Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, the author of The Perfect Tribute as well as many stories of a lighter character, writes charmingly.
Margarita Spalding Gerry in The Toy Shop has something really unusual, both in theme and treatment.
Octave Thanet (Alice French) vivaciously represents plain people; her Missionary Sheriff and Stories of a Western Town are well known; read from either.
Add to these names those already given under other heads for this outline: Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Brown, and Mrs. Cutting.
As has already been suggested, the year's work may be expanded into a complete study of American women writers. If this is done, begin with those of early years: Lydia Maria Child and Margaret Fuller; add to them our essayists, Helen Hunt Jackson, Agnes Repplier, Vida Scudder; our poets, the Cary sisters, Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Larcom, Emily Dickinson, Edith Thomas, Celia Thaxter, May Riley Smith, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Emma Lazarus, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Josephine Preston Peabody, and Anna Branch, and our miscellaneous writers, who have written biography, essays, stories, and practical books: Alice Morse Earle, Marion Harland, Kate Upson Clark, Mary Heaton Vorse, and Margaret E. Sangster. Women journalists might also be an additional subject, and women editors, to cover the entire field of women in letters.
CHAPTER X
Town Improvement
I—OUR LOCAL CONDITIONS
1. The Value of Public Sentiment and Coöperation—Rise in values as a town improves; what an enthusiast can accomplish.