Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/899

856 Miss Scidmore was born at Madison, Wisconsin, October 14, 1856. Her parents being missionaries in Japan and China, Miss Scidmore has spent much of her time in Japan and many of her writings are stories of that country. She first became conspicuous as a writer in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, writing letters from Washington over the signature, "Ruhamah," and by her pen name she is best known. She has written on Alaska, Java, China, India, and her work is reliable and her style fascinating. She spends much of her time in Washington.

Mrs. Brooks was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her family, the Tuttles, of Hertfordshire, England, settled in New Haven, Connecticut upon a tract of land now occupied by Yale College, and this tract remained in their family for more than a century. Her grandfather was one of Anthony Wayne's men at the storming of Stony Point. Presidents Dwight and Woolsey, of Yale, are descendants of her family; also Prescott, the historian, and other noted people. Mrs. Brooks is the author of poems, essays, and short stories which have appeared in the newspapers and magazines of the country.

Mrs. Katharine G. Busbey was born in Brooklyn, New York. Graduated from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1885. Was married in 1896, and has lived in Washington since that date.

Her father, Horace Graves, was a lawyer; her mother, a college president; her uncle, a college professor.

Mrs. Busbey wrote "The Letters from a New Congressman's Wife," published in a popular magazine. The publisher said they were good and wanted to use her name, but she decided that they should go anonymously to test their value—fearing these stories would be attributed to her husband, who was in the center of the Washington political maelstrom, and people might say she acted only as his amanuensis. She was right. The stories were popular and when a year later the same magazine printed a story by Katharine G. Busbey, author of "Letters from a New Congressman's Wife," she received