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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

Assistant Secretary. She is universally esteemed by the women of the State and is ever ready to do their bidding. Miss Cook has very many times addressed the Convention upon important subjects, and at the jubilee meeting, January 18, 1889, she gave the history of the Convention, at which time the American Baptist said:

The history of the Convention by Professor Mary V. Cook, their Corresponding Secretary, was a concise and comprehensive paper. She left the well-beaten tracks of most of the lady Speakers and dealt entirely with facts, and without sentiment traced the Convention from its incipiency until the present time. It was an interesting paper, brimful of information, and was well received. Miss Cook is never more in earnest than when saying a word for the women's work.

She has often spoken and read papers before the public with much credit, viz.: At Mobile, Ala., she read a paper before the American National Baptist Convention, August 27, 1887, subject, "Woman's Work in the Denomination." The same year she appeared before the National Press Convention at Louisville, Ky., and read a paper, "Is Juvenile Literature Demanded on the Part of Colored Children?" September 25, 1888, at Nashville, in the great meeting of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, she read a paper on "Female Education." September, 1890, she was invited to prepare a paper on "Woman's Work for Woman," to be read before the Foreign Mission Convention, but sudden illness in her family called her home before the programme of this body was called. September, 1891, before the National Convention at Dallas, Texas, she read a paper on "Women in Medicine." She has appeared before the State Teachers' Association three