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Women Lawyers in the United States.

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world has yet to be referred to. Her name I lawyers has never been lost, and she is glad have seen in every article I ever read on this that her pioneering along this line has helped subject, but until I received a letter from open up the way in which others are now her recently, I had not known whether she achieving success. was yet living, and her letter was exceed The name of Mrs. J. Ellen Foster, the ingly welcome. Not that it was so long successful speaker on temperance, is gener ago, however, for it was only in June, 1869, ally known through the country both to the that Mrs. Belle A. Mansfield was admitted profession and the laity. Mrs. Foster's son, to the bar of Iowa at Mt. Pleasant in that W. H. Foster, Esq., an attorney in Geneseo,

State, after having I11., sent me the follow studied in a law office ing particulars which and at home. The his mother, who is ful statute under which filling a series of plat she was admitted pro form engagements, vided only for the ad was too busy to write mission of "any white out. Mrs. Foster male person," but studied law for two or there was also the sec three years in Clinton, tion common to most Iowa, at home in her compilations of stat family and in the office utes, that " words im of her husband, E. C. Foster. She has fre porting the masculine quently said in public gender only may be that she read Blackextended to females." stone while she was And Mrs. Mansfield rocking her babies. writes me that the pre siding judge said very She was admitted to significantly that when the bar of the Su any of those restrictive preme Court of Iowa words did a manifest in 1872, and was the fir^t woman to prac injustice to individuals, tise before that court. the court was justified She practised alone in construing statutes ADA BITTENBENDER. at first, and then as extending to others formed a partnership not expressly included with her husband. She followed the pro in them. Mrs. Mansfield studied law be cause of her love of it, and when admitted to fession generally up to within a few years, the bar fully intended to begin practice soon, with good success; but lately her plat but delayed till she should return from a form work has taken her entire time, though this has been largely along and upon the European trip which had been planned. Dur ing her stay in Paris she spent some months legal phases of the questions which she has in the Ecole de Droit, pursuing her legal treated. Mr. Foster speaks of a murder studies under most favorable auspices. On case in Indianapolis where his mother was her return to America circumstances led engaged in the defence of a woman who had her into teaching rather than professional been convicted and sentenced to be hung, work, and she now fills the chair of history but for whom a new trial had been secured, in the De Pauw University of Greencastle, as probably her most celebrated cause. She Ind.; but her interest in law and women was successful; for the prisoner was only