THERE is no place like a young college town in a young country for untroubled optimism. Hope blossoms there as nowhere else; the ideal ever beckons at the next turn in the road. When Josiah Willard brought his little family to Oberlin, it seemed to them all that a new golden age of opportunity was theirs. Even Frances, who was little more than a baby, drank in the spirit of the place with the air she breathed.

It was not hard to believe in a golden age when one happened to see little Frances, or "Frank," Willard dancing like a sunbeam about the campus. She liked to play about the big buildings, where father went every day with his big books, and watch for him to come out. Sometimes one of the students would stop to speak to her; sometimes a group would gather about while, with fair hair flying and small arms waving, in a voice incredibly clear and bird-like, she "said a piece" that mother had taught her.

"Is that a little professorling?" asked a new-comer one day, attracted by the child's cherub face and darting, fairylike ways.

"Guess again!" returned a dignified senior. "Her father is one of the students. Haven't you noticed that fine-looking Willard? The mother, too, knows how to appreciate a college, I understand—used to be a teacher back in New York where they came from."

"You don't mean to say that this happy little goldfinch is the child of two such solemn owls!" exclaimed the other.

"Nothing of the sort. They are very wide-awake, alive sort of people, I assure you,—the kind who'd make a success of anything. The father wants to be a preacher, they say—wait, there he comes now!"

It was plain to be seen that Mr. Willard was an alert, capable man and a good father. The little girl ran to him with a joyful cry, and a sturdy lad who had been trying to climb a tree bounded forward at the same time. "I trust that my small fry haven't been making trouble," said the man, giving his free hand to Frances and graciously allowing Oliver to carry two of his armful of books.

"Only making friends," the senior responded genially, "and one can see that they can't very well help that."

The Oberlin years were a happy, friendly time for all the family. While both father and mother were working hard to make the most of their long-delayed opportunity for a liberal education, they delighted above all in the companionship of neighbors with tastes like their own. After five years, however, it became clear that the future was not to be after their planning. Mr. Willard's health failed, and a wise doctor said that he must leave his book-world, and take up a free, active life in the open. So the little family joined the army of westward-moving pioneers.

Can you picture the three prairie-schooners that carried them and all their goods to the new home? The father drove the first, Oliver geehawed proudly from the high perch of the next, and mother sat in the third, with Frances and little sister Mary on a cushioned throne made out of father's topsyturvy desk. For nearly thirty days the little caravan made its way—now through forests, now across great sweeping prairies, now over bumping corduroy roads that crossed stretches of swampy ground. They cooked their bacon and potatoes, gypsy-fashion, on the ground, and slept under the white hoods of their long wagons, when they were not kept awake by the howling of wolves.

When Sunday came, they rested wherever the day found them—sometimes on the rolling prairie, where their only shelter from rain and sun was the homely schooner, but where at night they could look up at the great tent of the starry heavens; sometimes in the cathedral of the forest, where they found Jack-in-the-pulpit preaching to the other wild-flowers and birds and breezes singing an anthem of praise.

It was truly a new world through which they made their way—beginnings all about—the roughest, crudest sort of beginnings, glorified by the brightest hopes. Tiny cabins were planted on the edge of the prairies; rough huts of logs were dropped down in clearings in the forest. Everywhere people were working with an energy that could not be daunted—felling trees, sowing, harvesting, building. As they passed by the end of Lake Michigan they caught a glimpse of a small, struggling village in the midst of a dark, hopeless-looking morass, from which they turned aside on seeing the warning sign No bottom here. That little settlement in the swamp was Chicago.

Northward they journeyed to Wisconsin, where on the bluffs above Rock River, not far from Janesville, they found a spot with fertile prairie on one side and sheltering, wooded hills on the other. It seemed as if the place fairly called to them: "This is home. You are my people. My fields and hills and river have been waiting many a year just for you!"

Here Mr. Willard planted the roof-tree, using timber that his own ax had wrested from the forest. Year by year it grew with their life. "Forest Home," as they lovingly called it, was a low, rambling dwelling, covered with trailing vines and all but hidden away in a grove of oaks and evergreens. It seemed as if Nature had taken over the work of their hands—house, barns, fields, and orchards—and made them her dearest care. Here were people after her own heart, people who went out eagerly to meet and use the things that each day brought. They found real zest in plowing fields, laying fences, raising cattle, and learning the ways of soil and weather. They learned how to keep rats and gophers from devouring their crops, how to bank up the house as a protection from hurricanes, and how to fight the prairie fires with fire.

Frank Willard grew as the trees grew, quite naturally, gathering strength from the life about her. She had her share in the daily tasks; she had, too, a chance for free, happy, good times. There was but one other family of children near enough to share their plays, but the fun was never dependent on numbers or novelty. If there were only two members of the "Rustic Club" present, the birds and chipmunks and other wood-creatures supplied every lack. Sometimes when they found themselves longing to "pick up and move back among folks," they played that the farm was a city.

"'My mind to me a kingdom is,'" quoted Frank, optimistically; "and I think if we all put our minds to it, we can manage to people this spot on the map very sociably."

Their city had a model government, and ideal regulations for community health and enjoyment. It had also an enterprising newspaper of which Frank was editor.

Frank was the leader in all of the fun. She was the commanding general in that famous "Indian fight" when, with Mary and Mother, she held the fort against the attack of two dreadful, make-believe savages and a dog. It was due to her strategy that the dog was brought over to their side by an enticing sparerib and the day won. Frank, too, was the captain of their good ship Enterprise.

"If we do live inland, we don't have to think inland, Mary," she said. "What's the use of sitting here in Wisconsin and sighing because we've never seen the ocean. Let's take this hen-coop and go a-sailing. Who knows what magic shores we'll touch beyond our Sea of Fancy!"

A plank was put across the pointed top of the hen-coop, and the children stood at opposite ends steering, slowly when the sea was calm and more energetically when a storm was brewing. The hens clucked and the chickens ran about in a panic, but the captain calmly charted the waters and laid down rules of navigation.

Perhaps, though, the best times of all were those that Frank spent in her retreat at the top of a black oak tree, where she could sit weaving stories of bright romance to her heart's content. On the tree she nailed a sign with this painted warning: "The Eagle's Nest. Beware!" to secure her against intruders. Here she wrote a wonderful novel of adventure, some four hundred pages long.

But this eagle found that the wings of her imagination could not make her entirely free and happy. She had to return from the heights and the high adventures of her favorite heroes to the dull routine of farm life. She was not even allowed to ride, as Oliver was.

"Well, if I can't be trusted to manage a horse, I'll see what can be done with a cow and a saddle. I simply must ride something," Frank declared, with a determined toss of her head.

It took not only determination, but also grim endurance and a sense of fun to help her through this novel experiment, which certainly had in it more excitement than pleasure. However, when her father saw her ride by on her long-horned steed, he said with a laugh:

"You have fairly earned a better mount, Frank. And I suppose there is really no more risk of your breaking your neck with a horse."

That night Frank wrote in her journal:

"Hurrah! rejoice! A new era has this moment been ushered in. Rode a horse through the corn—the acme of my hopes realized."

In the saddle, with the keen breath of a brisk morning in her face, she felt almost free—almost a part of the larger life for which she longed. "I think I'm fonder of anything out of my sphere than anything in it," she said to her mother, whose understanding and sympathy never failed her.

Perhaps she loved especially to pore over a book of astronomy and try to puzzle out the starry paths on the vast prairie of the heavens, because it carried her up and away from her every-day world. Sometimes, however, she was brought back to earth with a rude bump. "When I had to get dinner one Sunday, I fairly cried," she said. "To come back to frying onions, when I've been among the rings of Saturn, is terrible."

She didn't at all know what it was for which she longed. Only she knew that she didn't want to grow up—to twist up her free curls with spiky hair-pins and to wear long skirts which seemed to make it plain that a weary round of shut-in tasks was all her lot and that the happy days of roaming woods and fields were over.

Through all the girlhood days at "Forest Home" Frank longed for the chance to go to a real school as much as she longed to be free. Oliver went to the Janesville Academy, and later to Beloit College, but she could get only fleeting glimpses of his more satisfying life through the books he brought home and his talks of lectures and professors. She remembered those far-off days at Oberlin as a golden time indeed. There even a girl might have the chance to learn the things that would set her mind and soul free.

It was a great day for Frances and Mary Willard when Mr. Hodge, a Yale man who was, like her father, exiled to a life in a new country, decided to open a school for the children of the neighboring farms. On the never-to-be-forgotten first day the girls got up long before light, put their tin pails of dinner and their satchels of books with their coats, hoods, and mufflers, and then stood watching the clock, whose provokingly measured ticks seemed entirely indifferent to the eager beating of their hearts. At last the hired man yoked the oxen to the long "bob-sled," and Oliver drove them over a new white road to the new school. The doors were not yet open.

"I told you it was much too early," said Oliver. "The idea of being so crazy over the opening of a little two-by-four school like this!"

"It does look like a sort of big ground-nut," said Frank, with a laugh, "but it's ours to crack. Besides, we have a Yale graduate to teach us, and Beloit can't beat that!"

"Let's go over to Mr. Hodge's for the key, and make the fire for him," suggested Mary.

There was an unusually long entry in Frank's diary that night:

At last Professor Hodge appeared, in his long-tailed blue coat with brass buttons, carrying an armful of school-books and a dinner-bell in his hand. He stood on the steps and rang the bell, long, loud, and merrily. My heart bounded, and I said inside of it, so that nobody heard: "At last we are going to school all by ourselves, Mary and I, and we are going to have advantages like other folks, just as Mother said we should." O! goody-goody-goody! I feel satisfied with the world, myself, and the rest of mankind.

This enthusiasm for school and study did not wane as the days went by. "I want to know everything—everything," Frank would declare vehemently. "It is only knowing that can make one free."

The time came when she was to go away to college. Wistfully she went about saying good-by to all the pleasant haunts about "Forest Home." For a long time she sat on her old perch in the "Eagle's nest," looking off towards the river and the hills.

"I think that as I know more, I live more," said Frank to her mother that night. "I am alive to so many things now that I never thought of six months ago; and everything is dearer—is more a part of myself."

The North-West Female College, at Evanston, Illinois, was Frank's alma mater. Here her love of learning made her a leader in all her classes; and her originality, daring, and personal charm made her a leader in the social life of the students. She was editor of the college paper, and first fun-maker of a lively clan whose chief delight it was to shock some of their meek classmates out of their unthinking "goody-goodness." She was known, for instance, to have climbed into the steeple and to have remained on her giddy perch during an entire recitation period in the higher mathematics.

In her days of teaching, Frank was the same alert, free, eager-minded, fun-loving girl. First in a country school near Chicago, and afterward in a seminary in Pittsburg, she was a successful teacher because she never ceased to be a learner.

"Frank, you have the hungriest soul I ever saw in a human being. It will never be satisfied!" said one of her friends.

"I shall never be satisfied until I have entered every open door, and I shall not go in alone," said Frank.

In all of her pursuit of knowledge and culture she was intensely social. She was always learning with others and for others. A bit from her diary in 1866 reveals the spirit in which she worked:

I read a good deal and learn ever so many new things every day. I get so hungry to know things. I'll teach these girls as well as possible.... Girls, girls, girls! Questions upon questions. Dear me, it is no small undertaking to be elder sister to the whole 180 of them. They treat me beautifully, and I think I reciprocate.

"Miss Willard seems to see us not as we are, but as we hope we are becoming," one of her girls said. "And so we simply have to do what she believes we can do."

No one was a stranger or indifferent to her. When her clear blue eyes looked into the eyes of another, they always saw a friend.

Through these early years of teaching Frances Willard was learning not only from constant study and work with others, but also from sorrow. Her sister Mary was taken from her. The story of what her gentle life and loving comradeship meant to Frank is told in the first and best of Miss Willard's books, "Nineteen Beautiful Years," which gives many delightful glimpses of their childhood on the Wisconsin farm and the school-girl years together. Soon after Mary's death "Forest Home" was sold and the family separated. Frank wrote in her journal at this time:

I am to lose sight of the old familiar landmarks; old things are passing from me, whose love is for old things. I am pushing out all by myself into the wide, wide sea.

The writing of the story of Mary's life, together with essays and articles of general interest for the papers and magazines, "took the harm out of life for a while." In all her writing, as in her teaching and later in her public speaking, her instinctive faith in people was the secret of her power and influence as a leader.

"For myself, I liked the world, believed it friendly, and could see no reason why I might not confide in it," she said.

When another sorrow, the loss of her father, threatened to darken her life for a time, a friend came to the rescue and "opened a new door" for her—the door of travel and study abroad. They lived for two and a half years in Europe, and made a journey to Syria and Egypt. During much of this time Miss Willard spent nine hours a day in study. She longed to make her own the impressions of beauty and the haunting charm of the past.

"I must really enter into the life of each place," she said, "if it is only for a few weeks or months. I want to feel that I have a right to the landscape—that I'm not just an intruding tourist, caring only for random sight-seeing."

But Miss Willard brought back much more than a general culture gained through a study of art, history, and literature, and a contact with civilization. She gained, above all, a vital interest in conditions of life, particularly those that concern women and their opportunities for education, self-expression, and service. The Frances E. Willard that the world knows, the organizer and leader in social reform, was born at this time. On her thirtieth birthday she wrote:

I can do so much more when I go home. I shall have a hold on life, and a fitness for it so much more assured. Perhaps—who knows?—there may be noble, wide-reaching work for me in the years ahead.

It seemed to Miss Willard, when she returned to her own country, that there was, after all, no land like America, and no spot anywhere so truly satisfying as Rest Cottage in Evanston, where her mother awaited her home-coming. A signal honor awaited her as well. She was called to be president of her alma mater; and when the college became a part of the North-Western University, she remained as Dean of Women.

At this time many towns and cities of the Middle West were the scene of a strange, pathetic, and heart-stirring movement known as the Temperance Crusade. Gentle, home-loving women, white-haired mothers bent with toil and grief, marched through the streets, singing hymns, praying, and making direct appeals to keepers of saloons "for the sake of humanity and their own souls' sake to quit their soul-destroying business." Their very weakness was their strength. Their simple faith and the things they had suffered through the drink evil pleaded for them. A great religious revival was under way.

In Chicago a band of women who were marching to the City Council to ask that the law for Sunday closing of saloons be enforced were rudely jostled and insulted by a mob. Miss Willard, who had before been deeply stirred by the movement, was now thoroughly aroused. She made several eloquent speeches in behalf of the cause, which was, she said, "everybody's war." Her first instinct was to leave her college and give her all to the work. Then it seemed to her that she ought to help just where she was—that everybody ought. So, just where she was, the young dean devoted her power of eloquent speech and her influence with people to the cause. Day by day her interest in reform became more absorbing. She realized that the early fervor and enthusiasm of the movement needed to be strengthened by "sober second thought" and sound organization.

"If I only had more time—if I were more free!" she exclaimed.

Then the turn of events did indeed free her from her responsibility to her college. A change of policy so altered the conditions of her work that she decided to resign her charge and go east to study the temperance movement. The time came when she had to make a final choice. Two letters reached her on the same day: One asked her to assume the principal-ship of an important school in New York at a large salary; the other begged her to take charge of the Chicago branch of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union at no salary at all. The girl who had worshiped culture and lived in books decided to accept the second call; and turning her back on a brilliant career and worldly success, she threw in her lot with the most unpopular reform of the day. Frances Willard, the distinguished teacher, writer, and lecturer, became a crusader.

"How can you think it right to give up your interest in literature and art!" wailed one of her friends and admirers.

"What greater art than to try to restore the image of God to faces that have lost it?" replied Miss Willard.

Those early days in Chicago were a brave, splendid time. Often walking miles, because she had no money for car-fare, the inspired crusader "followed the gleam" of her vision of what this woman's movement might accomplish. Where others saw only an uncertain group of overwrought fanatics, she saw an organized army of earnest workers possessed of that "loftiest chivalry which comes as a sequel of their service to the weakest."

"I seemed to see the end from the beginning," she said; "and when one has done that, nothing can discourage or daunt."

Miss Willard often said that she was never happier than during this time, when her spirit was entirely free, because she neither longed for what the world could give nor feared what it might take away. She felt very near to the poor people among whom she worked.

"I am a better friend than you dream," she would say in her heart, while her eyes spoke her sympathy and understanding. "I know more about you than you think, for I am hungry, too."

Of course, in time, the women discovered that their valued leader did not have an independent income as they had imagined (since she had never seemed to give a thought to ways and means for herself), and a sufficient salary was provided for her. But always she spent her income as she spent herself—to the utmost for the work.

The secret of Miss Willard's success as a speaker lay in this entire giving of herself. The intensity of life, the irrepressible humor, the never-failing sympathy, the spirit that hungered after all that was beautiful shone in her clear eyes, and, in the pure, vibrant tones of her wonderful voice, went straight to the hearts of all who listened. She did not enter into her life as a crusader halt and maimed; all of the woman's varied interests and capacities were felt in the work of the reformer.

"She is a great orator because in her words the clear seeing of a perfectly poised mind and the warm feeling of an intensely sympathetic heart are wonderfully blended," said Henry Ward Beecher.

Miss Willard was not only a gifted speaker, whose pure, flame-like spirit enkindled faith and enthusiasm in others; she was also a rare organizer and indefatigable worker. As president of the National Union, she visited nearly every city and town in the United States, and, during a dozen years, averaged one meeting a day. The hours spent on trains were devoted to making plans and preparing addresses. On a trip up the Hudson, while everybody was on deck enjoying the scenery, Miss Willard remained in the cabin busy with pad and pencil.

"I know myself too well to venture out," she said to a friend who remonstrated with her. "There is work that must be done."

Under Miss Willard's leadership the work became a power in the life and progress of the nation and of humanity. There were those who objected the very breadth and inclusiveness of her sympathies and interests, and who protested against the "scatteration" policies, that would, they said, lead to no definite goal.

"I cannot see why any society should impose limitations on any good work," said this broad-minded leader. "Everything is not in the temperance movement, but the temperance movement should be in everything."

In 1898 the loyal crusader was called to lay down her arms and leave the battle to others. She had given so unstintedly to every good work all that she was, that at fifty-eight her powers of endurance were spent. "I am so tired—so tired," she said again and again; and at the last, with a serene smile, "How beautiful it is to be with God!" In the great hall of the Capitol, where each State has been permitted to place statues of two of its most cherished leaders, Illinois has put the marble figure of Frances E. Willard, the only woman in a company of soldiers and statesmen. In presenting the statue to the nation, Mr. Foss, who represented Miss Willard's own district in Illinois, closed his address with these words:

Frances E. Willard once said: "If I were asked what was the true mission of the ideal woman, I would say, 'It is to make the whole world home-like.'" Illinois, therefore, presents this statue not only as a tribute to her whom it represents,—one of the foremost women of America,—but as a tribute to woman and her mighty influence upon our national life; to woman in the home; to woman wherever she is toiling for the good of humanity; to woman everywhere who has ever stood "For God, for home, for native land."