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THE first of the professions to be invaded by women was the medical. Now the name of a woman physician is to be seen in almost every city block in any of what are known as "physicians' districts," and almost every town of size has at least one woman on its list of medical practitioners.

The first woman to graduate from a medical school was Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. Her sister, Dr. Emily Blackwell, dean of the Medical College of the New York Infirmary, was the second. The story of the difficulty of gaining a proper medical education is well told by the latter of the Blackwell sisters. She says that to appreciate the advance which women have made in the medical profession one must go back forty years, to the time when not only had no woman in America written "M. D." after her name, but women graduates in any department of study were almost unheard-of. Diplomas, advanced courses of instruction, were then things entirely outside of the ordinary life of woman. It is difficult for students of the present day to realize the narrowness of the then existing opportunities for intellectual cultivation, not only in the absence of college courses, but in the comparative slightness in the scope and quality of instruction in the girls schools of that time.

But aspirations for a higher life were in the air. Miss Lyon, Mrs. Willard, Catherine Beecher, and other pioneers in the education of women, had begun their work, and less conspicuous women all over the country were beginning to give expression to the coming demands. The entrance of women into the medical profession must be reckoned from the time when a woman first obtained admission to a medical college to pursue the course of study required by law as a preparation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, with the legal authority to practice and the

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professional recognition as a physician which the degree confers. This dates from the admission of Elizabeth Blackwell to the Geneva Medical College in 1848.

When, a few years earlier, she began to make inquiries, and asked advice of physicians as to how to accomplish her purpose, she was met on all sides by incredulous and contemptuous amazement and discouragement. In 1848 she addressed letters to several medical colleges asking permission to matriculate as a student. By most of them no notice of the application was taken. Others simply declined. From one only the Geneva Medical College of New York, a favorable answer was received.

How this answer came to be given was told Miss Emily Blackwell by Mr. Stephen Smith, of New York, and it shows how quixotic an undertaking it was then regarded. Mr. Smith said:

"The first course of medical lectures which I attended was in a medical college in the interior of the State. The class numbering about 150 students, was composed largely of young men from the neighboring towns. They were rude, boisterous, and riotous beyond comparison. On several occasions the residents of the neighborhood sent written protests to the faculty, threatening to have the college indicted as a nuisance if the disturbance did not cease. During lectures it was often almost impossible to hear the professors, owing to the confusion.

"Some weeks after the course began, the dean appeared before the class with a letter in his hand, which he craved the indulgence of the students to be allowed to read. Anticipation was extreme when he announced that it contained the most extraordinary request which had ever been made to the faculty. The letter was written by a physician of Philadelphia, who requested the faculty to admit as a student a lady who was studying medicine in his office. He stated that she had been refused admission by several medical colleges, but as this institution was in the country, he thought it more likely to be free from prejudice against a woman medical student. The dean stated that the faculty had taken action on the communication, and directed him to report their conclusion to the class. They decided to leave the matter in the hands of the class, with this understanding, that if any single pupil objected to her, a negative reply would be returned. It subsequently appeared that the faculty did not intend to admit her, but wished to escape giving a direct refusal by referring the question to the class.

"But the whole affair assumed the most ridiculous aspect to the class, and the announcement was received with the most uproarious demonstrations of favor. A meeting was called for the evening, which was attended by every member. The resolution approving the admission of the lady was sustained by a number of most extravagant speeches, which were enthusiastically cheered. The vote was taken, with what seemed to be one unanimous yell, 'yes.' When the negative was called, a single voice was heard uttering a timid 'no.' The scene that followed

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[image: OPERATING ROOM IN WOMAN'S HOSPITAL]

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passes description. A general rush was made for the corner of the room which emitted the voice, and the recalcitrant member was only too glad to acknowledge his error and record his vote in the affirmative. The faculty received the decision of the class with evident disfavor, but returned an answer admitting the woman student. Two weeks or more elapsed, and as she did not appear, the incident of her application was quite forgotten, and the class continued in its riotous career.

"One morning, all unexpectedly, a lady entered the lecture room with the professor. She was quite small of stature, plainly dressed, appeared diffident and retiring, but had a firm and determined expression of face. Her entrance into that Bedlam of confusion acted like magic upon every student. Each hurriedly sought his seat and the most absolute silence prevailed. For the first time a lecture was given without the slightest interruption, and every word could be heard as distinctly as if there had been but a single person in the room. The sudden transformation of this class from a band of lawless desperadoes to gentlemen, by the mere presence of a woman, proved to be permanent in its effects. A more orderly class of medical students was never seen than this, and it continued to be till the close of the term.

"Our woman student came up for examination for graduation at the close of the term, and took rank with the best students of the class. As this was the first instance of the granting of a medical diploma to a woman in this country, so far as time faculty had information, there was at first some hesitation about conferring the degree. But it was finally decided to take the novel step, and in the honor list of the roll of graduates for that year appears the name, Elizabeth Blackwell."

Notwithstanding the amusement the application seemed to have caused, the letter of the faculty admitting the woman student was accompanied by a handsome letter from the class assuring her that there should be nothing on their part to make her position difficult. And they kept their word. Any annoyance she experienced came from outside. The ladies at her boarding-house ignored her presence. Those passing her in the street not infrequently testified their disapprobation by manner, even by remarks. She often felt when the college doors closed behind her, that she had entered a refuge.

When the degree of Doctor was taken, the first phase only of a medical education was completed. The hospitals in winch the student must acquire familiarity with time practical part of the profession were absolutely closed to the young woman doctor. Her only chance to seek such opportunities was in the great medical centres of Europe, and again she was discouraged on all hands by assertions of the impossibility of a woman studying without insult among the crowd of foreign students. But she was not to be diverted, and true to her intention, she went abroad, and after three years of successful studies in Europe,

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Dr. Blackwell returned and established herself in practice in New York. The new departure was made.

Immediately after her graduation a few women were admitted to other medical colleges. Invariably so much pressure was put by the medical societies upon any college admitting a woman, that the doors of that particular college were hence forth closed. Exclusion from all medical institutions became the settled policy. Separate colleges for women were promptly established, Boston taking the lead in 1850, and Philadelphia following in the same year. And yet, not all men were opposed to this new departure. As early as 1845 Dr. Samuel Gregory, in connection with his brother, Mr. George Gregory, published pamphlets advocating the education and employment of women physicians. In 1847 he delivered a series of public lectures upon the subject, and proposed the opening of a school for the purpose. In 1848 a class of twelve women was formed, under the instruction of Dr. Enoch C. Rolfe and Dr. William M. Cornell. An association styled the "American Female Medical Education Society" was organized the same year, and afterward merged in the New England Female Medical College, chartered in 1856, which still owns valuable property and has many facilities for its work.

In 1854 the doctors, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, obtained a certificate of incorporation for the New York Infirmary, the first, and for many years the only, beginning of a woman's hospital.

Now followed the period of the greatest depression for time new effort. The first women students had, to a certain extent, the advantage of the great system of instruction organized for men. Their immediate successors were restricted to the facilities afforded them by the small women's schools. The adverse sentiment which closed the college influenced unfavorably the growth of the schools. Some of the medical societies declared that physicians teaching in these schools should be excluded from their ranks. The unfriendly tone of the profession was that of the general public. Social and professional ostracism was the rule in regard to both students and teachers. When Dr. Blackwell established herself in New York she was obliged to purchase a house, because she found it impossible to remit reputable rooms. When, in 1857, the indoor department of the infirmary was opened, under the charge of Dr. Zakrewska as resident physician, many of the friends feared that the little hospital would come to grief. Some of the trustees were remonstrated with by their friends for allowing their names to be connected with an institution that would cause scandal and trouble.

That opinions have changed since those early days and that, after all, the correctness or propriety of anything depends upon our own standpoint toward it, is shown by the following little incident which happened at the Boston home of this same Dr. Zakrewska after she had left Dr. Blackwell's hospital and started

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into practice for herself. Her home was the centre of attraction for all the women medical students of Boston, and they were always welcome there. Living with Dr. Zakrewska, as housekeeper, was her widowed sister who had a little daughter about six years of age. This little one was a pet among the girl meds., as the students were familiarly called. It happened that her mother took her one day to see her dentist. At dinner the little girl seemed much absorbed and neglected to eat. Dr. Zakrewska said to her, "What's the matter, little one? Why don't you eat your soup"

"Oh, Auntie," was the child's reply, "what do you think? I went with mamma to see Dr.---- and that doctor was a man."

The idea that a doctor could be anything but a woman was as strange to this child, brought up among women physicians, as it was to the men physicians of fifty years ago that a doctor could be anything but a man. So you see, after all, it is only a question of standpoint.

Mrs. Clemence S. Lozier was one of the first women to study medicine. She was a native of Plainfield, N. J., her mother was a Quaker, a woman who had a natural love for tending the sick, and good qualifications for doing so. Her elder brother was a doctor of repute in New York. In 1830 she married Mr. A. W. Lozier. His health soon failing, she opened a select school in West Tenth Street. She continued here for eleven years, introducing into her school the study of physiology, anatomy and hygiene. She was the first to teach these branches to girls. During this time she read medical works under her brother's direction. When her scholars were ill, she would generally be called before the physician, and in ordinary cases she was the sole reliance. She also prescribed for many poor. Her husband died in 1837, but it was not until she was thirty-five years old, in 1849, that she regularly attended medical lectures. She graduated at Syracuse Eclectic College, having been refused by all others, on the ground that no woman student could be received. Returning to New York, she entered at once into regular and successful practice.

Struggles such as those of the Doctors Blackwell and Dr. Lozier are over. The girl has now no trouble to gain admission into the best medical colleges. They are open to her all the country over. It is only to will to study, and to do it.

Hundreds of women physicians have a large and lucrative practice. Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, the wife of an equally renowned physician, has her office thronged with patients. It is said there are as many in her waiting-room as in her husband's. Dr. Ella Mark, of Baltimore, one of the younger women in the profession, is earning fame and reputation by her skill. These are only a few of the hundreds of successful women practitioners in this country alone.

Women are now becoming specialists. A few have taken a step in the right direction, in becoming oculists. The Emperor of Austria has lately authorized

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Madam Reba Kershbaumer to practice as an oculist. In Strasburg the Princess Hohenlohe and her daughter Elizabeth have taken a practical course in military hospital nursing, assisting at operations, amputations, cleansing aud bandaging wounds.

In Buffalo, N. Y., Dr. Lilian Craig Randall, with a corps of woman assistants, has opened a surgical hospital for women. Dr. Randall is possessed of great firmness and decision of character, together with a gentle and most womanly heart. She believed that such a hospital as she proposed could obviate many of the distressing features connected with surgery, where sensitive women are the patients. As soon as it was made clear that her enterprise was in no way an aggressive attempt on the part of women to usurp the place and work of man, but merely the result of an earnest desire to fill a long-felt want where women were so often the sufferers, the new enterprise received the hearty good-will and co- operation of all. It has had a steady growth and been from the first entirely self-supporting.

It has taken courage and faith and self-devotion in the pioneer workers to struggle through the long day of small things, but the result of their labors is shown in the stable and influential institutions into which these small beginnings have grown and the right of way which is given to women in this profession as though her choosing it always had been a matter of course.

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THE last presidential election showed a remarkable increase over other elections in the number of women who did active work in the political field. This was so noticeable that not a few persons have commented on the fact as one of the most significant proofs during the last few years of the rapidly widening scope of woman's influence. Each of the several parties had its feminine advocates. Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, of Washington, was at the head of the Woman's National Republican Association of America. In the various States the same organization had active and able leaders, Miss Helen Varick Boswell being State President for New York. In the West women have been particularly prominent in political work. In New England several prominent women actively championed the gold cause, while Mrs. Elizabeth Sheldon Tillinghast, the daughter of Judge Sheldon, of New Haven, Conn., proved herself an eloquent speaker in behalf of free silver. The Prohibition party has for years counted many noble women among its most earnest workers, and has repeatedly inserted a plank in its platform stating that it believes educational qualifications, and not sex, should regulate the elective franchise. The labor and socialistic movements have devoted and able women among their speakers and leaders.

All this is of comparatively recent origin, though. Mrs. Lucy Stone, speaking of this in Boston not many years ago, reviewed the developments of forty years. In speaking of the first National Woman's Rights Convention, which had met just forty years before, some of the things Mrs. Stone said were:

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[image: MARY A. LIVERMORE]

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"Forty years ago, when our convention met in Worcester, the papers far and wide laughed at it as a 'hen convention.' That was what they called it. One of the gains between that time and this is that women can meet and sit in convention and find themselves fairly and well reported.

"Among the first and best gains that have been accorded to us is free speech for women. Up to that time and before it, the women speakers had been hailed with mobs, brickbats and stones. When I held a meeting in Maiden, Mass., the pastor of the Orthodox Congregational Church, being asked to give notice of the meeting (this meeting was under the auspices of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society; William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were officers of the Society), this minister in Maiden held the notice up before his face, and he said, 'I am requested by Mr. Mowry to say that a hen will undertake to crow like a cock at the Town Hall this afternoon at five o'clock. Anybody who wants to hear that kind of music will, of course, attend.' So unpopular and unwelcome was the idea of a woman speaking in public, that, after years of effort by Angelina and Sarah Grimké and Abby Kelley, that was the welcome that came to a younger worker. The consequence was, I had a very large meeting. Everybody came, and Mr. Mowry was asked what kind of a hen it was, and all about it; and altogether it was a very good advertisement of the meeting.

"Then see the different tone of the press. Deacon Samuel Bowles, editor and founder of the Springfield Republican, a most excellent man said of me in his own paper, 'You she-hyena, don't you come here!' To-day the Springfield Republican is one of the staunchest advocates of woman suffrage, and it publishes a department every week concerning woman and her interests."

In the times of anti-slavery agitation women exerted a strong influence in politics, often and scenes of great excitement. Mrs. Stone was a little woman with an attractive face and a sweet voice. It is told of her that once, at an anti slavery meeting held on Cape Cod, in a grove, in the open air, a platform bad been erected for the speakers, and a crowd assembled; but a crowd so menacing in aspect and with so evident an intention of violence, that the speakers one by one came down from the stand and slipped quietly away, till none were left but Stephen Foster and Lucy Stone. She said, "You had better run, Stephen; they are coming!' He answered," But who will take care of you?" At that moment the mob made a rush for the platform, and a big man sprang up on it swinging a club. She turned to him and said without hesitation, "This gentleman will take care of me." He declared that he would. He tucked her under one arm, and holding his club with the other, marched her out through the crowd, who were roughly handling Mr. Foster and such of the other speakers as they had been able to catch. Her representation so prevailed upon him that he mounted her on a stump and stood by her with his club while she addressed the mob. They were

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so moved by her speech that they not only desisted from further violence, but took up a collection of twenty dollars to pay Stephen Foster for his coat, which they had torn in two from top to bottom.

In 1869 Mrs. Stone, with William Lloyd Garrison, George William Curtis, Colonel T. W. Higginson, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore and others, organized the American Woman Suffrage Association. From that time until now the cause of woman's suffrage and the interest of women in politics generally has steadily increased, although not without the opposition and disapproval of many of the same sex.

Sixty years ago women could not vote anywhere. In 1845 Kentucky gave school suffrage to widows. In 1861 Kansas gave it to all women. In 1869 England gave municipal suffrage to single women and widows and Wyoming gave full suffrage to all women. School suffrage was granted in 1875 by Michigan and Minnesota, in 1876 by Colorado, in 1878 by New Hampshire and Oregon, in 1879 by Massachusetts, in 1880 by New York and Vermont. In 1881 municipal suffrage was extended to the single women and widows of Scotland. Nebraska gave school suffrage in 1883 and Wisconsin in 1885. In 1886 school suffrage was given in Washington and municipal suffrage to single women and widows in New Brunswick and Ontario. In 1887 municipal suffrage was extended to all women in Kansas and school suffrage in North and South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and New Jersey. In 1891 school suffrage was granted in Illinois. In 1892 municipal suffrage was extended to single women and widows in the Province of Quebec. In 1893 school suffrage was granted in Connecticut and full suffrage in Colorado and New Zealand. In 1894 school suffrage was granted in Ohio, a limited municipal suffrage in Iowa, and parish and district suffrage in England to women both married and single. In 1895 full suffrage was granted in South Australia to women both married and single. In 1896 full suffrage was granted to women in Utah and Idaho.

The first petition for woman suffrage presented to Parliament, in 1867, was signed by only 1499 women. The petition of 1873 was signed by 11,000 women. The petition presented to the members of the present Parliament was signed by 257,000 women.

The well-known newspaper correspondent, Harold Frederic, says, "The question may be one at which many politicians smile, but the steadily increasing support it receives cannot be denied by any careful student."

Naturally, it is in the four Western States of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho, where suffrage is absolutely free, that women have become most prominent in politics. The Colorado House of Representatives for 1897 contained four women members. They acquitted themselves of their duties creditably and with dignity. One bill in connection with which they did specially good work was

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that for the establishment of a separate reformatory for women. An observer of this branch of the Colorado Legislature wrote:

"The lower house outranks the Senate in the serious decorum of legislative deliberation. The few women who sit as members in the representative hail of the beautiful Colorado capitol seem unconsciously to impose upon its proceedings a greater regard for the amenities of speech and conduct than is observed in the upper house, where there are, as yet, no women to be considered."

The office of chairman of the Committee on Printing, of the same Legislature, was filled by Mrs. Conine, one of these women, and so efficiently that the cost to the State for the printing for the session was $2000 less than ever before.

Mrs. A. J. Peavy, State Superintendent of Public Institutions for Colorado, proved herself a woman of strength and ability. The office sought her, and not she the office. Her administration was characterized by thoroughness, economy and honesty.

A similar record was made by the County Superintendents. Twenty-six women occupied these positions to thirty men.

Wyoming has had for some time a successful State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the person of Miss Estelle M. Reel.

In city politics the women of Denver particularly distinguished themselves in 1897. In the spring of that year the Civic Federation, consisting of about 10,000 women, conceived a plan to call a convention and put out a non-partisan ticket for the municipal election of April. A single organization not being strong enough to carry an independent ticket, the Civic Federation accepted the invitation of the Tax-payers' League and joined forces in an effort to secure a ticket in the interest of good government. The Tax-payers' League was organized as a revolt against gang rule, and its platform received the endorsement of the Civic Federation in 1895. Both organizations stand for Home Rule and the interest of the people as against the control of corporations. The call for the convention was issued con jointly by the Civic Federation and Tax-payers' League and when the election occurred their candidates were elected.

The convention which was the result of this movement assembled in the Chamber of Commerce Hall at 10 o'clock, February 25. Mrs. Frank Hall, president of the Civic Federation, was chosen temporary chairman, and presided until the convention was organized. The delegates, numbering more than a hundred, represented the best elements in the city--ministers, lawyers, physicians, labor men, trades assembly, etc. Women constituted about half the delegates. At the Silver Republican Convention, held a week later, a score of women were delegates.

The following account of an election in Denver is interesting. It was written by a woman who was not herself in favor of women voting:

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"I went from polling place to polling place in the lower part of the city. I did not see one person under the influence of liquor. Every saloon in the town seemed closed. The polling places were invariably clean, and in perfectly approachable buildings. There were no crowds, and no disorder of any kind. The women were treated with absolute courtesy in every way. I saw not the slightest sign of that contempt which is said by opponents of suffrage to come with too much familiarity. Neither did I see the little self-consciousness which marks the ordinary woman in the ordinary crowd. The women seemed serious and straightforward."

While it is not the purpose of this article to give prominence to any special movement, but to speak of women in politics in general, it is interesting since woman suffragists are generally most active in politics, to read what certain well-known men and women think of the suffrage question.

Clara Barton, in speaking to the soldiers, said:

"When you were weak and I was strong, I toiled for you. Now you are strong and I am weak. Because of my work for you I ask your aid. I ask the ballot for myself and my sex. As I stood by you, I pray you stand by me and mine." Hon. John M. Long, Secretary of the Navy, said:

"Somebody says few women would vote if enfranchised. Well, it often happens in an election that more than half the men refuse to vote. But if one man or woman wants to exercise the right to vote, what earthly reason is there for denying it, because other men and women do not wish to exercise it? If I desire to breathe the fresh air of heaven, shall I not cross my threshold because the rest of the family group prefer the stale atmosphere indoors?" Hon. George F. Hoar, United States Senator, said:

"If any person deems the franchise a burden and not a privilege, such a person is under no constraint to exercise it. But, if it be a birthright, then it is obvious that no other person than the individual concerned can rightfully restrain its exercise The committee concede that women ought to be clothed with the suffrage in any State where any considerable part of the women desire it. This is a pretty serious confession. What has become of the argument that women are unfit to vote?"

The names of the women who have been prominent in politics are too many in number to be included with any degree of completeness in an article like this. One thinks of Miss Susan B. Anthony, who years ago declared her constitutional right to vote, in New York State, voted in spite of the law, and was arrested and fined. The fine was never collected, but the courts decided that women did not have the right under the Constitution to vote.

Mary Elizabeth Lease, of Kansas, has proved one of the most eloquent speakers, and has perhaps come to be quite as well known throughout the country

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as any other of the "new women" of whom she speaks so earnestly. Two quotations from Mrs. Lease show her picturesque power with words.

"The hands on the dial plate of time mark the hour for a new dispensation. The Samson of soul power is shaking the pillars of material authority. In these later days the phrase new woman ' has become strangely familiar. Looking into the soul life of the world we find abundant evidence that the new woman, new in a much higher sense than many can now perceive, is here, a prime factor in the world's redemption."

"Then strong in faith the hour abide,
Light, Truth and Love, the battle-ground,
For every wind and every tide
That pulses all the wide world round,
Shall start the languid pulse of time,
Shall beat and surge in rhythmic song.
All hail! the New Woman for whose love
The world hath hungered long."

Mrs. Anna E. Diggs and Mrs. Anna Waite are prominent Populist leaders among the women of Kansas. The latter edits a paper in Ellsworth. Mrs. Laura M. Johns, of Salina, Kan., is a Republican worker. Mrs. Judge Henderson, the wife of a former Senator from Missouri, took an active part in the last campaign as a gold standard Republican.

Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, for many years a practicing lawyer in Washington, came prominently into public notice as a presidential candidate in the campaign in which Cleveland was first elected.

It is much to the credit of our sex, however, that their most important political work has been done in and for the Prohibition Party. This party was founded some twenty-five years ago, and from the first has stood not only for the prohibition of the liquor traffic, but for the full enfranchisement of women. Its record has been that of an educator of other parties, although it has elected some candidates, and has had tickets in the field in almost every State in the Union. So far as can be learned the highest number of votes yet polled is three hundred thousand. Women have served on its executive committee, and on that small central committee which manages its affairs they have been delegates to its convention, and have received every recognition. At the last presidential campaign the Prohibition Party left out all its previous planks except that relating to the liquor traffic, which caused a division, and about one-third of the delegates, led by Governor St. John, of Kansas, adjourned to another hall and formed the Liberal Party, which makes women's ballot part and parcel of the movement, because it is believed that the ballot in the hand of women means prohibition.

The white ribbon women of the country sympathize strongly with this wing of the party, but inasmuch as the Prohibition Party had a resolution for the

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ballot, although it did not at this particular convention include the subject in its platform, the W. C. T. U. is loyal to both these parties, and its influence is in favor of their being merged in one as before. They have been requested by the white ribbon women to change their name to Home Protection Party, because this name indicates precisely what all the temperance forces of the country are working for.

The names which have been given above are only a few of those which the history of the last few years have made prominent, and although the turmoil of political life may fail to attract some women, may even for a time, at least, repel them, the passing years have shown that here, as in so many other fields, the opportunities for women to work, and to make their influence felt, have vastly increased.

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IN no profession which woman has entered has she encountered such bitter opposition as was shown her when she tried the ministry. Much as those had endured who in the earlier days became medical students, it was slight compared to the obloquy showered upon those who sought entrance to the schools of theology. They were assailed by pulpit and press. St. Paul was quoted to them, their opponents meanwhile overlooking in teaching the letter of the Apostle, the spirit of Christ, which was revealed to women as well as to men. But the barriers of prejudice were at length broken down, for a few strong, fearless men gave the benefit of their influence to the women, and now the woman minister is no unusual sight, and her ministrations are followed in almost every case by blessed results.

The Universalist Church has from the first welcomed woman to its councils, and has accorded to her the fullest liberty in the exercise of her powers in its service. Maria Cook and Lydia Jenkins, both of New York State, were the first women who are known to have preached Universalism. They preached for a short time in the early part of this century, though neither of them sought ordination. Olympia Brown was the first woman upon whom ordination was conferred. This occurred directly after her graduation from the Canton Theological School in 1863. There are sixty-five women in the ministry of the Universalist Church.

There are more than twenty women in this country who are pastors, not preachers merely, but settled pastors over Unitarian churches, and they are uniformly successful. The president of the Iowa Unitarian Association, Rev. Miss Safford, is one of the most conspicuous women pastors. Still another is the

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Rev. Mary P. Whitney, of the Unity Church, South Boston. She is not only an able pastor, but a woman of force in church councils; and the same may be said of the Rev. Florence L. Pierce, of Pomona, Cal. the Rev. Harriet D. Boyuton, who, with her husband, is settled at Roslindale, Mass.

The Congregational Church of to-day draws no line of eligibility to pastoral ordination between men and women. According to the latest pastoral lists, however, there are only seventeen ordained women preachers in the Congregational Church. Half a dozen of them are in the New England States, the majority are stationed in the far West.

The Methodist Episcopal Church refused to ordain women as preachers. But licenses have been granted to many, Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing, sister of Bishop Fowler, and Mrs. Mary T. Lathrop being the most prominent. It can be but a little time before this church, usually so broad and liberal in its views regarding women, will whined unto line and ordain those who desire to become preachers of the Word of God. Certainly there are no more devoted women in the world than those belonging to the Methodist Church.

While the women preachers of tine Methodist Church are more properly evangelists, yet many have gained for themselves the name of able preachers, in time full sense of the term. Mrs. Maggie Vail Cott has been for many years engaged in active evangelistic work in almost every State of the Union. Other well-known women preachers of the Methodist denomination are Mary Sparkes Wheeler, of Philadelphia; Grace Weiser Davis, of Jersey City; and Mrs. E. O. Robinson, of Indianapolis, and many evangelists of the W. C. T. U.

Rev. Anna Howard Shaw graduated from the theological department of the Boston University with high honors in 1878, and served the Methodist Episcopal Church at Hingham, Mass., for a year. Her second pastorate was at East Dennis, Cape Cod, where she faithfully discharged her duties for several years. The "fault of being a woman" prevented the Methodist Episcopal Church from granting her ordination, notwithstanding her long and useful services, so in 1880 she applied to time Protestant Methodist Church and was regularly installed a minister of that denomination.

A prominent woman minister in Greater New York is the Rev. Alice K. Wright. She and her husband are co-workers in a parish just outside the city limits. They graduated in the same class at the Canton Seminary, were consecrated together, then married. In speaking of her work Mrs. Wright says:

"I make time young people my specialty, and they come to nine for advice and counsel. I am the confidante of almost every young man and girl in our congregation, and I am kept busy straightening out the many unhappy tangles into which young people fall so easily. The older people go to my husband with their difficulties, but I find that he often turns them over to me when there is a

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particularly delicate case to handle, or when the persons concerned require an extra amount of sympathy and patience. This is the one thing that makes the life of a woman minister more difficult than that of a man. Being a woman, she is expected to have an extra supply of those two qualities--patience and sympathy--and to have them ready for immediate use on every occasion. But I love the work, and am doing everything in my power to encourage more women to enter the ministry. During the ages of woman's bondage she developed many characteristics which unfitted her for useful service in the new fields of labor to which she is now called. Our most successful leaders had much to overcome within themselves while they carried on the conflict against prejudice and ignorance.

"When we study these conditions we cannot but marvel at the wonderful success that has so early crowned woman's efforts in the new fields of her choice.

"But during those ages of 'the dominion of muscular force,' as Oliver Schreiner calls them, woman developed some characteristics which, I hope, she may never lose, as such a calamity would divest her of the power by which she rose above bondage and by which she is destined to succeed in whatever good and worthy thing she undertakes.

"The characteristics are chiefly patience, tenacity, tact, truthfulness, and, above all, mother love. And when woman comes to focus these tendencies upon great and unselfish ends they broaden and develop into glorious potencies.

"The ministry is one of those fields of effort where the characteristics mentioned are in demand, and where women seem peculiarly fitted to perform a much-needed work. I believe that the ministry is the broadest, loftiest field on earth for the exercise of noble and helpful characteristics. No field furnishes so great an opportunity for reaching all classes, all ages and both sexes with the gospel of purity, honesty and equality for which the world is famishing.

"The responsibility of the ministry exceeds that of any other profession, in the fact that one who preaches with real and lasting effect is one who tries harder than anybody else to live up to the truth professed."

Rev. Caroline Bartlett Crane has established a working church in Kalamazoo, Mich., of which she is the pastor, and which is one of the most influential for good of any church in the city. Rev. Augusta J. Chopin is another active minister doing noble work.

And why should not women enter the ministry? The mother heart of God will never be known to the world until translated into speech by mother-hearted women. Law and love will never balance in the realm of grace until a woman's hand shall hold the scales. Men preach a creed; women declare a life. Men deal in formulas, women in facts. Men have always tithed mint and rue and cumin in their ecclesiasticism, while the world's heart has cried out for compassion, forgiveness and sympathy. Men's preaching has left heads committed to a

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catechism and left hearts hard as nether millstones. The Greek bishop who said, "My creed is faultless; with my life you have nothing to do," condensed into a sentence two thousand years of priestly dogma. Men reason in the abstract, women in the concrete. A syllogism symbolizes one, a rule of life the other. Religion is an affair of the heart; the world is hungry for the comfort of Christ's gospel, and thirsty for its every-day beatitudes of that holiness which alone constitutes happiness. Men have lost faith in themselves and in each other. Boodlerism and "corners" on the market, greed of gain, passion for power, impurity of life, the complicity of the church with the liquor traffic, the preference of a partisan to a conscientious ballot, have combined to make the men of this generation faithless to each other. The masses of the people have forsaken God's house. But the masses will go to hear when they speak, and every woman who leads a life of week day holiness and has the gospel in her looks, how ever plain her face and dress may be, has round her head the sweet Madonna's halo, in the eyes of every man who sees her, and she speaks to him with the sacred cadence of his own mother's voice.

[image: REV. CAROLINE BARTLETT CRANE]

Men have been preaching well-nigh two thousand years, and the large majority of the converts have been women. Suppose now that women share the preaching power, may it not be reasonably expected that a majority of the converts under their administration will be men? The entrance of woman upon

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the ministerial vocation gives to humanity just twice the probability of strengthening and comforting speech, for women have at least as much sympathy, reverence and spirituality as men, and they have at least equal felicity of manner and of utterance. Why, then, should the pulpit have been so long shorn of half its power?

Formerly the voices of women were held to render them incapable of public speech, but it was discovered that what these voices lacked in sonorosity they supplied in clearness, and when women singers outranked all others, and women lecturers were speaking daily to assemblies numbering from one to ten thousand, this objection vanished. Men said that admitting women into the pulpit would disrupt the home. In this, as in other arguments, they have been proven wrong. The mother heart has not changed--never will change. Women may enter the arena of literature, art, business, the professions, what you will, become a teacher, a physician, a philanthropist, a writer, a minister, even, but she is woman, first of all, and cannot deny herself. A woman in the clerical profession is never ill danger of forgetting that she is a woman. She is continually expected to do things that are never required of men in the same position, that men could not do if they would, and at the same time she is required to perform all the regular duties of the minister. And what is the reward for all this? None whatever, unless she finds it in her own heart, born out of the love for her work. The woman who goes into the ministry thinking thereby to make a good living in an easy way, or to popularize herself and get her name before the public, will meet as she deserves to do, disappointment, dissatisfaction and failure. But when a woman goes into the ministry with a true ideal of liner work, if after one year of conscientious effort--one year of trial and heartache, too, perhaps--she turns back, she will be an exception to the rule. There is a satisfaction, an inspiration which comes very early in the work and binds one to it forever. Let the discouragements and troubles come as thick and fast as they may, the true-hearted minister will not falter in her loyalty to the grandest calling in the world for in her heart is a joy that can hardly be expressed, beside which the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared."

One minister in speaking of her work says: "To know that God has worked through you to bring sunshine into but one dark home; to give hope to one soul that was in loneliness and doubt; to have heard the words 'My pastor' spoken in confidence and love when a heart could call to no other human source for sympathy: to know that every week some tired mother or some little child will come to you for sympathy and help--it is these things that raise the minister above the criticism, the fear of failure and disappointment. It is the desire to help and the occasional satisfaction of hope fulfilled, that makes the ministry a good and happy field for work."

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WOMEN who were girls half a century ago, and who, looking back over the years, see what the time has brought both in advantage and opportunity, may well call this, as one woman did not long since, "the golden age for women." There is very little to-day in the way of profession or employment that the woman with ability, steadfastness of character and courage, may not undertake. Avenue after avenue has been opened, and quietly, without flourish of trumpets, women have set out to walk therein. It is no longer a matter of surprise to find them occupying almost any position, and if one wonders at all, it is that they had not found its desirability earlier.

I do not know how many of the girls who are reading this book in the hope of finding the one suggestion that shall open the way for their own advancement, know how many girls are employed as piano and organ tuners, or how successful they have proven in this position. Does the idea startle you? Have you grown so accustomed to having your piano always tuned by a man that you can't imagine doing it for yourself or having some other woman do it for you? Have you always thought of it as exclusively a man's business? Well, why should it be? It is not difficult, it is pleasant, and more sheltered than many other employments which take women out of their homes.

The first person to employ women as tuners was the Hon. Jacob Estey, the founder of the famous Estey Organ Company, of Brattleboro, Vt. It is thirty years since women were first introduced into that factory, so you see this avocation is not so very new, after all.

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"Deacon Estey," as every one called him, was a very progressive man, and his daughter stood in as high regard as his son. He believed in woman's capacity and ability to do the finer parts of mechanical work, and when the opportunity came he put his theory to a practical test. This was soon after the civil war when so many women were left dependent on their own resources, and oftentimes the sole support of little children or aged parents. New ways must be made for these workers, and one of the first men to give them opportunity was kind Deacon Estey. When first a woman was introduced into the factory, the men tuners were exceedingly indignant after holding a meeting at which they expressed themselves very freely, and worked themselves tip into a wrathful state of mind, they waited upon their employer and demanded that the offending woman be sent away. The alternative was given him of discharging her or losing them. He listened to them very patiently, and when they were through, he answered them with as much determination as they had shown, but with no anger. The woman was there, she did her work satisfactorily, she was to stay. Of course they could do as they chose about remaining; every man had a right to do what seemed best for himself; but he should never be guilty of an injustice to please any one. The men listened, withdrew--and stayed. As the work increased and the business was enlarged, other women were employed.

It is a pleasure to be able to record that this introduction of women into the Estey Organ Works was not made in the interest of "economy;" they received the same wages as did the men who did the same kind of work, and had every advantage that was given their fellow-workers. Good Deacon Estey has gone on, out of this world, but women should always have a kindly thought for him and hold him in grateful remembrance. His son, who has succeeded to his business, follows his father's example in employing women tuners, and respecting all the traditions of liberality and justice.

A little less than twenty years ago, in response to the rapidly increasing demand for practical instruction in piano tuning, there was introduced into the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston a department which would afford special facilities for the development of this important art. Among those who applied for admission to this department were a number of young women; they were cordially welcomed, for the late Dr. Tourjee was another man who believed in the capacity of women to excel in various directions. Their progress was noted with special interest, for they were the first, so far as could be learned, who had undertaken the systematic study of the theory and practice of tunning. To the great satisfaction of the management and faculty, their advancement was from the start both rapid and thorough, and before the first term was ended, it became evident that a new field of endeavor had been found for girls. As time passed, the highest expectations were abundantly realized; the young women easily kept

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[image: PIANO TUNING]

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pace with the young men who were pursuing the same course, and amply proved their entire ability to excel in this new line of work. From that time the proportion of women to men students has constantly increased until now they are about equal and years of active effort by the women who have received an education in this department have proved beyond a question their special adaptation to the work.

The department has become one of the most important in the Conservatory and it is provided with ample accommodations for a full and systematic course of instruction. The common idea that the art of tuning is exceedingly difficult to acquire, demanding primarily and exceptionally fine ear, is incorrect. The success which has attended its pursuit in the Conservatory has fully demonstrated that it is within the reach of all who have sufficient natural ability to succeed in any other department.

The faculty of the Conservatory strongly recommend the course to all who would become teachers, and especially to those who reside in sections of the country where competent tuners are not to be found.

For the benefit of the girl who may like to prepare herself for this business, the outline of the course of study is briefly given. It requires two years to obtaining a diploma, and the first year the studies include, for the first term: The general study of pitch and relation of musical intervals. Their application as employed in tuning. Structure of the temperament. During the second term: Principles and practice of piano tuning continued. Factory tuning begun. Musical acoustics, embracing the theory of scales, harmonics, beats and temperaments. Study of general construction of piano-forte begun, action model drafting. Polishing begun. Third term: Tuning at Conservatory and factory continued. Study of mechanism of piano-forte action in minutest detail. Stringing and principles of action regulating. Polishing. Fourth term: Tuning practice as in previous terms. Setting up and regulating piano action. Voicing. Capping, etc.

The course for the second year includes in the first term: General review and development of previous year's work. Reed organ construction and tuning begun. Second term: Reed tuning continued; general repairing. Study of reed organ building at factory. Pipe organ construction and tuning begun. Third term: Reed tuning and voicing. Pipe organ tuning continued. Study of organ pipe construction at factory. Organ construction completed. Fourth term: General completion of all departments of study in the school.

In introducing this profession for women it was fully expected that the same prejudice and opposition would be encountered which have always greeted any innovation, and those who were instrumental in bringing the movement forward prepared themselves carefully to defend it. They knew that the objections would be just what they turned out to be; the first one was, that young women would lack the necessary physical strength. To this they had the ready reply that the

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demands made upon the strength were not so great as those made in factories, mills, sewing rooms, or even kitchens; in fact, that the tuner's work was not so fatiguing as were many of the employments in which women were constantly engaged, and which came under the head of "woman's work." The second objection made was, that women, as a rule, lacked mechanical ingenuity. The only answer needed to this objection was to point to the many manufactories where the nicest mechanical skill is necessary, and which are crowded by women operatives.

The third objection was, that women lacked the power of application necessary to the acquirement of a difficult mechanical art. Time has answered that argument, as it alone could, and the experience of the years since the department was first instituted has proven that young women, with the naturally delicate ear and touch, possess peculiar qualifications for this work, and that the fine discrimination necessary to the tuning of an instrument is characteristic of them.

A large number of the women students in this branch come from the West and South, where skillful tuners are rare, and many of them have gone back to their homes and are practicing this art with great success, some of them combining with it the profession of piano or organ teacher.

The attractions which the profession of tuning presents are many. The work itself is well classed among the arts, being the correct adjustment of the musical instrument to the purposes of artistic expression. The manual labor necessary to the accomplishment of this branch of work is calculated to make it healthful and strengthening, and the mental application is sufficient to impart zest and interest to it, while it is attended also with the satisfaction of immediate results. Aside from the limited amount of tuning done during the construction of the instrument, the sphere of the tuner in the homes of the people, or in the ware rooms of music' dealers, lies in sharp contrast to the life in shops and nulls. The profession is conspicuously one in which there is, and is to be, plenty of room. A glance at the actual condition of the country, as concerns the tuning of pianos, and the numbers of instruments demanding constant attention, proves this to be true. In the cities, naturally enough, the profession is fairly represented, although the number of thoroughly educated tuners is limited, while, as I dare say many of you realize, in almost any part of the United States there are whole counties, containing hundreds of pianos with new ones being constantly added, where only an occasional traveling tuner can be found to hurriedly attend to them all. With the vast number old pianos, which each year demand more care as they show additional signs of wear, and the thousands of new ones, which scores of manufactories are producing yearly--to say nothing of many times the number of organs--there is surely no occupation which promises a more abundant and ever-increasing business than this of tuning. Every piano made requires care, whether it is used much or

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little. And as the country increases in wealth and the art of music becomes more universal--especially as pianos become lower in price and are even in greater demand than now--the question very naturally arises, Who shall keep these countless numbers in condition to be used? This, then, is a new field of labor opening to women--another avenue in which our girls may seek employment.

Not every girl will be attracted to this new field, but there is work and remuneration for those who are. In regard to the qualifications necessary to a perfect acquirement of this business, they are: a correct musical ear, a fair amount of musical intelligence, and a desire to excel.

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EVER since that far-away time of which the poets sang:

"When Music, heavenly maid, was young,"

women have naturally turned to music as a field in which they may properly exercise their talents for the sake of giving pleasure to themselves and others, and when necessary, find in them a means of earning a livelihood. While it is true, then, that certain opportunities have been open to women in music longer, perhaps, than in almost any other direction, it is no less true that during time last quarter of the nineteenth century new opportunities have presented themselves in music, new fields for work been opened, in the same gratifying proportion as in so many other lines.

In vocal music there has been a widening of the field for opera and concert work, and the addition of one entirely new branch in the teaching of music in the public schools. In instrumental music, not so very long ago, women played practically no instrument except the organ, piano and harp. Now there is no instrument in the largest orchestra--with the exception, perhaps, of the heaviest double bass horn--which women do not play. They direct orchestras and write music. In fact, there may be said to be no branch of music now in which a young woman with reasonable talent, and a willingness to work hard, may not hope to succeed.

Of all forms of musical expression, singing is the one most commonly employed. Song comes as easily and spontaneously from the lips of the human being as it does from the throat of a bird. In writing of women in music, then,

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one naturally thinks first of the women who sing, and those who hope by singing to earn for themselves that independence which is the ambition of so many young women to-day.

To write even the names of the women who have become famous as singers would fill a chapter as long as this can be. This century has seen Bosio, Sontag, Lucca, Jenny Lind, Albani, Marietta Piccolomini, Anna de la Grange, Krezzolini, Gazzaniga, Parepa Rosa, and many others almost, if not quite, as distinguished.

Nearly all of these birds of song were heard in America. Of them all no one attracted so much popular attention as Jenny Lind, probably because she had the advantage of the consummate advertising skill of P. T. Barnum. The young people of to-day cannot remember the enthusiasm which was excited by her visit here, and since they cannot, they also fail to understand the firmness with which the majority of people who crowded freight sheds and extemporized shelters to hear her, contend that since her time they have never heard her equal.

Of later great singers there has been, perhaps, no greater favorite than Annie Louis Carey, now Mrs. Raymond. She was a Maine girl, born to very modest circumstances, who determined to develop her rarely beautiful voice, and did so, through years of hard work in village and city choirs, concerts, and finally opera.

Albani was a Canadian girl, her father a country organist. She first learned to play the organ, and played in church. Then came the piano, both instruments to be practically abandoned later, when she came to realize that her talent lay in her voice. After years of work she was able to go to Paris and study with Lamperti, eventually becoming one of the great singers of the world. Albani, now Mrs. Gye, has lived for many years in England, where her sweetness of his position and beauty of character, added to her talent as a musician, have given her a hold upon the English public which makes her appearance upon any stage a signal for a tumult of applause long before she has opened her lips to sing. The writer heard Albani sing not long ago at the great Handel Triennial Festival in the Crystal Palace, London. There were 22,000 people in the audience, and 4500 were in the chorus. When Madam Albani walked down the stage there arose such a shout of welcome as must have been a satisfactory reward for even so many years of hard work as hers. More than that, her life and talents have so attracted the attention of Queen Victoria that she has long enjoyed the royal favor as no other artist does, and the woman who was once a little Canadian girl enjoys the rare distinction of frequent invitations to Windsor Castle, where she is greeted not merely as a great singer, but as a friend.

Adelina Patti needs no word. Her triumphant career as an artist is fresh in the mind of every one. The practical financial results of it are seen in the castle in Wales in which she lives in regal style. Her wonderful coming up, with her sister Carlotta, from being bare-footed little Italian girls in New York, has always

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been one of the phenomena of musical history. She sang as naturally as a bird, and with almost as little regard for that "method" which is so essential to most artists.

To-day the mind turns naturally to Nordica, Calve, Eames and Melba, when one thinks of great singers. The State of Maine has been remarkable in the number of great singers which it has sent out. In addition to Carey, Nordica and Eames were natives of the Pine Tree State. Nordica came as a girl to Boston to study in the Conservatory of Music. She thought herself fortunate to get a place, some time later, to sing in a quartette, and from that went on to concert work. Eventually she was able to go to Paris to complete her studies. Emma Eames was another Maine girl who was willing to study hard and profit by the advice of older and more experienced musicians. She is gifted with great adaptability. Her marriage to Julian Story, the successful portrait artist, has been a very happy one, and without doubt, the doubly artistic atmosphere in which she has lived has done much to develop her talent.

Melba was an Australian girl who studied in Paris, and has achieved a very great success.

The possibility of becoming a Nordica, a Melba, or an Eames is a fascinating one, and it is only natural that in the success of such women other young women should find encouragement for the cultivation of musical talent. And although there can of necessity be but few great prizes, such as these women win, because few persons are gifted with their pre-eminent talents and abilities, there will almost always be open to the woman of moderate talent who will thoroughly fit herself for such work as she can do, and is willing to do it, a field in which she can earn a comfortable living, and be happily independent in doing so. This field is by no means narrow. It embraces among other lines of work the ordinary teaching of singing, the teaching of singing in the public schools--a constantly widening field--choir work in churches, and concert and festival singing.

The writer has asked one young woman of her acquaintance, whose experience as a teacher of singing has proved the correctness of the above statement, to write out a brief account of what she did, with the thought that it will be of interest, and the hope that it may be of help, to other young women who may have the same ambition.

"My home was in a country town of about 2500 inhabitants. My father was a clergyman, and while there was always the money which might be necessary to provide us children with the means for an education, we expected and wished to practice all possible prudence. The fact that there was a good small college in the town made the matter of education easier to accomplish. I think the fact that I had a good voice was first noticed as far back as when I was a child in Sabbath-school, and I began to sing little songs in the school entertainments.

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When I was twelve years old our church gathered a chorus choir, and I was among the number. It was not long before I began to be asked to sing the solo parts there. Two or three years later I began to take my first special lessons driving twelve miles on Saturdays to an adjoining town to do so. That was when I was in college.

"We had a long winter vacation, then, of seven weeks. The last year I was in college I spent that vacation in Boston, studying with a good teacher there. The next winter I went to New York, and devoted the whole winter to hard work there with one of the best known teachers in that city. It was my intention to have returned to New York for another year with the same teacher, but an older brother having decided to go to Leipsic, Germany, to study that year, the family decided that as there would not be very much more expense, and many added advantages, I had better go with him, and I did so.

"As my studies had now begun to cost more money than I could expect to easily have from home, I had my life insured and began to borrow from a friend who from interest in my work was willing to accept the insurance as security. The debt incurred then, and added to during the next few years, I was able to fully repay after I began to work for myself.

"I always tried to be economical, except that I did not hesitate to go freely to concerts and the opera, because I felt that to be a legitimate part of my education. Fortunately such expenses in Leipsic are comparatively small. We used to pay thirty-seven and a-half cents for seats at the opera, and although they were far back we were able to hear well. I am frequently asked what a student can live for, and study, in Europe. My experience was so largely in Leipsic that I can answer for only that city. My first years expenses, all told, were only between $500 and $600 Except for the entertainments which I have spoken of I am afraid most young people would have thought I lived pretty poorly. I do not mean but what we were comfortable, and very happy. My brother was with me, as I have said. We lived in lodgings, and got our own breakfasts and suppers, taking our dinners at a restaurant. I remember we restricted ourselves to a supper of bread and butter, and milk, with the addition of so much extra as could be bought each night for not more than twenty-five pfennigs, an equivalent of five cents in our money. Sometimes that meant two little slices of cold meat, some times a bit of cheese, but I think we never exceeded the sum.

"I studied in Leipsic three years. The next two years cost me more, as my brother was not with me, and I had rooms and board with a family. I studied the piano, composition, counterpoint, and the general branches of music at the Conservatory, and vocal music with an able teacher outside. For two years I took lessons in the German language. When I am asked what I think of the advisability of students going to Germany to study, I have always said that I think

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they will get there a better 'all round' education in music than anywhere else. It seems to me as if the Germans make the study and teaching of music such a serious matter that no conscientious student can help coming to feel the responsibility and value of the work, and study accordingly.

"After my third year in Leipsic I came to London and studied for seven months with William Shakespeare, and the next year came home, in debt, but feeling that I had now sufficient knowledge of music so that I ought to be able to earn a living by teaching, even if I could not do anything else. I think many young women who want to begin to teach music make a mistake in thinking they cannot be successful, or perhaps contented, unless they are in some large city. The field is very much more crowded there. I began in a large country town, some distance from my home, but near enough so that I could go there in the morning and come back at night. I had no trouble in getting thirty-six pupils at the very first, in that one town, and soon there were others in other towns and at home. It was hard work. I used to teach all day long, and sometimes would get pretty tired. But from the very first I was able to more than pay my expenses, and I paid my board at home, too, because I had all along been determined that there was no reason why I should not take care of myself just as my brothers were doing. During the next year an opportunity presented itself for me to go to an institution in a Western State to take charge of the music there. The salary was very reasonable, and as this institution was in a city of 20,000 inhabitants there was a chance for considerable outside work. I succeeded in getting a church position, and during vacations was able to take some concert engagements. My total income the second year, when I had got fairly settled there, was a little over $1500, and that I felt was doing very well for a girl. Since then it has steadily increased, and I have been able to live very pleasantly, and, as I have sad, pay all my debts.

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THE three lines of music work--teaching, choir singing and concert work-- are so closely interwoven that it would be hard to treat them separately. Very many musicians combine two of them, some all three. Choir work forms, perhaps, the first steady means of earning money, which the majority of singers find available, although the pay at first may be very small. As a general thing, while there are many more paid church singers now than in years past, the average salary is less. Many women are glad to get a chance to begin in church work for nothing,. singing for the sake of the drill, the experience, and the reputation, which the position gives them. Then, perhaps, a dollar a Sunday is paid, and later two dollars. A woman who is paid five dollars a Sunday may count herself doing well. The average salary for a good church soprano is now from $400 to $600 a year. Of course, there are fortunate exceptions. A few wealthy churches in each of the great cities pay some favorite and famous singers much higher prices. Even in these cases $1200 to $1500 is generally the limit, although there are exceptions, and one woman in New York City is said to receive no less than $4500 a year for singing in church.

The training necessary for making a successful church singer should he quite as arduous as that in any line, and no one makes a greater mistake than the woman who, because she has a good voice and knows a little something of music, thinks she is fitted to sing in a church choir. Nowhere else is the ability to read music at sight correctly so indispensable. Most church choirs can have but one rehearsal--generally on Saturday night. If the director is to keep any kind of a

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reputation for himself and choir, he must present fresh music from Sunday to Sunday, and it must be of a high order of merit. If he puts such music into the hands of a person who cannot read it readily, it is like putting a French book down for a child to read who hardly knows English. It is possible for the ignorant singer to learn the piece of music by rote, if she have a quick ear, but even then the whole time of its rehearsal must be given to her especial benefit, and the time of the other three members of the choir, quite likely able musicians, entirely lost.

[image: GERTRUDE FRANKLIN]

The young woman who hopes to perfect her self as a church singer should furnish herself at once with an instrument, preferably a piano, and then practice, practice, practice, until she can read readily and correctly. Then, and only then, ought she to think of asking for a place in a first- class choir. In vocal work one of the most widely and favorably known teachers, church and concert singers, is Gertrude Franklin, of Boston, formerly Miss Virginia Beatty, of Baltimore. Her musical education began while she was quite young, and at the age of thirteen she gave promise of becoming a brilliant pianist. Her taste, however, was for vocal rather than instrumental music, and prompted by natural inclination, and the possession of a voice of remarkable sweetness and purity, she began the study of singing. Mr. Aaron Taylor and Signor Agramonti were her first teachers, and on the advice of the latter she went to Europe to

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complete her musical education. In Paris she studied under Madame Lagrange, and with Professor Barbot, of the Conservatoire, and in London. On returning home she took an extended course of study under Madame Rudersdorff, for oratorio and the more serious range of classical concert music.

Miss Franklin has appeared in the symphony concerts of Boston, New York and Brooklyn, and in classical and other concerts in most of the large cities of the United States. Her work has been under the leadership of such men as Theodore Thomas, Walter Damrosch, Emil Pauer, Karlberg, Henschel, Gericke, Nikisch, Tomlins, Gilchrist and others. Her concert work was remarkable apart from her fine voice, because of the extent of her repertoire. She sings in French, German, Italian and English, and has the proud distinction of having the largest repertoire of any American singer, also the largest collection of arias and orchestral scores for the concert stage. Miss Franklin has never repeated a program in the same place, or an aria, unless called upon at a moment's notice to sing without rehearsal. At present her time is so engaged in teaching that she has given up concert work. In private she is now known as Mrs. W. C. G. Salisbury.

Mrs. Jennie Patrick Walker, Miss Gertrude Edwards, Mrs. Humphrey Allen, Mrs. Marie Kaula Stone, Mrs. Titus--one of the Boston symphony soloists, are only a few more of the women who in New England alone, have won reputation for themselves as church and concert singers.

Miss Julia Wyatt, who was born in Dover, N. H., but went to Boston to study, has won special success as a teacher. She emphasizes the point mentioned above in her teaching, saving in public recently:

"The pupil should learn to accompany herself. In this way, self-reliance is learned and a freedom in execution, all-important factors in the training of a successful vocalist. How often is a pupil asked to sing and cannot do so because see cannot accompany herself!"

The teaching of music in the public schools is a branch of work which is being rapidly developed. Almost all the larger towns and cities now require the services of at least one musical superintendent, and the majority of these are women. One or more hour's teaching a week will be given to each school, and a general oversight kept over the music teaching of the regular teacher in that room during all the time. In the larger towns the salary is good. Often a woman will be able to combine two or three smaller towns, going to each certain days in the week, and from the combination secure a good living. The best training for this work is in a measure distinct from that for ordinary teaching. The pupils are instructed in large classes, instead of singly, and the teacher must learn to impart musical notation in a single rhythmic way.

There are now held at various places in the United States several summer schools of music, arranged and managed by the principal system of musical

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instruction for schools now before the public. Much can be learned at these schools, and a few courses of their instruction, supplemented by diligent practice, have fitted many women to do work which enables them to command paying positions.

[image: NANNIE HANDS-KRONBERG]

Concert work is apt to lead very naturally out of teaching and successful church work. It is an acceptable adjunct to other musical employments, but perhaps no one takes to it entirely for a support. A few women can command high prices for an appearance in concerts, but the opportunities are not many. Traveling from town to town is hard at best, and becomes a much more serious matter when one remembers how much care is necessary to preserve such a delicate organ as a singer's voice. Probably a scale of from $5 to $50 would embrace the prices paid very nearly all concert singers, after expenses are paid, and the majority of those would be nearer $5 than $50. Of course, there are to be excepted the great opera stars when they appear on the concert stage, and all such singers as may have made a world-wide reputation in other lines of work. If a young woman has made up her mind that she wishes to study music as a profession, and taking stock of her especial talents has also decided in just which branch of music her taste and talents incline, so that she may more reasonably hope for success in that than in any

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other line, she should next, if she is really sincere in her desire to fit herself to do such thorough work as can only lead to genuine success, seek the judgment and advice of a thoroughly able specialist in that particular line.

Do not trust only to the advice of relatives and friends. Even if they honestly desire to be sincere in their opinions they cannot help being prejudiced and they too often make the mistake of raising false hopes in a young singer who would do well enough in a parlor but who is by no means a person of sufficient parts for the arduous study which alone can make the artist, be they ever so talented.

For instance: at one time, some years ago, there happened to be studying music in Milan, Italy, between three hundred and four hundred Americans. Over half of them were women. Out of the number there at the time referred to only one woman, Madam Albani, has achieved a really distinguished success.

There are many things to be considered. A famous American teacher tells of one experience thus: "A young woman came over a thousand miles to have me try her voice and advise her if she should study for the stage. I had her come to my studio and sing several arias. She had been well trained in technique, and her voice was a beautiful one, but she sang every one of the numbers out of tune. When she had finished I told her so, and she said, 'That may be so, but don't you think my voice is a beautiful one?'

"I told her that her voice was a beautiful one, and then tried it again, but with the same result, and told her so. She argued that this would not interfere with her artistic success, until finally I told her, 'If you possess all of the other artistic virtues but that of absolute pitch, you forfeit your right to them all when you think of following the career of an artist.' She was so offended that she put on her cloak and went away without even thanking me."

Asked for a general summary of the whole situation, the same teacher replied:

"There is no doubt but what the musical profession is overcrowded to-day with persons who could do something else a great deal better."

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AFTER a young woman decides that she has sufficient musical talent to be justified in devoting time and money to its cultivation, she ought next to try and find out if hers be a special talent in some one direction, and if it is, direct her work and energies accordingly. Of course the distinction between study of the voice and of instrumental music is easy to make, and in the latter there is generally a decided taste for some one instrument. There is, however, a further division which can be made in most cases, and it would be of advantage to many young women music students if they would realize this earlier than most of them do. In the teaching of vocal music, for instance, there is, as has been said in a preceding chapter, a very decided difference between the qualities necessary for private teaching and for teaching in the public schools. Some young women seem to have a special fitness for dealing with children in large divisions, which is of the greatest value in school work. It is just the same with the student of the piano. Given talents which may be developed into equal ability, one woman may be able to excel as a teacher, another as a concert performer, or another as an accompanist.

The remarkably successful career of Mrs. Martha Dana Shepard, of Boston, as a music festival pianist, is a striking proof of the truth of this statement. Mrs. Shepard very early in her life realized in just what direction her talent lay and developed it in that direction. Her home was in the town of Ashland, N. H., and she lived there some years after her marriage. She had gradually won a good local reputation as an accompanist for choruses and festivals, until through the instrumentality of some one who knew of her work, there came a chance for her to go

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to Keene, N. H., to play at a festival there at which Carl Zerrahn, already the most famous director in New England, was to conduct. This was the first opportunity which she had had to play at so large a festival and under so experienced a conductor. Mrs. Shepard tells the story herself as follows:

"I was a young woman then, almost unused to the world outside my own country town, and when I came to consider the proposition found myself frightened at the thought of coming before so large an audience and so able a conductor. Mr. Zerrahn even then had the reputation of being a keen critic, and not very favorably disposed toward women pianists. I was determined I would succeed, though, in the line of work which I had chosen, and this seemed to be the first beginning to be made. I accepted the offer and made my plans to go. My baby then was only six months old, and this in itself seemed reason enough to make me give up, but when the time came I took my baby and my girl and went to Keene. The girl stayed at the hotel and minded the baby and I went to the hall. To say that I was frightened wouldn't begin to express the situation, but I watched Mr. Zerrahn's baton, and when that came down I came down on the piano. I did the very best I could, and I succeeded."

Mr. Zerrahn was quick to recognize the merits of his new-found accompanist. even if she was a woman. From that time until her retirement from her field of work in 1897, thirty-two years, Mrs. Shepard played every year at a great many festivals, all over New England, New York and Canada. After a few years she moved to Boston, and added the position of a church organist and director of a choir to her other work. During the thirty-five years that Mrs. Shepard was constantly before the public she had the rare record of having failed to meet only one engagement, and that only on account of the illness of her husband. In this time it is probable that no one else but Mr. Zerrahn did so much for the cause of music in New England outside the large cities as did Mrs. Shepard. Her success was largely due to her possessing, in addition to her musical ability, the talent to inspire a country chorus of inexperienced singers with confidence and enthusiasm. Added to this she was gifted with perfect health and a physique so strong as to enable her to do a prodigious amount of hard work. Week after week she has played at her church in Boston on Sunday, taken an early Monday train for perhaps extreme northern New England or Canada, reached her destination on Monday evening, and played the same evening at a rehearsal, played the next four days at forenoon and afternoon rehearsals and evening concerts, and come home on Saturday to conduct her church rehearsal on Saturday evening. Mrs. Shepard's own explanation of her success is simple: "I have always worked hard, and always tried to do my best." The young woman who is willing to really do those two things, given any reasonable amount of ability to begin with may hope to be just as successful.

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[image: MARTHA DANA SHEPARD]

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Of other women who have won distinction and a means of support from the piano, the number is too great to try to count by name. The field for this work has been greatly widened of late from the constantly increasing number of churches desiring a capable organist, and willing to pay them. When only a few years ago it was thought a woman could hardly play a church organ, they are now to be found doing satisfactory work in some of the largest churches.

A great many girls, too, earn a pleasant summer in first-class mountain or seaside hotels by playing the piano a few hours every day and evening. Sometimes they are given nothing but their board and railroad fare, and sometimes they receive a small salary besides.

That such an institution as the National Conservatory of Music of America should have been founded in this decidedly practical country is worthy of note, but that the foundation and the eminence attained by it, despite many adverse or negative conditions, are due to the spirit, courage, labor and indomitable perseverance of one woman alone, Mrs. Jeannette M. Thurber, of New York, is remarkable. It has been sheerly a labor of love with Mrs. Thurber, love of the art of music and love of the culture of her countrymen; the Conservatory is not conducted for the purpose of making money. It supplies tuition at a nominal cost to all pupils who in the judgment of the faculty are apt to make a reputation in the world of music. Mrs. Thurber finds repayment for the expenditure of her time, labor and means in the hundreds of young men and women graduates of the Conservatory who are making a name and a living as singers and players.

The National Conservatory has been in existence a dozen years at 126-128 East Seventeenth street, New York. Its faculty numbers nearly sixty, and includes such musicians as Rafael Joseffy, Adele Margulies, Leopold Lichtenberg, Victor Capoul, Gustav Hinrichs, S. P. Warren and Anton Seidl, while its director is a composer of world-wide fame, the greatest composer perhaps since Brahms--Dr. Antonin Dvorak. The pupils of the Conservatory number at present six hundred and eighty-six, and it has supplied tuition since its inception to three less than three thousand pupils, in many cases free, thanks to Mrs. Thurber's broad generosity and love of music. Whatever there is to be learned in the practice and theory of music is here taught by the best masters, and, while called national, this Conservatory is really universal in the inclusive scope of its curriculum.

Of women composers of music there are at least four living at the time this chapter is written who have achieved a success which has given them a world-wide reputation. These are Chaminade, a native Parisian; Augusta Holmes, a woman of Irish birth, but so long a resident of Paris that she is reckoned as a Parisian; Mrs. H. H. A. Beach, a native of New Hampshire, and Margaret Ruthven Lang, a native Bostonian.

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[image: MRS. H. H. A. BEACH]

Mlle. Chaminade writes chiefly songs and pieces for the piano. Her work charms by its delicate beauty, and it has given her a unique position in the entire musical world.

Augusta Holmes has written songs, piano music, orchestral music and large choral works. Her success compares favorably with that of any living writers of music to-day. She has an unusual talent for melody.

Kate Vannah, of Gardiner, Me., is another successful song writer.

Mrs. H. H. A. Beach was born in Henniker, N. H. When but a child of four years musical ideas began to crystallize in her mind, and she could put in correct form the harmonies which came to her. No more interesting study could present itself to the student of psychology than the natural talent of this woman, which, though inherited in part from her ancestors, suddenly took a fresh bound and resulted in genius. Before she was thirty years old she had written a mass for solo voices chorus, orchestra and organ, a symphony, and over sixty other works for piano. Her talent becomes the more interesting when one learns that it was self-acquired, with the exception of rudimentary instruction received from a few teachers in harmony and musical form.

In musical composition Mrs. Beach for years has pursued diligently lines of study which have proved valuable, and among which may be mentioned the habit of analyzing the works performed by the noted Boston Symphony Orchestra. In addition to this practice she translated for herself treatises not existing in the English language, and which have an important bearing on her lines of study. Her first public success as a pianist was in 1883, when but sixteen years of age she appeared with the Symphony Orchestra, playing Moscheles' G minor concerto for piano and orchestra. Since then she has appeared many times with the latter organization, and also with Theodore Thomas, as well as at numerous recitals, performing chiefly her own compositions.

Her "Gaelic" Symphony is a composition well thought out, original and admirably handled. It does not suggest the sex of its composer, but rather the mind of a well-balanced master in form and color. Her skill in the instrumentation of this work is remarkable. Mrs. Beach's talent in developing the heavier forms of musical composition found instant recognition on the performance of her Mass in E flat by the Handel and Haydn Society in 1892. This work was at once given just and enthusiastic praise. In the words of an eminent

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musical critic: "Mrs. Beach at once took rank among the foremost of America's composers." Margaret Ruthven Lang was born in Boston, November 27, 1867. She inherits her musical ability from both parents. Her father, B. J. Lang, the eminent organist leader and teacher, who has long held a foremost position in the musical life of Boston, has been the most influential factor in shaping her musical growth.

[image: MARGARET R. LANG]

Miss Lang, therefore, has had coupled with her natural gifts a musical education which has been carefully nurtured in every detail. She began writing music when about twelve years old. Among her first compositions at that time was a quintette of one movement for strings and piano, and several songs. She began the study of the piano forte under one of her father's pupils, and later continued it under his direction. Some time after this she studied the violin with Louis Schmidt in Boston, and continued under Drechsler and Abel in Munich during the winters of 1886- 87. While in Munich she also studied composition with Victor Gluth.

On returning to Boston in 1887, she took up the study of orchestration with G. W. Chadwick, since which time she has written a large number of compositions, many of which have had great success. Her "dramatic overture, " op. 12, was performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Nikisch on April 8, 1893; her overture, Witichis, op. 10, was performed in Chicago under Theodore Thomas, at two concerts in July and August, 1893, and at a third concert under Bendix. Both of these compositions are in manuscript; also a third overture, op. 23, "Totila." Of other works for orchestra, composed later, are three arias: one for alto, "Sappho's Prayer to Aphrodite," was performed in New York in 1896; one for soprano, "Armida," performed at the Boston Symphony concert, January 13, 1896, and one for baritone, "Phoebus."

She has also in manuscript several part-songs, piano-forte pieces, songs, a cantata for chorus, solo and orchestra; a string quartette and several compositions for violin and piano; also forty published songs, several part-songs and piano pieces.

What these four women have done others may do. While it is not reasonable to expect that all will have the special talent necessary for composition, it may be

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safely thought that some will have it, who, if they are willing to work, may succeed. After all, it is the same story--application; and if Chaminade, Augusta Holmes, Mrs. Beach and Miss Lang were to tell you how they came to succeed, it is a question if all four would not unite to say that they believed hard work, quite as much as talent, lay at the foundation.