Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

“ [144] Julia Ward Howe never flags — but that unhappily Miss H., with the soul and self-abandonment of a great actress, lacks those graces of elocution, which should set forth the beauties of your verses.”

Some of the critics blamed the author severely for her choice of a subject — the betrayal and abandonment of an innocent girl by a villain; they thought it unfeminine, not to say indelicate, for a woman to write of such matters.

At that time nothing could be farther from her thoughts than to be classed with the advocates of Women's Rights as they then appeared; yet in “The world's own” are passages which show that already her heart cherished the high ideal of her sex, for which her later voice was to be uplifted:--

I think we call them Women, who uphold
Faint hearts and strong, with angel countenance;
Who stand for all that's high in Faith's resolve,
Or great in Hope's first promise.

Ev'n the frail creature with a moment's bloom,
That pays your pleasure with her sacrifice,
And, having first a marketable price,
Grows thenceforth valueless,--ev'n such an one,
Lifted a little from the mire, and purged
By hands severely kind, will give to view
The germ of all we honor, in the form
Of all that we abhor. You fling a jewel
Where wild feet tramp, and crushing wheels go by;
You cannot tread the splendor from its dust;
So, in the shattered relics, shimmers yet
Through tears and grime, the pride of womanhood.

We must not forget the Comic Muse. Comparatively