tributors were J. C. Brainerd,[1] Professors Fisher and Fowler, Mrs. Sigourney, and others.
Mrs. Tuthill wrote rhymes from childhood, and as far back as she can remember was devoted to books. One of her amusements during girlhood was to write, stealthily, essays, plays, tales, and verses, all of which, however, with the exception of two or three school compositions, were committed to the flames previous to her marriage. She had imbibed a strong prejudice against literary women, and firmly resolved never to become one. Mr. Tuthill took a different view of the matter, and urged her to a further pursuit of liberal studies and the continued exercise of her pen. At his solicitation, she wrote regularly for the “Microscope” during its continuance, which, however, was only for a couple of years.
Mr. Tuthill died in 1825, at the age of twenty-nine, leaving a widow and four children, one son and three daughters. As a solace under affliction, Mrs. Tuthill employed her pen in contributing frequently to literary periodicals, but always anonymously, and with so little regard to fame of authorship as to keep neither record nor copy of her pieces, though some of them now occasionally float by as waifs on the tide of current literature. Several little books, too, were written by her between 1827 and 1839, for the pleasure of mental occupation, and published anonymously. Some of these still hold their place in Sunday school libraries.
Mrs. Tuthill’s name first came before the public in 1839. It was on the title-page of a reading book for young ladies, prepared on a new plan. The plan was to make the selections a series of illustrations of the rules of rhetoric, the examples selected being taken from the best English and American authors. The “Young Ladies’ Reader,” the title of this collection, has been popular, and has gone through many editions.
The ice being once broken, she began to publish more freely, and during the same year gave to the world the work entitled “The Young Lady’s Home.” It is an octavo volume of tales and essays, having in view the completion of a young lady’s education after her leaving school. It shows at once a fertile imagination and varied reading, sound judgment, and a familiar acquaintance with social life. It has been frequently reprinted.
Her next publication was an admirable series of small volumes for boys and girls, which have been, of all her writings, the most widely and the most favourably known. They are 16mo.’s, of about 150 pages each. “I will be a Gentleman,” 1844, twenty editions; “I will be a Lady,” 1844, twenty editions; “Onward, right Onward,” 1845, ten editions; “Boarding School Girl,” 1845, six editions; “Anything for Sport,” 1846, eight editions; “A Strike for Freedom, or, Law and Order,” 1850, three editions in the first year.
Had Mrs. Tuthill written nothing but these attractive and useful volumes, she would have entitled herself to an honourable place in any
- ↑ See Whittier’s Life of J. C. Brainerd.
