above all,
pathetic and sympathetic. She took charge of a Bible class of young
ladies in the Sunday-school, and these were soon deeply moved by her
talks to them as a class, and profoundly attracted to her by a way she
had of gathering each one of them under