Frances Willard House Museum
Home of the WCTU
Preserving the Past, Transforming the Future
National WCTU Library and Archives - the place where researchers come for primary sources.
The Den
Let Something Good be Said
Frances' Traveling Bag - "Old Faithful"
The heart of the house is the "Den." In this room is Frances' desk where she wrote and planned, as the Master Organizer. Above her desk is a copy of the painting Diana or Christ, a gift of Lady Henry Sommerset. Her Bible is bound with a white ribbon and kept in a plastic box, the pages are brittle and the binding loose. Many notes which she made in her study are found in the margins. The sign which used to be on her door when she was particularly busy, "This is my busy day", is now on her desk.
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"Let something good be said" is the motto over the fireplace. The words came from the poem by James Whitcomb Riley.
Let Something Good Be Said
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When over the fair fame of friend or foe
The shadow of disgrace shall fall, instead
Of words of blame, or proof of thus and so,
Let something good be said.
Forget not that no fellow-being yet
May fall so low but love may lift his head:
Even the cheek of shame with tears is wet,
If something good be said.
No generous heart may vainly turn aside
In ways of sympathy; no soul so dead
But may awaken strong and glorified,
If something good be said.
And so I charge ye, by the thorny crown,
And by the cross on which the Saviour bled,
And by your own soul's hope of fair renown,
Let something good be said!
In the plastic case is Old Faithful, the traveling bag that carried Frances' papers on all her many long and arduous journeys. In The Union Signal, January 25, 1883, Frances wrote: "It is without form, but nothing on the earth beneath is less void than my beloved traveling bag. It has 'leanings in its old age, but 'e'en its errors lean to virtue's side.' Nature doesn't abhor a vacuum half so teetotally as does that same heavy, topping, nondescript nugget of a bag. It has been evilly and despitefully entreated, used as a footstool, a writing desk, a pillow; it has patiently disgorged thousands of letters, postals and documents; but it survives, and I deem it the fittest of all survivals to me personally known."
Photo from 1965
Frances Willard working at her desk in the "Den."
Frances Willard at her desk with Old Faithful at her feet.