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

[53] as an editor, her management being brave and efficient, while her cultivated taste made the “Standard” attractive to many who were not attracted by the plainer fare of the “Liberator.” The good judgment shown in her poetical and literary selections was always acknowledged with especial gratitude by those who read the “Standard” at that time.

During all this period she was a member of the family of the well-known Quaker philanthropist, Isaac T. Hopper, whose biographer she afterwards became. This must have been the most important and satisfactory time in Mrs. Child's whole life. She was placed where her sympathetic nature found abundant outlet, and plenty of co-operation. Dwelling in a home where disinterestedness and noble labor were as daily breath, she had great opportunities. There was no mere almsgiving there, no mere secretaryship of benevolent societies; but sin and sorrow must be brought home to the fireside and to the heart; the fugitive slave, the drunkard, the outcast woman, must be the chosen guest of the abode,--must be taken and held and loved into reformation or hope. Since the stern tragedy of city life began, it has seen no more efficient organization for relief, than when dear old Isaac Hopper and Mrs. Child took up their abode beneath one roof in New York.

For a time she did no regular work in the cause of permanent literature,--though she edited an anti-slavery Almanac in 1843,--but she found an opening for her best eloquence in writing letters to the “Boston Courier,” then under the charge of Joseph T. Buckingham. This was the series of “Letters from New York” that afterwards became famous. They were the precursors of that modern school of newspaper correspondence in which women have so large a share, and which has something of the charm of women's private letters,--a style of writing where description preponderates over argument, and statistics make way for fancy and enthusiasm.