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Rh social and legal enfranchisement of her sex. For years she has been in demand as a lecturer on gospel temperance, universal suffrage, social purity and kindred topics. Her keen, logical and yet

poetic and impassioned style of oratory fairly takes her audiences by storm and has won for her a national reputation as a public speaker. As a writer she has won an enviable reputation, her poems, stories and prose sketches being published in leading periodicals, both north and south. Her genius seems to be versatile in its nature. She is an elegant home-maker, a brilliant conversationalist, an eloquent speaker and an active philanthropist, but it is as a woman working for the most degraded and downtrodden of her sex she is to be held in lasting and grateful remembrance by the women of the nation.

SCHAFFER, Miss Margaret Eliza, insurance agent, born near Riverton, Iowa, and April, 1869. Her father was of German parentage, born in Pennsylvania, and while yet a child moved with his parents to Fulton county, Ill. At the early age of seventeen he began to teach school. At the breaking out of the Civil War he entered the Union service. His musical ability was soon recognized, and he was made life-major and brigade leader during his march with Sherman. On his return he was married to Emma Wadsworth, a young woman of literary tastes. They bought a home in Fremont county, Iowa, where in the following year Margaret was born. Until twelve years of age she studied under private tutors.

In 1880 her father embarked in the mercantile business in Malvern, Iowa. Entering school there, she pursued her studies diligently, at the same time taking lessons in music of Prof. Willey, a graduate of the Leipzig Conservatory of Music. Later she entered the Coming Academy, Iowa. After leaving the academy, she successfully followed her musical profession till in May, 1890, when the subject of life insurance was brought to her attention. In that line she found a work that was at once uncrowded, pleasant and remunerative. She entered the work with the true missionary spirit. Her task has been to educate the women to urge their husbands to insure, because it means to them contentment and, in the majority of cases, increased comfort and protection against want in case of financial reverses in the husband's business, or declining health. She was one of the first of the few women to venture in that work, and it is claimed she was the first to open an office of her own and make a special department for the insurance of women. On 1st January, 1892, she connected herself with the National Life of Vermont, in Omaha, Neb., after having worked in Omaha a year in another company. The National laid aside the prejudice against admitting women on equal terms with men.

SCHAFFNER, Mrs. Ernestine, "The Prisoner's Friend," is a citizen of New York City. She is the possessor of wealth, that enables her to indulge her charitable leanings in a substantial way. She has always felt a deep interest in the criminal and downtrodden people of her city, and since 1885 she has done remarkable work in behalf of prisoners of both sexes, who are under arrest or serving sentences in the city prisons. She has an office at No. 21 Center street, near one of the prisons. Over the door is the legend: "Free Advice to the Poor and to the Innocent Accused." She visits the courts and devotes her time to the relief of the prisoners. She is a woman past middle age, and her work has been carried on alone. She was drawn into the work in a simple-way. One day she read in an evening paper of a young German immigrant, who, having been arrested for some trivial offense, was so overcome by the disgrace that he tried to commit suicide. The next morning she bailed him out, and so impressed was she by his story and her belief in