Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

2inne C. Z.: otta
beaming like the sun upon the just and unjust, conscious of her own good-will-unconscious, if possible, of slight or malice. I have never known man
or woman so eager for the truth, whatever it might
be; so ready to receive the light, no matter whence it
came; so humble in her own esteem; so ready to
praise friend and foe when praise was due. The
latch-string of her heart and head, as of her hospitable door, was always out. The welcome came
from one who, living in the world for seventy-six
years, was never spoiled by it, whose simplicity and
naturalness would have graced a child.
Mrs. Botta had no fear of death. She accepted the
inevitable, and often talked with her husband of that
mysterious law of nature which usually seems so
cruel. She believed firmly in cremation, but so dearly
loved her friend and best adviser of forty years, Mr.
Charles Butler, as to waive her own judgment in
deference to his. "Remember," she said to her
husband, "if I die before Mr. Butler, let me be
buried. If I die after him, be sure that I am
cremated."
She died first, and no truer mourner has this
thoughtful woman than the ninety-year-old man who
"longs for the touch of a vanished hand, and the
sound of a voice that is still."
For many years it had been Mrs. Botta's custom to
send Mr. Butler a pocket-book on Christmas wherein
lay a poem inspired by her regard. The old pocketbook was always carefully laid aside for the new;
the poems, intended for one eye only, were always
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