Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/298

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
290
FRANCES POWER COBBE.

weighing nearly three hundred and fifty pounds. She too often has to walk on crutches, which gives one a sad feeling that this enormous size is far from being the result of, or accompanied by, health. But when one converses with Miss Cobbe, he finds that the chief characteristic of her face and expression is delicacy. There is a lambent humor about her mouth, a subtle perceptiveness blended with sweetness about the eye, a sensitiveness and sensibility in her manner, under which-—as conversation and acquaintance go on — the corpulency seems to shrink and the most charming physiognomy to be unsheathed. Miss Cobbe has an extraordinary power of conversation, is one of the wittiest of mortals, and where-ever she appears has about her a group of fascinated young people—particularly of her own sex — by whose bursts of merriment one may know on entering a company where the authoress of ‘Intuitive Morals’ is seated.”

Kate Field says of her: “Miss Cobbe is the embodiment of genial philanthropy;