French and the influence and care of a refined Christian home. In the years of her residence in Europe Mrs. Willard's gifts and wide acquaintance have ever been at the service of her countrywomen and she stood there as here as a representative of the best phases of total abstinence reform.
Mrs. Alice Williams during years of suffering and invalidism read, studied and thought much on temperance subjects, and when restored to health the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was formed in her state of Missouri. She became an active local worker. In 1884 she went with her husband to Lake Bluff, 111., to a prohibition conference there. At the request of Missouri state president, Mrs. Williams' voice was first heard from the platform in a two minutes' speech. She was appointed superintendent of the young woman's work in Missouri and was called to every part of the state to speak and organize. She always commanded large audiences and her lectures presented the truth of the temperance question and social purity in an unusually strong, yet not offensive manner.
Mrs. Jennie Fowler Willing's father was a Canadian "patriot," who lost all in an attempt to secure national independence, and was glad to escape to the States with his family to begin life again in the New West, so that this inherited love of freedom and a mixture of heroic English, Scotch and Irish blood in her veins, naturally brought Mrs. Willing to the fore when the great temperance crusade swept over the land. For several years she was president of the Illinois State Woman's Temperance Union, and with Emily Huntington Miller she issued the call for the Cleveland convention, presiding over that body in which the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union was organized. For a few years she edited its organ now the Union Signal. Mrs. Willing was drawn into public speaking by her temperance zeal and soon found herself addressing immense audiences in all the great cities of the country. As an evangelist she held many large revival services with marked success, and after moving to New York City in 1899, her life was as full of good works as it would seem possible for any human being's to be. She was interested in foreign mission work conducting her evangelistic services, was superintendent in an Italian mission and the bureau of immigration with its immigrant girls' homes in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Her English sturdiness, Scotch persistence, and Irish vivacity, her altogether usefulness made her an ideal type of an American woman.
Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer, although originally famous for her work in the Women's Relief Corps, has done no less efficient service for the temperance cause. When the Civil War broke out she became Iowa's volunteer agent to distribute supplies to the army and was the first sanitary agent for the state, being elected by the legislature. She received a pass from Secretary of War Stanton, which was endorsed by President Lincoln and throughout the Civil War she was constantly in the field ministering to the sick and wounded in the hospital and on the battlefield. She was personally acquainted with the leading generals of the army and was a special friend of General Grant and accompanied him and Mrs. Grant on the boat of observation that went down the Mississippi to see six gunboats and eight wooden steamers run the blockade. While in the service she introduced a reform in hospital cookery known as the special diet kitchens, which was made a part of the United States Army system and which saved the lives of thousands of soldiers who
