THREE DEDICATIONS IN WHICH FAMOUS AUTHORS GIVE
ELOQUENT EXPRESSION TO AFFECTION
INSPIRED BY NOBLE WOMEN.
The men who wrote the three extracts which are given here represent three
vividly contrasted types. Ernest Renan was a distinguished Frenchman, a
profound Hebrew scholar, and yet witty, cynical, and eloquent. John
Greenleaf Whittier was a Massachusetts Quaker of rustic manners and great
simplicity of life, who viewed Nature with the sympathetic eyes of a born
poet, but always serious, simple, and sincere. Eugene Field was a Chicago
journalist, full of irreverent American humor, rollicking and sometimes
boisterous, although he too had a vein of tenderness in his nature and a
sympathy with the finer things of life. Yet these three men all agreed in
their affection for their sisters. Renan wrote of his sister Henriette
that "it was she who exerted the strongest influence on my life," and at
his death he left a little volume containing his reminiscences of her.
It is evident from the dedications of Whittier and Field that each felt an
almost equal debt of gratitude to the sisters with whom their early years
were spent and whose affection they have so beautifully commemorated.