Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, Jenny June | Page 6

retain and cherish their best and noblest qualities and deeds. We repeat
their finest words and recount their generous works. The sunshine falls
clear on their virtues, and the shadow lies kindly on their faults. It
exalts our nature that our minds elect only the lovely and beautiful
characteristics of the lost friend. This sublime power in us breaks the
force of the bitter criticism of the obituary, the eulogy, and the
epitaph--that they are false notes in a hymn of praise. And to us yet
living, there is sweet comfort in the thought that our best and higher
selves shall remain with those we love and honor. And so shall the
good we do live after us. These purified remembrances are links of the
chain that binds the humblest to the highest.
In my early womanhood I knew our honored president, a fair, happy,
healthy, active English woman; and she appeared to me (sobered by the
loss of most of my family) to rejoice in a fulness of life. We were
maidens, and her interests and activities were in domestic and social
life. I have not lost the fresh memory of her in those days.
She was our president for ten years, and afterwards our honorary
president. The activity of her life has made the deepest impression upon
me. Every member of our association and of sister associations will
agree with me, that never a woman brought a more cheerful and willing
spirit to her official duties than did she. She rejoiced in her place,
delighted in her privilege, and fully enjoyed the recognition and good
fellowship of other clubs. This cheerful service, rendered for years,
made her widely known in the club world. She responded to personal
influence and suggestions made directly to her. She was most receptive
to practical ideas, and adopted methods readily, and her liberal service
brought to her just recompense.
For years it required sacrifice on her part to attend the regular meetings
of Sorosis, for she had daily occupation, and a lost day must be
redeemed. But when an officer she made the sacrifice cheerfully. She
was social and hospitable. Freely her house was given to us for lectures,
receptions to distinguished guests and business meetings. For years the
Positivists held their meetings at her home. She found her pleasure in

pleasing, and in helping others gave herself joy. She loved her work for
clubs, and you will remember that she had several business enterprises
connected with them, during the years that she was an active
clubwoman.
I was in this country while she was preparing her history of clubs (not
the history of Sorosis), and she brought the interest and enthusiasm of a
young woman to the work; with a satisfied pride she showed me the
material she had collected for the history. Nothing else to her mind was
more important, or to be thought of until that was accomplished. I
believe that her usefulness to clubs has been commensurate with the
interest and gratification she had in the service.
During the years of our acquaintance our intercourse was genial and
concordant, and the results of our early work in Sorosis cannot equal
the sweet satisfaction that came with its performance.
In the early life of the club many of us were young mothers, and our
domestic duties had strong claims upon us, and one prominent thought
in connection with the formation of Sorosis was that the attention of a
large class of thinking women, directed in concert towards important
domestic and social questions, could be secured; and, while the
character of the club should be pre-eminently social, we hoped to
quietly bring in important reforms, or at least some effective action on
these questions, and, above all, to secure an intelligent social
intercourse without increasing our domestic duties and responsibilities.
Have we not accomplished this?
As the smallest consoling thought is greater than the most eloquent
expression of sorrow, so do we find some consolation in the fact that
fate was kind to our friend, and led her away when she could no longer
enjoy life, and that she went while with us whose hearts were warm
with an active sympathy and tender helpfulness.
Our kind purpose to her name lifts our acts above criticism, and
fortifies them by our love and worthiness of intention. Let us live to
live forever--so shall we never fear death; let our warm human love be
the prophet of a union for greater benefits; and let us have faith in the
love that lives in human bosoms still:
"Lives to renovate our earth From the bondage of its birth, And the
long arrears of ill."

Address by the Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Vice-President of the
Woman's Press Club of New York City
I am requested to speak