“A plainly attired lady of medium hight [sic] wearing a brown dress and lace collar, was introduced to a large audience at the Case avenue Presbyterian church last evening as Mrs. G. R. Alden, or the first “Pansy” of the season after an unusually severe winter.”
Isn’t that a charming way to describe Isabella?
Those are the first lines of a newspaper article about a public reading she gave at a Cleveland church in 1885.
Isabella regularly drew large crowds whenever she appeared at an event, especially if there was a chance she might read one of her stories; and on this particular evening, she read chapters from her short story “Circulating Decimals.”
Here’s the newspaper’s full description of the event:
![“PANSY” ON CHURCH SOCIETIES.
Mrs. Alden and the Adelbert College Glee Club Entertain an Audience.
A plainly attired lady of medium hight [sic] wearing a brown dress and lace collar, was introduced to a large audience at the Case avenue Presbyterian church last evening as Mrs. G. R. Alden, or the first “Pansy” of the season after an unusually severe winter.
Mrs. Alden, who is well known in the literary world as “Pansy” the Sunday school workers’ favorite authoress, read several chapters of her republished book “Circulating Decimal,” to the great delight of her hearers. She is a pleasing and natural reader, and knows how to interest an audience. She read of the trials and tribulations of Sunday school societies, described the efforts of the young ladies to “get up” a church fair and the cantata of “Esther,” how they quarreled over the leading parts and how they netted the enormous sum of $19.02
In the course of the evening the Adelbert college glee club entertained the audience with several excellent selections, capitally sung, among which were “Nellie was a Lady,” “Way Down Upon the Suwanee river” and “George Washington.”](https://isabellaalden.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/plain-dealer_cleveland-oh_1885-04-15_page-8.png)
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Isabella Alden 