"... The ladies have invaded the field of fiction and carried off its most substantial triumphs. Mrs. Stowe, Fanny Fern, and now another name, if the portents do not deceive us, is about to be added--that of Miss Chandler, who although the youngest of the band (she is not yet nineteen), is overflowing with genius and promise. Such tales as those of 'Silence Adams,' 'A Husking Party at Ryefield,' 'Agnes Lee,' and 'Only an Old Maid,' reveal the pathos, the beauty, the power, the depth and earnestness of emotion that Ellen Louise has the art of transfusing into the humblest and most commonplace details.... But Ellen Louise must not be deceived by injudicious admiration. Her style, purified, chastened and subdued, would lose none of its attractiveness. She gives evidence of too noble a habit of thought to desire the success which comes of the hasty plaudits of the hour." The book reviewing of 1853 was apparently not unlike the spelling of George Eliot's poor Mr. Tulliver,--"a matter of private judgment." For although the stories of Ellen Louise were singularly sweet and winsome in their tone, with an unusual grasp of sentiment and glow of fancy for so youthful and inexperienced a writer, they could yet hardly claim to rank with the work of Mrs. Stowe. The leading papers of that day united, however, in an absolute chorus of praise for the young author, who is pronounced "charming," and "overflowing with talent"; the "refinement and delicacy" of her work, her "rare maturity of thought and style," and a myriad other literary virtues were discerned and celebrated to the extent that the resources of the language of the country would allow. A sonnet was written to her, signed "B.P.S.," which signature is easily translated to us in these days as that of B.P. Shillaber, the author of "Mrs. Partington." The sonnet is entitled: TO ELLEN LOUISE Take this, and that, and t'other all together, We like you better every day we're breathing; And round our hearts this pleasant summer weather Your fairy fingers deathless flowers are weaving: We read delightedly your charming pages Fraught in each line with truth and magic beauty; Here starts a tear that some hid woe assuages, And there is heard a voice that calls to duty. And proudly may Connecticut, sweet Ellen, Point to the genius bright that crowns her daughter, And the rare graces that she doth excel in, Confessed in floods of praise from every quarter. The world forgives the wooden nutmeg suction Because of you, the best Connecticut production. The succeeding year Miss Chandler passed at Mrs. Willard's Seminary in Troy, N.Y., and a classmate, who in after years became the wife of General Gillespie, thus describes her: