followed a few months later by sorrow for its loss. With the exception of some time spent in Washington, D.C., the home of Mrs. Spofford has been on Deer Ishind, between Newburyport and Amesbury. Here Mr. Spofford died in August, 1888. Several winter seasons of recent years Mrs. Spofford has passed in Boston. In the sunmier of 1908 she went to Europe with her sister, her niece, and her ward, sailing on the same steamer with her friend, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, in her annual visit to England. The present winter (1903-1904) she is in Paris.
Mrs. Spofford as a writer is exceptionally happy in her estimates and appreciations of other women authors and their work: witness, for example, the biographical sketch appearing over her signature in another i)art of this book, her criticism of the poems of Anne Whitney in the North American Review for 1860, and her article on "The Author of Charles Auchester," in the Atlantic Monthly, June, 1862.
Among her books may here be mentioned, not to give an exhaustive list: "Sir Rohan's Ghost," "Azarian," "New England Legends," "Art Decoration," "The Servant Question," "Hester Stanley at .Saint Mark's," "Poems," "In Titian's Garden," "Ballads about Authors," "The Children of the Valley" (1901), "The Great Procession" (1902).
Her most recent work in the Atlantic (November and December, 1903), "The Story of the Queen," a short novel in two chapters, is one that could hardly have been written before the dawn of the twentieth century, and would never have been written, just so felicitously and out of the heart, by any other pen than that of Mrs. Spofford, idealist.
"I read it with delight," says Mrs. Moulton, referring to this story, and adding these words to emphasize her admiration for Mrs. Spofford as a poet as well as a story writer: "There is a far-reaching grandeur of thought and imagination in her poetic work. To lyric grace and charm she adds breadth of view and nobility of conception. She is neighbor to the stars. The blind poet, Philip Bourke Marston, was a great admirer of her work, as are many other English readers of high degree, among them the professor of poetry at the University of Oxford. She is a poet of deep emotion, of far-reaching vision, of splendid power."
But beyond all the literary graces and achievements of Mrs. Spofford—and it is a pleasant note to close with — this same gifted contemporary and intimate friend appreciates "her noble womanhood, her unselfish devotion to her family and her friends, her loyalty to all high and noble ideals."
EMMA ELIZABETH BROWN, artist and writer, was born in Concord, N.H., October 18, 1847, daughter of John Frost and Elizabeth (Evans) Brown. Her father had no sons, his brother Henry (also deceased) never married, and, her grand-father Brown having been an only son, Miss Brown is the last of her line to bear the family name. As stated by the late Henry Brown, who was a genealogist, this family of Brown in New England is of German origin and the early spelling of the name was Braun.
Through her paternal grandmother, Mrs. Susannah Frost Brown, Miss Brown traces her descent from Edmund Frost, Ruling Elder of the church in Cambridge, Mass. Elder Frost, said to have been son of John Frost, of Ipswich, England, came over in the ship "Great Hope" in 1635, and was made freeman at Cambridge, March 3, 1630. He died in July, 1672. In his will, which was probated in October following, he left bequests to his widow Reana (his second wife, each of his eight children, something to the new college (Harvard) then building at Cambridge, and to George Alcock, a student. Much time was spent by Mr. Henry Brown in England, looking up the records of the Frost family.
Miss Brown's father, John Frost Brown, for many years a leading bookseller in Concord, N.H., was an ardent lover of beauty, whether in nature or art. During her girlhood, as she took long outdoor tramps with him, he taught her to note the changing beauties of sky and land and sea, which in later years she has been so skilful in reproducing on canvas. During his busy life he collected a large library of valuable books. He was a great reader himself,
