Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.
Heredity and environment conspired to make Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward a woman of letters. Her father, the Rev. Austin Phelps, was pastor of the Pine Street Congregational church of Boston at the time of her birth, August 31, 1844. In 1848 he became a professor in the theological seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, and thus his daughter Elizabeth grew up among a circle of thinkers and writers. She received most of her education from her father, but also attended the private school at Andover and the seminary of Mrs. Prof. Edwards, where she took a course of study equal to that of the men’s colleges of to-day. At the age of nineteen she left school and engaged in mission work at Abbott Village and Factory Settlement, a short distance from her home. It was here she began an acquaintance with the lives and needs of working people, which resulted in books such as “Hedged In” and “Jack, the Fisherman.” Her first story was published in the Youth’s Companion when she was only thirteen years old. In 1864 she published “A Sacrifice Consumed,” in Harper’s Magazine, which earned her right to the title “author.” The book which has given her greatest fame, “The Gates Ajar,” was begun in 1862 and was published in 1868. Nearly one hundred thousand copies were sold in the United States, and more than that number in Great Britain. It was also translated into a number of foreign languages. Probably Mrs. Ward has written more books worth while than any other woman writer of her time. In 1888 Miss Phelps was married to Herbert D. Ward, and has co-operated with him in writing several romances.
REFORMERS.
George Thorndike Angell.
George Thorndike Angell was born at Southbridge, Massachusetts, June 5, 1823. He was educated in the public schools and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1846. After study at the Harvard law school he was admitted to the bar in 1851. For thirty-four years he has headed the work for the humane treatment of animals and helpless human beings. In 1868, when a young man of twenty-two, he founded the Massachusetts society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. He has served as its president since its inception, no one being better fitted to fill the position. He has propagated his ideas on humanity to animals by many organizations, and forty-four thousand “bands of mercy” speak for his efficient and zealous management. As an editor and publisher, his activity has been enormous, for in one year his societies sent out 117,000,000 pages of literature. His work for dumb brutes is so well known that it has overshadowed those other forms of philanthropy with which he has to do, and which in the case of an ordinary man would have made him a reputation. The work of the Social Science Association, of which Mr. Angell is a director, is of a varied nature, and ranges from the prevention of crime to the detection of food adulteration, or from the betterment of tenement houses to obtaining a higher standard of citizenship.
Susan Brownell Anthony.
Susan Brownell Anthony was born at Adams, Massachusetts, February 15, 1820. Her father, a Quaker, was a cotton manufacturer and gave her a liberal education. When she was seventeen years old her father failed in business and she had to support herself by school teaching, which profession she followed for thirteen years. Aroused at the injustice of the inequality of wages paid to women teachers, she made a public speech on the subject at the New York Teachers’ Association, which attracted wide attention. She continued to work in the teachers’ association for equal recognition continuously and enthusiastically. In 1849 she began to speak for the temperance cause, but soon became convinced that women had no power to change the condition of things without being able to vote at the polls, and from that time on she identified herself with the suffrage movement. She has written a great many tracts and was at one time the editor of a weekly paper called the Revolution. Her work, The History of Woman’s Suffrage, which she prepared in conjunction with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, attracted wide attention.
Frederick St. George de Lautour Booth-Tucker.
Frederick St. George de Lautour Booth-Tucker was born at Monghyr, India, March 21, 1853. He was educated at the Cheltenham college, England, and, after passing the Indian civil service examination, was appointed assistant commanding magistrate in the Punjab. He resigned in order to join the Salvation army in 1881, inaugurated the Salvation Army work in India in 1882, and had charge of the work of the army there until 1891, when he was made secretary for the international work of the organization in London. Since 1896 he has been in charge of the affairs of the army in the United States, in conjunction with his wife, Emma Moss Booth, whom he married, after which he adopted the name of Booth-Tucker. He is the author of a number of religious and other works and has considerable ability as an orator and organizer. Mr. Booth-Tucker has a magnetic personality, and with the practical side of his nature stands him in good stead in connection with his chosen walk in life.