Before entering college I was for about six months a pupil of Mrs. Sarah Ripley of Waltham. She removed to Concord with her husband afterward. She was one of the most wonderful scholars of her time, or indeed of any time. President Everett said she could fill any professor's chair at Harvard. She was an admirable mathematician. She read the "Mecanique Celeste" of Laplace in the original without the aid of Dr. Bowditch's translation. She was a fine German and Italian scholar. She had a great fondness for Greek literature, especially for Plato and AEschylus. She was an accomplished naturalist. She was simple as a child, an admirable wife and mother, performing perfectly all the commonest duties of the household. The authorities of Harvard used to send boys to her who were rusticated for some offence. She would keep them along in all their studies, in most cases better instructed than they would have been if they had stayed in Cambridge. I remember her now with the strongest feeling of reverence, affection and gratitude. In that I say what every other pupil of hers would say. I do not think she ever knew how much her boys loved her. In 1876 the Directors of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia took steps to have the lives of three or four of the foremost women of the century that had just passed written as the best examples of American womanhood for our first century. Mrs. Schuyler was selected from New York, Mrs. Livermore from New Hampshire, and Mrs. Randolph from Virginia. Mrs. Ripley was chosen as the representative of Massachusetts. If anybody doubt the capacity of the intellect of woman to rival that of man in any calling requiring the highest intellectual capacity, without in the least forfeiting any quality of a delicate womanhood, let him read the "Life of Sarah Ripley." After her death Mr. Emerson wrote the following notice of her. It is not found in his collected works. "Died in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 26th of July, 1867, Mrs. Sarah Alden Ripley, aged seventy-four years. The death of this lady, widely known and beloved, will be sincerely deplored by many persons scattered in distant parts of the country, who have known her rare accomplishments and the singular loveliness of her character. A lineal descendant of the first governor of Plymouth Colony, she was happily born and bred. Her father, Gamaliel Bradford, was a sea-captain of marked ability, with heroic traits which old men will still remember, and though a man of action yet adding a taste for letters. Her brothers, younger than herself, were scholars, but her own taste for study was even more decided. At a time when perhaps no other young woman read Greek, she acquired the language with ease and read Plato,--adding soon the advantage of German commentators.