all enterprises of a public nature calculated to build up and improve the town or conserve the highest interests of the people. In 1872 he was elected to the town council, and reelected in 1875 and 1878, which will conclude nine years of service. During all this time he has been on the chief committee, that of Ways and Means, most of the time being chairman of the same. He also holds at the hands of Council the post of attorney-in-fact for the borough of Norristown of the Bringhurst bequest for the poor of the town. For many years he has been often selected to sit on arbitrations, road juries, and chosen guardian for trust funds and the like, and is fitted for such by reason of being a very quick and ready accountant. As a careful, accurate business man, of integrity and unblemished reputation, Mr. W. stands deservedly high. He is a man of social, kindly habits, fond of "the juveniles," which the latter have found out, of course, and appreciate. He Though not an inveterate partisan, Mr. Wright was originally a Whig, but more recently a decided Republican. was, however, never a seeker for public office. LUCRETIA MOTT. We have lived and loved together We have shared each other's gladness, Beyond this vale of tears There is a life above, Unmeasured by the flight of years, And all that life is love.-Montgomery. Certainly no woman in the State of Pennsylvania has wielded a wider influence upon the moral world for a period of nearly fifty years than Mrs. Lucretia Mott,* who for a considerable The title of our work is "The Eminent Men of Montgomery County." We have the following high authority that "men" includes women also: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him: male and female created He them."-Genesis 1, 27. We may add here that the preparation and insertion of this sketch is without authority of the subject, the liberty being assumed on the ground that our book would be incomplete without a notice of this distinguished lady, who for several years has been a resident of our county. Besides, her useful life and eminent example are in an important sense public property. time has been a resident of Cheltenham township, Montgomery county. This exerted power has been greatly enhanced by the fact that while maintaining her hold and standing among Friends, she has lent her countenance and aid to all the outside reforms which, as reflexes of our common christianity, have been the outgrowth of all sects alike. It is but an easy task to show that sects, as distinguished in America, where thought and religion are comparatively free, are charged severally with missions which none so well as themselves can perform. The reforms, also, are but abstract christianity struggling outside of the churches for recognition; but being out of the church, they are all liable to run into extremes and folly for lack of the "institutes." So "truth and falsehood grapple," and the world moves forward. Lucretia Mott* is a daughter of New England, inheriting in a wonderful degree the rigid persistency and pluck of the old Independents joined to the meek trust and simplicity of the early Quakers. She was born on the island of Nantucket in 1793, and is therefore now in her eighty-sixth year. Her father was a Friend before her, and probably captain of a fishing vessel, as he was a seaman from that town, where whaling was almost the universal business at that time. Her paternal ancestors were of the Coffins and Macys, the former a distinguished name in New England history, and on the maternal side, through the Folgers, claims a distant relationship with the family of Benjamin Franklin. Not being born to wealth, she was early inured to the hardships of life in assisting her mother, who, in the absence of the father at sea, managed a small mercantile business for a livelihood. In her eleventh year her parents moved to Boston, where she had the best opportunities of instruction in the public and private schools of that city. In her fourteenth year she was placed in a Friends' boarding-school in Duchess county, New York, and remained two years, at the close of which term, a vacancy occurring among the instructors that she was competent to fill, she remained another year in the place, securing also the education of a sister as part of the consideration for *For the material facts of this sketch we are indebted to "The Eminent Women of the Age," published by S. M. Betts & Co., Hartford, Connecticut, in 1868. her services. While here she formed the acquaintance of James Mott, her future husband, and a year later, after she had removed with her parents to Philadelphia, married him. James Mott left New York State and engaged in business with her father, but owing to the troubled state of the country at that time (1811-12), and the impending war, their mercantile ventures did not prosper, and shortly after her father died. This threw an increased responsibility upon her mother, which she and her husband shared, as the war troubles had made them all poor. Finally, however, James Mott succeeded in getting into profitable business, and in the course of years acquired a comfortable substance. As early as 1818, when she had reached her twenty-fifth year, she began to speak in the meetings of Friends, and soon received an authorization from the select meeting as a "public Friend." These gifts she improved till the division of the society took place, which grew out of the Unitarian views of Elias Hicks, when, as she expresses it, "My convictions led me to adhere to the sufficiency of the light within us, resting on truth as authority rather than 'taking authority for truth.'" This, of course, took her with the side popularly known as the "Hicksite," and she continued to be an eminent preacher in that branch. About ten years after this the anti-slavery and temperance reforms demanded attention, and Lucretia and James Mott were in the very fore-front of battle. As the Hicksite branch of Friends relaxed theological teaching, they became more earnest for a higher standard of public morals, and the reform hosts went through an excited discussion of some years concerning the relative merits of "non-resistance," "power of truth," "no voting," "fighting for liberty," and the like, till, "made mad by the gods," slaveholders drew the sword in 1861, and the problem, so far as chattel servitude in our country was concerned, settled itself forever. As a minister among Friends, or as a speaker, Lucretia Mott is a model of elegance, purity, and force. She never indulges in the sing-song tone addressed to the ear, but always in the purest Saxon, and speaks to the heart and judgment of her hearers. She also usually escapes the charge of mystifying, often made against the ministers of her denomination, by spiritualizing the facts of revelation. She prefers rather to leave out of sight doctrines that do not relate immediately to morals, applying the sternest reasoning to the commonest facts of life. Her biographer, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quotes her, however, in this connection, as saying that "the popular doctrine of human depravity never commended itself to my reason or conscience." On this declaration the author ventures the comment that her life-long moral warfare against vice, oppression and injustice, has certainly been a pretty strong indication of depravity somewhere. Her character, as read in her portrait, is a deep study. It is a visual synonym of strength, indicating a mind assured of the ground upon which it stands. To use phrenological language, it shows will-power under control of the moral sentiments. It tells also of strong social and domestic instincts, with an amount of quiet, unused combativeness that might warn off any one on a proselyting mission. The large, prominent eye, and broad, high forehead, bear logic and rhetoric in every expression. In morals she comes nearer the stoic than any modern public character we can call to mind—that is, rigid, intellectual morals, without passion or feeling. The face looks as if nothing could excite the mind of its owner to an ebullition of abnormal feeling; and then gentleness and benevolence beam from every lineament. Yet there is a slight dash of sarcasm mingled with pity and contempt stamped on those compressed lips. Still, using phrenological verbiage, she has enough secretiveness to make a wise and prudent counsellor. Hence she must have been the very Moses and Aaron combined to the woman movement. She is just enough masculine in her mentality to feel the wrongs of her sex, and has quite enough dogged courage to fight on, not "all summer," but for a life-time. She has lived, therefore, to see the cause of women-their right to equal suffrage-adopted by one political party, and favorably considered by others. Lucretia Mott has been a total abstainer from alcoholic drinks for many years, and for a long time previous to emancipation in the West Indies and our country, her family were |