Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/245

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226 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS several children, one of whom, the late Mrs. Alice Gordon Gulick, founded a college for girls in Madrid, Spain, where she with her husband and family held a position of large influ- ence for thirty years. In the Gordon home God was reverenced and attention was given to the individual development of each child. Daily at family prayers the Scriptures were read, and there were al- ways music and the singing of hymns. Frances Willard has told us that at no place did she ever hear such beautiful voices in song in one family. The father was prominent for many years in the councils of the Congregational church, serving in different capacities. For a quarter of a century he was treasurer of the board of commissioners of Foreign Missions. The atmosphere of that home was conducive to the develop- ment of the true, the beautiful, and the good in the lives of those who shared its beneficent influence. Anna was a happy, bonnie Uttle giri, with sunny brown hair, and large, beautiful, appealing eyes. She could sing almost as sweetly as the birds she loved, and by the time she was ten years old, she played the hymns that were sung at family prayers. She dearly loved flowers, pets, and smiUng, win- some babies and was blessed with a tender, sympathetic spirit. She was three years old when her father and mother moved from Boston to Auburndale, a beautiful suburb. A glimpse of the child's first day in the new home shows Miss Gordon's essentially esthetic temperament. *'She had been missed by members of the household, and a search was made, resulting in the discovery of the child leaning over an old cane-seated chair, which had blossomed into a miniature bed of violets under her magic touch ; the child 's eyes had been quick to spy the blossoms, her small hands scarcely less quick to transfer them to the old cane seat, dropping them one by one into the perforated surface. ' ' ^ Miss Gordon attended the Boston high school and later Lasall Seminary and Mt. Holyoke College. She spent a year with her sister in Madrid, and upon her return contin- ued her musical studies until she met Frances E. Willard at 1 Union Signal, April 30, 1914, p. 6.