mission work by which she aroused enthusiasm and secured unity of action in the societies she formed. Her interest in foreign missions can be traced to a favorite teacher at Mount Holyoke. To that teacher, Ann Eliza Fritcher, afterward a missionary under the American Board, founder and long-time principal of the Girls' School at Marsovaii, Turkey, Dr. Purington feels the deepest spiritual obligation.
Life, almost all life, has its tragic side. This one was not exempt. A nervous breakdown came, the consequence of anxiety and overwork; and for two years or more there was a physical, mental, and spiritual "walk in the dark with God." The disability had its compensations in a long residence at Clifton Springs Sanitarium and the help and blessing of Dr. Henry Foster. Out of pathos unspeakable, disaster, and defeat, came a knowledge of things unseen and eternal, and a buoyant faith in God that has been the mightiest factor in Dr. Purington's spiritual life. A gradual restoration was followed by change of scene and surroundings and a new home in the serener atmosphere of Boston. With Miss Ella Gilbert Ives, the friend who is one with her in motive, interest, and aim. Dr. Purington has been associated since 1885 in a school for girls, at the same time giving herself without stint to philanthropic work. For ten years she has held an influential position in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, running the gamut of local and county president, local. State, and national superintendent, and of late editor of the State paper. She served several years as national superintendent of franchise, and compiled for Miss Willard the facts used by her in her annual addresses to exhibit the progress of women. In 1895 Dr. Purington was transferred to the department of health and heredity, which, as national superintendent, she has thoroughly organized and developed, rallying to her assistance State superintendents and a host of earnest workers in her great constituency.
The aim of her department is the development of the highest life, physical, mental, and spiritual, and not only this, but also the cleanest, healthiest civic life. It includes co-operation with boards of health in the enforcement of health ordinances; school hygiene and sanitation, instruction in the laws of health in relation to dress, food, air, exercise, cleanliness, mental and moral hygiene. The department is active in trying to secure the passage of pure food bills, legislative enactments relating to public health, milk and poultry inspection, etc., all of which work covers a wide field of endeavor, and is attended year by year with increasingly good results.
In 1903, at the World's Convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Geneva, Switzerland, Dr. Purington was appointed World's Superintendcnt of the department co-operation with missionary societies; thus being enabled to unify her life-long work in two great fields of Christian activity.
In both missionary and temperance lines Dr. Purington's contributions to leading periodicals, her manuals and leaflets, have won recognition and hearty praise. Especially valuable are her life studies in the field of health and heredity. Her character and literary style are forceful, original, and clear-cut. She says on herself, "’The open secret of my life is the same as Charles Kingsley's: I have a friend, not only the One above all others, but in the sweetest human sense, as interpreted by Jeremy Taylor: 'By friendship I suppose you mean the greatest love, and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest sufferings, and the most exemplary faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsels, and the greatest union of minds of which brave men and women are capable.'" Her intellectual awakening she tlates from the early beginning of this friendship, which has been to her a chief source of happiness as well as of stimulus to growth. She believes with Evelyn, "There is in friendship something of all relations and something above them all."
ALICE KENT ROBERTSON, now known in private life as Mrs. Truman Quimby, is the only child of the Hon. William Henry and Rebecca (Prentiss) Kent, late of Charlestown, both deceased.
Alice Kent was born on Staniford Street,
