Her sympathy was strong for these women, betrayed into a life of crime by the sins of others; and Mr. Greeley expresses confidently his belief that[214] their alms. She had once attended, with other noble women, a gathering of outcasts of their sex; and, being asked how they appeared to her, replied, ‘As women like myself, save that they are victims of wrong and misfortune.’ No project of moral or social reform ever failed to command her generous, cheering benediction, even when she could not share the sanguine hopes of its authors: she trusted that these might somehow benefit the objects of their self-sacrifice, and felt confident that they must. at all events, be blessed in their own moral natures. I doubt that our various benevolent and reformatory associations had ever before, or have ever since received such wise, discriminating commendation to the favor of the rich, as they did from her pen during her connection with the ‘ Tribune.’
Greeley's Recollections, pp. 179, 180.
If she had been born to large fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue would have been one of her most cherished and first realized conceptions. Parton's Greeley, p. 260.And to show the strength and discrimination with which she handled another difficult class of questions, I will quote a passage that particularly pleased Mr. Greeley, in regard to the vexed question of Irish immigration:--
When we consider all the fire which glows so untamably
