Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, Jenny June | Page 9

to the many functions we attended together. We can all be proud of her. Wherever she went she was not only hailed as the pioneer woman, but also as one who did honor and credit to the name of American womanhood, for, although born in England, she still claimed that she was an American woman, as you know.
I shall never forget a little picture she gave of herself one day. She told us of her life in her home in a little town in the north of England. Her father was a Unitarian, and often had classes in his house for teaching the working people. His views, as you may imagine, were quite contrary to the views of the orthodox Church of England, and the people there rebelled, stoned the house, and wanted to turn them out of the town. The mother said to the father: "I wish you would take little Jennie by the hand, in her white frock, and lead her out to the people; perhaps when they see her they will not throw stones." That was her earliest memory of that little English town. Later, I believe, they left in the night and came to America, in order that they might live out the courage of their faith.
At our luncheon Mrs. Croly said: "I want English and American women to love each other. I remember with pride and honor my English birth. I can see my little room now--a small room with a lattice window over which the roses grew, and as I stood at the window on tiptoe, I could look into the old-fashioned garden below. I stood on an old chest. In the winter my summer frocks were kept there, and in the summer my red woollen dress. I loved it; it was beautiful, and it made me love England. When I am in England and I hear anything not quite kind about America, I am sorry and my heart aches, and if, when I am in America, I hear something not quite kind about England, my heart aches again, because I love it all."
In talking with Mrs. Croly, she said to me, "I hope some day you will come to a General Federation." Quoting Matthew Arnold, she said: "If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together, purely and simply for the benefit and good of mankind, it will be a power such as the world has never known." And she said, "There you will find it." We had talked about it and looked forward to seeing it together, but that will never be. It was her hope and dream that there should be such a General Federation of clubs as to bring in the women of the Old World with the Federation of Clubs in the New, that we might stand hand in hand together. She said to me, "I think you are narrow in your society--its members are only Americans." We have often talked this over, and have decided that in order to strengthen our centre we must keep it, at present, to American woman; but it may be possible to have an associate membership--the thin edge of the wedge looking toward the realization of her dreams.

Address by Cynthia Westover Alden, Vice-President of the Women's Press Club, and President of the International Sunshine Society
Mrs. Croly has left us. Yet I cannot think of her work as ended, of her mission as closed. You may go over every line she ever wrote, you may recall with, microscopic exactness every word she ever spoke, without finding one single grain of bitterness towards any human creature. Her active life was such as must find the ripe continuance of its activity in the better country whither she has preceded us. I feel that there is no hyperbole in applying to her memory the striking words of Lowell's Elegy on Dr. Channing:
"I do not come to weep above thy pall And mourn the dying-out of noble powers; The poet's clearer eye should see in all Earth's seeming woe, seed of immortal flowers.
"No power can die that ever wrought for truth; Thereby a law of Nature it became, And lives unwithered in its blithesome youth, When he who called it forth is but a name.
"Therefore I cannot think thee wholly gone; The better part of thee is with us still; Thy soul its hampering clay aside hath thrown, And only freer wrestles with the ill.
"Thou art not idle; in thy higher sphere Thy spirit bends itself to loving tasks, And strength to perfect what it dreamed of here Is all the crown and glory that it asks."
The women of America owe much to Jenny June. By example she showed them that the career of letters was open to them. Her style, cheerful and vivid, sometimes