A winsome little sprite seems Ellen Louise to have been, revealing, even in her earliest years, a quaint touch of her father's courtly dignity combined with her mother's refinement and unerring sense of the amenities of life. Mrs. Chandler's fastidious taste and a certain innate instinct for the fitness of things, invested her always with a personal elegance that surrounded her like an atmosphere. A picture lived in her daughter's memory of her arriving one day, in a bonnet with pink roses, to visit the school; and of her own childish thought that no other little girl had so pretty a mother as her own. In after years she pictured, in one of her sonnets, this beloved mother: How shall I here her placid picture paint With touch that shall be delicate, yet sure? Soft hair above a brow so high and pure Years have not soiled it with an earthly taint, Needing no aureole to prove her saint; Firm mind that no temptation could allure; Soul strong to do, heart stronger to endure; And calm, sweet lips that utter no complaint. So have I seen her, in my darkest days, And when her own most sacred ties were riven, Walk tranquilly in self-denying ways, Asking for strength, and sure it would be given; Filling her life with lowly prayer, high praise,-- So shall I see her, if we meet in heaven. The little maid's schooldays seem to have begun before she was out of the nursery, for a tiny relic has drifted down the years, in the form of a very brilliant rose painted on a slip of paper,--the paper faded and yellow with age, the rose as fresh as if colored yesterday,--bearing the legend: "Miss Ellen L. Chandler deserves my approbation for good behavior in school. Charlotte Taintor." And this documentary evidence of the good behavior of "Miss Ellen" is dated August, 1839, when she was but little past her fourth birthday. It is pleasant to know that the future poet began her earthly career in a fashion so exemplary; and a further testimonial exists in a page which has survived for nearly seventy years, on which a relative, a friendly old gentleman, had written, in 1840, lines "To Little Ellen," which run in part: Ah, lovely child! the thought of thee Still fills my heart with gladness; Whene'er thy cherub face I see Its smiles dispel my sadness. This artless ditty continues through many stanzas, and contains one line at which the reader to-day can but smile sympathetically: Thy seraph voice with music breathing; for this rhapsodical phrase connects itself with the many tributes paid in later life to her "golden voice." Whittier, expressing his desire to meet "the benediction of thy face," alludes also to the music of her tones. That the voice is an index of the soul is a theory which may easily be accepted by those who have in memory the clear, soft speech of Mrs. Moulton. Often was she playfully entreated to