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286 the money to pay for these opportunities, and of preserving and developing the morals not only of their children but of their husbands and the men about them.

The persistency and skill of Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, called "The Grandmother of Boston," in keeping an open house for social gatherings was one of the really valuable contributions to the social life of Boston. Her little shop has been called "a kind of Transcendental Exchange," and her home was the same, and it is said she was the first woman in Boston to give a regular evening to her friends, and to the last days of her life she continued these delightful social gatherings.

In many instances the wife of a great man has failed to prove herself worthy even of reflected glory, but the wife of Benjamin Butler was such an active factor in his career, along military as well as civil lines, that she well deserves a biography of her own. I give it, however, in the words of her distinguished husband, as I have taken it from the story of his own life: "In the year 1830, I made the acquaintance of Fisher Ames Hildreth, the only son of Dr. Israil Hildreth, of Dracut, a town joining Lowell on the north side of the Merrimac River. That acquaintance ripened into an affectionate friendship which terminated only with his death thirty years later. Doctor Hildreth had a family of seven children, six being daughters. The son, having invited me to the family gathering of the Thanksgiving feast I there first met Sarah, the second daughter. I was much impressed with her personal endowments, literary attainments and brilliancy of mind. Doctor Hildreth was an exceedingly scholarly and literary man, who was a great admirer of English poets, especially of Byron, Burns and Shakespeare, and had early taught the great poet's plays to his daughter, who in consequence developed a strong desire to go on the stage. Her father approved of this and she appeared with brilliant success at the Tremont Theatre in Boston and the Park Theatre in New York, her talent for the delineation of character being fully acknowledged by all. When our acquaintance began I had never seen her on the stage, her home life being sufficient to attract me. She declined to leave her profession, however, until I had won my spurs in my own profession. But a most cordial and affectionate intimacy existed between us, and in the spring of 1843, I visited her at Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was a star. There we became engaged and we were married on the sixteenth of May, 1844."

Having thus concisely outlined his wife's girlhood and their courtship, the General proceeds with his tribute to her value as the helpmate of a public man: "My wife, with a devotion quite unparalleled," he says, "gave me her support by accompanying me, at my earnest wish, in every expedition in the War of the Rebellion and made for me a home wherever I was stationed in command. She went with me in the expedition to Ship Island after the attack upon New Orleans, where I was exposed to the greatest peril of my life, and only when my ship was hourly expected to go to pieces and when I appealed to her good sense that our