A Useful Life.

Manawatu Herald, 4 June 1904, Page 3

A Useful Life.

BIGNESS BURDETT-COUTTS llie Baroness Burdett-Coutts was ninety years old on April 21st. The frail-looking lady who comes into the Piccadilly drawing-room with a courteous greeting, and talks to her visitor quietly and serenely as if ahe had nothing else to do, ia still one of the most charming hostesses in London. Her sight and hearing are perfect, she moves about with complete ease, and ia always busy. Directly her visitor leaves ahe will go back to her writing-table and work on steadily for many hours. But no one will guess from her manner now that she has anything to do but sit here quietly and talk over old friends and old times. It is a favourite story of the Baroness how three Lord Chancellors have told her that ahe would have been the best Lord Chancellor ever seen on the Woolsack, She has lived a life whose work has been of an importance simply immeasurable. The whole basis of popular education has been broadened by her resolute introduction of such practical work as sewing and cookingclasses into it; the Church of England owes her several important colonial Bishoprics, including those of Adelaide and Bishop Columbia, and ahe originated the movement for building model lodging-houses for the working-classes. Baroness Burdett-Coutts was a charming speaker, partly because she always had something to say worth hearing, partly because she spoke without notes, but chiefly because her voice (until her illness three years ago, which slightly affected the vocal chords) was one of the most pleasant in London. It is almost a pity that Baroness Burdett-Coutts can hold out no hope of publishing a volume of memoirs. Her acquaintance with almost everybody worth knowing in England for the last half-century has been curiously intimate, partly from her own intensely sympathetic nature and partly from the fact that many people came to pour out their troubles to this solitary girl and woman who would have told them to a woman surrounded by relatives • and it has never occurred to the Baroness to write down or even remember these confidences.