Page:Famous Single Poems (1924).djvu/102

Famous Single Poems

time Mrs. Case was there. Her husband, Lieutenant Case, was on a revenue cutter on Lake Erie. I remember her telling me she was married during the Civil War and did not see her husband for months at a time. Mrs. Case was very blond and exceedingly pretty. I know she was a Southerner, but do not remember whether she was from Baltimore or somewhere in Virginia. I have always remembered vividly her vivacity, wit and charm.

It was presumably while Mrs. Case was visiting at Oak Park in 1905 that she wrote her story for the Free Press, and she also at that time met Dr. William E. Barton, pastor of the First Congregational Church there. Dr. Barton was to become one of her most redoubtable champions. He drew from her the story of “There Is No Unbelief,” together with a few facts about her life, which he embodied in an article published in the Advance, a Congregationalist paper printed in Chicago, in its issue of April 1, 1915.

Dr. Barton did not learn from Mrs. Case either the date or place of her birth. She had been a widow for many years and was quite old when he met her in 1905. From a portrait of that date, which accompanies his article, she appears to be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. It is not really a portrait—it is just a snap-shot showing her seated beneath some

90