Isabella Alden’s novel Ester Ried, Asleep and Awake opens with a memorable scene: Ester Ried—barely eighteen years old—finds herself with much more responsibility than a girl of her age should have. With an ill mother, four younger siblings, and several boarders to care for and feed, she is often pressed for time, thin on patience, and struggling to keep up with a never-ending list of things to do.
Much of her time is spent in the kitchen cooking, washing dishes, and supervising laundry; and on scorching summer days, the heat from the wood stove makes the entire room even hotter, so her cheeks were always in a state of “glowing.”
Trade card for a traditional wood-burning kitchen stove, about 1890
When Ester Ried was published in 1870, kitchen stoves were large, cast-iron pieces of furniture; and while their primary function was for cooking, stoves also served as essential elements of a home’s heating system. In winter a wood-burning stove helped keep the house warm and cozy. In summer, the same stove could make a kitchen unbearably hot.
Isabella’s readers could identify with Ester Ried’s plight. Isabella, too, must have had more than her share of summer days spent “glowing” in an overheated kitchen while she cooked her family’s meals, heated water for bathing, and tended to a litany of household tasks.
An 1884 trade card from the Detroit Stove Works, manufacturer of wood-burning, oil, and gasoline stoves.
So in 1880, when a new type of cooking stove—the gasoline stove—appeared on the market, Isabella took notice.
Unlike traditional wood-burning stoves that required constant monitoring of logs, flues, and dampers to manage the temperature, gasoline stoves offered a revolutionary level of control. They worked much like a kerosene lamp: a cloth wick pulled the gasoline up to the burner where it turned into a gas, creating a steady, hot blue flame.
An 1890 ad for the Sun Dial gas stove.
By simply turning a knob to adjust the wick, a woman could make her cooking and baking incredibly precise. Best of all, because they didn’t radiate intense ambient heat like massive cast-iron wood stoves, they spared homemakers from suffering in a sweltering kitchen.
In 1880 Isabella wrote about a young wife and mother who learned about the advantages of a gasoline stove in a short story titled, “Faith and Gasoline.”
Summer heat and money troubles force Faith Vincent to face the heartbreaking prospect of being separated from her husband for the entire summer—until a neighbor’s wisdom, a clever “gasoline stove,” and a good amount of prayer help Faith secretly transform her despair into a promising future for herself and her family.
For many people, January is a time of new beginnings, a chance to throw off old habits and create new routines that we hope will make us happier, healthier, and more successful.
One resolution that never goes out of style: getting our finances in order. We promise ourselves we’ll spend less, save more, or stick to a budget. It’s advice we hear everywhere, from financial gurus to social media influencers.
But more than a century ago, Isabella Alden was already writing about these same challenges, and offered practical wisdom about money management that remains true today.
Isabella was well acquainted with the concept of living within your means. Growing up, she watched her parents practice small, daily economies. They instilled in Isabella a belief that buying anything on credit—from running a tab at the green grocer’s to carrying a mortgage on a home—could lead to financial ruin.
When she was twenty-five, Isabella married a newly-ordained minister and kept house with very little income. It wasn’t until she began writing her books and stories that she started to earn money to augment her husband’s meager salary.
Money (and the lack of it) was a frequent theme in Isabella’s books. In Aunt Hannah and Martha and John Isabella wrote about the trials of a young minister’s wife who has to learn to cook and clean in order to economize (often with comical and disastrous results). Some of the scenes in the novel are based on Isabella’s own experiences.
So it isn’t surprising that she would be wise about money, and would believe wholeheartedly in the concept of living within one’s means.
Here’s an essay she wrote on the topic for an issue of The Pansy magazine in 1878:
GRAIN BY GRAIN
Did you ever know a young man, when he began in earnest to work for a living, who ever had wages enough? Somehow, salaries and “wants” never do keep with each other. There are not many, who, like an old philosopher, can walk along the streets of a gay city and note the tempting wares set out on every side, and yet say, “How many things there are here that I do not want!” Yet if you can get a little into his way of looking at the luxuries of life, it will be a great help to your peace of mind.
And it is a very singular fact that most fortunes have been laid on very small foundations. A great merchant was accustomed to tell his many clerks that he laid the foundation of his property when he used to chop wood at twenty-five cents a cord. Whenever he was tempted to squander a quarter he would say, “There goes a cord of wood!” He learned in very early years a good lesson in practical economy.
An old woman had been seen for years hanging about the wharves, where vessels were loaded and unloaded in New York harbor, intent on picking up the grains of coffee, corn, rice, etc., that were by chance scattered on the piers. The other day she was badly hurt by some heavy bags of grain falling on her. The kind merchants took up a purse for old Rosa and sent her to her home in Hoboken, in charge of an officer. What was his surprise to find that the neat and handsomely furnished cottage was the property of the old grain picker? She had literally built and furnished it, as the coral workers do their homes, grain by grain.
Do not be discouraged though your profits are small. If you cannot increase the income, the only way out of the difficulty is to cut down the wants. Turn every claim to the best account, and as prices go, you will be able to get a vast amount of real comfort out of even a small income. The habits you are forming are also of the greatest importance, and may be made the foundation stones of a high prosperity.
Have you ever had a “grain by grain” moment—where small consistent choices added up to something significant over time?
If you had to choose just one principle from Isabella’s essay to focus on this year—cutting unnecessary wants, maximizing what you have, or building better financial habits—which would make the biggest difference in your life?
Have you ever wondered if your daily witness for Christ can truly make a difference in winning a loved one’s soul? Would you be willing to compromise your principles if you thought it might be the only way to influence someone else for Christ?
These are the heart-searching questions at the center of this month’s free read, “Fishing for Phil,” by Isabella Alden. The story follows teenager Daisy Morris as she navigates the delicate balance between family loyalty and her personal devotion to God.
Daisy Morris is a young woman of firm Christian principle , but her convictions are put to the test when her beloved Aunt Mattie and cousin Blanche plead with her to attend a special play. They believe it is the only way to coax Phil away from his worldly companions and back into the church. Will Daisy yield to the pressure of those she loves , or will her quiet refusal to compromise “one inch of the way” prove to be the very witness Phil truly needs?
December 8, 1925—almost exactly 100 years ago—started as any ordinary Tuesday afternoon in Palo Alto, California. Isabella Alden was 83 years old, and was living in the beloved double-home that she and her husband Ross built a decade before on Embarcadero Road.
Ross and her son Raymond had died the year before, so only Isabella and her daughter-in-law Barbara (Raymond’s widow) and her five children were left to share the rambling house.
Barbara Hitt Alden, about 1910.
That afternoon, Isabella, Barbara, and Barbara’s youngest son, Raymond Jr., set out together in the family car. Barbara was behind the wheel. None of them could have known that their simple outing would dramatically change the remainder of Isabella’s life.
A 1925 Lincoln sedan, a popular car style in the 1920s.
At a street intersection a little less than a mile from their home, another car collided with the Alden vehicle, striking it with enough force to cause it to overturn. The impact shattered the windshield and windows, showering the passengers with broken glass.
The San Francisco Chronicle, December 8, 1925.
Barbara was only slightly hurt. But Isabella and her young grandson suffered “severe cuts about the face and head, and many bruises.” After receiving first aid from a nearby physician, Isabella and Raymond Jr. were taken to Palo Alto Hospital for treatment.
Palo Alto Hospital in the 1920s.
The next day’s newspaper reported reassuring news: the accident victims had returned home, and Isabella “was found to have suffered only from shock and minor cuts.” Her grandson’s injuries were described as the most serious of the three.
The Peninsula Times Tribune, December 9, 1925.
But that assessment would prove tragically wrong.
What those initial medical evaluations missed was the true extent of Isabella’s injuries. The accident left her in considerable pain and, ultimately, confined to a wheelchair for most of the remaining years of her life.
Until the accident, Isabella was a woman who had been remarkably productive well into her eighties—still writing, still engaged with her work and family. The accident didn’t just slow her down; it fundamentally altered how she could live her remaining years.
Isabella in later years.
In her memoir “Memories of Yesterday,” which she finished writing after the accident, Isabella documented the physical pain she endured. For a woman who had spent her life in service to others, who had quietly helped so many navigate their own difficulties, those final years must have been particularly difficult for her.
Isabella lived for nearly five more years after the accident, passing away in 1930 at age 88. Those years, spent largely in a wheelchair and dealing with chronic pain, were a far cry from the active, engaged life she had led for more than eight decades.
What is striking about this incident in Isabella’s life isn’t just the tragedy of the accident itself, but what it reveals about her character during her final years. Despite her pain and limitations, she continued to write. She finished her last novel, An Interrupted Night, and entrusted it to her niece, Grace Livingston Hill, to guide it through the publishing process.
She also completed her memoir, Memories of Yesterdays, candidly sharing her memories and reflections on a life well-lived. Even when her body was confined to a wheelchair, her mind and spirit remained active.
That’s the Isabella Alden we’ve come to know through her writings—someone who lived out the principles she wrote about, even when circumstances became difficult. She had spent decades writing about faith, perseverance, and finding purpose in adversity. In her final years, she had to draw on those very principles herself.
A hundred years ago this month, Isabella’s life changed forever on a Palo Alto street corner. While the accident limited her physical abilities, it couldn’t diminish the legacy she’d built through decades of faithful work—or the strength of character that sustained her until the end.
Rebecca’s dress was entirely appropriate and becoming. She had gone out from her father’s house very well supplied with clothes, and her ability to re-make them herself had stood her in good stead, so that now her dress of fine black cloth, made severely plain, but with minute attention to details, became her well. So did the black felt bonnet, with its three stylish plumes, which she had herself dressed over.
from Wanted, by Isabella Alden, published in 1894
In her stories, Isabella often used the latest fashion to define a character’s financial and social status, and Rebecca Meredith’s outfit was an excellent example. Because her dress was plain and black, her bonnet “with its three stylish plumes” was the centerpiece of her outfit and called attention to her pretty face.
Bonnets with plumes were very much in style when Wanted was published in 1894. Women’s magazines, like Godey’s Lady’s Book and TheLadies Home Journal showed that hats were be made from a variety of materials—straw, for example, or stiffened fabrics like velvet—and that they were quite modest in size.
From Godey’s Lady’s Book, August 1895.
Though small, hats at that time were heavily adorned with ribbons, bows, artificial flowers and, most importantly, bird plumes.
From Godey’s Lady’s Book, October 1897.
Bird feathers were the most desirable decorative elements on a lady’s hat. In 1894 The Ladies Home Journal predicted that actual wings displayed on bonnets would be “all the rage,” while another magazine wrote that “almost every second woman one sees in the streets flaunts an aigrette of heron’s plumes on her bonnet.”
Milliners used feathers from egrets, hummingbirds, herons, and even song birds of all kinds as adornments.
From Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1898.
The more exotic the bird, the more desirable their feathers; and the millinery industry was willing to pay top dollar to anyone who would supply them, no questions asked.
But some people did ask questions and raise alarms, after nature lovers in England and the United States discovered that some birds, like ospreys and egrets, were hunted so mercilessly, ornithologists feared they would soon be extinct.
In London, a Society for the Protection of Birds was formed. Members pledged to never wear feathers of any bird not killed for the purpose of food. Similar organizations were formed in Europe, Canada, and the U.S.
The public outcry began to pay off, as women around the world pledged to stop wearing hats with real bird feathers, and American lawmakers enacted state and federal laws to protect certain species of birds by banning them from use in hats and garments.
One bird that was exempt from protection was the ostrich, because its feathers could be harvested without killing the bird. So it was natural that the millinery industry would turn its attention to ostriches as a source for adornments.
Ostrich farms that had been established in the southern United States in the late 1890s in hopes of selling feathers to the millinery industry suddenly saw an increased demand for their wares.
An ostrich farm in southern California.
And because ostrich feathers could be plucked every eight or nine months, ostrich farmers with large herds enjoyed a regularly replenished inventory they could sell.
With the turn of the century, hat styles changed, and the small bonnets that were popular when Isabella wrote Wanted fell out of fashion. The new bonnet styles of the 1900s featured wide brims and brilliant colors.
Ostrich plumes suited the new styles beautifully. Because of their size, the plumes could cover a large hat’s crown and brim.
Even more importantly, ostrich feathers could be dyed to match almost any color. Women and conservationists rejoiced, feeling confident that they could use ostrich feathers for fashion without feeling guilty.
In her 1912 novel The Long Way Home Isabella made sure her fashionable characters wore the latest style in bonnets. Newlywed Ilsa Forbes wore a wide-brimmed hat when she boarded the train with her new husband Andy:
But Andrew had no words, just then; never was the heart of bridegroom more filled to overflowing, and he could not yet think about decorations or supper. “My wife!” he murmured, as his arm encircled her. “Really and truly and forever my wife. Do you realize it, darling?” She nestled as closely to him as her pretty, new traveling hat would permit and laughed softly.
There was, however, a problem with those stylish large hats adorned with ostrich feathers. In 1908 a letter to the editor of the Oregonian newspaper applauded the ban on exotic bird feathers, but raised a new and troubling concern about ostrich feathers:
The letter-writer wasn’t the only one wondering if an ostrich felt pain when its feathers were plucked. Soon the Audubon Society and other conservationists began asking the same question and took their findings to state legislators.
In California, where Isabella was living and where many of the country’s ostrich farms were located, the question was answered by lawmakers. In 1900 the state updated its penal code to make it a crime to intentionally mutilate or torture a living animal, which included plucking live birds like ostriches.
So ostrich farmers stopped plucking and began snipping feathers, instead. A 1911 article in the Dallas Morning News explained the process:
From The Dallas Morning News, November 12, 1911.
Once again, stylish ladies (and Isabella’s equally stylish characters) could wear hats adorned with feathers and maintain a relatively clear conscience.
It’s interesting how Isabella’s attention to details, like hat sizes and adornments, brought her stories to life. While she didn’t preach about fashion in her novels, she paid close attention to these niceties, and used them to bring authenticity to her characters and their world. Contemporary fans of her novels would have noted the subtle changes as keeping up with the times.
For us in 2025, it’s fascinating to learn there’s a whole complicated history behind Rebecca Meredith’s feathers—a history about women who were determined to write wrongs and find ways to be fashionable without compromising their conscience.
You can learn more about Isabella’s novels mentioned in this post by clicking on the book covers below:
Full disclosure: these are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you decide to purchase through them, this blog will receive a small commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, but it helps us keep this site running and researching Isabella’s life and the fascinating world in which she lived.
When Isabella Alden began writing her beloved “Pansy” books in the 1870s, the literary landscape looked very different than it does today. There were few public libraries like the ones we have now; instead, churches filled that role by establishing their own library systems.
The Sunday-school library was a powerful force in 19th-century America. They didn’t just lend books—they curated collections of books that shaped readers’ moral and spiritual development.
Not all Sunday-school libraries were created equal; some churches seemed to have unlimited resources to maintain a well-stocked library of five-hundred books or more, displayed in neat rows on well-built shelves; while others had only a few titles in their collection.
Isabella’s short story, “Circulating Decimals” is about the efforts of a community to raise money for just such a church library that has fallen into a “disgraceful condition” due to neglect and lack of funds. (You can click here to read the story for free.)
But regardless of size or budget, church libraries had one mission in common: to offer readers books that supported religious instruction, moral development, and the spiritual growth of the congregation.
Churches established committees to evaluate each potential library addition against a set of religious standards. The minister often played a role in recommending or vetoing books, which were also chosen based on their theological soundness and ability to promote standards of Christian living.
The Grace Methodist Episcopal Church of Taunton, Massachusetts had a rather large library of over five-hundred books, and included some of Isabella’s novels, as well as books by Margaret Sangster, E.P. Roe, and other Christian fiction authors.
The church divided their book collection into categories and published a catalog for members of their congregation. The fact that Isabella had ten of her books included in the catalog shows how well the moral messages of her stories aligned with the church’s values and appealed to readers of all ages.
(You can click on the image above to see the entire Grace M.E. Sabbath-school Library catalog of 1904.)
Mainstream publishers like Little, Brown and Company actively marketed their wholesome books to churches. This advertisement in “The Sunday School Library Bulletin” magazine shows their newest offering to churches included a new edition of “Little Men” by Louisa May Alcott:
And organizations like The National Temperance Society also marketed their books directly to churches. Their ad below features a temperance novel by Isabella’s friend Theodosia Foster (who used the pen name of Faye Huntington):
Church libraries established systems for inventorying and lending books. They assigned an inventory number to each book, and issued library cards to readers.
The numbered book plate from a book in the Sunday school library of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Springfield, Illinois.
They also created rules for borrowing:
Church libraries were a lifeline for readers, especially in smaller and frontier communities where there were no free public libraries. But that began to change in 1886 when wealthy steel magnate Andrew Carnegie began funding the building of public libraries across the country. By 1923 he had financed the building of over 1,600 public libraries where borrowers could choose from thousands of book titles, including the most popular books of the day.
The New York City Public Library, opened to the public in 1911.
The “safe” books Isabella wrote went out of print, while modern novels by Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald filled the shelves at public libraries.
Sunday-school libraries still existed, but their influence waned to such an extent that in 1930 a newspaper in Greensboro, North Carolina published an editorial just after Isabella’s death. The editorial fondly recalled the church libraries of years gone by:
There were no sex novels; no crime novels; no filthy “realism,” which portrays the perversions of human nature as if it were life itself. Romance there was, in glorious gobs. Many of the books seeped sentimentality. And always there were happy endings.
He went on to write that Isabella’s books “made for clean lives and happy homes and good society.” In her stories, “the problems were the problems of everyday people trying to be good. If they were somewhat morbid and over-introspective, so was the era for which they were meant.”
Isabella truly did write for the era in which she lived; but it’s important to remember that her books succeeded in Sunday school libraries not just because they met church requirements, but because Isabella had a particular understanding of literature’s purpose—that stories should help readers have a closer walk with God and become better versions of themselves.
Maybe that’s why her “Pansy” novels, despite going out of print, are still read and loved by new readers today, and remembered fondly by those who discovered them on long-ago Sunday afternoons in church libraries.
Does your church have a library? What are the kinds of books it offers?
Despite her popularity as a best-selling author, Isabella gave very few interviews. She made an exception in 1892 when a magazine called The Ladies Home Journal (which was quickly becoming the most widely-read magazine in the world) came calling.
The interviewer, Denny Johnson, asked Isabella the usual interview questions about her home life, her childhood, and what inspired her to write. But in the process of sharing Isabella’s answers to those very standard questions, Johnson’s article reveals the quiet power of Isabella’s Christian principles.
Reading the article, you get the sense that what made Isabella extraordinary wasn’t just her prolific writing career; it was the way in which her personal character was very much reflected in the stories she published.
The image of Isabella that was published with the 1892 article in The Ladies Home Journal.
So, here are four things The Ladies Home Journal interview revealed about Isabella’s personal character:
1. Isabella Lived Her Message
Johnson wrote that Isabella’s Christian principles weren’t “mere theories, existing only on paper.” Instead, they were “the rules that govern her own daily life.”
In those few words, Johnson revealed what is essentially the foundation of Isabella’s stories. Readers don’t just admire her characters’ moral courage—they can sense it comes from the reality of Isabella’s life.
Isabella believed in what Johnson called “practical “Christianity”—faith that rolled up its sleeves and got to work.
She quietly helped others navigate life’s difficulties, often so unobtrusively that people didn’t realize she was the one who had “smoothed this bit of path, or pushed aside that jagged stone.” To Isabella, that was genuine Christian service.
2. Isabella had Humility in Success
By 1892 Isabella had already authored over one hundred books that were beloved by readers around the world, yet the article describes her “as unspoiled as when she signed her name for the first time ‘Pansy.'” She shrank from publicity and seemed genuinely surprised by the impact of her work.
Her modesty wasn’t false humility; it reflected Isabella’s belief that her talents were gifts meant for service rather than self-promotion. As Johnson wrote, “self-emolument has no part in her work,” but instead she had “consecrated intellect, as well as heart and life, to the service of Christ.” In other words, she didn’t write stories for personal gain.
3. Isabella was Consistent
What gave Isabella her unique influence over young people wasn’t just her writing skill, but her consistent character. The same “high standard of right and wrong,” the same genuine care for others, the same joy in her faith that readers found in her books—all of this could be witnessed in her daily life.
The article said she had an infectious laugh and youthful spirit that weren’t manufactured for her audience.
She would pause her important work to meet with any child who came to visit, demonstrating that her love for young people was authentic, not merely professional.
4. Isabella’s Example is Timeless
In our present world of personal brands and influence marketing, Isabella’s story feels refreshingly honest. Her success didn’t come from clever marketing; it came from being the same person in private that she was in public. She wrote from who she actually was, not who she thought her audience wanted her to be.
Maybe that’s a big part of why her books are still being read today, long after other, flashier authors have been forgotten. There’s still something powerful about the simple consistency of Isabella’s authentic faith and the honest life she lived that still shine through when we read her stories.
Isabella Alden never actually said so, but there’s an argument to be made Flossy Shipley Roberts may very well have been her favorite character. Of all the characters Isabella created, Flossy made the most appearances in her novels.
Flossy first appeared in Four Girls at Chautauqua. She was also a key character in TheChautauqua Girls at Home, Ruth Erskine’s Crosses, Four Mothers at Chautauqua, and Echoingand Re-echoing.
And while she was only mentioned in Judge Burnham’s Daughters and Ruth Erskine’s Son, Flossy made her final appearance—and played a major role—in Ester Ried Yet Speaking.
Perhaps one reason Flossie was so well-loved—by Isabella and by her readers—was that she was honest and truthful, yet deceptively strong. People constantly underestimated Flossy because she was soft spoken and was willing to please others.
But Flossy also had a strong moral sense of right and wrong. She relied on her Christian faith to give her the strength she needed to always do right rather than what others wanted her to do.
She was also kind hearted, especially when it came to children. Flossy was just as willing to teach a Sunday school class full of ragged orphaned street boys as she was to serve tea on her best china to a wealthy church deacon and his wife.
That was the case in Esther Ried Yet Speaking, when Flossy took on the task of teaching a Sunday-school class of rough street boys. During the first class, Flossy took an interest in one of those boys, Dirk Colson and his sister Mart. In the story, Flossy’s concern for them and the rest of the boys—and the actions she took to help them—reflected Isabella’s own principles.
Boys in Mullens Alley, New York, 1888, by Jacob A. Riis
Isabella was keenly interested in the problem of street children living in large urban areas like New York City. In 1889 she wrote:
There is, in New York City, a meeting known as the “Woman’s Conference.” On the second Friday of every month they meet together to discuss matters of importance and see what they can do to help along the good work which is being done in this world. A few weeks ago they took for their subject the “Street Children’s Sunday,” their object being to see what they can do to help these miserable, neglected, almost forgotten, children to something better than their sorrowful lives have yet known.
The Sun (a New York newspaper) covered that women’s conference and published an account of the meeting, including this paragraph:
At the meeting, which was presided over by Mrs. Lowell of the State Board of Charities, Mrs. Houghton, literary editor of the Evangelist, introduced a subject of the Sunday Life of tenement-house children, a large class of whom do not attend the Sunday schools, and whose Sundays, owing to the drunkenness of their parents, which is more general on that day than any other, and also to the overcrowding of the small rooms in which they live by the presence of the entire family on that day, are full of wretchedness and discomfort. “The children do not laugh enough,” Mrs. Lowell said. “They did not know how to play or to be happy.” This subject has been long of great interest to Mrs. Houghton, and out of this discussion germinated a plan to do something for those little wretched waifs of humanity to brighten their lives, and ultimately to make of them better men and women and more intelligent and worthy citizens.
Isabella strongly believed in the last line of the article: that making the lives of poor boys and girls better will ultimately help them grow to be better men and women.
Children sleeping on Mulberry Street, 1890, by Jacob A. Riis
She also had the example of Jacob Riis, a newspaper reporter who documented living conditions in New York slums. Through his written articles and photographs, he almost single-handedly educated Americans about the necessity of better living conditions for the poor. He advocated for clean drinking water, public parks, and child labor laws, and he was instrumental in implementing these and many other reforms in New York City. Riis and Isabella both attended Chautauqua Institution at the same time, and Riis was close friends with Bishop John Vincent, one of Chautauqua’s co-founders.
Jacob A. Riis in 1904 (from Library of Congress)
Isabella may very well have been thinking of Riis when she wrote about Flossy’s efforts to reach and influence the street boys in her Sunday-school class.
Dwellings of Death by Jacob A. Riis
In one scene, Flossy gets lost in the slums while trying to visit Dirk, and a street boy named Nimble Dick helps her find Dirk’s house.
Mrs. Roberts uttered an exclamation. The house was one of the most forlorn in the row, seeming, if the miserable state of the buildings would admit of comparison, to be more out of repair than the others. It came home to her just then, with a sudden, desolating force, that human beings such as she was trying to reach, and such as she hoped would live in heaven forever, called such earthly habitations as these homes. What possible idea could they ever get of heaven by calling it “home”?
“Do they have the whole of the house?”
She asked the question timidly, for the building looked very large, but she was utterly unused to city tenement life.
“The whole of that house?” Dick fairly shouted the sentence, and bent himself double with laughter. “Well, I should say not, mum! As near as I can calculate, about thirty-five different families have that pleasure. The whole of the house! Oh, my! What a greeny!” And he laughed again.
Mrs. Roberts exerted herself to laugh with him, albeit she was horror-stricken. Thirty-five families in one house! How could they be other than awful in their ways of living?
“I know almost nothing about great cities,” she said. “My home was in a much smaller one.”
This was the truth, but not the whole truth. Instinct kept this veritable lady, in the truest sense of the word, from explaining that she knew nothing about the abject poor, when she was speaking to one of their number.
But Flossy quickly set about learning all she could about Dirk, his sister, and their neighbors because she felt a distinct calling to help them. When she returned a second time to Dirk’s tenement building—this time accompanied by her husband—other residents of the tenement warned her to stay away from Dirk.
It was strange, she could not herself account for it; but with every added word of misery that set poor Dirk Colson lower and lower in the scale of humanity, there seemed to come into this woman’s heart, and shine in her face, an assurance that he was to be a “chosen vessel unto God.”
A Tenement Yard by Jacob A. Riis
To Flossy, helping Dirk and the rest of “her boys” was essential. And when someone tried to change her mind by asking what good Flossy could possibly do for such creatures, she replied:
“Don’t you think that Jesus Christ died to save them? And don’t you think he wants them saved? And will he not be pleased with even my little bits of efforts if he knows that my sincere desire is to save these souls for his glory?”
Her “little bits of efforts” may seem small at first, but Flossy soon begins to see results with “her boys.”
You can read all about the plan Flossy came up with, and how the boys responded, in Isabella’s novel, Ester Ried Yet Speaking.
You can read Isabella’s novel Ester Ried Yet Speaking for only 99 cents! Choose your favorite e-book retailer. (Your purchase from The Pansy Shop helps support this blog.)
In Isabella’s early days of teaching Sunday school, the blackboard was an innovation. In her books, Isabella often wrote about how intimidating the blackboard was for many teachers, and some refused to use it.
That’s what happened in her 1878 novel Links in Rebecca’s Life. In the story, a young woman named Almina had the charge of teaching young children their Sunday-school lesson, but she refused to use a blackboard:
“It is quite the fashion to rave over them … but I won’t have one. What could I do with it? I don’t know how to draw, and as for making lines and marks and dots … I am not going to make an idiot of myself. What’s the use?”
Isabella saw things differently. With inspiration from her old Chautauqua friend Frank Beard (creator of “Chalk Talks”), Isabella embraced the blackboard as a teaching tool, especially for her youngest students who were just learning to read.
Of course, not all Sunday-school teachers had Frank Beard for a friend and guide. And not all teachers had a talent for drawing and diagramming.
Publications like The Sunday School Times recognized that, and published “Blackboard Hints” in many issues of their magazine, showing teachers that simple lettered blackboard illustrations could be just as effective:
It was Isabella’s opinion that any lesson could be better taught by the use of a blackboard or a slate.
“Children are invariably more impressed with what grows into being before their eyes then with what is brought in a completed form before them,” she said.
In her Sunday school lessons, Isabella used pictures and objects whenever she could to illustrate her lessons, but she liked the blackboard better.
“I never attempt elaborate drawings. In the first place, I cannot draw anything. In the second place, but I would not if I could, in a Sunday school room. There is not time. The barest outline is all you can spare time for in all that you need. A blackboard used constantly throughout the lesson — a mark for this one, a dot for that, a crooked line for a river, and oval for a lake — that is better for an [children’s] class than a careful summing up of the lesson at the close.”
So Isabella often began her lessons by putting a dot or a simple symbol on the blackboard, just to get the attention of everyone in her class—at least until they found out what that mark was for.
“If I need such a dot or mark or line as the most mischievous and troublesome [child] there can make for me, I have won him as a rule for that day.”
You can learn more about Frank Beard and his “Chalk Talks” by clicking here.
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The 2025 Chautauqua Institution officially opens on June 21. Much has changed at the institution in the last 151 years, but thanks to Isabella Alden and her contemporaries, we can piece together what it was like to spend a summer at Chautauqua in its early days.
Before there were cottages and meeting halls, Isabella and her family spent their summers sitting on rough wooden benches as they listened to lectures in the open air, and sleeping under the stars or in tents.
The photo below was taken about 1876, which was the second year of Chautauqua’s existence. Isabella was only thirty-five years old, but she was already quite famous.
She was the best-selling author of over a dozen novels, including the first four books of her “Ester Ried” series. And The Pansy magazine was in its third year of publication, with Isabella as editor and chief contributor of stories and articles.
In those early years The Pansy magazine was sent every month (it later became a weekly magazine) to thousands of children. Isabella called each of her young subscribers her “Pansies.”
While at Chautauqua one day that summer of 1876, Isabella was walking through the grove, which was one of her favorite spots at Chautauqua. She wrote:
Chautauqua is so beautiful this year. Don’t you know, I met today one of the little Pansies! As I was walking through the grove, there came a sweet-faced little girl to me, and she said in a low, sweet voice:
“If you please, I live in Ohio, and I’m going home today, and I’d like so very much to kiss you, then I could tell all the little girls that I kissed Pansy.”
You may be sure that I gave her the very warmest kiss I had, and told her to tell all her little Pansy friends that part of the kiss was for them.
A ladies’ magazine once printed an article about Isabella and commented that one of the strongest and most attractive elements of her character was her humility in regard to the great good she accomplished through her writing. But in truth, she was keenly aware of the power she had over her readers, and she always used that power to help them come to know and love the Lord Jesus Christ. Just think of the story the little girl in the grove told to her friends back in Ohio! How many of her little friends do you think were influenced to know and love Jesus, all because of Isabella’s kindness to a child and that one little kiss?
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![A square label affixed to the inside cover of a book. On the first line of the word "NO" with room to write a number; the number 61 was written and crossed out, and the number 77 written beside it. Below are printed "SUNDAY SCHOOL LIBRARY of the Evengelical [sic] Lutheran Church, Springfield, Ill." The text is surrounded by a fancy Victorian-era design of swirls and dots.](https://isabellaalden.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/evangelical-lutheran-church-book-plate.jpg)
Isabella Alden 