Transcriber's Notes. Hyphenation has been standardised. A GROUP OF FAMOUS WOMEN STORIES OF THEIR LIVES BY EDITH HORTON ILLUSTRATED D. C. HEATH AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY D. C. HEATH & COMPANY 1 C 4 TO THE WOMEN TEACHERS OF AMERICA WHOSE NOBLE LIVES HAVE EVER BEEN AN INSPIRATION TO THE YOUTH OF OUR LAND FOREWORD The best kind of American woman is proud. She has confidence in herself. She is not vain or conceited or self-assertive, but she has faith in her own powers. Even if she could, she would not spend her life in play or in idleness; she would choose to work. She believes that because she is doing her chosen work—whatever it may be—steadily, hour by hour, day by day, she is achieving. Because she has confidence in herself, she can live and labor serenely, proudly. No matter how obscure her lot, she feels herself to be in the same class as the most famous of her American sisters who have worked with steadiness and confidence at their task, and who have achieved greatness. So difficult has it been for teachers to find brief, readable biographies of distinguished women to use in connection with their lessons in history and civics that they will welcome this interesting collection. It should help to make the girls in our American schools proud of their womanhood and it should give them a strong desire to be worthy of belonging to the same class as this group of noble workers. EMMA L. JOHNSTON Principal Brooklyn Training School for Teachers. March 16, 1914. "If women now sit on thrones, if the most beautiful painting in the world is of a mother and her child, if the image of a woman crowns the dome of the American Capitol, if in allegory and metaphor and painting and sculpture the highest ideals are women, it is because they have a right to be there. By all their drudgery and patience, by all their suffering and kindness, they have earned their right to be there." —_O. T. Mason_ "The Egyptian people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a woman; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shuttle." —_John Ruskin_ INTRODUCTION The advantages of biography as a means of education are obvious. History and biography go hand in hand, the latter giving vitality and reality to the former. Educators have for a long time appreciated this, and in many Courses of Study throughout our land provision has been made for the teaching of history through biography. In most cases, emphasis has been laid upon the notable careers of Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, and other illustrious men, with the purpose of interesting the young and inspiring in them the spirit of emulation.