Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/198

190 “These persons need not health, nor youth, nor the charms of personal presence, to make their thought available. A few more such, and ‘old woman’ shall not be the synonym for imbecility, nor ‘old maid’ a term of contempt.”

An editorial criticism, in the Chicago Journal, of the leading female writers of the day, thus makes mention of Harriet Martineau: "Probably no living English writer has been more active or more efficient in moulding British opinion, and certainly none has been more beneficent in lifelong influence. England would be less humane and enlightened than she is to-day, if the brave and wise heart of Harriet Martineau had not for nearly fifty years helped to push forward the good cause of popular progress.”

She has already passed the allotted "three- score years and ten,” and can look back upon a long and well-spent life. For her, death has no terrors. If she has no personal hopes for the future, neither has she any regrets for the past. She, surely, if any