Miss Peabody was a contributor to the Christian Examiner, the Dial, Barnard's Journal of Education, and other periodicals. Among her books were (not to make an exhaustive list of the works of her pen): "Moral Self-education," translated from the French, 1828; "First Steps in History"; "Key to Hebrew History"; also "Keys to Grecian and to Roman History," 1833; "Record of a School" (Mr. Alcott's), 1835 (third edition, revised, 1874); with Mrs. Mann, "Moral Culture of Infancy" and "Kindergarten Guide," of which after her visit to Europe she issued early in the seventies a revised edition; "Reminiscences of William E. Channing, D.D."; and "A Last Evening with Allston."
Mrs. Mann, besides being a writer on educational topics and a translator, was the author of "A Physiological Cook-book," "Flower People," "Life of Horace Mann," and "Juanita, a Romance of Real Life in Cuba."
Toward the close of her life Elizabeth Peabody became blind. She died in Jamaica Plain, January 3, 1894, in her ninetieth year.
On May 2, 1904, two weeks before the one hundredth anniversary of her birth, at meeting of the New England Women's Club, of which she had been a valued member, heart-felt tribute in the form of letters and addresses of some length was paid to her memory by Mrs. Howe, president of the club, Mrs. Cheney, Colonel Higginson, Dr. Hale, and others who had known her long and well.
Mrs. Howe, after speaking of her as one who "recognized everywhere the beauty and glory of existence," said: "I cannot remember ever to have known any one who carried through life so much of this serene atmosphere, the result of high aspirations, genuine culture, and sweet humanity. Her nature was very expansive and her life full of benevolent activity . . . She helped Margaret Fuller to arrange her first conversations in Boston. She espoused the cause of the Pole, the Hungarian, the Indian. She was the devoted friend of Kossuth's sister. Whom has she not befriended when they most needed a friend? Her declining years were followed with love and gratitude." Mrs. Cheney alluded to the fact that in her old age Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was often spoken of as "the grandmother of Boston," and added: "She was rightly named if the constant outflow of her warm heart to every one with all manner of loving feelings and helpful deeds and the best of all instructions to the children of every age in the city of her love could entitle her to this distinction. . . . Her large and varied reading filled her mind with stores of history, poetry, and philosophy. She gathered special advantage from the hobbies into which she entered with all her heart for the time. Out of them she gained always something rich and rare.
"She certainly had not the reputation of being a practical person. She was too readily interested in every scheme that offered good to the human race, too credulous of any individual who sought her help or comfort. In trying times her unselfish help, her advice, her sympathy, were all fruitful of good results which had seemed hopeless to less believing and ardent natures.
"Goethe says, 'All philosophy must be lived and loved.' Such was the spirit in which Elizabeth P. Peabody spent her ninety years in constant service to mankind."
Adeline D. T. Whitney, one of the successful women writers of New England in the latter half of the nineteenth century and still an active member of the craft in the first decade of the twentieth, is a Bostonian by birth and breeding. Her maiden name was Adeline Dutton Train. After her marriage in November, 1843, to Seth D. Whitney, of Milton, Mass., she became a resident of that town, where in her widowhood she continues to make her home, Mr. Whitney having died in 1890.
Born September 15, 1824, the daughter of Enoch Train and his first wife, Adeline Dutton, Mrs. Whitney is a grand-daughter on the paternal side of Enoch, Sr., and Hannah (Elwing) Train and a descendant in the seventh generation of John1 Traine, who came to Massachusetts in 1635 and settled at Watertown. Mrs. Whitney's grandmother Train was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Ewing, of Philadelphia,
