To the vast majority of people, who have but a superficial knowledge of Lady Curzon, her charm lies in the phases of that exterior life which are visible to all and easily discerned from afar,--her youth, her beauty, her wealth, the artistic perfection of her raiment, and the glory and pageant of her present existence. These, however, are but foot-lights to the real power of the woman rising beyond them. As a girl in America she stood forth against the rich background of her home as distinctly as she is silhouetted to-day against the magnificence of the throne of India. It was not so much what she did or said, though that was sometimes of an unusual order, that made her the social power she was in America; it was rather what people instinctively felt that she was. "What thou art," says Emerson, defining that force we call character, "so roars and thunders above thy head, I cannot hear thee speak." She was serious and earnest rather than scintillating, with a reserve and dignity of manner tempered by a sweetness that admitted no suggestion of austerity. The grace with which she now meets every situation, the intelligent interest she manifests in every theme with which she is approached, are not matters of happy chance or accident. She has been carefully equipped for her place in life. Studious and ambitious, she has known little of frivolity or idleness. Every faculty and every gift with which she was endowed have been conscientiously cultivated, so that, like the wise virgins of the parable, she was found ready when the hour came with a light that guides not only her own footsteps, but is seen from afar. [Illustration: Jennie Chamberlain (Lady Naylor-Leyland) From the painting by H. Schmiechen] Though Lady Curzon's life has been largely cosmopolitan, the city of Chicago, in which she was born and passed her first thirteen years, has a more substantial claim upon her than any in which she has since lived. She evidently reciprocates the feeling of the former city, for it was to it that she recently addressed a plea in behalf of the famine-stricken districts of India. It was there that her father, Mr. Levi Z. Leiter, amassed his immense fortune, laying its foundation as a partner in the dry-goods firm of Marshall Field & Co. There, also, her brother, Joseph Leiter, still continues his remarkable position in the stock market.