Woman of the Century/Morilla M. Norton

NORTON, Miss Morilla M., specialist in French literature, born in Ogden, N. Y., 22nd September, 1865. Her father is Rev. Smith Norton, descended from the Maine and Massachusetts families of Norton and Weston, and her mother was Morilla E. Hill Norton, a rare and cultivated woman, who died in the early infancy of her only daughter. She was a niece of Madame Willard, mother of Miss Frances E. Willard. Miss Norton's maternal ancestors, the Hills, the Thompsons and the Morrills, of New Hampshire and Vermont, were among the foremost citizens and patriots of

their time. Her great-grandfather, Abraham Morrill, was a member of Stark's famous brigade in the battle of Bennington. Miss Norton received her education through study at home and in some of the best private schools of Boston, Mass. She spent the five years, 1886 to 1891, in Europe. During the first year she studied chiefly in Berlin. She spent some months in St. Petersburg, traveled in Germany and Italy, where she paid especial attention to art, and studied in excellent French families in the jura and in Lausanne. She has also traveled in England, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium and France, and resided three-and-a-half years in Paris, a student, under private professors and in the Sorbonne and College de France, of the French language and literature, which is her specialty. She has taken extended courses in the Sorbonne and College de France in English literature, in Italian history and art, and the political history of Europe, but has devoted most of her time and energies to a study of the French poets, philosophers, moralists, dramatists, critics and novelists, from the earliest times to the present. She speaks French with ease and purity. She is a member of the church connected with the American Chapel in Paris, and her sympathy with humanity is broad and deep. Miss Norton wields a facile pen, excelling in thought, and in clear, terse and graceful expression. Her productions have been accepted by the "Atlantic Monthly," Boston "Transcript," New York "Observer and other journals. Her home is with her parents in Beloit, Wis. Since her return, in 1891, to her native land, she has devoted herself to the upbuilding of her health and to the preparation of courses of lectures on French literature, to be delivered before literary clubs and classes.