Woman of the Century/Emily Gillmore Alden

ALDEN, Miss Emily Gillmore, author and educator, born in Boston, Mass., 21st January, 1834. In infancy her parents removed to Cambridge, and her education was pursued in the public schools of that city, and in Mt. Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass. Her career has been chiefly that of a teacher in Castleton, Vt., and in Monticello Seminary, Godfrey, Ill. In this latter institution she now has charge of the departments of history, rhetoric, and English literature, and of senior classes for graduation. Her literary work, stimulated probably by the scope of her teaching and her experience as an enthusiastic and truly artistic educator, has been the recreation of her years, and her poems have the delicacy and spontaneity that belong to genius. Miss Alden comes of Pilgrim ancestry, being of the eighth generation in lineal descent from the Mayflower. She is singularly retiring in manner, courts no admiration for her work, and holds ever her daintiest verses in most modest estimation. She shrinks from publicity, and her first efforts were offered under a pen-name. An early critic, detecting an artistic touch in her poetic fancy, insisted that the mask should be dropped, and since then her poems have reached a very appreciative circle of readers under her own signature.