Her father, Mr. Rowland Ellis, was born in Boston, but while yet young removed to Cincinnati, where he still lives in a vigorous and honored old age. Although his mother, in all her later years at least, was a devoted attendant upon Theodore Parker's services, Mr. Ellis in early life was a Baptist. But when the Unitarian Church was founded at Cincinnati, in 1830, his name appears among the organizers, of whom he is almost the sole survivor. Of that church he has always been a devoted supporter and constant attendant. He was a leading banker of the West, and Sallie was born into one of the most elegant and luxurious homes in Cincinnati. The Ellises kept open house, exercised the most generous hospitality, and made, as one says who knew them well then, "such a beautiful use of their money. The Ellises were just the people who _ought_ to have money." Mrs. Ellis is described as a woman of unusual loveliness of character. Out of the eight children, Sallie was thought to be the mother's favorite, because, it was supposed, she was always puny, shy, and delicate. "Sallie shall always have what she wants," said the mother, "because she wants so little." But mothers _know_, and undoubtedly the mother saw deeper than others into the rare spiritual quality concealed from the world under her delicate child's quiet, reserved exterior. Her older sister remembers of Sallie's childhood: "As a very young child she exhibited strongly marked peculiarities of character. Her affection, conscientiousness, piety, and love of duty made her different from the rest of us as children. I remember well that at home or at school there were never any rebukes for Sallie. Though very social by nature, as young as at five and six years of age she loved to be alone, and would sit in the corner of her mother's room, with face turned to the corner, musing, and talking in a low tone to her doll. When our father and mother would take the children to entertainments of various descriptions, such as children enjoy, Sallie would invariably express her preference to remain at home. If she thought her parents wanted her to go, she went." For some years Sallie attended the private school of Mrs. Anne Ryland, an English Unitarian (a former parishioner, I think, of Rev. Laut Carpenter, and connected by marriage with Rev. Brooke Herford), a lady of noble character, and a teacher whose culture and methods were in advance of her age. In a volume of poetry presented Sallie by this teacher, is this inscription, whose old-fashioned quaintness of phrase pictures for us the Sallie Ellis of thirteen, then, as always, faithful to duty.