With the magnetism of her gifts she would have been known to fame even had her family been of less prominence. Well placed, however, as she was in life, her brilliancy illumined a vast horizon. Her father, Judge Robert Ould, always held a distinguished position, both in the District of Columbia, where he was born, and in Richmond, whither he removed at the outbreak of the war. Besides being thrown in intimate contact with the prominent citizens of both places, he was frequently called upon to extend his hospitality to eminent strangers who came to him with letters of introduction. His home during part of his residence in Washington was in the quaint old building opposite the Treasury Department, now Riggs Bank. There President Buchanan was his guest for several days after he quitted the White House. No extraordinary preparations, however, were made for the entertainment of the ex-President in a household where distinguished guests were a frequent occurrence. A loose rod in the stair-carpet was secured on the suggestion of Mrs. Ould's mother, lest Mr. Buchanan, not accustomed to the circumnavigation that it had imposed upon the family, should fall and break his leg, in which event they would have him three weeks instead of three days.

Judge Ould came prominently before the public as the district attorney at the time of the prosecution of General Daniel Sickles for the killing of Barton Key, Sickles being defended by Edwin M. Stanton, who became more widely known later as Lincoln's Secretary of War.

Ould's prominence was rather augmented after the outbreak of the war and his removal to Richmond, where he was made commissioner of the Confederate government for the exchange of prisoners. He had married a celebrated Virginia beauty, Miss Sarah Turpin, and had four children, all of whom, with one noted exception, are still living. His wife, after having been long an invalid, died before his family was grown, and he, some years later, married Mrs. Handy, of Baltimore, the mother of the beautiful May Handy, one of Richmond's belles of the present day.

Mattie Ould was born in the District of Columbia, which she left in her childhood for the home with which her fame is associated. She returned, however, to spend the last two years of her school life in the Visitation Convent, Georgetown. Though known to all Richmond from her childhood, her renown throughout the South dates from her first appearance at the White Sulphur Springs, which in her day, before the advent of the Northern pleasure-seeker, still possessed all the distinctive features of a Southern watering-place. Though it was already a long-established resort, to the magic which her presence shed about it during the seasons that she spent there it owes much of its wide fame to-day. All the details of the war were then yet vivid memories, and there many a battle was fought over again in graphic words by men whose bravery and gallantry in action have never been surpassed. Many of them had been distinguished officers in the army of the Confederacy,—Joe Johnston, of Virginia; Wade Hampton, of South Carolina; Gordon, of Georgia; Beauregard, of Louisiana; Butler, Gary, the gallant Pickett, of Gettysburg fame; and Hood, of Alabama, then lifting himself about on his crutches. It was such men as these who stamped their striking individuality upon the life of the Southern watering-places at that period, and among whom, keenly appreciating the wit, ardently loving the beauty, and reverencing the goodness of a woman beyond all things, Mattie Ould came to be the greatest belle the South has had since the war.

While she was ever superlatively attractive to men, she was yet a generous friend to women, and frequently avenged the slights to which she saw some plain woman subjected, for, besides the scintillating qualities that made her a popular idol she had many noble traits that commended her to a more profound and lasting admiration.

The toast which is more celebrated than any of her other equally clever utterances was offered at a supper at the Springs, given in honor of herself and another famous Richmond belle, Mary Triplett, the late Mrs. Philip Haxall. Miss Triplett had been asked to propose a toast and had declined. Mattie Ould, however, rose without hesitation, lifted her glass, inclined her graceful head towards Miss Triplett, and in her clear musical voice, said, "Here's to beauty, grace, and wit, which united make a Triplett." There was, indeed, a peculiar enchantment about all she did and said that seemed never to have belonged to any one else. Her dancing infused a new charm into the atmosphere of a ball-room, and as a horsewoman she possessed a skill and grace that few could rival.

Her horse once ran away with her in Richmond, just as the groom mounted her and before she had put her foot in the stirrup. It dashed off at top speed, running several squares through the residence district of the city, and then turned into a business street, where it rushed madly into a hack. The hackman, however, had seen it coming, and realizing that he could not get out of its way, he stood up, and throwing his arm around the rider's waist, he lifted her from the saddle as the horse crashed into the hack, partly demolishing it, and fell. A great crowd witnessed the rescue, and cheered lustily for the courageous old hackman. When Mattie Ould was recognized, however, the enthusiasm assumed a more substantial form, and the hands of many men went generously into their pockets. He was never forgotten, and as long as Mattie Ould lived she provided for him and his family, some of the many who had loved her keeping up the good work after she was gone.

Though she was the object of the ardent devotion of many men, she did not marry until she had passed her twenty-fifth year. It was rumored that she was engaged to a friend of her father's, a man many years her senior, and the indignation with which her father received the news of her marriage to Oliver Schoolcraft substantiated in many minds the report of the former engagement.

Her marriage occurred at the end of the summer of 1876, which she had spent with her grandmother at the White Sulphur Springs. Thither Schoolcraft, one of the wealthiest of the younger set of men who adorned Richmond life, had followed her, taking with him his own valuable horses and traps, with which adjuncts he was ever at her disposal. They drove over to Salem one day, and were quietly married there that evening, at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John A. McCall; one of Miss Ould's brothers and several of her friends witnessing the ceremony. As no preparation had been made for her marriage, she wore, instead of the conventional white satin, a simple gown of white organdy, set off with bands of black velvet.

She was never more bewitchingly lovely than she was that night, and so impressed herself indelibly on the minds of all who gathered about her, some of whom were but little children. Being asked to sing in the course of the evening, she complied with her usual graciousness, for part of the charm of her manner lay not only in her readiness to contribute to the pleasure of others, but in the absolute enjoyment she evinced in so doing. She made her own selection, and sang the little song that was then in favor with her, "Under the Daisies." It was singularly prophetic, for just as the daisies of another spring were putting forth their bloom the sweet voice, whose vibrations had rung so many glad echoes from the world, lapsed forever into silence.

Schoolcraft took her to Richmond the day following their marriage, where her father insisted upon having the ceremony performed again, owing to some technicality of the law to the effect that a marriage license should be obtained at the usual place of residence of the bride. Though the spirit of comradeship had existed to an unusual degree between this father and daughter, he never forgave her until it was too late for that forgiveness to be any comfort to her.

She lived, after her marriage, in an elegant suite of rooms, built over Schoolcraft's handsomely equipped stables. When some one twitted her about the peculiar location of her new abode, she replied, with her unfailing readiness, that she was not the first person who had lived in a stable, and quoted a precedent that no Christian could gainsay.

One morning, in the spring following her marriage, Richmond was appalled by the report which, in the course of a few hours had spread over the entire city, that Mattie Ould was dying. The world was so full of her and all she did and said, that it was not credible that her beguiling presence was passing from it. A silent depression and a sense of personal loss settled upon the people in every walk of life.

Richmond had never beheld such a sight as Mattie Ould's funeral. Old St. Paul's Church and the Square opposite were thronged, the streets all along the route to the cemetery were lined, and even the hills of beautiful Hollywood were black with people. The entire population of the city was there, many, who were too poor to ride, walking, for she had brightened all their lives, and she belonged to them all.

She lies all through the spring and summer beneath a bed of daisies, and near her sleeps the infant whose life closed her own. In the memory of the people of the South she is yet a living presence, whose words, wise and droll, are repeated, ever with a keen relish for their pungency, for she touched all things with that true wit which is

JENNIE JEROME
(LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL)

To-day, when there are so many American women adorning high places and filling more or less leading rôles in British society, it is difficult to realize that only a little more than a quarter of a century ago there was a strong movement afoot, among certain leaders of that society, to exclude their fair transatlantic cousins from London drawing-rooms. As to the oft-recurring Anglo-American marriage, while there are yet many people who look askance upon any sort of an international alliance, that prejudice that frowned so ominously upon it some years ago has wonderfully abated on both sides of the water. The Queen herself recently confessed that she had regarded it at one time as rather a hazardous experiment, but realizing that, with her broad education and elastic temperament, the American girl adapts herself to a new environment with a facility which would scarcely be possible to the less flexible English girl, Her Majesty's apprehensions have been gradually allayed.

One of the first American women before whom these later-day barriers of social prejudice gave way was Miss Jennie Jerome, of New York. As the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill, and ably championed by his mother the Duchess of Marlborough, she penetrated the innermost recesses of British society, opening the way more than any other woman to the position her countrywomen occupy there at the end of the century, and holding herself a place second to that of no other American woman in Europe.

The admiration she attracted as a young girl, the wonderful part she played in the life of her husband and is at present playing in the lives of her sons, the unusual influence she has undeniably exercised in English politics, the intimate contact into which the events of her life have from time to time thrown her with the crowned heads of Europe,—the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Germany, and the Queen of England,—have all tended to give her a unique place in the history of the latter days of the Victorian era. In England there is no woman below the royal family whose name and personality are so generally known as Lady Randolph Churchill's.

Her prominent identification with the Primrose League has carried her fame into the colonies and into India. Many people in Russia and Germany follow her career with keen interest, the press of both countries bringing her frequently before the public, and even in self-centred France the women of the aristocracy, in imitation of her political achievements, have from time to time essayed to "jouer la Lady Randolph Churchill."

She is the eldest of three daughters of the late Mr. Leonard Jerome, and was born in Brooklyn, on the 9th of January, 1854. There and in New York she passed her early childhood.

Her mother was a woman of independent fortune and her father an enterprising and successful man of affairs. He was the founder, in New York, of the Jockey Club, and his name figures conspicuously in the annals of the turf of both England and America, he having been one of its active patrons in the former country, whose racing system he introduced into America.

His family migrated to Paris when his eldest daughter was in her eleventh year, and there his children grew up and were educated. Miss Jennie Jerome's artistic and musical gifts were carefully trained, and she has been considered ever since she made her entrée into English society as one of its most accomplished pianists. Her name appears frequently on the programmes of concerts given in behalf of charity, and is always a powerful drawing card, for she plays with a clearness and delicacy of touch rarely attained by an amateur.

France was at the height of its glories under the second empire when the Jeromes took up their residence in Paris. The court, presided over by one of the most beautiful women who ever wore a diadem, was characterized by almost unprecedented magnificence. Paris then, as now, led the world in all matters of personal adornment, and one feature in that régime of luxuriant display, inaugurated by the Empress, is still felt to-day in every quarter of the globe where women make any pretence of following fashions in dress. She never permitted any woman to appear twice in her presence in the same gown. As a result, there dates from her brief era of leadership an extravagance in woman's dress that was before undreamed of, and which has had the effect of raising the details of a toilet from a subordinate to a ruling position among women in fashionable life, with a loss of much that gave a truer beauty to existence under a system when the sparkle of a woman's mind was of greater value than the flash of her jewels.

Mrs. Jerome, a woman of wealth and taste, easily acquired a position of distinction in the fashionable life of the French capital at that time. Her eldest daughter meanwhile grew up with a reputation for great beauty, her fame increasing as the unusual gifts of her bright mind unfolded themselves. She was one of that group of clever and beautiful young girls with whom the Emperor and Empress from time to time surrounded the little Prince Imperial, and she participated at Compiègne in the memorable celebration of one of the few birthday anniversaries which fate accorded him.

The Franco-Prussian war drove the Jeromes across the channel. They tarried in England during the days that marked the fall of the empire and the uprising of the Communards with their awful deeds of devastation. The summer of 1873 they passed at Cowes.

Miss Jennie Jerome was then in her twentieth year, tall, slender, with a thoughtful countenance denoting both talent and character in its broad brow and square chin. Her mouth was grave and sweet, while her great dark eyes, that are yet the most striking feature of her face, her purple black hair, and her clear olive skin gave her a distinctive place among the blonde daughters of England. Always a striking figure in their midst, the contrast was perhaps never more marked than upon the occasion of the marriage of Princess Louise of Wales to the Earl of Fife, when the blonde type of the British women was so much in evidence in the demi-toilettes commanded by the Queen, and when Lady Randolph Churchill's brunette coloring was so well set off by her yellow satin gown, with a diamond star twinkling above her brow against her black hair.

Though the nomadic tendency of Americans frequently leads them abroad, where they mingle for awhile in the life of various European capitals, there were fewer American women at that time forming a permanent part of foreign society, and one so gifted mentally and physically as was Miss Jerome soon became a noted figure. She attracted everywhere the most evident admiration, never impairing the effect her appearance produced by the least manifestation of vanity.

To the Isle of Wight also that summer there betook himself a young English nobleman, the second son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough. But three years out of college, where he had not been distinguished as a student, but rather for the irresistible attractiveness of his personality and for the enjoyment he extracted from existence, there was little in Lord Randolph Churchill's life in the summer of 1873 that foreshadowed the greatness he was destined to attain. Restless, ambitious, full of energy, with no specific object upon which to expend it, he hesitated between a diplomatic and a military career, and meanwhile, since taking his degree in 1871, he had travelled over the whole of Europe.

He was already an idol to his mother, towards whom he ever showed that thoughtfulness that is the acme of gallantry. He had much of her dash and spirit, and she entered sympathetically into all the events of his life; he on his side never failing to report to her immediately, either in person or by message, all his successes. When he met Jennie Jerome, and for the first time the future assumed a tangible and very beautiful form, he confided in his mother and at once solicited her interest in the young American girl.

To Miss Jerome's mother, however, Lord Randolph Churchill, a younger son, with no particularly bright prospects in life, did not appeal as a desirable match. She returned to Paris with her daughters. Lord Randolph followed, and there at the British Embassy, in January, 1874, he was married to Miss Jerome.

With an ambition and talent equal to his own, she entered completely into his desire to make for himself a place of distinction in life. The dissolution of Parliament early in the year of his marriage offered the opportunity for a political career. He began at home, in the borough of Woodstock, in which Blenheim Palace, where he had been born twenty-five years before, is situated, and secured his election to a seat in the House of Commons without being asked any questions as to his political creed, which, it was taken for granted, was identical with that of his family.

Like his wife's father, he took an active interest in matters pertaining to the turf, owning several famous race-horses and capturing during the course of his life some notable prizes. His first speech in Parliament was to call the attention of the first Commissioner of Public Works to the hard and dusty condition of Rotten Row, and to ask that it be put in better shape, without delay, for both horses and their riders.

During the first six almost silent years of his Parliamentary career, while he was studying the men and measures he subsequently arraigned with so much brilliancy, his young wife was adapting herself to the social life of his country, whose events are as well established as those of its political life. In a dutiful way which gives it a dignity not possible in a country whose social usages admit of more caprice, every one lives up to the well-appointed order in which, beginning with the first drawing-room in the early spring, the various functions of each season follow one another.

While there may be more refreshment and enthusiasm in the novelty which American society admits of, it lacks that stability that emanates from the very sameness with which one English year follows in the footsteps of another, and that sense of ancient respectability which rises from the consciousness of participating in the same pleasures from youth to old age in which one's fathers similarly participated in their time.

Lady Randolph Churchill easily overcame the prejudices which existed in the minds of some English women against all American women. Young as she was, there was a commanding quality in her very presence which vanquished that narrowness that harbors petty dislike on a basis of nationality.

Both of her sisters married in England, one to Moreton Frewen and the other to the only son of Sir John Leslie, Bart., of Glaslough Monaghan.

Her two sons were born, the first, Winston Spencer Churchill, on the 30th of November, 1874, and the younger, John Winston Churchill, in February, 1880.

Between the duties of her home and those of a social nature, which her position in the world entailed upon her, the first period of her life in England passed. From 1880, however, dated the dramatic period of Lord Randolph Churchill's career, in which his wife bore so conspicuous a part. He rose to the leadership of that small section of the House known as the "Fourth Party," which, coming forward as an evidence of the vigor yet possessed by the Conservatives, succeeded in June, 1885, in overthrowing the Gladstonian ministry. He was frequently compared to Disraeli, and many people prophesied for him a similar career.

In 1883, in connection with Sir H. Drummond Wolf, Lord Randolph Churchill founded, in the interests of the Conservative party, that powerful organization, the Primrose League. In a membership to-day of over one and a half million, with Knights, Dames, and Associates, Lady Randolph Churchill stands number twelve upon its rolls. The kingdom and empire of Great Britain are dotted with its Habitations.

With its development there began a new phase of Lady Churchill's life. She became from that moment thoroughly an Englishwoman, identifying herself closely with her husband's public life and interests, aiding him not only with the popularity she had already attained, but with the remarkable sagacity she displayed in reference to all political questions. With the qualities that rendered her more charming as a woman she combined those most valuable in a man. Ambitious, intrepid, discreet, she was yet graceful, tactful, wise, and witty. She became at once a force among the members of the League, and, besides being much in demand at the social events at its various Habitations, she endeavored continually to impress upon its members the influence each might exercise in behalf of "that party which is pledged to support all that is dear to England, Religion, Law, Order, and Unity of the Empire."

In her character of Dame of the Primrose League she has participated in so many electioneering contests that she is almost as well known in England as any man in public life. When her husband, in 1885, attacked the seat held by Mr. John Bright for Birmingham, seconded by the Duchess of Marlborough, she canvassed the constituency for him. Never before had women gone thus among the workingmen of Birmingham, entering the factories as well as their homes, and addressing them both collectively and individually. Though they made much havoc in the ranks of Radicalism and greatly diminished his votes, they did not succeed in defeating "the tribune of the people."

Lady Churchill is a rousing speaker, and, with her great beauty and magnetism, evoked immense enthusiasm, her carriage being frequently surrounded and followed for some distance by cheering crowds. In South Paddington her efforts told with better effect, Lord Churchill securing the election in that district.

With the accession to office of Lord Salisbury's government, Lord Churchill went into the Cabinet as Secretary of State for India,—the real head of affairs of the far-away empire where the power is represented by a governor-general. During his brief tenure of that office his wife was decorated with the imperial order of the Crown of India, which has so recently been bestowed upon another American woman in the person of the present governor-general's wife.

Lord Churchill stood at this time at the very head of his party, and when a few months after resigning the office as Secretary of State for India he again went into the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, being at the time but thirty-seven years of age, there seemed opening to him a future of almost unprecedented brilliancy. More than ever was it said that he was treading in the footsteps of Lord Beaconsfield, to whom he had been so often compared, and the Prime Ministership seemed almost within his reach. His name was on every tongue, and when he appeared in public places accompanied by his wife, whose tall, slender figure and clear-eyed, interested face were as well known as his own, he was frequently greeted with outbursts of applause. When she drove in Hyde Park her carriage was frequently followed, and she was pointed out with the most enthusiastic admiration.

Not only in England, but accompanying her husband to Russia and Germany, she excited in both of those countries a similar sentiment, there being among the people an eager desire to see the beautiful American who was so much admired by the court circles.

Attractive as she was under all circumstances, she never more admirably reflected the fine qualities of her character than on that day when her husband rose amidst the absolute silence of the House of Commons to give his reasons for withdrawing from the Cabinet. Absorbed in him, she followed intently his every word and gesture, though aware beforehand of every syllable he would utter. With perfect self-control she revealed nothing either of regret, disappointment, or any sentiment upon which a guess at his plans for the future might be hazarded.

Socially her life ran in much the same channel. So great was her beauty and so many were her talents that, though her husband gradually withdrew from public life, she was continually in the public eye, being constantly in demand to open fairs, distribute prizes, and take part in concerts. In March, 1888, she went to Clydebank to christen the "City of New York," at that time one of the most remarkable vessels that had been built. During the following summer she opened an electrical exhibit at Birmingham, and a few days later conferred the annual awards at Malvern College, her husband accompanying her and making addresses upon both occasions. About this time also she made her first appearance as a literata in an article on the social life of Russia, based on the observations she had made while in St. Petersburg with her husband. Well informed, keenly observant, clever, and witty, she entered the lists without handicap, and her position to-day in the world of letters is at least unique. The most costly quarterly in existence, now entering upon its second year, is owned and edited by her.

In 1891, when he was but forty-two years old, Lord Randolph Churchill came suddenly face to face with the beginning of the end of his remarkable and crowded life. The utter physical collapse that followed, terminating in death in January, 1895, threw light upon much that had seemed inexplicable in the latter days of his public career.

Accompanied by his wife, he journeyed around the world in quest of the health which he was destined never to find. They passed through New York, Lady Churchill's first home, but made no stay, hastening across the continent to San Francisco. In Egypt, realizing how futile had been the long days and nights of travel and exile, he begged to be taken home to pass there the last few hours that yet remained to him.

From all who saw them they evoked pity and admiration,—pity for the man, stricken and doomed, in the very prime of his days and with the highest place among the statesmen of his time almost within his grasp, and admiration for the wife who, aglow with beauty, spirit, and ambition, manifested for him during those months of tragic gloom, in which his life closed, all the devotion and admiration which the most successful moments of his life, when he stood on the very pinnacle of fame, had called forth from her gratified heart.

The untimely disappearance from the world of a man whose magnetic nature had made him a leader of men and an idol of all classes of society appealed powerfully to public feeling. The tolling of the funeral bell from St. George's, in Hanover Square, a little after noon on the 24th of January, 1895, announced his death.

Though she took no part in the doings of the world for some time after her husband's death, Lady Randolph Churchill did not drop from its memory, nor is she in any degree less interesting to-day than she was as the wife of an eminent statesman. Her musical gifts and tastes gradually drew her from the seclusion of her early widowhood, and she reappeared in public first at concerts and at the opera, still dressing in black.

Her social graces and talents make her the genius of many house-parties, where individual gifts and accomplishments show to best advantage and are most in demand. In the tableaux and burlesque given at Blenheim Palace in January, 1898, to raise money for the Restoration Fund of St. Mary Magdalene's church at Woodstock, she appeared as a lady journalist, portraying the character with a realism that manifested an accurate knowledge of the original. She was also a guest at Chatsworth House during a recent visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales, taking part there in the private theatricals which were part of the entertainment offered to their Royal Highnesses.

To her sons she is a congenial spirit, being interested in the things that interest them, particularly in yachting, horses, and the various racing events of each year. It is owing largely, no doubt, to her love of an active out-of-door life that her figure yet retains much of the slenderness and suppleness of young womanhood. She stands and walks with all the grace of a girl, and is one of the most noted skaters in England.

Not only into their recreations, but into the serious side of her sons' lives, she enters with that earnestness which made her so inseparable a part of her husband's life.

In the summer of 1899 the elder of her sons, Mr. Winston Churchill, made his first effort for a seat in Parliament. Oldham, in Lancashire, the scene of his endeavors, has two Parliamentary seats, which both became vacant at the same time. Though they had been filled by Conservatives, the result of the balloting in 1899 showed that the cotton-spinners, who form a large class of the voters of the borough, were tired of Conservative rule, for both Liberal candidates came in with heavy majorities.

Towards the end of the campaign Lady Randolph Churchill went vigorously and enthusiastically to her son's assistance. "The Liberal candidates being married," she said, "have an advantage." Though she won him many votes and greatly reduced the opposition, as she had done in the days of the Birmingham contest, when her husband attacked Bright's seat, the result was inevitable, and both mother and son accepted it with the grace and spirit of thoroughbred woman- and manhood.

There is an anecdote frequently related of Lady Churchill's ready wit, called forth by a situation which arose during the electioneering campaign, in which she was taking an active interest, of Mr. Burdett-Coutts, husband of the old Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was at the time over eighty years of age. An old voter upon whom Lady Churchill called, and who seemed ready enough to cast his vote for Mr. Burdett-Coutts, took occasion, however, to relate to her, with much relish, the price which the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire had paid a butcher for his vote in the days of the famous Pitt and Fox contest, permitting him to kiss her lovely cheek. He concluded his narration with a direct intimation that he would consider a similar reward as fair payment for his own vote.

"Very well," replied Lady Churchill, smiling a gracious compliance, "I will book your vote on those terms, but you must remember that I am working for Mr. Burdett-Coutts, and I must, therefore, refer you for payment to the Baroness."

In June, 1899, the first number of Lady Churchill's quarterly, the Anglo-Saxon Review, which had been for several months the subject of much conjecture and speculation, appeared.

ran the opening lines of perhaps the cleverest of the many verses and paragraphs her new venture called forth.

Its contributions included papers from Lord Rosebery and Whitelaw Reid, a poem from Swinburne, with stories from Henry James, Gilbert Parker, and Sir Frank Sweetenham, and a drama from John Oliver Hobbes. Among the illustrations were a picture of the Queen, as frontispiece, and a reproduction of Gilbert Stewart's portrait of Washington. The binding was in keeping with the contents, and was of dark-blue morocco, richly tooled in gold, with the royal coat of arms in the centre, surmounted by the crown of England, with supporters, a reproduction of a cover designed in the seventeenth century by the court binder, Abraham Bateman. It sold, as have the subsequent editions, for a guinea a number, and was, as the enterprising editress said in her preface, a volume "worthy to be taken up into that Valhalla of printed things, the library."

At the outbreak of the war in the Transvaal in 1899 Lady Randolph Churchill gave another evidence of her public spirit and enterprise which identified her once again with her native country. As chairman of the committee of the American hospital ship "Maine," she took an active part in the direction and equipment of one of the finest ambulance ships in the service. The ship itself was loaned by the Atlantic Transport Company, and named in memory of the ill-fated American battle-ship "Maine." The contributions for its equipment were made by Americans on both sides of the ocean. Among the American women living in England who actively interested themselves in the matter were Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain, Mrs. Arthur Paget, Mrs. Bradley-Martin, and both of Lady Randolph Churchill's sisters.

An appeal, issued on the 27th of October, for thirty thousand pounds met with a speedy response, and in the course of a few weeks the American hospital ship "Maine," flying the flag that was a gift from the Queen, and with accommodations for two hundred sick or wounded soldiers, carrying its corps of surgeons and nurses and Lady Randolph Churchill herself, was on its way to Durban.

Though it was as the wife of Lord Randolph Churchill and through her close identification with his interests that Lady Churchill first came prominently before the world, it is undoubtedly her own personality that has made for her the place she holds there to-day.

On the 28th of July, 1900, Lady Randolph Churchill became the wife of Mr. George Cornwallis West. Though marriages of women to men many years their junior are by no means rare in British society, the rumor of this engagement, which had been afloat for quite a year, excited an unusual amount of comment and criticism. The ceremony was performed at St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, the Duke of Marlborough leading Lady Churchill to the altar. Though widows of titled men in England may upon entering into a second marriage retain the name and title acquired through their former marriage, Lady Randolph Churchill settled the much-discussed question as to whether she would retain hers by her decision to be known as Mrs. George Cornwallis West.

Not yet in middle life, and with two sons to be launched upon their careers, in which she has already foreshadowed what her part may be, the world may still expect to hear much of her, for there is a bracing and vigorous quality in her individuality that renders her interesting and inspiring to many classes and many countries. She has been frequently reproduced in the fiction of her era, more than one English writer drawing his material continually from her life and character.

To what extent her beauty forms part of her magnetism is with many people a debatable question. Though Long painted her as a typical beauty, and Sargent's canvas of her that hangs in her own library portrays an exquisite feminine loveliness, she leans perhaps too much towards the masculine in mental poise and temperament to be an adequate reflection of purely feminine beauty. A many-sided, strong, self-sustained character, her outward form is an expression of her own uncommon personality rather than a type of conventional beauty.

NELLIE HAZELTINE
(MRS. FREDERICK W. PARAMORE)

Among the members of the graduating class at Mary Institute, St. Louis, in the year 1873, was a young girl who, in addition to the bright mind and intellectual ambition she had already manifested, was endowed with so extraordinary a physical beauty and so lovable a character that much of the brilliancy of her life might even then have been foretold. She was not yet seventeen years old, and was as absolutely unconscious of the unusual loveliness of her person as she ever seemed to be even after ten years of adulation.

Her figure had already attained a faultless contour, and in her simple graduation gown of white French muslin, the flounces of its skirt headed with wreaths of pink roses and green leaves, and its round bodice offset with a bertha covered in the same design of roses and leaves, she suggested all the fragrance and beauty of a flower. Her red-gold hair seemed to reflect some of the sun's own glory, and with the marvellous delicacy of her skin, the deep wine-color of her eyes, and the classic perfection of her features, there can be little doubt that she was, as she was so often said to be later, the most beautiful woman ever born west of the Mississippi.

Among her school-mates Nellie Hazeltine had won that popularity that was hers in after years to so remarkable an extent among all women. The power she possessed of diffusing herself and all that pertained to her among others precluded every thought of envy, and those with whom she came in contact experienced rather a sense of personal gratification in the contemplation of her gifts than any desire to despoil her of them or of the admiration they attracted.

She was the only daughter of Captain William B. Hazeltine, a man who had made a large fortune in the mercantile world, and she went from school to further enhance the attractiveness of an already beautiful home. There for several years she continued her studies, though it was not unusual then for girls of her age to take up their position in the social world immediately upon quitting school. As a result her accomplishments were of a higher order than those commonly possessed by the young women of her period. She was well read, she spoke French with the same ease with which she spoke her mother tongue, and was a musician of unusual ability. Such attributes soon gained for her a wide reputation and a unique position in the society of her native city.

In the matter of its social complexion St. Louis has generally been classed among the cities of the South. Besides the French, who formed a large proportion of its early settlers, those who rose early to a leading position were the families who had migrated there from Virginia and Kentucky. They were slave-owners and landholders, and as such gave a substantial character to the social foundations of the city. The Anglo-Saxon gradually absorbed the French element, which, though it disappeared from the political horizon, still formed a powerful undercurrent in the lives of the people, harmonizing the forms of their social intercourse and imparting a certain artistic value to their existence generally, that gave St. Louis a distinctive place among the growing and wealthy young cities in its vicinity. This, with the character it took from the dominant race, which restrained it from that tendency to display that was elsewhere more or less apparent, yet which ever inculcated the sacred laws of hospitality, blended into a delightful whole and gave to the city a charm that it has never lost.

Of such a civilization Nellie Hazeltine has unquestionably been the fairest product. Yet no one was less conscious than she of the eminence of her position or of the sensation her appearance invariably created.

Shortly after the beginning of her social career she went with her father to Washington to attend a competitive drill of military organizations from all sections of the country. While there she was selected to present the colors to the company of which her father was captain. Among the spectators of a scene which is always more or less inspiring, was a man who, though already past middle-life, was yet not proof against the witchery of such a singularly lovely presence as Nellie Hazeltine's. From the moment she thus crossed his life, like many another man of less prominence, Samuel J. Tilden followed her career with an ardent and chivalrous admiration that increased as her beautiful character developed and disclosed itself.

When he came before the country as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and captured not only the nomination but the majority vote of the people, when his name was on every tongue in America, and everything that concerned him was of absorbing interest, the story of his devotion to Nellie Hazeltine spread throughout the length and breadth of the country.

From the moment it became known that Samuel J. Tilden had been elected President of the United States, till Samuel J. Randall, Speaker of the House of Representatives, cutting the tie vote of that body, redeemed its pledge to abide by the decision of the Electoral Commission, which declared Rutherford B. Hayes President of the United States, forms one of the most thrilling periods in our political history. It was but eleven years after the great civil struggle, and people living to-day, when the sinews of the nation are again knitted, cannot easily estimate the bitterness engendered by the campaign that fell during our centennial year.

The contest reached nothing less than a sublime climax when Randall, with nothing in his great form or his strong face to betray the struggle it had cost him, stepped quietly down from the Speaker's platform, and, taking his place on the floor of the House, uttered amid its breathless silence that affirmative syllable upon which hung national tranquillity.

Both men took the oath of office,—Tilden, the people's choice, in the privacy of his own home in New York, and Hayes, twice, first, on Saturday afternoon, the 3d of March, in the White House, overlapping Grant's term of office by a few hours, that there might be no intermission occasioned by inauguration-day falling on Sunday; and again on Monday, the 5th of March, in the presence of the people.

A Presidential campaign that proceeds and terminates in the usual way is sufficient to entail an enormous amount of publicity upon the candidates. The campaign of '76, however, gave Tilden both a prominence and a place in the affections of the people of his country that could scarcely have been greater had he been permitted to fill the high office to which they elected him.

His bachelorhood was an interesting feature of his personality, for we had had at that time but one bachelor President. The sentimental side of public opinion was satisfied, however, with the report that he was soon to be married to Miss Hazeltine. On her part, though his admiration for her was easily apparent, she never referred to his having offered himself to her any more than she revealed the fact of any other man ever having honored her with a similar proposal. Yet it was known through men who could not easily disguise the sharpness of their disappointment at her rejection of their suit that she was continually the recipient of such offers.

Though she was already well known socially, in both St. Louis and New York, her fame was established after the summers of 1876 and 1877 on a vastly wider basis. During the latter season she made a tour of the Eastern watering-places, and went for the first time to the Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs, succeeding Mattie Ould in its social leadership during the last days of the old régime, when it occupied the first rank as a distinctively Southern resort.

There was no one who made any pretence of rivalling her, though fair women from every section of the South still upheld the fame of the old resort. She has been frequently compared to Mattie Ould, and the history of their short lives furnishes several points of similarity. Hers was a more faultless type of beauty than Mattie Ould's, however, and she had a reserve and dignity that were in keeping with its high order, whereas, Mattie Ould was distinguished by a flow of spirits and a brilliancy of wit that captivated every fancy and carried all before it. Both had the power to attract and hold the attention and admiration of large circles of people, one by the overwhelming sparkle of her words, the other by the magic of a lovely presence.

Nellie Hazeltine was at all times as charming in the society of her own sex as she was among men; and women in every rank of life had for her a tender attachment. Many a girl trying her uncertain young social wings for the first time owed to her that subsequent enjoyment and happiness which is called success. She was absolutely unselfish, and without display used the remarkable power which her own fascinating personality gave her to add to the happiness or improve the condition of others.

On the 2d of December, 1881, she was married to Mr. Frederick W. Paramore, a young railroad man of St. Louis, and a son of Mr. J. W. Paramore, who was president of the Texas and St. Louis Railroad.

Memories of her, like those of Mattie Ould, centre in the days of a glorious girlhood. She was but twenty-seven years of age when she passed out of life, a little more than two years after her marriage, followed by an infant son whose existence had measured but a few days. The entire city of St. Louis mourned her loss, and few people have been laid to rest amid such evidences of a profound and universal grief as followed her. Her grave in Bellefontaine, whither strangers visiting St. Louis still frequently make a pilgrimage, was literally filled in with flowers by the young women of the city, to whom her life had been a beautiful example.

In the Museum of St. Louis, there hangs a portrait of her painted by Carl Gutherz. It is a full-length figure dressed in white and standing in her own drawing-room. Her abundant hair is arranged after the peculiar fashion of the day, with a heavy fringe low on the forehead. From beneath it, however, there looks down upon the beholder a face reflecting something of both the heart and mind whence flowed the charm of Nellie Hazeltine's personality, and of a beauty so ideal as to be almost sufficient in itself to immortalize her among the women of her country.

MARY VICTORIA LEITER
(BARONESS CURZON OF KEDLESTON)

For the second time within the century an American woman has risen to viceregal honors. Mary Caton, the granddaughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton and the widow of Robert Patterson, of Baltimore, through her marriage, in 1825, to the Marquis of Wellesley, who was at the time Viceroy of Ireland, went to reign a queen in the country whence her ancestors, more than a century before, had emigrated to America. In Mary Victoria Leiter, whose life, to the people of a future generation, will read much like romance, we again behold an American woman, who, like the Marchioness of Wellesley at the time she became Vicereine of Ireland, is still young and beautiful, filling a similar position in India, with its four hundred millions of subjects.

The parallel between her life and that of Mary Caton, however, goes no farther. Wellesley was already in possession of the Governor-Generalship of Ireland when he married Mrs. Patterson. He was, moreover, beyond the threescore mark in years, and he bore "his blushing honors thick upon him," having already been Viceroy of India. Curzon was but thirty-nine years old when the governor-generalship of the latter mighty country, the shining mark of many a man's whole career, was offered to him. His public life bore little more than "the tender leaves of hope," though his writings on Eastern topics were already accepted as highly authoritative. Lady Wellesley had but to follow the leadership of a man of recognized ability and established fame, while Lady Curzon walks side by side with the man who is making that steep ascent which the British editorial mind has classified as "Salisbury's most interesting experiment." It is, moreover, an open secret that, far from shrinking from the new office, with the weight of responsibility which it imposed, she encouraged her husband to accept it.

While we are familiar with that phase of international marriage which confers rank and title upon the daughters of our republic, no American woman has ever played such a part in the British empire as has fallen to the lot of Lady Curzon. From that day in the spring of 1895, when she became the wife of the young Commoner, George Nathaniel Curzon, she stepped into English history; the days of her American belleship became a fragrant reminiscence. The qualities which had given them brilliancy, however, continued to illuminate the broader horizon of her life in England, and have become in her present exalted position the admiration of her own country, whose interest in her is purely personal, and the gratification of England, whose interest is political and much farther-reaching.

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.