ANNA HOWABD SHAW By Lucy E. Anthony A YOUNG girl fainted while giving her first recitation at school — fainted from stage fright. When she recov- ered, her teacher wanted her to go home, but Anna How- ard Shaw insisted on going back to complete her recitation, saying that if she failed to finish it then she would never again be able to recite anything. This child developed a genius for pubUc speaking and oratory, and an infinite capacity for work, which, coupled with her native longing for liberty, and a sense of justice inherited from her great-grandmother, Nicolas Stott, united in making of her a worker, speaker, and orator of recognized ability in the various reforms to which she has given her life. Anna Howard Shaw was bom at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Eng- land, February 14, 1847. When she was very young her fam- ily emigrated to the United States, making the journey in a sailing vessel. When a week out at sea the ship was wrecked and towed back to Queenstown port where it remained many days for repairs. During this time she visited Spike Island, where there was a great prison and where she saw prisoners forced to dip water from the sea on one side of the island, carry it across and empty it into the ocean on the other side. Long afterwards when she became interested in prisoners, this example came back to her as her first conscious lesson of the inefficiency of the government in dealing with its criminals, and the useless waste of the energy and strength of human beings. After reaching this country she attended public school at Lawrence, Massachusetts, until she was twelve years old, when the family moved to Michigan, making the journey mostly by wagon. At first they lived in a little log house which the father and brothers had built before the arrival of the others, chopping down the great primeval pines, oaks, and bird *s-eye maples for space for the hut. Miss Shaw remembers the de- spair which overcame her mother when she reached this place.
