"Amber" was not to be classed with any society or any creed. In all
respects she was an individual. In good-humored contempt she held all
form, and with deep sincerity she revered all simple things. She smiled
upon error and frowned upon pretense. Her life was largely made up of
impulse and sacrifice. She was the constant "victim" of her own
generosity, needing the money and the time which sympathy impelled her
to give away. She was so devoted a lover of the moods of nature, noting
so closely the changing of the leaf or a new note sounded by the
whimsical wind, that her spirit itself must once have been an October
day. Year after year she toiled, and her reward was not money, but a
letter from the bedside of the invalid, telling of a heart that had been
lightened, of a care that had been driven from the door. None of the
newspaper writers of Chicago was more popular. Another column told the
news of the day; her column held the news of the heart. Her best
thoughts and warmest fancies are scattered throughout her prose. Her
verses are pleasant, and many of them are striking, but meter often
chained her fancy. But some of her unchained fancies, poetic conceits in
the guise of prose, will live long after the clasp, holding the
pretentious verses of a society laureate, shall have been eaten loose by
the constant nibble of time.
When a church was crowded with friends, come to bid "Amber" good-bye, a
great thinker, a writer who knows the meaning of toil, said that she had
succeeded by the force and the industry of her genius. And so she had.
For others, influence searched out easy places, but "Amber" found her
own hard place and maintained it, struggling alone. Her words were for
the poor and the sorrowful, and they could but give a blessing. But in
the end, a blessing from the poor may be brighter than the silver of the
rich.
Opie Read.
Rosemary and Rue.