She had no special love for books, except for reading, spelling and grammar, but her ambition kept her at the head of most of her classes.

Nearly all of her education was received under her father's instruction in a country school, though she completed her course of study in Clinton Seminary.

[4] Adopting the pen name of "Lenora" she contributed to periodicals and based on this success, she wrote more ambitiously.

[2] In the financial panic of 1857, their fortunes were so much impaired that she stopped writing till end of the Civil War.

Longfellow, amid the praise of the world found time to write a letter of encouragement and well wishes, and a host of others, able critics and authors, were not insensible to the merits of the work.

The Louisville Courier-Journal, to which Bedford was at one time a frequent contributor, speaking of this work, said:— "Mrs. Lou S. Bedford is compared by many to Felicia Hemans; and permit me to suggest that her name be inscribed as high upon the scroll of honor and worth as that of Paul H. Hayne.

There is the sweet charm of dignity, decorum and morality; yea, even more, of Christianity, breathing from her lines.

The Vision is a tribute to the North for her magnanimity and beautiful charity to the South in 1878, when the yellow fever had desolated and depopulated so many cities and homes.

The outpourings of a mighty sympathy dictated this poem; while the fragrant incense of a nation's gratitude breathes and burns through the inspiration of this woman's pen.

Heretofore, I have confined my publications to poetry; but in this miscellaneous collection I have interspersed prose with recently written poems, together with others not embraced in the former volumes.

For a time, she lived in New York City, but she claimed Dallas as her home and wished to be identified with Texas.