In Lucy Larcom’s touching poem, “My Childhood’s Enchantress,” will be found a loving tribute to this mother-sister, to whom she owed so much in her youth and all through her life. It was she who first taught Lucy the use of the pen, and encouraged and helped her in all her literary efforts. She was the oldest own sister of Lucy, is the “Emelie” in the “New England Girlhood,” and to her Lucy wrote almost her first, certainly her first _printed_, letter, in 1834, just after their mother had moved to Lowell. This is from her autobiography, printed in _The Lowell Offering_. She says:-- “_Dear Sister_,--We have got a sink in our front entry. We live in a three-story brick block, with fourteen doors in it. There is a canal close by. But no more of this. We arrived safe after our fatiguing journey. We are in good health, and hope you enjoy the same blessing.” In writing of her to me, Lucy says:-- “I was transplanted quite early in my childhood, and grew through girlhood and womanhood under her care. The ten or twelve years of my residence there were certainly very important years to me. My natural bent towards literature was more encouraged and developed at Lowell than it would probably have been elsewhere; and I have always called the place a home in remembrance.... We were often writing to each other, and there never was any break to our affection since my childhood. I think she was almost a perfect woman.” I remember Emmeline as a motherly young woman whom the rest of us looked up to, as one much superior to ourselves; and, in recalling her influence over her younger companions, I think she must have done a great deal towards inciting them to learn to think on earnest subjects, and to express their thoughts in writing. She was tall and stately, with curling hair, and was much prettier than Lucy; she had a face full of sunshine, and, like Lucy, the bluest of blue eyes. She was conspicuous among the group of the original writers for _The Lowell Offering_, as well as _The Operatives’ Magazine_. She was an enthusiastic student, reading abstruse books in the intervals of mill-work, and so becoming familiar with mental and moral science; or she would study mathematical problems, of which she usually had one or two pinned up before her, to occupy her thoughts at her daily toil. The Rev. Amos Blanchard, a very scholarly man, said of her that she was the most intellectual woman in his church, of which she was also one of the most faithful and self-sacrificing members, giving herself unreservedly to all good works. She married the Rev. George Spaulding, and with her husband and her sister Lucy went, in 1846, to Illinois, and spent the greater part of her life there, as a clergyman’s wife, useful, happy, and beloved.