James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

Now our gentle and poetic Penthesilea has gained the woodland cool and dim. On they press, horse and rider alike enthused, till they reach some retired valley, a sequestered nook, where no profane eyes may look. Lady and pony are going to have a grand equestrian frolic. Pony likes it as well as lady. What prancing and pawing! what rearing and backing! Now a swift gallop, as if in the ring of some fairy circus. But this is no vulgar horse-opera; no saw-dust or tan-bark here; nothing for show, since the bluejays have no eye for horse-flesh, nor can squirrels be made envious by such exploits. At length pony acts as though the game had been carried as far as he cared to have it; and Grace leaps to the greensward and lets him breathe, and get a drink, and bite the sod. Will he not start for home? Not he. His fetters are silken; but his mistress has that rare gift, unusual among men, and very uncommon with the softer sex, the faculty of controlling animals. He obeys her word like a spaniel; goes and comes at her bidding; stands on his hind feet, if she tells him to; lies down; gets up again; follows her up the steps of the piazza. In fact, if such a thing could be, he would carry out the nursery rhyme and go after her “upstairs, downstairs, in the lady's chamber.”

The ride home is somewhat more gentle; for, in the cool of the evening dusk, our heroine has turned poetess again, and is chiselling out Pygmalion word by word, or indulging in such spirit-longings as this:--

I look upon life's glorious things,
The deathless themes of song,
The grand, the proud, the beautiful,
The wild, the free, the strong;
And wish that I might take a part
Of what to them belong.