To me she was a revelation of good-will to men. She lectured me sometimes, as a mother might and ought, always in infinite tenderness. “I cannot have you say that, my child!” she said once, when I broke into a tirade against the hypocrisy and general selfishness of humankind at large, and certain offenders in particular. “Nobody is all-wicked. There is more unconquered evil in some natures than in others. There is good—a spark of divine fire—in every soul God has made. Look for it, and you will find it. Encourage it, and it will shine.” And in reply to a murmur during the trial-experiences of parish work, when I “deplored the effect of these belittling cares and petty commonplaces upon my intellectual growth,” the caressing hand was laid against my hot cheek. “Dear! you are the wife of the man of God! It is a sacred trust committed to you as his helpmate. To shirk anything that helps him would be a sin. And we climb one step at a time, you know—not by bold leaps. Nothing is belittling that God sets for us to do.” She, and some other things, gave me a royal winter. Another good friend, Mrs. Stanard, had notified me that Edward Everett, then lecturing in behalf of the Mount Vernon Association, was to be her guest while in Richmond, and raised me to the seventh heaven of delighted anticipation by inviting me to meet him at a dinner-party she would give him. Mrs. Ritchie forestalled the introduction to the great man by writing a wee note to me on the morning of the day on which the dinner was to be. The Mount Vernon Association had for its express object the purchase of Washington’s home and burial-place, to be held by the Nation, and not by the remote descendant of Mary and Augustine Washington, who had inherited it. Mrs. Ritchie was the secretary of the organization. Her note said: “A committee of our Association will wait upon Mr. Everett at the Governor’s house this forenoon. I will smuggle you in, if you will go with us. I shall call for you at eleven.” When we four who had come together were ushered into the spacious drawing-room of the gubernatorial mansion, we had it to ourselves. Mrs. Ritchie, with a pretty gesture that reminded one of her French birth, fell to arranging five or six chairs near the middle of the room, into a seemingly careless group. One faced the rest at a conversational angle. “Now!” she uttered, with a playful pretence of secrecy; “you will see Mr. Everett seat himself just there! He can do nothing else. Call it a stage trick, if you like. But he _must_ sit there!” The words had hardly left her lips when Mr. Everett entered, accompanied by a younger man, erect in carriage and bronzed in complexion, whom he presented to us as “My son-in-law, Lieutenant Wise.” To our secret amusement, Mr. Everett took the chair set for him, and this, when three remained vacant after the ladies were all seated.