During this time,--from 1760 to 1775,--a Mrs. Peck was also known in the same town as an excellent midwife. The direct successor of Mrs. King was, however, a Mrs. Lucretia Lester, who practised from 1745 to 1779. Of her my authority says, "She was justly respected as nurse and doctress to the pains and infirmities incident to her fellow-mortals, _especially_ her own sex;" a remark which shows she attended _both_. "She was, during thirty years, conspicuous as an angel of mercy; a woman whose price was beyond rubies. It is said she attended at the birth of _thirteen hundred_ children, and, of that number, lost but two." A Mrs. Susannah Brown practised from 1800 to 1840, and attended at the birth of _fourteen hundred_ children. From the number of patients these women must have had, it would seem as if they were sustained by the whole neighborhood. The book just published speaks highly of them, as what Henry Ward Beecher would call a "means of grace," and pleads, from the precedent, for the education of women to medicine. Southold is in Suffolk County, on Long Island; and was settled in the early part of the seventeenth century. It has now three churches, and less than five thousand inhabitants. The instance of so creditable a practice being maintained for a whole century, by three women, stands alone, so far as I know, in this country. Mrs. King probably studied abroad, and taught her next successor, and possibly Mrs. Peck, who seems to have assisted both. That three of the four women named should have practised forty years each, seems very remarkable. [27] See Appendix, sketch of Mrs. Roberts, and other female preachers. [28] I did not think, certainly, when I wrote the above passage, of Arthur Helps's "Companions of my Solitude;" but, taking up the book during a day of illness, I find a parallel passage in what he writes of the "sin of great cities." In speaking of the many excuses which ought to be made for fallen women, he says: "And then there is nobody into whose ear the poor girl can pour her troubles, _except she comes as a beggar_. This will be said to be a leaning, on my part, to the confessional. I cannot help this: I must speak the truth that is in me."