If
the young men shared her delight in the book, she was interested
at once to lead them to higher steps and more difficult but
not less engaging authors, and they soon learned to prize
the new world of thought and history thus opened. Her best
pupils became her lasting friends. She became one of the
best Greek scholars in the country, and continued, in her
latest years, the habit of reading Homer, the tragedians,
and Plato. But her studies took a wide range in mathematics,
in natural philosophy, in psychology, in theology, as well
as in ancient and modern literature. She had always a keen
ear open to whatever new facts astronomy, chemistry, of the
theories of light and heat had to furnish. Any knowledge,
all knowledge was welcome. Her stores increased day by day.
She was absolutely without pedantry. Nobody ever heard of
her learning until a necessity came for its use, and then
nothing could be more simple than her solution of the problem
proposed to her. The most intellectual gladly conversed with
one whose knowledge, however rich and varied, was always with
her only the means of new acquisition.
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