Of all her labors, heavy and varied as those of Hercules, her poetry was what she loved best. But she lived in an age when there are few who can take their spiritual meat in verse. The age of steel is an age of prose, and so she labored in season and out to give her message in prose as well as in poetry, with the spoken word as well as the written. She was the most willing of troubadours; she hastened gladly wherever she was called, whether it was to some stately banquet of the muses like the Bryant Centenary, or to a humble company of illiterate negroes, in the poor little chapel at Santo Domingo, where she preached all one season. Whether some rich and powerful association like the Woman’s Club at Chicago summoned her or some modest group of working women on Cape Cod, she was always ready. She asked no fee, but accepted what was given her. She spoke and wrote oftenest for love, and next often for an honorarium of five dollars. The first need of her being was to give. So much had been given to her that she was forever trying to pay the debt by giving of her store to others. I find in her own handwriting the best expression of this need of giving, that was perhaps the prime necessity of her life. “I, for one, feel that my indebtedness grows with my years. And it occurred to me the other day that when I should depart from this earthly scene, “God’s poor Debtor” might be the fittest inscription for my gravestone, if I should have one. So much have I received from the great Giver, so little have I been able to return.” One day a rash scatter-brained fellow who was always getting himself and others into hot water asked her this question: “Is it not always our duty to sacrifice ourselves for others?” She knew very well that he was contemplating a perfectly reckless step and was trying to hoodwink her--and himself--into thinking the action noble, because it would be so disadvantageous to himself. The boy I fear forgot her answer; here it is for you to remember and lay to heart. “We must always remember that we come into the world alone, that we go out of the world alone, that there is nothing to us but ourselves.” Certain things, she held, we must sacrifice, selfish personal ends, comfort, pleasure, ease, but if we are to fight the good fight we must not make the fancied sacrifice of letting our arms rust while we lay them down to fight another’s battle--nine times out of ten an easier thing to do than to fight our own. She had met with so much opposition all her life through serving the unpopular causes of Abolition, Woman’s Suffrage, Religious Freedom, she had fought so grimly for what, when she entered the ranks, always seemed a Forlorn Hope, that she knew the real joy lies in the battle, not in the victory.