Alice Cogswell Bemis: A Sketch by a Friend

								

like many others that followed and it is typical of all that she has
done throughout a long and useful life. Though I was only a little
fellow, I have a strong impression of an energetic, influential family,
full of good deeds, and of a large house with well stocked cellars and
larders that seemed to exist chiefly for the benefit of neighbors and
friends. Lucy and Alice were beautiful young women. Their mother died
when they were quite young, and while they were in their early 'teens'
they were in charge of the Cogswell home. This they made most
attractive. My boyhood impression is that they were always doing nice
things for people--always sending their friends baskets from their
larder. I have a wonderful impression of Uncle Cogswell's garden. As
gardens go nowadays it may not have been unusual, but to me it was a
rare spot. It contained choice varieties of currants, gooseberries,
pears and cherries. There may have been some apple trees, but I have the
feeling that apples were a trifle common to associate with his exotic
varieties. From the time of my father's death, which occurred when I was
eight years old, Cousin Alice seemed to assume a godmotherly interest in
me and my career. Three evenings a week I went to the Lowell Institute,
which kept me in town too late to go home to Ipswich, and she gave me a
key to her home in Newton and had a room always ready for my use. She
always took a generous interest in my work. Her moral support was
everything to me. She made me feel that my profession was worthy and
dignified." Many students whom she helped in later years would gladly
give the same testimony of support and encouragement received from her.
The sisters attended the Ipswich Seminary, one of the famous schools of
New England in its day. Its principal, Mrs. Cowles, had an attractive
personality, a cultivated mind, and great force of character. Her
husband, Dr. Cowles, was a clergyman and a man of wide influence, though
because of his blindness he was not in the active ministry for many
years. In spite of this seemingly insurmountable obstacle he was a
constant student, especially of Greek and Hebrew, and wrote much of
value on the Old Testament. His presence added greatly to the household,
whose refined and stimulating atmosphere seems to have made as strong an
impression on the students as did the soundness of the teaching in the
classroom. The two sisters, Lucy and Alice, took the entire course of
study that the seminary offered. Alice graduated from it in 1864. Many
of its pupils became women of large influence in the world, and carried
from their life in the seminary a profound impression of the religious
influences that had surrounded them there. Their own thought and their
manner of life showed the lasting value of the emphasis that had been
laid in the school on the supreme importance of right living and right
thinking. Those who knew the sisters well recall the many times in after