Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman

I have been asked by the publishers of this Autobiography to write the Introduction. I am very glad to be asked. There is no woman in the world whose book I would rather introduce than that of my friend and co-worker, Frances E. Willard. From the first hour of my acquaintance with her, now more than sixteen years ago, she has been to me the embodiment of all that is lovely, and good, and womanly, and strong, and noble and tender, in human nature. She has been my queen among women, and I have felt it to be one of the greatest privileges of my life to call her my friend. I have been inspired by her genius, I have been cheered by her sympathy, I have been taught by her wisdom, I have been led onward and upward by her enthusiastic faith. We have met on almost every point of human interest, and have been together in joy and in sorrow, in success and in apparent failure; she has been a member of my household for weeks together, and I have seen her tried by prosperity and flattery, by misunderstanding and evil report; and always and everywhere she has been the same simple-hearted, fair-minded Christian woman, whose one sole aim has been to do the will of God as far as she knew it, and to bear whatever of apparent ill He may have permitted to come upon her, with cheerful submission, as being His loving discipline for the purpose of making her what, above all, she longs to be, a partaker of His holiness.

In regard to her public work she has seemed to me one of God's best gifts to the American women of the nineteenth century, for she has done more to enlarge our sympathies, widen our outlook, and develop our gifts, than any man, or any other woman of her time. Every movement for the uplifting of humanity has found in her a cordial friend and active helper.

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