It is sweet to me to have a little glimpse of your room and to see where you sleep all the long quiet night. I would like to cover all the walls with my love and leave beautiful and loving messages everywhere to whisper in your ears when you least expect them.

I would like to pack your pillows full of the most beautiful and wondrous dreams and to watch over you in the still night-time and to fill your hearts full of good things for all the hours of the day.

I would like to kiss your eyes open in the morning and always to sleep with you in some sort of tremendous bed that nobody ever heard of!

And I would like to do a thousand things more, “SUPPOSING” that I could; but most of all, I would like you to feel me near you and always to help you like a sweet voice in your hearts always whispering “Remember!” “Be good! Be good! Make others happy!”

Gertrude Hitz Burton wrote this letter to her two young sons shortly before her death of tuberculosis in 1896 at the age of 35. Gertrude was the maternal great-grandmother of June Vail, a Brunswick writer whose fascinating book, “The Passion of Perfection: Gertrude Hitz Burton’s Modern Victorian Life,” deserves your attention.

First inspired by letters, scrapbooks, daguerreotypes and later photographs found in her parents attic, Vail masterfully crafted the story of an extraordinary woman who was both of her time and ahead of her time. Gertrude was an outspoken advocate for sex education, marriage equality and women’s rights before these terms had even entered our national lexicon.

At the same time, Gertrude dealt with some intensely personal challenges, just as we all do at times in our lives. After her parents separated, she struggled to please both her pragmatic mother, upon whom she was often financially dependent, and her loving father, who remained, throughout her life, a steadfast friend. She struggled with the fact that she had a weaker connection with her husband, an MIT professor, than with her poet pen pal, a philosophical soulmate. We’ll never know whether she consummated that relationship, but the reader — at least this reader — hopes they did. And during her last years, she struggled to remain optimistic when she knew she had little time to live.

This book could hold the reader’s attention even if some famous names did not crop up from time to time. Gertrude taught at a school for the death, mentored by Alexander Graham Bell. Her father worked for Alexander Graham Bell for many years and, in the process, became a close friend and honorary father, of sorts, to Helen Keller. One of her sons (Harold Burton) became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and played an important role in the 1954 landmark case “Brown v. Board of Education.” Her other son (Felix Arnold Burton) roomed with future arctic explorer Robert Peary at Bowdoin College.

Gertude had a deep affection for Maine, once writing while at her mother’s cottage on Deer Isle that, “There is no more beautiful sight than sunset from the porch.” And she always felt connected to Switzerland, her father’s native land where she, herself, chose to spend her final days.

In describing those last days in Switzerland, June Vail wrote, “In the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays, her father looked after her, sitting quietly in her room. Gertrude remained almost silent, her throat so irritated she could only whisper. The weather sparkled. Through the French doors to her balcony the views of the mountains to the south, beyond the Rhone Valley, were spectacular — whether crystalline or cloudshrouded. Sometimes only the jagged snow-covered peaks thrust above the sea of white clouds that filled the valley below.”

Enough. If you’re interested in reading a compelling story about an extraordinary woman who lived in a different era, you’ll enjoy this book. Incidentally, June Vail will be discussing the book and her research at a Brown Bag Noontime Talk sponsored by the Pejepscot Historical Society from 12 to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, March 28 at the Skolfield-Whittier House Drawing Room at 161 Park Row in Brunswick.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary or suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns at [email protected].