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298 terest to all those who care at all to read these brief: biographies.

are questions which I am wholly unprepared to answer. Of her birth and youth I have been unable to glean any definite information. One newspaper paragraph states that she is the only daughter of a poor but learned clergyman, who educated her himself thoroughly in the classics and sciences. Another, with less appearance of reliability, declares her to be the ward and adopted daughter of her warm friend and admirer Herbert Spencer, and that it is to his tuition and companionship that she owes her thorough education. Neither of these stories is, perhaps, correct. All that we do know certainly of her youth are the facts that her maiden name was Marian Evans, and that she has a thorough and classical education; and so must have enjoyed from