Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/569

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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND

its interests. In the old days of the Unitarian Review many turned in every issue first of all to the section headed 'At Homo and Abroad,' articles which she wrote for that publication for many years.

"Besides the good work that Mrs. Lowe did and the influence she exerted, there was another salient feature in her life that no one who had any particular acquaintance with her could fail to recognize. That was the sweet remembrance of her husband. Charles Lowe was the idol of her heart. To lovingly write the story of his life and work, to cherish his character and memory, to live over again unceasingly the happy days and years in which they lived together for causes dear to humanity and God, was her greatest joy and delight. ... A typical Unitarian, she loved the church of Channing. She was proud of its past, and had high hopes for its future.

"Mrs. Lowe was one of the clearest and most positive in her own expression of what she believed to be true. Her whole life and character was kindly, philanthropic, beneficent. He sought to be useful and to do good in the world. Hence the large place and the wide and long-sustained influence she has had in this community."


SARAH ORNE JEWETT, Litt. D.— An assured position among American men and women of letters has been won by Sarah Orne Jewett in her thirty and more years of authorship, dating from her first contribution to the Atlantic Monthly, December, 1869. Miss Jewett is a native of South Berwick, Me. Born September 3, 1849, the second daughter of Theodore H. Jewett, M.D., and his wife Caroline, she still retains, with her sister Mary, her home in the well-known "Jewett House " at South Berwick, a comely and spacious mansion built in 1740, now rich in historical associations.

Miss Jewett is of English descent, traced through long lines of American ancestry, with a French strain inherited from her paternal grandmother. Her maternal grandparents were Dr. William and Abigail (Oilman) Perry, the grandmother a daughter of Nathaniel Gilman and descendant of Edward Gilman, one of the earliest settlers of Exeter, N.H.

Dr. Theodore H. Jewett (Bowdoin College, 1834; Jefferson Medical College, 1840) was a man of note in his profession, which trusted and beloved as a family physician, and for some years a professor in the Medical School connected with Bowdoin College. Sarah, in her girlhood, not being strong and needing all the outdoor life possible, used often to accompany her father during his long drives to visit his country patients. Her reading and study received most of its direction at home, though at intervals she attended the South Berwick Academy.

While yet of school age, she wrote for Our Young Folks and the Rivemide Magazine. F'or a few years, as witnessed by the index to the Atlantic Monllih/, 1857-76, she veiled her identity as an author under the pen name of Alice Eliot. "Deephaven," her first book, published in 1877, has been followed by several novels, as "A Country Doctor," "A Marsh Island," and "The Tory Lover" (1901); a number of volumes of short stories and sketches, including (not to mention them all) "Country By-ways," "Old Friends and New," "The Mate of" the 'Daylight' and Friends Ashore," "The King, of Folly Island and Other People," "A White Heron and Other Stories"; three stories for girls—namely, "Betty Leicester," "Betty Leicester's Christmas," and "Playdays"; and "The Story of the Normans," in Putnam's series of Stories of the Nations.

From competent critics Miss Jewett's writings have received gracious meed of praise. Instance the following, which bears date 1897: "As the best material for stories may be wasted by unskilled hands, so the plain, the meagre, the commonplace, may be used to marvellous advantage by the masters of the craft Miss Jewett's 'Country of the Pointed Firs' is a case in point. . . . The casual observer could see little of interest here (in a fishing village on the Maine coast), the average writer could make little of what he sees, but the acute and sympathetic; observer, the exceptional writer, comes on the scene, looks about, thinks, writes, and, behold! a fascinating story." Later work in 1900 called forth this appreciation: "With-