Woman of the Century/Charlotte Fiske Bates Roge

ROGE, Mrs. Charlotte Flake Bates, author, critic and educator, born in New York, 30th November, 1838. Her father died during her infancy, and her home from her eighth year almost to the time of her marriage was with her mother and family in Cambridge, Mass. There Miss Bates attended the public schools, and there for twenty-five years was engaged in private teaching. She began to write at eighteen, and her first paid efforts appeared several years later in "Our Young Folks." She has ever since contributed more or less to the periodicals and has much in manuscript awaiting publication, but only one volume of her verse has been issued, "Risk, and Other Poems" (Boston, 1879). Nine of the French translations in the book she made for Longfellow's "Poems of Places," in whose preparation she aided considerably. She edited two delightful compilations from his own works, and to his memory was dedicated her anthology of British and American verse, "The Cambridge Book of Poetry and Song" (New York, 1882). CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES ROGÉ. She has given some admirable lectures and readings from her own writings, which are in many veins of thought. Nowhere is she happier than in the humorous epigram. The ethic fun which she can put into twenty words, no other writer can surpass. She has done much for good causes, especially for those connected with her art. and once at least was a successful organizer. Alone and under difficulties she carried out the authors' reading in Sanders' Theater, Cambridge, which added a loyal emphasis and a considerable sum to the Longfellow memorial fund. It was in her native city that she taught last, and there an attack of pneumonia proved nearly fatal. The physicians expecting her death, the report of its occurrence was circulated by the press, and, though the error was speedily and publicly corrected, it crept into Cassell’s late publication, "Younger American Poets," whose preface regrets her loss. On 4th June, 1891, Miss Bates, who still keeps her maiden name in literature, became the wife of M. Edouard Rogé, of New York, where she is now living. In December, 1891. she was appointed an honorary and corresponding member of the advisory council on literary congresses, woman's branch of the W. C. A., in the Chicago Exposition. She has a broad mind, open to the most advanced ideas of the epoch. She is a poet, divining well the moods and needs of the human heart. She is a christian, eager above all to help and uplift men through her genius.