16 ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
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am far from a dispassionate, or even a detachedobserver of her whom I would make known. Sheand I had become pretty completely one. Often myonly way of telling about her is to tell about myself.The book, therefore, while ostensibly a biography,claims many privileges of an autctbiography, andmight properly enough be called the autobiographyof a friend. In it I must be allowed abundant ego-tism, reminiscence, admiration, personal disclosure.But perhaps such a compound method will not bethought inappropriate in a portrait of one whoseconstant habit it was to mingle her abounding lifewith that of others. u CQELDBiOCffi AucE Elviba Freeman was born on the night ofFebruary 21, 1855, at Colesville, Broome County,New York. The influences which chiefly shaped herchildhood were her country life» her narrow meflins,and her father's change of occupation. All else issubordinate to these. Colesville is rather a collection of farms than ofhouses, Windsor, its nearest considerable village,being seven miles away; its nearest town, Bingham-ton, a dozen miles from Windsor. All the child'searly years were passed in a tract of smiling country,where hills, woods, fertile fields, and the windingstream of the Susquehanna expressed the beautyand friendliness of nature with nothing of it? savagery.These gracious influences became a rich endowment.Nature did for her what it did for Wordsworth'sLucy, imparted to her its mystery, its poise, its soli-tude, its rhythmic change, its freedom from hasteand affectation. Social being as she afterwards be-came, her days with dumb things were fortunatelypreparatory. They taught her to know the elementalbackground of human existence, to respect it,to
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