MARY LYON .·. ALICE FREEMAN PALMER .·. CLARA BARTON .·. FRANCES WILLARD .·. JULIA WARD HOWE .·. ANNA SHAW .·. MARY ANTIN ALICE C. FLETCHER .·. MARY SLESSOR OF CALABAR .·. MADAME CURIE JANE ADDAMS BY MARY R. PARKMAN Author of "Heroes of Today," etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1921 Copyright, 1916, 1917, by The Century Co. Published September, 1917 Reprinted April, 1918; Reprinted August, 1918. PRINTED IN U. S. A. TO MY MOTHER AND ALL WHO, LIKE HER, ARE TRUE MOTHERS, AND

From time immemorial women have been content to be as those who serve. Non ministrari sed ministrare —not to be ministered unto but to minister—is not alone the motto of those who stand under the Wellesley banner, but of true women everywhere. For centuries a woman's own home had not only first claim, but full claim, on her fostering care. Her interests and sympathies—her mother love—belonged only to those of her own household. In the days when much of the labor of providing food and clothing wa

"W HAT is my little Mistress Mary trying to do?" The whir of the spinning-wheel was stilled for a moment as Mrs. Lyon glanced in surprise at the child who had climbed up on a chair to look more closely at the hourglass on the chimneypiece. "I am just trying to see if I can find the way to make more time," replied Mary. "That's not the way, daughter," laughed the busy mother, as she started her wheel again. "When you stop to watch time, you lose it. Let your work slip from your fingers faster tha

T HIS is the story of a princess of our own time and our own America—a princess who, while little more than a girl herself, was chosen to rule a kingdom of girls. It is a little like the story of Tennyson's "Princess," with her woman's kingdom, and very much like the happy, old-fashioned fairy-tale. We have come to think it is only in fairy-tales that a golden destiny finds out the true, golden heart, and, even though she masquerades as a goose-girl, discovers the "kingly child" and brings her t

A CHRISTMAS baby! Now isn't that the best kind of a Christmas gift for us all?" cried Captain Stephen Barton, who took the interesting flannel bundle from the nurse's arms and held it out proudly to the assembled family. No longed-for heir to a waiting kingdom could have received a more royal welcome than did that little girl who appeared at the Barton home in Oxford, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1821. Ten years had passed since a child had come to the comfortable farm-house, and the four bi

Instead of peace, I was to participate in war; instead of the sweetness of home, I was to become a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I have felt that a great promotion came to me when I was counted worthy to be a worker in the organized crusade for "God and Home and Native Land."... If I were asked the mission of the ideal woman, I would say it is to make the whole world homelike. The true woman will make every place she enters homelike—and she will enter every place in this wide world....

T HERE is no place like a young college town in a young country for untroubled optimism. Hope blossoms there as nowhere else; the ideal ever beckons at the next turn in the road. When Josiah Willard brought his little family to Oberlin, it seemed to them all that a new golden age of opportunity was theirs. Even Frances, who was little more than a baby, drank in the spirit of the place with the air she breathed. It was not hard to believe in a golden age when one happened to see little Frances, o

We have told the story of our mother's life, possibly at too great length; but she herself told it in eight words. "Tell me," Maud asked her once, "what is the ideal aim of life?" She paused a moment, and replied, dwelling thoughtfully on each word: "To learn, to teach, to serve, to enjoy!"...

T WO little girls were rolling hoops along the street when they suddenly caught them over their little bare arms and drew up close to the railings of a house on the corner. "There is the wonderful coach and the little girl I told you about, Eliza," whispered Marietta, pushing back the straw bonnet that shaded her face from the sun and pointing with her stick. It was truly a magnificent yellow coach, pulled by two proud gray horses. Even Cinderella's golden equipage could not have been more splen

Nothing bigger can come to a human being than to love a great Cause more than life itself, and to have the privilege throughout life of working for that Cause....

A YOUNG girl was standing on a stump in the woods, waving her arms and talking very earnestly. There was no one there to listen except a robin a-tilt on a branch where the afternoon sun could turn his rusty brown breast to red, and a chattering, inquisitive bluejay. All the other little wood folk were in hiding. That strange creature was in the woods but not of them. She belonged to the world of people. The girl knew that she belonged to a different world. She was not trying to play that she was

Y OU know the story of "The Man without a Country"—the man who lost his country through his own fault. Can you imagine what it would mean to be a child without a country—to have no flag, no heroes, no true native land to which you belong as you belong to your family, and which in turn belongs to you? How would it seem to grow up without the feeling that you have a big country, a true fatherland to protect your home and your friends; to build schools for you; to give you parks and playgrounds, an

A GREAT poet once tried to look into the future and picture the kind of people who might some day live upon the earth—people wiser and happier than we are because they shall have learned through our mistakes and carried to success our beginnings, and so have come to understand fully many things that we see dimly as through a mist. These people Tennyson calls the "crowning race": You see he believed that the way to gain command of Earth is through learning to read the open book of Nature. That bo

A MONG all the weavers in the great factory at Dundee there was no girl more deft and skilful than Mary Slessor. She was only eleven when she had to help shoulder the cares of the household and share with the frail mother the task of earning bread for the hungry children. For the little family was worse than fatherless. The man who had once been a thrifty, self-respecting shoemaker had become a slave to drink; and his life was a burden to himself and to those who were nearest and dearest to him.

One truth discovered is immortal and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed....

Y OU would hardly think that a big, bare room, with rows of battered benches and shelves and tables littered with all sorts of queer-looking jars and bottles, could be a hiding-place for fairies. Yet Marie's father, who was one of the wise men of Warsaw, said they were always to be found there. "Yes, little daughter," he said, "the fairies you may chance to meet with in the woods, peeping from behind trees and sleeping in flowers, are a tricksy, uncertain sort. The real fairies, who do things, a

The Russian peasants have a proverb that says: "Labor is the house that Love lives in"; by which they mean that no two people, or group of people, can come into affectionate relation with each other unless they carry on a mutual task....

D O you remember what the poet says of Peter Bell? In the same way, when he saw the "primrose by the river's brim," it was not to him a lovely bit of the miracle of upspringing life from the unthinking clod; it was just a common little yellow flower, which one might idly pick and cast aside, but to which one never gave a thought. He saw the sky and woods and fields and human faces with the outward eye, but not with the eye of the heart or the spirit. He had eyes for nothing but the shell and sho