Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/115

84 years, spending her summers in Sackville, N.B., with her father, ever attentive to his comfort and happiness as long as he lived. At the expiration of five years she had leave of absence, and went to Europe for hospital work. At various times she has taken post-graduate courses in New York and other cities. When she had been at the Conservatory nine years (during which time she had acquired a large outside practice, not being in any way restricted by the trustees of the Conservatory), she became lecturer on diseases of women at Boston University. As her duties increased in other directions, she wished to resign her position at the Conservatory, but was obliged to wait three years before her resignation would be accepted. She is ever grateful and appreciative of the unfailing courtesy which was shown her at that institution. In 1900 she took up her residence at the Westminster, Copley Square.

Doctor Cahill is a busy and happy woman, loving the profession in which she has been so successful. She is president of the Twentieth Century Medical Club, second vice-president of the Massachusetts Surgical and Gynecological Society, first vice-president of the Boston Homœopathic Medical Society, a member of the American Institute of Homoeopathy, the Electro-Therapeutical Society, Society for University Education of Women, and the Actors' Alliance, and first vice-president of the Alunmi Association of Boston University School of Medicine. Although too busy to be often present at the meetings, she is a member of the New England Women's Club and the Women's Educational and Industrial Union and a stockholder in the Woman's Club-house Corporation. From girlhood she has been a member of the Methodist church.

LIDA RUMSEY FOWLE. philanthropic worker, one of the founders, in 1863, of the Soldiers' Free Library and Reading Room in Washington, D.C., has been for the past fifteen years, with her husband, Mr. John A. Fowle, a resident of Dorchester, Mass. She was born in New York City, June 6, 1842, daughter of John Wickliffe and Mary Agnes (Underbill) Rumsey.

In 1861 her parents removed to Washing-Ion. Her mother was constant in works of love among the soldiers of the Civil War, and Miss Ruinsey (now Mrs. Fowle) soon began visiting the hospitals with a desire to add sunshine to the dreary days of the sick and wounded. Realizing that her musical talents could be of service, she sang to them songs that were an inspiration. Men released from Libby Prison and located temporarily at the Soldiers' Rest she aroused from a state of apathy and gloom to one of courage and hope. Forming plans for improving the condition of the convalescents and other soldiers stationed at Washington, she received the co-operation of Mr. John A. Fowle, who held a position in the Navy Department at Washington. They established a Sunday evening prayer meeting in Columbian College hospital, an upper room in "Auntie Pomoroy's" ward being assigned for the purpose. It was crowded every night, and overflow meetings were held in a grove near by. A report of these gatherings in "Our Army Nurses" says: "The interest steadily increased, the boys often doing double duty in order to be present. The enthusiasm of the soldiers could not be repressed when Miss Rumsey's sweet voice stirred their souls and rekindled the noble, self-sacrificing spirit that had brought them to such a place; and cheers shook the very walls."

Miss Rumsey also saw active service among the wounded and dying on the battle-field. Mr. Frank Moore, in "Women of the War," gives the following account <if her work after the second battle of Bull Run, fought August 30, 1862: "Mr. Fowle obtained an ambulance, and Miss Rumsey loaded it with some four hundred and fifty loaves of bread, meat, spirits of all kinds, bandages, lint, shirts, and other stores. Leaving Washington late on Saturday afternoon, they drove out by way of Bailey's Cross-roads, and reached Centreville very early on Sunday morning. They halted at a little building near the road, which was already nearly full of the wounded. . . . For some time Miss Rumsey renained in the ambulance, giving out bread to the famishing boys, who crowded around as soon as it was known there was anything to be eaten there. Most of them