“You know I am way behind the times, am not even a ‘suffrage woman’ yet, though I haven’t the least objection to the rest of the women’s having it. Don’t you see, I’m constitutionally on the fence.... I hope your enthusiastic believers will succeed; and if the suffrage comes, as it will, I hope it will be a blessing to everybody. All the people I know and respect seem to be in the movement, and still ‘I don’t see it.’... Later, in 1888, she writes:-- “I am for human rights for woman. I never did believe in man’s claim to dictate to her. But I want to work for her elevation in my own way, so that when she does vote, it will not be a failure. I cannot ‘Club,’ myself. I am an obstinate old Independent.... Men are chivalrous, you know. Do you suppose we women shall be so towards them, by and by, in the women’s millenium? Dear me! I like the old slavish bonds, and am perfectly willing men should rule the world yet, heathenish old maid that I am. Now, here I am perplexed with _two_ calls to the meeting to consider the matter of women’s voting, about which I have never made up my mind, and can’t! If I were a property woman, I might.”... In writing of her volume of poetical works, published in 1868, Miss Larcom says,-- “I shall send a volume to your other self and you, (how are we to use adjectives in the Women’s Rights speech?), not by way of throwing a sop to Cerberus, but because of old friendship, and because I value your candid opinion _and_ Warrington’s very highly. I am a little more afraid of you than of him,--I remember Gail Hamilton and the wringing-machine. Don’t pillory me in a paragraph, will you? nor inspire the pen masculine with a _bon mot_ at my expense.” At Miss Larcom’s particular request I have refrained from saying more than is necessary of her as a writer for _The Offering_. On her last visit to me, in 1892, while speaking of the material to be used in this book, she asked me not to say too much about her, because, as she said, she was “tired of being always cited as _the_ representative of _The Offering_ writers, when there were others who wrote and did quite as much, or more, for the magazine than I did.” Miss Larcom is correct here. Her fame was achieved long after she ceased to be a mill-girl; and there were several others, as the sketches will show, who were as good writers, and much better known than herself, when she left the factory. And it is very thoughtful of her to speak a good word for those hitherto forgotten authors, by declining to be made a sort of composite portrait, as representing the best and brightest among them. In one of her letters she says,--