authorship of that hymn, but she proved her right to it, beyond all doubt, in 1878, after it had been rated as a classic. In 1855 she became the wife of Benjamin F. Mace, a lawyer of Bangor, remaining in that
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FRANCES LAUGHTON MACE.
city until 1885, when they removed to San José, Cal., where they now reside. Four of the eight children born to them died. When the latest- born had entered its second year, her fountain of poetry, which had run mostly underground during twenty years, sprang up afresh, and "Israfil" was written, appearing with illustrations in "Harper's Magazine," winning for her quick recognition and advancing her toward the front rank of singers. Since then her poems have found place in the leading magazines and journals In 1883 she published a collection of poems in a volume entitled "Legends, Lyrics and Sonnets," soon followed by a second edition, enlarged and extended. In 1888, a volume of her latest work was published with the title "Under Pine and Palm," adding to her reputation.
MtCLAIN, Mrs. Louise Bowman, author, born in Madison, Ind., 9th August, 1841. She was educated in the common schools of that city, graduating from the high school when but little more than fourteen years of age.
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LOUISE BOWMAN McCLAIN.
While in those days she exhibited remarkable facility in the stiff, formal lessons of the text-books, her mind and heart were fast developing along another line wholly independent of the discipline of the school-room, and at an early age she had shown a great fondness for poetry. That fondness was partly inherited and partly due to the inspiring scenes amid which she grew up. Her mother, Emily Huntley Bowman, who was a cousin of Lydia Huntley Sigourney, was herself a poet of more than ordinary ability. Her father, Elijah Goodell Bowman, was a man of strong mental powers and wide and diversified knowledge, and to his careful and healthful pruning is due much of the symmetry which her work possesses. Mrs. McClain has never published a book, but her poems, sketches and stories have appeared in various papers and magazines of Indiana and other States. Her work is of a high order, pure, refined and elevating. She is the wife of Rev. T. B. McClain, of the Methodist Fpiscopal Church.
McCOMAS, Mrs. Alice Moore, author, editor, lecturer and reformer, born in Paris, Ill., 18th June, 1850. Her father, the late Gen. Jesse H. Moore, scholar, clergyman, soldier and statesman, who died while serving his government as United States Consul in Callao, Peru, was at the time of her birth, president of the Paris academy. He came of an old Virginia family whose ancestors were noted for their valor and love of country in the wars of 1776 and 1812. Her mother, a native of Kentucky, was a daughter of one of Kentucky's prominent families, which gave to the world the famous clergyman, William H. Thompson, and John W. Thompson the celebrated Indiana jurist, from both sides of her family she inherited literary taste.
From the age of eight years she had her own opinions on social and religious questions, and often astonished her elders with profound questionings, which brought upon her the name of '"peculiar," and her aggressiveness as she became older, in clinging to those opinions, even when very unpopular, added to that the opprobrium, "self-willed and headstrong." During the Civil War, in which nearly all tier male relatives and friends, including the man whose wife she afterwards became, had enlisted for the defense of the Union, she commenced the study of politics. At that time she read of the woman's rights movement. While she had not the courage openly to advocate a thing hooted at and pronounced "unwomanly" by many in her circle, her nature rebelled against the inequality of the sexes. In school she traded compositions for worked-out mathematical problems, averaging many terms from six to ten
