She held her course and steered her life as a skilled navigator holds his course, who while he steers by compass and chart yet makes myriad adjustments as required by continually varying conditions of wind and wave and sky. And pursuers of high ideals in ethics and philosophy were always on her list of friends. This list always included clergymen, and in this connection we may note the observations at a later date of Rev. Charles G. Ames. He says: Dr. Zakrzewska in speaking of the class of unfortunate women with whom she was often brought in contact in her medical work, once said to me, “I cannot give them money but I always give them my friendship in order to keep them morally alive.” It made me think of Fichte’s words, “No honest mind is without communication with God, whether so called or not.” After hearing that remark of the Doctor’s, I never had any difficulty in giving her my fellowship on the deepest spiritual ground. Reverend James Freeman Clarke[24] was one of her earliest friends in Boston, their acquaintance beginning back in the days when she came soliciting help for opening the New York Infirmary. In her address at the opening of the Sewall Maternity new building, in 1892, Dr. Zakrzewska alludes to this episode, saying: Let me express the gratitude we owe for our existence to a man whose influence secured to us the noble friends who in the spirit of justice to women gave invaluable assistance with their labors and their financial help--I mean, Reverend James Freeman Clarke. I feel justified in saying that it was among the members of his church that the idea was materialized and that funds for the beginning of the experiment were provided. We have referred above to Dr. Zakrzewska’s wide reading. One of the friends of her Cleveland days, Rev. A. D. Mayo, says: By an intuitive grasp of what was best for herself in books, she realized the saying of the historian, George Bancroft, “I should as soon think of eating all the apples on the big tree in my garden as to read the whole of any good book. I pluck and eat the best apple and leave the rest.” She always knew the best apple on every tree of knowledge, and her mind was stored with the condensed wisdom of many libraries. And he tells of the renewal in Boston of his friendship with her, some twenty years after its beginning in Cleveland: Having made Boston my family headquarters, we were brought together in her generously appointed home in Union Park, almost under the eaves of the great church of Dr. Edward Everett Hale. I then verified anew the old truth that a genuine friendship grows even during absence. Writing at this same date about Dr. Zakrzewska’s personality, Dr. Buckel says: I cannot measure how much I owe to her skillful, energetic, practical instruction as a physician when I was a student in the New York Infirmary; neither can I measure the strength, courage and hope which her bright example has given me throughout my life.