to write the next installment of that serial she knew that she was putting her whole heart and conscience into the effort. What she did not know was that she was producing a work which would continue to be praised and hated for a hundred years.

Julia Ward Howe was a few years younger than Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was born in New York City, May 27, 1819. Her father was a banker, and he and his wife came of old and distinguished families. Julia was privately educated. She was dreamy and unpractical but had a quick memory. She had little skill in sewing or in any use of tools, but she read Milton and Byron and Shakespeare and thought of writing. Later she studied French, German, philosophy, history and literature. Her early training gave her little opportunity for social life. In 1841 she was on a visit to Boston. Charles Sumner called upon her, being a friend of her brother, and told her about the notable work of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who had established in South Boston the Perkins Institute for the Blind. He had achieved a miracle in his day in the teaching of Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf mute, the Hellen Keller of that earlier generation. Julia went to visit the Perkins Institute accompanied by Senator Sumner and the poet Longfellow. Dr. Howe was not at the school when they arrived, but before they left he came riding up on

his black horse. To Julia he looked like a hero, and the distinction he had already won in his profession was in full keeping with her first impression of him. He had done a notable work for the feeble minded and the insane. He was putting eyes into the fingerends of the blind. Beside all this he was a zealous opponent of slavery. It was fore-ordained that Dr. Howe and Julia Ward should marry. They married and went abroad, and upon their return lived near the Perkins Institute, and had as their associates and friends all the distinguished people of literary Boston.

The Civil War came, and she made a visit to Washington. From her window in Willard's Hotel she beheld the passing regiments and heard snatches of the popular army song, "John Brown's Body Lies A-Mouldering in the Grave, but His Soul Goes Marching On." Her minister, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, said to her, "Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?" The suggestion pleased her. She later told the story in these words:

"I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, 'I must get up and write those verses down, lest I fall asleep again and

forget them. So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stub of a pen, which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper. Having completed my writing, I returned to bed and fell asleep, saying to myself, 'I like this better than most things that I have written."."

The poem was published in The Atlantic Monthly under the title of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.' That came very near to being the end of it. Chaplain McCabe, then with the army, read it, liked it and committed it to memory. About a year later he was captured and confined with other Union officers in Libby Prison. One day they heard of great Union victory. There was great rejoicing in the prison. Chaplain McCabe recited and sang the poem to the tune the soldiers all knew. His fellow prisoners joined in the chorus. Out of Libby Prison the song was born again and it now seems destined never to die.

Mrs. Howe lived to be ninety-one years of age. She was a woman of dignity and charm and carried her animation and optimism down to her extreme old age, Near the end of her life her daughter asked her, "What is the ideal aim of life?" Her mother paused a moment and put life's purpose as she saw it into four words. Anne Dudley Bradstreet with her fondness for putting things in fours would have rejoiced

that Mrs. Howe so thoroughly followed her method. These were the four purposes, which as Mrs. Howe believed, should constitute the ideal aim of life:

"To learn, to teach, to serve, to enjoy!"

We were intending to accept no birthdays that went back of the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, but we may stretch our chronology a little to include the date of February 28, 1797. Then was born in Buckland, Massachusetts, that foremost woman educator of her day, Mary Lyon. She was the daughter of a farmer, the fifth of seven children, and her father died when she was six years old. The family was poor, and Mary never had time to play. She was busy with housekeeping, gardening and nursing. On winter evenings she carded and spun wool and worked at the loom. Yet she was not oppressed by the toil she had high spirits and good humor and she obtained an education. Two coverlets spun, woven and dyed with her own hands paid for her admission to Sanderson Academy in Ashland, Mass. Her dress was blue homespun and her speech and manner betrayed her rural background, but she consumed a Latin grammar over Sunday and recited it almost in toto on Monday. She had a fine faculty for friendship. With no money and with very little assistance she obtained an education. Her definition of an education was to be fitted to do good. Working sometimes twenty hours

out of the twenty-four, she finished her own period of preparation, and then set out to found a school for farmers' daughters. Mt. Holyoke was only one result of her endeavor. In a very real sense all education for women in America was stimulated by her sacrifice and service. She died in 1849, and her Academy is now a College, with wide reaching influence. Mary Lyon is the mother of more daughters than any other woman in America today.

If we were to go ten years further back, we should find Emma Willard, who was born in Berlin, Connecticut, in 1787, and who became in 1821, principal of a Female Seminary in Troy, New York. She lived long and died in 1870. The school she founded is still in existence, and has never been made over into a college, but the work of Emma Willard continues to be that of one America's most notable pioneers in the educational life of women.

Among the finest types of American womanhood in the field of education in more recent days stands the figure of Alice Freeman Palmer. She was born in Colesville, Broome County, New York, February 21, 1855, and so was a full half century later than the other women of whom we have been thinking. Much educational water had run under the scholastic bridge since Mary Lyon. But Alice Freeman was born, ast Mary Lyon was, upon a farm, and with very narrow