also a writer of that mental calibre which was attained through profound thought and careful investigation. Sheldon published the greater part of her work under assumed names, or no name at all, partly through her own desire and partly through the injustice of editors. Her range of literary work extended from short Freethought articles for various liberal magazines, humor for Sunday newspapers, ghost stories and pathos for various monthlies, to thrilling tales of adventure for boys. Sheldon's affection for animals amounted almost to mania, and she declared in more than forcible language that "if she were possessed of great wealth, she would spend a large portion of it in trying to punish two classes of people—first, the class who neglect or ill-treat animals, and, second, the men and women who bring children into the world without a clean bill of health, morals or temperament, to say nothing of sufficient wealth to insure them against hardship." Her published work consisted of seven novels, about two hundred short stories, more than one thousand poems, and many articles on scientific and sociological subjects. Religion and Freethought Sheldon was brought up an orthodox Congregationalist, but her doubts ripened early and reaped their harvest. The God of the Bible soon became in her eyes not only a "moral monstrosity" but an "inconceivable hypothesis," and she saw no shadow of reason in the "vicarious atonement." A God who creates beings with an "inclination" toward evil furnishes the temptation for the committing of said evil, and then punishes his own creatures for acting out the impulses of their natures, was a being whom she could not and would not worship. In early life, she read Dodd, Drummond, and John Stuart Mill, and studied the Bible with a concordance, besides spending many hours praying for enlightenment on these subjects, but the only knowledge which she could glean that in any way satisfied her common sense and reason came later in the study of Ludwig Büchner, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and in company with such intellects as these she soon realized that she was beyond the need of faith in the undemonstrable vagaries of superstition. When she asked for suitable employment for a woman of her intelligence at the Woman's Christian Association, she was requested to tell her family history, declare her faith in God and give up a percentage of her earnings for a servant's