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(From the Boston SUNDAY HERALD, March 1st, 1885)

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker.

A Sketch of her Plan for Conversational Receptions.

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, the daughter of Dr. Lyman Beecher, who stands in the ranks of the Beecher family between Charles and Thomas Beecher, and who is some ten years the junior of Mrs. Stowe, has been spending the winter in Boston and is already familiarly known at the Women's Clubs, the meetings of the Philanthropic Societies, and in the quarters where the believers in women's rights, and the more refined and intelligent believers in Spiritualism are accustomed to congregate. She has an unmistakeable Beecher face, and would be selected in any company as a woman of remarkable personality. She is a real Beecher, and should one begin to tell stories about her, his experience would be like that of every one who tries to measure the personality of any one of the Beecher family - it would be an endless task.

Mrs. Hooker, since her nineteenth year, when she was married to Mr. John Hooker, a wel[l]-known and successful Hartford lawyer, has been a careful and intelligent student of the social, political and religious questions of the age. Like the wife of Jonathan Edwards, who kept pace with her husband in the study of theology, she went hand in hand with her husband in the study of law. She inherited liberal ideas, while Mr. Hooker was a Hartford deacon of the most orthodox type. Hartford never had a better one, and to this day, "as honest as John Hooker," means the type of character which he has illustrated.

The married life of these two, if it were a proper subject to write about, would be as interesting in prose as is Lord Tennyson's "Princess," in poetry. Mrs. Hooker is a lady who in some respects reminds one of Margaret Fuller. She has Margaret's resolute utterance and large outreach into great questions.

Again she reminds one of Harriet Martineau, in the practical handling of subjects which are more frequently reserved for a man. But in all this Mrs. Hooker is still preeminently the woman. She has been the mother of several children, and the breadth of her hold upon life is equal to her grasp of those large fields of thought into which women do not always enter. Though already beyond middle life, she is still in the vigor of mature years, and has unique and remarkable powers as a speaker on subjects which she has duly considered, and in which she takes a personal interest. In later years, quite against her plans she has felt called upon to enter the ranks of the Spiritualists, and her story of the way in which she [--round--][insert: found] herself introduced into this new realm of what is to many a demonstrated faith, is regarded by the few who have heard it, to be one of the most thrilling narratives that has ever come from human lips. The write speaks on this point as one who has heard the story.

Mrs. Hooker is no stranger to the platform, in fact she is a speaker rather than a writer, but her qualities as a speaker remind one of the powers which Mrs. Stowe has evinced as a writer. She has inspirational forces at her command and is mistress of the world of Spirits as truly as she is keeper of the fountains of smiles and tears. While she was spending the winter in Boston, her rooms at 16 James Street have been almost daily visited by women both young and old partly to learn about her beliefs in Spiritualism, and partly to consult her in regard to the practical affairs of life. The increase of these visits and the urgency of those who know what Mrs. Hooker can do as a teacher of her sex have at length induced her to think seriously of taking rooms where she may hold frequent conversations like those which Margaret Fuller used to hold in Boston, in order to bring people together who wish to consult her, and also in order to give instruction on the subjects with which she feels herself competent to deal. One of her subjects is political economy, which she treats from the point of view adopted by Miss Martineau, including within the scope, physiology and hygiene, as well as psychology.

In the same connection and on the same basis she would take up legislation and jurisprudence and show that the welfare of the individual is identical with that of the commonwealth and the nation. Another subject upon which she feels called to speak is sanitation, both public and private; and still another is that of police on the oversight of that portion of the public who turn their lives in criminal directions. Still another topic is spiritualism, about whose history, philosophy and religion she has something to say. This is in part the range of subjects on which Mrs. hooker is daily consulted and on which she will speak at the conversations which she is thinking of, and concerning whose details the public will soon be informed. Her method would be a short essay, then the introduction of people to one another, then illustration of the subject in hand with conversation.

It is believed that these conversations will be found profitable to those who attend them, and that Mrs. Hooker has peculiar and exceptional resources for assisting those who wish to make honest researches into the truth and methods of what is best in Spiritualism. At any rate all who consult her on this or the other subjects with which she feels herself [page is cut off]

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