e wish to wander about there with you, and perhaps two or
three other of my American friends. Until this can be accomplished, I hope
to continue my present work in the New-England Female Medical College,
which, though by no means yet what we wish it to be, is deserving of
every effort to raise it to the stand that it ought to take among the
medical institutions of America.

Yours with love,

Marie E. Zakrzewska.
Boston, September, 1859.

* * * * *

The sweet, pure song has ended. Happy she who has been permitted to set
its clear, strong notes to music. I need not murmur that my own old
hand-organ grows useless, since it has been permitted to grind out the
_key_. Yet Marie's story is told so modestly, and with so much personal
reserve, that, for the sake of the women whom we are both striving to
help, I must be forgiven for directing the public attention to a few of
its points.

In all respects, the "little blind doctor" of the story is the Marie
Zakrzewska that we know. The early anecdotes give us the poetic
impressibility and the enduring muscular fibre, that make themselves felt
through the lively, facile nature. The voice that ordered the fetters
taken off of crazy Jacob is the voice we still hear in the wards of the
hospital. But that poetic impressibility did not run wild with crazy
fancies when she was left to sleep on the floor of the dead-house: the
same strong sense controlled it that started the "tassel manufactory" in
New York, where it had been meant to open a physician's office. Only
thirteen years old when she left school, she had but little aid beside a
_steady purpose_ in preparing for her career. We hear of her slatternly
habits; but who would ever guess them, who remembers the quiet, tasteful
dress of later years?

How free from all egotism is the record! The brain-fever which followed
her attendance on her two aunts is mentioned as quietly as if it were a
sprained foot. Who of us but can see the wearing-away of nervous energy
which took place with the perpetual care of a cancer and a somnambulist
pressed also by the hard reading suggested by Dr. Arthur Luetze? Berlin
educated the second La Chapelle; but it was for America, not Germany. The
dreadful tragedy of Dr. Schmidt's death is hardly dwelt upon long enough
to show its full effects, so fearful is our friend of intruding a personal
matter.

When "Woman's Right to Labor" was printed, many persons expressed the