Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1901-03-22
IN Brattleboro, probably in the pros
porous days of the old water cure.
Miss Frances Wizards Story.

The late Frances E. Willard, the
temperance writer and lecturer, in an
SIIiCle on Elizabeth Thompson, Phil
anInroplst, told the following story:
she mrs. thompson told me her
history. Her maiden name was Row.
ell. She was born in Vermont, in Cal
edonia county, the same county which
was the native home of both her par
ents. She was of sturdy stock tha
daughter of a farmer born into a
home where hard work was plenty.
with an honest father of good habits
and good lie, but not, Judge, of high
spirituality; and with a mother who
must have been asaint, according to
her daughters definition, woman of
the deepest and most intuitive nature
IN whom the spiritualities well up of
their own sweet will, nor needed to
be superinduced by study, culture, OBJ
serYation, or any outside help: her
body, soul and spirit being the home
OF the Spirit of God. She had many
children and a hard life. Elizabeth
told me that she could never put into
words the pity, the compassion, the
tenderness she felt toward her moth
er, and from this fountain had flowed
all those tides of larger sympathy
which has since gone to almost to the
ends of the earth. Her mother was
beautiful in body as well as in soul,
and bequeathed her nature and gifts,
both exterior and interior, to her
daughter, Elizabeth.
| do not know just how it came
about, but Boston gentleman of the
highest culture, a graduate of Har-
ward university in the some class with
George Bancroft and others of our
most distinguished men, a bachelor
who was living with his mother and
sisters at the Hub, was travelling
through Vermont on a pleasure trip
one summer, and in some casual way,
as we are wont to call it, met Eliza
beth, who, Judge, was young enough
than he to have been his daughter.
suppose that her great beauty and ear
nestnesS of nature attracted him.
Some months after they met at a con-
cert in Boston, to which she had been
escorted by her uncle, whom she was
visiting. From that time their ac-
quaintance and friendship went on,
until they were married, not, as
judge, with the approval of the aristo-
cratic ladies in his home, but at least
without any revolt on their part.
Once, not many years before Mr..
Thompson's death, when they were
summering in Brattleboro, that gem
of a town embosomed in hills, he
came to her one evning with a formid-
able document and said, Elizabeth,
have made my will and bequeathed
every cent l have in the world to
you
She said: "Oh, why did you do
that" l am not wise in worldly
ways l should not know how to eX-
pend it as you would have wished.
should be the prey of the designing
and should be caught in the meshes of
the law"
I'm what way would you like, then
to have me change my will?" he said
for all that have must go to you"
She looked out over the lovely even
ing landscape and into the calm heav-
ems, then down into this manufac'
turing town where there was so much
misery. and said: Perhaps | can use
it for the good of humanity while | am
alive, but as to it's final use | am not
willing to have the responsibility
Can you not leave it for my benefit
during life and say that at my death
one-half of it must go to the poor
women of BrattlebOro, and the other
half to the poor women of Rhinebeck
on-the-Hudson, where we have so Of
ten stayed?"
He said very little to her, but when
a few years after, his generous heart
had ceased to beat, the will was found
to be drawn just as she had desired it
And so she became a widow at about
80 years of age, with a fortune whose
annual income was about 100000. She
would never touch the principal and
her tastes were very simple. Society
had no attractions for her and hel
dress was always of the plainest
though in good taste.
She managed her own business af
fairs. and became quite a notable bust
ness woman. Her check book was
her fairy wand, and l have been told
! that at the close of every mouth she
had drawn out the entire installment
for that period, often going beyond it
When the paralytic stroke came upor
her and others took her business II
hand, it was found that there were q
families in a New England town where
she was then living, entirely depend
ent upon her bounty.
| NFre i11ia NarramOra On in III