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Rh extremely sensitive nature, her efforts were burned as soon as written. In 1856 she went to California. Through the force of circumstances she was compelled to offer her stories and sketches to the

newspapers and magazines, and in less than two years the name of Rowena Granice had become a household word in every town in the new State of California. The newspapers were loud in their praise of the simple home stories of the new California writer. In 1862 she, with her husband, Robert J. Steele, started the "Pioneer" newspaper in Merced county, in the town of Snelling. They soon removed to Merced City, where the paper was enlarged. Mrs. Steele continued to act as associate editor until 1877, when the failing health of her husband compelled her to take entire charge, and for seven years she was editor and proprietor. In 1884, assisted by her son. she started a daily in connection with the weekly. In 1889 her husband died. After conducting successfully the newspaper business in the same county for twenty-eight years she sold out. She has been married twice and has two sons, H H. Granice and L. R. Steele, both journalists. She is still an active writer and worker in the temperance cause, and at present (1892) is editor and proprietor of the "Budget," in Lodi, Cal.

STEIN, Miss Evaleen, poet, was born in Lafayette, Ind., and has passed her whole life in that city. She received a liberal education and at an early age showed her poetic talents. Her father, the late John A. Stein, was a brilliant lawyer and a writer of meritorious verse and prose, and he directed her studies and reading so as to develop the talents which he discovered in her.

Her training included art, and she has won a reputation as an artist of exceptional merit. She has done much decorative work for Chicago and New York societies, and recently she took an art -course in the Chicago Art Institute. She began to publish poems in local papers about six years ago, and her work at once attracted attention by its finish and mastery of form, as well as by its spirit and sentiment. She has contributed prose sketches to the local press, and has been a contributor to "St. Nicholas," the Boston "Transcript," the Indianapolis "Journal" and other periodicals. Poems from her pen have appeared in various collections, but she has never published a volume of her work. In her Lafayette home she is the center of a large circle of cultured persons.

STEINER, Miss Emma R., musical composer and orchestral conductor, was born in Baltimore, Md. Her father, Colonel Frederick Steiner, was well known in commercial and military circles. She was a precocious musician, but her family did not encourage her in the development of her talents. The only instruction she ever received in music was a three-month course under Professor Frank Mitler, while she was a student in the Southern Institute. She is a self-educated musician. She went to Chicago and entered the chorus of an operatic company, and there she attracted the attention of E. Rice, who engaged her as director in one of his companies in "Iolanthe." She conducted successfully in Boston, and later in Toronto, Canada, where she took the place of Harry Braham, who was taken ill. She succeeded in every attempt and was at once recognized as the possessor of all the qualities that make a successful orchestral conductor. Her ambition was next employed in the production of an opera of her own composition, and "Fleurette" was there suit. She then dramatized Tennyson's "Day Dream." She is engaged on several other operas, some of them of a higher grade. Four of her compositions were selected by Theodore Thomas, to be played in the Columbian Exposition in 1893. These are "I Envy the Rose," "Tecolotl." a Mexican love-song, a "Waltz Song" from "Fleurette," and an operatic "ensemble"