The good she did seemed to enter the pores of the spirit, and to uplift in unknown ways the poor degraded ideal of our lives. The secret of her help was not exuberance, but stillness and rest. Ever more and more the beautiful secret eluded analysis. It shone out of her eyes. It lingered in the lovely smile that irradiated her face, and made every touch and tone a benediction. Even the dullest perception must have seen that her life was spiritual, based on unselfishness and charity. Beside her thoughtfulness and tender care all other kinds of self-abnegation seemed poor. She lived in the higher range of being. The purity of her face and the clearness of her eyes was a rebuke to all low motives. But no word of criticism fell from her lips. She was ready to take into her all-embracing tenderness those whom others disliked and shunned. Her gentle nature found a thousand excuses for their faults. Life had been hard with them; and, for this reason, she must be lenient. The good in each soul was always present to her perceptions. She reverenced it even in its evil admixture as a manifestation of the divine.
She shunned the smallest witticism at another’s expense, lest she should pain or soil that pure inner mirror of conscience by an exaggeration. Perfect justice was the rule of her life. To the poor and despised she never condescended, but poured out her love and charity as the woman of Scripture broke the box of precious ointment to anoint the Master’s feet. All human beings received their due meed of appreciation at her hands. She disregarded the conventional limits a false social order has set up, shunning this one and honoring that one, because of externals. She was not afraid of losing her place in society by knowing the wrong people. She went her way with a strange unworldliness through all the prickly hedges, daring to be true to her own nature. She drew no arbitrary lines between human beings. It was the soul that interested her. The rich were not welcome for their riches, nor the poor for their poverty; but all were welcome for their humanity.
Her door was as the door of a shrine because the fair amenities were always found within. Hospitality to her was as sacred as the hearth altar to the ancients. If she had not money to give the mendicant, she gave that something infinitely better,—the touch of human kinship. Many came for the dole she had to bestow, the secret charity that was not taken from her superfluity, but from her need. Her lowliness of heart was like that of a little child. How could a stranger suspect that she was a deep and profound student? Her researches had led her to the largest, most liberal faith in God and the soul and the spirit of Christ incarnate in humanity. The study of nature, to which she was devoted, showed her no irreconcilable break between science and religion. She could follow the boldest flights of the speculative spirit or face the last analysis of the physicist, while she clung to God and the witness of her own being. She aimed at an all-round culture, that one part of her nature might not be dwarfed by over-balance and disproportion.