But before she had reached this point in her career, while in fact the fame of this Western worker was just beginning to be heard of in the seaboard cities, the reading public of those cities was startled into a fever of enthusiasm by the letters of a Western girl in Eastern papers, the _Home Journal_, the _Saturday Gazette_, the _Saturday Evening Post_, the _National Press_. It was in 1845 and ’46 that “Grace Greenwood” first took her place, while still a girl in her teens, as one of the most brilliant, clear-headed, and versatile of newspaper correspondents, in which special province, so far as journalistic work is concerned, she has elected to remain, with the exception of the few years, beginning with 1853, during which she published and edited the _Little Pilgrim_. Mrs. Swisshelm’s ambitions, on the contrary, led her always to prefer the active duties of editor and publisher. The _Saturday Visitor_ under her management was a power in the fields of political and social reform, of home duties and graces. She enlisted the services of other women for its departments. Chief among these helpers was Mrs. Frances D. Gage of Ohio, who became afterwards widely known as a charming writer for children, an earnest woman’s rights speaker, and contributor to the _New York Independent_. In 1856, after her connection with the _Visitor_ ceased, Mrs. Gage led the van of women journalists in her own State by becoming associate editor of an agricultural paper in Columbus, conducting its Home department with marked success. Mrs. Swisshelm, attracted in 1856 by what seemed a wider sphere for work in the new Northwest, sold her Pittsburgh paper and soon afterwards started, in Minnesota, the _St. Cloud Visitor_. In this she of course continued her advocacy of Free Soil and anti-slavery doctrines, and within a year her office was raided and her press destroyed by a mob. Fearlessly she gathered her resources together, and began the publication of the _St. Cloud Democrat_, in which she afresh demonstrated her ability, and in the campaign of 1860 supported Mr. Lincoln for the Presidency. After the close of the war she returned to the duties of active journalism; having, during the years of conflict, laid them aside to perform efficient service as a nurse “at the front.” Her vigorous pen until nearly the close of her life failed not to serve every cause in whose truth and justice she believed.