Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/142

Rh the society. She Introduced into the magazine features which made it a helper to missionary' workers. In 1879 she was elected corresponding secretary and organizer for the Rhode Island

Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and began at once to address audiences and to organize unions in different parts of the State. In 1884 she was elected president of the Union and devoted the next seven years to speaking and planning in its interest. In the securing of a prohibitory amendment to the constitution of Rhode Island, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the acknowledged leader, and to that work Mrs. Burlingame bent the energy of her life. In 1889 she was a delegate to the General Conference from the Rhode Island Free Baptist Association, that being the first year when women were sent as delegates to that body. In 1890 she was licensed to preach by the Rhode Island Free Baptist Ministers' Association. In 1891, being seriously worn by her prolonged labors for temperance, she resigned the presidency of the Rhode Island Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and was elected National Woman's Christian Temperance Union evangelist. She soon after accepted the position of general agent of the Free Baptist Woman's Missionary Society, and since that time has been traveling, visiting quarterly and yearly conferences and churches, and addressing them on the broadest phases of missionary work, including the important reforms of the day.

BURNETT, Miss Cynthia S., educator and temperance reformer, born in Hartford, Ohio, 1st May, 1840. She is the oldest daughter of a descendant of the early settlers of New Jersey. Her mother is a Virginian by birth and education. Her early life was divided between home duties and study till the age of seventeen, when she began her career as a teacher in the public schools near her home, a part of each year being spent as a student in the neighboring academy. The Civil War changed the current of her life, and she resolved to obtain the best education possible and to devote her life to the profession of her choice. She studied four years in the Western Reserve Seminary, in her own county, from which she was graduated in the classical course in 1868. She at once accepted the position of preceptress and teacher of Latin in Orwell Normal Institute. Three years later she took the position of teacher of languages in Beaver College. Failing health made a change of climate necessary, and she went to the old home of her mother in Virginia, where for a time she had charge of a training-school for teachers. Two years were spent in the Methodist Episcopal College in Tullahoma, Tenn. There she became interested in the "New South," and many letters were written for the press in defense of the struggling people. At the first opportunity after the crusade she donned the white ribbon. Her first public work was done in 1879, in Illinois, Later she answered calls for help in Florida, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In 1885 she was made State organizer of Ohio. The first year she lectured one-hundred-sixty-five times, besides holding meetings in the day-time and organizing over forty unions. Her voice failing, she accepted a call to Utah, as teacher in the Methodist Episcopal College in Salt Lake City. She was made territorial president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Eight unions and fifteen loyal legions were organized by her. Each month one or more meetings were held by her in the penitentiary. She edited a temperance column in a Mormon paper. Tabernacles and school-houses were open to her, and through the assistance of

missionaries and Mormons alike the gospel of temper, nice was presented in many towns. Unable longer to work so hard, and believing that her real place was in the lecture field, she accepted n rail to