with particular mention of one who claims some special consideration in a volume such as this.

This chapter undertakes no roll call of all the famous or heroic women of the past century; but it endeavors to bring to mind some representative names in different departments of activity and purpose.

One thinks first, of course, of those women who have definitely taken up the cause of womanhood and have given their lives to advancing it. Notable names

come to mind, from Susan B. Anthony to Anna Shaw, of women who have felt their own hearts under the whole burden of womanhood, and have lived for the advancement of their sex. Susan B. Anthony was born but little more than a hundred years ago. Her birthday was February 15, 1820. She was born at Adams, Mass., and her parents were Quakers. She received her early education in a school taught by her father for his own children and those of his neighbors. She began teaching at seventeen, and continued to be a teacher until she was thirty-two. From that time until the outbreak of the Civil War she was active in temperance and anti-slavery, organization, but she began in 1854 her work for woman suffrage, to which cause she devoted herself until her death March 13, 1906. She was recognized as one of the foremost of all advocates of the complete legal equality of men and women. She toiled long and arduously, but she

lived to see the beginning of the realization of what she had striven for.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, intimate associate of Susan B. Anthony, was five years the senior of that timehonored worker, having been born in 1815. She was educated at the Troy Female Seminary, where she graduated in 1832. In 1840 she was married to Henry Brewster Stanton, who had studied theology, but practiced law and edited a newspaper, and became prominent in politics, particularly against slavery. The first woman's rights convention in America was held in Seneca Falls, N. Y. where she and her husband had removed: from Boston, and she was one of the three organizers of it, and for many years president of the national organization the National Woman's Suffrage Association. She died in 1890.

With these we think naturally of Lucy Stone, whose husband Henry B. Blackwell, consented that she should retain her maiden name even after her marriage, and whose daughter, Alice Stone-Blackwell carries on her work of editing the Woman's Journal. Lucy Stone was born in West Brookfield, Mass., August 13, 1818. She earned, the money which enabled her to take a college course, and was one of the early graduates of Oberlin. She went immediately upon the platform as the advocate of abolition and of woman suffrage. She had a re

markable voice and a pleasing manner which held in control the most belligerent audiences, and she won her way against opposition and indifference.

died in 1893.

She

All these and their associates wrought for the cause of womanhood, and they lived to see great progress though not the complete realization of their hopes.

But we are concerned also, and primarily, with those women who wrought at tasks such as came to them in varying fields of endeavor, and who achieved success for themselves and their sex and for through their labors humanity. We hold honor women who worked for womanhood and exalted it; but most of woman's work is work for humanity, and her sex is exalted in the blessing which she brings to mankind.

Women have produced some noted scientists. First of these, in modern America, we remember Maria Mitchell. She was born on Nantucket, August 1, 1818, in the same general period and the same State with the three eminent women whom we have named; and like Susan B. Anthony, she was born a Quakeress. Her father was a school teacher and later a bank cashier, and made meteorological observations for the United States Government. His avocation was astronomy, in which pursuit he enjoyed the companionship of his daughter. She became greatly interested in the use of her father's poorly equipped observatory,

especially in the use of his telescope. It was an instrument of small diameter, but it opened to the little girl new vistas into the siderial universe. She came to observe with special interest the nebulae, and also to search for comets.

For a time she taught school, but gave up her teaching to become librarian of Nantucket Athenaeum. She was fond of music, and so was her father. Musical instruments were not allowed in that Quaker household, but she managed to get a piano into the house and upstairs while the family were away, and it was not compelled to vacate the premises. Her favorite instrument, however, was the telescope. She was domestic, and she knit for her father warm woolen socks to keep off his rheumatism, and she assisted in the household labor.

One autumn evening in 1847-the date was October 1-there was a little party at the Mitchell home. Maria was courteous to her guests, but it was so fine a night, she could not resist the temptation to go to the roof and do a little sky-sweeping. There, upon the house-top alone, she discovered a comet. Breathless, she hurried down and brought up her father, who confirmed her observation, and said, "Maria, that is a comet, and the discovery is thine. "Some years before, King Frederick VI of Denmark had offered a gold medal to the discover of a telescopic comet.

On October 3, by the first mail leaving Nantucket, Mr. Mitchell posted a letter to Mr. Bond of the Cambridge Observatory, informing him of Maria's discovery, and giving the location of the comet. Frederick VI had died, and Frederick VII was on the throne, and before the necessary formalities had been completed several noted astronomers had found the comet; but when they knew the facts, they were just and generous enough to withdraw their claims in favor of Maria; and the royal medal which the astronomers of the world had been hoping to win, went to a girl on the little island of Nantucket. For her the luminary was named "Miss Mitchell's comet."'

Thus did Maria wake up and find herself famous, She made two journeys to Europe and was entertained by the foremost scientists then living. Returning from her second journey, she found her mother's health poor, and she devoted herself to her mother, who did not live long.

After the death of her mother, Maria and her father moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, where she continued her scientific researches with her father, not neglecting to knit for him the long warm woolen socks which had proved a comfort to him.

About this time Matthew Vassar, who had repented of being a brewer, but later returned to his craft and prospered in it, determined to use his money or