QUALITIES OF ELIZABETH FRY

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6802, 4 January 1929, Page 11

QUALITIES OF ELIZABETH FRY

Elizabeth was very shy and retiring, and was not thought, when young, to possess much talent or strength of character. She disliked learning, and her education on that account seems to have been somewhat defective. The two strongest features which showed themselves. . . wore enterprise and benevolence. Kitty, in later years, gauged her sister’s character very correctly when she said, ‘Elizabeth had more genius than anyone, from her retiring disposition, gave her credit for. She had tender feelings, especially toward her parents, to whom she was the most loving and obedient of any of their children. Elizabeth was gentle in look and manner, and pleasing in person; though she had not Bachel’s glowing beauty. She disliked learning languages, and was somewhat obstinate. In contemplating her remarkable and peculiar gifts I am struck with the development of her character and the manner in which the qualities, considered faults when she was a child, became virtues, and proved of the most important efficacy in her career of active service.” . . .

Nothing perhaps in the way of testimony is more beautiful than the words of her niece Priscilla: “We cannot expect the next generation to believe what wc know of the treasure she was. They may form some idea of her outward acts and capabilities; they cannot know what she was personally. After seeing her in some difficult work, my feeling was—marvellous as were her gifts, the real wonder was in her grace, her extraordinary power of loving and caring for others; the flow of the oil which in almost all others is by drops, in her was a rich steady stream, able to take in the meanest, the most unattractive, the most unrepaying; her power of condescending to the little interests of others combined ,-with her "greatness, her high natural powers of mind and her magnitude of action. We who tasted of it can never forget it, but I feel it vain to hope that our children will ever fully take it in.”—‘‘Georgina King Lewis, in ' ‘ Elizabeth Fry. ’ ’