Woman of the Century/Olive White Smith

SMITH, Mrs. Olive White, author, born in Clarendon, Vt., 25th December, 1846 She is generally known in literature as Mrs. Clinton Smith. Her ancestors were among the early settlers of Vermont. Her father, Charles White, was a pioneer geologist and the discoverer of several of the Vermont marble quarries. Her childhood was passed among the Green Mountains. She grew up with a mind imbued with astern morality, tempered by a love of humanity, which led her in girlhood to be intelligently interested in the abolition of slavery. She was educated under Mrs. H. F. Leavitt. in the female seminary established by Mrs. Emma Willard, in Middlebury, Vt. Home and foreign missions claimed her attention, and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union found in her an enthusiastic friend. Although her home has been in a retired corner of the great world, so deep has been her interest in public affairs that she has lived in the current of passing events. OLIVE WHITE SMITH. Possessing a reverence, for law. she marveled at the ease with which the prohibitory liquor law of her State was evaded. Alter spending much time and energy in interviewing judges, justices, sheriffs and States' attorneys, she came to the conclusion that those officers, holding their positions through the votes of a political party, will go no further in good works than that party demands. Her parlors have been a gathering place for temperance people and prohibitionists. She has written some temperance articles and addresses, as well as short poems and stories, for New York papers and magazines. All of her life she has been connected with Sunday- school work in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Her husband sympathizes in all her hopes, and they have an interesting family of five children. She has been a contributor to the "Rural New Yorker," the New York "Weekly Witness." "Demorest's Magazine" and other periodicals. She has used the pen-names "Alicia" and "August Noon." Her home was in Middlebury, Vt., until 1891, when her husband was called to a Government position in Washington, D. C, and removed his family to that city, where Mrs. Smith is actively engaged in literary pursuits.