nfolding and ripening amid congenial surroundings of a true and
beautiful soul, a clear and refined intellect, and a singularly
sympathetic social nature. She was born eighty years ago"--this was
written in 1871,--"when the atmosphere was still electric with the
storm in which we took our place among the nations, and, passing her
childhood in the seclusion of a New England valley, while yet her
family was linked to the great world without by ties both political
and social, early and deep foundations were laid in her character of
patriotism, religious feeling, love of nature, and strong attachment
to home, and to those who made it what it was. And when in later life,
she took her place among the acknowledged leaders of literature and
society, these remained the central features of her character, and
around them gathered all the graceful culture, the active
philanthropy, the social accomplishment, which made her presence a joy
wherever it came."

It is not singular if she began her existence at a somewhat advanced
stage. She was quite sure she remembered incidents that took place
before she was two years old. She remembered a dinner party at which
Miss Susan Morton, afterward Madame Quincy, was present, and to which
her father and her brother, Theodore, came from Philadelphia. If you
are anxious to know what incidents of such an event would fix
themselves in the mind of a child of two, they were these: She made
her first attempt to say "Theodore," and "Philadelphia," and she tried
her baby trick of biting her glass, for which she had doubtless been
reproved, and watched its effect upon her father. "I recall perfectly
the feeling with which I turned my eye to him, expecting to see that
brow cloud with displeasure, but it was smooth as love could make it.
That consciousness, that glance, that assurance, remained stamped
indelibly."

"Education in the common sense," says Miss Sedgwick, "I had next to
none." For schools, she fared like other children in Stockbridge, with
the difference that her father was "absorbed in political life," her
mother, in Catharine's youth an invalid, died early, and no one, she
says, "dictated my studies or overlooked my progress. I remember
feeling an intense ambition to be at the head of my class, and
generally being there. Our minds were not weakened by too much study;
reading, spelling, and Dwight's geography were the only paths of
knowledge into which we were led;" to which accomplishments