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594 originated or established by it since 1884, and during 1891 its missionary work was done in fifteen tribes When Miss Honney retired from the presidency of the association, November, 1884, Mrs. Mary Lowe Dickinson was elected to the office, filling it for three years, when Mrs. Quinton, till then doing the work of general secretary, was unanimously elected president, and still holds the office. Of late years attaining full health, Mrs. Quinton, though some- what past fifty, is at her best, and still continues her public addresses, many hundreds of which she has given in her visits to nearly every State and Territory, and on her last tour of many months, extending entirely around the United States, she bore a government commission and did service also on behalf of Indian education.

RAGSDALE, Miss Lulah, poet, novelist and actor, born in "Cedar Hall," the family residence, near Brookhaven, Miss., 5th February, 1866. She is a genuine southerner. Her father was a Georgian. Her mother was a member of the Hooker family. One of her ancestors was Nathaniel Hooker, a pilgrim father, whose immediate descendants settled in Virginia. Her mother, a gifted woman, supervised her early education and selected her books.

She was graduated from Whitworth College. She began early in life to study two arts, the art of poesy and the Thespian art. She believes that poetry is constitutional, and she fed on works of poetry and romance. Her poems have appeared in the leading southern papers. Her stories and novelettes have won her fame. As an actor, she has succeeded so well that she will adopt the theatrical profession. She has written for many northern magazines, as well as weekly and daily papers. The twin loves of her life, the drama and poetry, have made their impress upon her with equal strength. In her acting she is always poetical, in her poetry always dramatic. Strength, delicacy and a romantic intensity characterize all her work.

RALSTON, Mrs. Harriet Newell, poet, born in Waverly, N. Y., 21st October, 1828. She is the daughter of Rev. Aaron Jackson. Her youth was passed in New York, Massachusetts and

Illinois, and her education was received in the institutions of learning in the first two named States. Upon her removal to Quincy, 111., she formed the acquaintance of Hon. James H. Ralston, whose wife she became shortly afterward. Judge Ralston was a leading man in Illinois and held various important offices in that State. After serving as an officer in the Mexican War, he turned his attention again to the practice of law, settling in the then new State of California. On their wedding day Judge and Mrs. Ralston set out from New York for the Pacific coast, enjoying on the way the tropical beauties of the Nicaraguan Isthmus. Following the death of Judge Ralston, his widow kit her home in Austin, Nev., for the East, eventually settling in Washington, D. C, where her son is at present a professor of law in the National Law University of that city. Mrs. Ralston has written many fine poems, which, although never collected in the form of a volume, have been published and widely copied by the press. She is the author of "Fatherless Joe," "Decoration Day," "The Spectral Feast," "The Queen's Jewels and "The White Cross of Savoy," for which poem King Humbert of Italy sent her a letter of thanks and appreciation. Her poems are very numerous, among which may be specially mentioned "The Queen's jewels," written for the occasion of a banquet given by the Woman's National Press Association of Washington, D. C, of which she is a member, to the delegates of the Pan-American Congress assembled in that city, and for which poem she has received many acknowledgments from the representatives of Central and South American governments. She still takes an active interest in philanthropic and social movements tending to