Lyons departed with an agreeable impression that he had been talking to a woman who combined mental sagacity and enterprise with considerable fascination of person.  This capable companion of Mr. Parsons was no coquettish or simpering beauty, no mere devotee of fashionable manners, but a mature, well-poised character endowed with ripe intellectual and bodily graces.  Their interview suggested that she possessed initiative and discretion in directing the course of events, and a strong sense of moral responsibility, attributes which attracted his interest.  He was obliged to make two more visits before the execution of the will, and on each occasion he had an opportunity to spend a half-hour alone in the society of Selma.  He found her gravely and engagingly sympathetic with his advocacy of democratic principles; he told her of his ambition to be elected to Congress—­an ambition which he believed would be realized the following autumn.  He confided to her, also, that he was engaged in his leisure moments in the preparation of a literary volume to be entitled, “Watchwords of Patriotism,” a study of the requisites of the best citizenship, exemplified by pertinent extracts from the public utterances of the most distinguished American public servants.

Selma on her part reciprocated by a reference to the course of lectures on “Culture and Higher Education,” which she had resolved to deliver before the Benham Institute during the winter.  In these lectures she meant to emphasize the importance of unfettered individuality, and to comment adversely on the tendencies hostile to this fundamental principle of progress which she had observed in New York and from which Benham itself did not appear to her to be entirely exempt.  After delivering these lectures in Benham she intended to repeat them in various parts of the State, and in some of the large cities elsewhere, under the auspices of the Confederated Sisterhood of Women’s Clubs of America, the Sorosis which Mrs. Earle had established on a firm basis, and of which at present she was second vice-president.  As a token of sympathy with this undertaking, Mr. Lyons offered to procure her a free pass on the railroads over which she would be obliged to travel.  This pleased Selma greatly, for she had always regarded free passes as a sign of mysterious and enviable importance.

Two months later Selma, as secretary of the sub-committee of the Institute selected to oppose before the legislature the bill to create an appointed school board, had further occasion to confer with Mr. Lyons.  He agreed to be the active counsel, and approved of the plan that a delegation of women should journey to the capital, two hours and a half by rail, and add the moral support of their presence at the hearing before the legislative committee.