A REMARKABLE WOMAN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6138, 26 March 1898, Page 3

A REMARKABLE WOMAN.

MISS FRANCES WILLARD

The recent death at the age of fiftyeight years of Miss Frances Willard, the well-known American authoress and temperance advocate, was not wholly unexpected, for hor long illness was of such a nature thafc recovery was considered very improbable. Miss Willard was undoubtedly a remarkable woman, and her sweet, intellectual face, framed in a wealth of beautiful wavy hair, was a true index of the -large mind of this earnest worker for humanity.

Frances Willard was a native of Ogden, in the State of New York, where she was born in 1539. Her childhood was an ideally happy one, spent chiefly on a farm in Wisconsin. Here, up to the age of twelve, she lived almost out of doors on tho prairie, hor brother ancl sister being her only playmates. As showing how strong was the organising talent of the future president of the National Women's Christian Temperance Union, even during childhood, her two first clubs, the Artists' and the Rustics', may be mentioned. These Frances Willard formed when just twelve years old, to give a constitutional setting to the hunting and sketching amusements of herself and her sister. The clubs were duly constituted with president, secretary, regular meetings ancl carefully defined laws.

The last clause of the laws of the Artists' Club ran as follows : — " We, the members of this club, pledge ourselves faithfully to keep all these our own laws. Frank Willard, Mary E. Willard."

The Rustic Club had the same membership, but more elaborate rules. The object was defined as being that of "hunting, fishing and trapping, with other rural pleasures at once exciting and noble."

At the age of twelve Frances Willard went to school at a neighbour's house. Two years later a little schoolhouse was built, and at seventeen she went to a woman's college at Mil-w-attkee, and later she attended college at Evanston, a sxiburb of Chicago. She Was passionately fond of reading. When sixteen years she says : — "I read Dr Dick's ' Christian Philosopher ' and 'Future State,' and was so wrought upon that when I had to help to get dinner one Sunday I fairly cried. 'To come down fco frying onions when I had been among the rings of Saturn is a little too much !' I said impatiently." When she was eighteen she records that up to thafc time life had known no greater disappointment than the decision of her practical-minded mother that she should not study Greek.

She broke down from over-study before she graduated, but her indomitable will carried her through. She had an almost savage lust for learning, and she often rose at four, and more than once was found on the floor in dead sleep, with her face on Butler's " Analogy." When she was twenty she left college, determined to " earn my own living, pay my own way, and be of some use in the world." So, by way of mak ng a beginning, sho became a schoolteacher when in her twenty-first year. In 1868, Miss Willard went for a two years' trip to Europe with Miss Kate Jackson, who defrayed the expense. Together they visited nearly every country in Europe, and went also to Egypt and Palestine. On her return Frances Willard was appointed President of Evanston College for Ladies, where she elaborated an excellent system of self-government. Later on she became teacher of natural science in various seminaries.

She was thirty-five years 'old before she found her true vocation. Her college studies, her European travels, and her teaching experience had been merely the preparation for her temperance work. In 1873, under the leadership of Mrs (Judge) Thompson, a delicate woman of great, beauty and courage, was commenced the woman's crusade against drink saloons, which was in reality the beginning of the temperance movement.

Miss Willard, whose parents had been life-long teetotallers, was absorbed in the cause from the beginning. She began to lecture in public. A new life lay before her. She was offered the post of Principal to a ladies' school in New York at a salary of =£580 per annum. She had no means of subsistence save her profession, and just .then she was offered the presidentship of the Chicago Women's Temperance Union, but there was no salary attached to the post. For some time she wavered, but finally declined the principalship and went to Chicago as president of its Temperance Union.

Miss Willard, when asked if she wanted monoy, because if she did the Society would try to get some, replied, " Oh, that will be all right." She said to herself, "I am just going to pray, to work, and to trust God." Her salary was nothing per annum, paid quarterly. She starved on it, but worked away all the same, and for several months went hungry and penniless. It was in this way that the foundations were laid. " I had some pretty rings, given me in other days by friends and pupils; these I put off and never have resumed them, also my watch chain, for I would have no striking contrast between these poor people and myself. To share my last dime with some famishedlooking man or woman was a pure delight. Indeed, my whole life has not known a more lovely jenod. I communed with God; I dwelt in the Spirit; this world had nothing to give mo, nothing to take away." It was in tliis period of impecuniosity that she was so uplifted in soul as to declare :— " I haven't a cent in the world, but all the same I own Chicago." In 1878 she became the editor of the Chicago Daily p pot,s t, and she was the author of the "Home Protection Movement." to give women in America the ballot on all temperance questions, and of the following 7oTo 2 neteen Beautiful Years," w5Jv"iS? «w d Hel P a in Temperance }!=?' <cS 7 \ m9n and Temperance," 1883 -, How to Win," 1886 ; " Women in

the-Pulpit; 1688; and "Glimpses of Fifty Years : Jhe Autopiography of an American Woman. The first edition of the lastnamed book consisted of 50,000 copies. She was a ceaseless worker in the temperance movement in America, and for many years found in Lady Henry Somerset, the president of the British Women's Christian Temperance Union, a co-worker after her own heart. Unfortunately for her, and fov Lady Henry, the. sisterly friendship which had long existed between these two notable women was broken about a year ago by the attitude taken up by the latter with regard- to the Indian cantonments question, a sad ending to one of the strouges- women's friendships we know of in the latter half of this century.