Society. From that she naturally passed into the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874 as the systematized form of the great Ohio crusade. In that society her abilities at once marked her as a leader. Suffering from a morbid shyness which, as a school-girl, made the simple reading of an essay a most trying ordeal, she sought nothing more eagerly than the privilege of working in obscurity, but circumstances pushed her to the platform, where her own natural abilities have won for her a foremost place. At the convention held in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1874, she was made chairman of a committee to draft a constitution and by-laws for the newly organized Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the Fifth Congressional District. She is now the superintendent of the national department of parliamentary usage, and the drills which she conducts in the white-ribboners' "School of Methods" and elsewhere are attended by persons of both sexes At the Chautauquas, where she has had charge, these drills, attended by hundreds, have met an ever increasing need and have been among the most popular meetings held. Mrs. Benjamin has for years been a victim to neuralgia, but her remarkable will power has carried her on until she has become one of the leaders in State and national work. She is a logical, convincing, enthusiastic speaker with a deep, powerful voice and urgent manner. She has been elected president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union for the fifth district of Michigan for thirteen consecutive years, and has built up white-ribbon interests in the Bay View Assembly, until that foremost summer camp has become a model for all others in that particular. Mrs. Benjamin is a notably excellent presiding officer and a skilled parliamentarian.
BENNETT, Mrs. Adelaide George, poet, born in Warner, N. H., 8th November, 1848. Her childhood was passed under the shadow of the famed Kearsarge Mountain. She is the daughter of Gilman C. and Nancy B. George and a sister of H. Maria George, who is also well-known in literary circles. She was educated in Contoocook Academy
and under private tutors. She taught several years in the public schools of Manchester, N. H. In October, 1887, Miss George was married to Charles H. Bennett, of Pipestone City, Minn. Their marriage was quite a romantic one and was noticed by many papers of the country. The fascinating glamour of legend, woven into poetry by the master hand of Longfellow in his "Song of Hiawatha," led her to covet a piece of the "blood-red mystic stone " for her cabinet of geological curiosities, and she wrote to the postmaster of Pipestone City, then a paper town surveyed within the precincts of the sacred quarry, for a specimen of the stone. The specimen was forwarded by Mr. Bennett, accompanied by a set of views of the quarry and surrounding region, and a correspondence and acquaintance followed, which resulted in their marriage. On their bridal tour, while calling upon Mr. Longfellow, they informed him that he had unwittingly been a match-maker. As they went down the steps of the old colonial mansion, the venerable figure of the immortal poet was framed in the wide doorway as he beamed a benediction upon them and wished them much joy at their "hanging of the crane." Mrs. Bennett wrote no poems for the press until after her marriage. When she did write for publication, it was at the solicitation of her husband. She is a botanist of distinction. During the season of 1883 she made a collection of the flora of the Pipestone region for Prof. Winchell's report on the botanical resources of Minnesota. That collection was, at the request of Prof. Winchell, exhibited in the New Orleans World's Exposition in 1884. She is an active member of the Woman's Relief Corps, and during 1888-89 she held the office of National Inspector of
ADELAIDE GEORGE BENNETT.
Minnesota. She has quite a reputation throughout the West for the writing and rendition of poems on public occasions. Possessing rare qualifications for literary work, jhe has principally confined herself to poetry. She has an elegant prose style, as is shown in her correspondence and a number of fugitive newspaper and magazine articles.
BENNETT, Mrs. Alice, doctor of medicine, born in Wrentham, Mass., 31st January, 1851. She was the youngest of six children born to Francis I. and Lydia Hayden Bennett. She was educated in Day's Academy, in her native town, and taught in the district schools there from her seventeenth to her twenty-first year. During that period she prepared herself for the step which, at that place and time, was a sort of social outlawry, and at the age of twenty-one she entered the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, from which she was graduated in March, 1876 One of the intervening years was spent as interne in the New England Hospital, Boston, under Dr. Susan Dimock. After her graduation Dr. Bennett went into dispensary work, living in the slums of Philadelphia for seven months. In October, 1876, she became demonstrator of anatomy in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania and during four years devoted herself to the study and teaching of anatomy, in connection with private practice. At the same time she was pursuing a course of scientific study in the University of Pennsylvania, and received the degree of Ph.D. from that institution in June, 1880. Her graduating thesis upon the anatomy of the fore-limb of the marmoset received honorable mention. In the same month she was elected to the important position she still occupies as superintendent of the department for women of the State
