CHAPTER V.
Frances E.Willard--Walt Whitman--Lady Henry Somerset--Mrs.Hannah Whitehall Smith--A Teetotaler for Ten Minutes--Olive Thorne Miller--Hearty Praise for Mrs.Lippincott (Grace Greenwood).
I was looking over some letters from Frances E.Willard last week.
What a powerful, blessed influence was hers! Such a rare combination of intense earnestness, persistence, and devotion to a "cause" with a gentle, forgiving, compassionate spirit, and all tempered by perfect self-control.
Visiting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, at the hospitable home of Mrs.
Hannah Whitehall Smith, the Quaker Bible reader and lay evangelist, and writer of cheerful counsel, I found several celebrities among her other guests.

Miss Willard and Walt Whitman happened to be present.
Whitman was rude and aggressively combative in his attack on the advocate of temperance, and that without the slightest provocation.

He declared that all this total abstinence was absolute rot and of no earthly use, and that he hated the sight of these women who went out of their way to be crusading temperance fanatics.
After this outburst he left the room.

Miss Willard never alluded to his fiery criticism, didn't seem to know she had been hit, but chatted on as if nothing unpleasant had occurred.
In half an hour he returned; and with a smiling face made a manly apology, and asked to be forgiven for his too severe remarks.

Miss Willard met him more than half-way, with generous cordiality, and they became good friends.