Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/252

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ANNA A. GORDON 233 woman. Concerning herself she is non-communicative, ac- cnstomed as she is to ministering, and not to be ministered onto. She accepts the admiration and the devotion of friends with sweet humility and utter lack of self -consciousness. Miss Gordon has ever kept the love of the child so close to her heart that she has seemed to hear its cry for a better op- portunity to live and to love. The response of her poetic na- ture has given us the children 's songs set to music, the stories and word pictures that lift all to a higher level and arouse a longing to help others to see God in everything. In her love of child life and love of art and love of music she has sought to make richer the harmonies of every life. Miss Gordon has been identified with the interests of the organization of which she is now the head aknost from its in- ception. She has spent much time abroad in the interests of children and of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union, having crossed the Atlantic twenty-four times. In our own country her name is known and loved in every section of the land. She has accomplished more than any woman of her generation in her work for children. She has served and conserved the interests of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union with a love and loyalty which have few parallels. Love and loyalty are the outstanding characteristics of the many-sided life of this remarkable woman. As general secretary of the World's Loyal Temperance Le- gion, her definite relation to and interest in the children of nearly forty nations have given her an opportunity for a knowledge of child life and endeavor unprecedented by any other living person. With perhaps the most vajied experience in philanthropic work of any American woman, with rare optimism, executive ability and wise diplomacy, Anna Adams Gordon leads the Temperance Women of this country.