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REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN OF NEW ENGLAND
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advocate of woman suffrage. She was a valued officer of the Association for the Advancement of Women, a pioneer company whose wide-spread labors did much to render possible the general federation of women's clubs, which now embraces every State in the Union."

Of Miss Eastman's success in the pulpit let Robert Collyer speak, in the spirit of many another:—

Dear Miss Eastman:

I want to thank you for the sermon you preached in Unity the other Sunday. It went to the heart of the whole congregation. I have not spoken to a man or a woman who is not of my mind—that it was one of the best sermons we have ever heard about the immortal life. Permit me to say, too, that I believe you can do great good as a preacher of the eternal truth; and I trust you will give this no secondary place in your life, but will think of the pulpit as your true place. I am sure you will be welcome.

Miss Frances Willam wrote her after one of her speeches made in Illinois: —

My dear Mary:

Our good Dr. Jutkins, who has just called, says he heard you with great pleasure in Lexington, Ky., years ago, and that "your brightness was not worn like a jewel on a dark garment, but encompa.ssed you like a luminous atmosphere."

Isn't that a nice one? Too good to keep.
Ever thine,
Frances.

Of herself Miss Eastman says, looking back over her past life and writing in the retirement of her pleasant home in Tewksbury, Mass.: "I seem to myself to have lived a life very like that of other New England girls and women, to whom came fortunate parentage, neither poverty nor riches, and, being of New England birth, the best opportunities the world had to offer to its daughters in the way of education and association, albeit, in view of the exclusion of my sex from its colleges, but a tithe of the education which the eager girl of that period hungered for. . . . When some one asked me recently where I got my education, with the colleges closed against me, I ought to have said, 'At home.'"

That her life has been one of large and powerful influence, especially in connection with work for the advancement of woman, those familiar with her career best know; and those who have been privileged to meet her in these later years best know in what high degree she retains her powers of thought and clear, forceful expression, and that natural charm of manner that has always been one of her most noticeable characteristics.


GERTRUDE QUINLAN, actress, was born in Boston, Mass., February 23, 1880. She is a daughter of Michael Charles and Ellen (Barret) Quinlan and the fifth in a family of seven girls. Michael C. Quinlan, her father, was a school-master in Ireland, his native country. Since he came to the United States and settled in Boston, he has lived in retirement, engaging in no active occupation.

Miss Quinlan was graduated at the Franklin Grammar School in Boston in 1892, and during the school year of 1893 she attended the Girls' High School in that city. From the age of four years she has sung in various church and charity concerts, and, knowing that she possessed a natural and exceptional soprano voice, she determined in her early years to cultivate that gift and make it her means of livelihood, whether it did or did not win her a reputation in the operatic world.

Handicapped at the outset by a lack of means to pay for the training necessary to the most perfect voice and the added difficulty of overcoming the prejudices of father and mother, not to mention other relations, who held certain rigid opinions about a public career, and that career the stage, for one of their own kin, Miss Quinlan at twenty-three years of age is a striking example of what may be accomplished by determined effort o£ will. Having finally gained the reluctant consent of her parents, with her mind centred upon a certain goal, she entered the chorus of the Castle Square Opera Company, singing at the Castle Square Theatre, Boston, in May, 1895. She remained there one year, entering into the hard work of learning the score of a new opera each week, and rehearsing one for the following week, while singing in two performances daily, with such courage and enthusiasm that