JOSEPHINE CABLES ALDRICH.
ALDRICH, Mrs. Josephine Cables, author and philanthropist born in Connecticut. She was but a few years old when her mother died, leaving her in the care of two Puritan grandmothers of the most severe school, strict in the observance of what they considered their religious duties. They believed that a free use of the rod was necessary to save the child's soul from destruction. This severe treatment taught her that the Golden Rule was by far the best maxim for morality and happiness, and no sooner was she in control of a home of her own in Rochester, N. Y., than she gave such instruction for the betterment of humanity by word and deed that her home became a sort of Mecca for advance thinkers, not only of America, but pilgrims came from Europe, Asia and Africa to confer with her. In 1882 she began in Rochester, N. Y., the publication of "The Occult World," a little paper devoted to advanced thought and reform work. Her editorials taught liberality, justice and mercy. Her greatest work has been in private life, and her influence for good over the individual was remarkable. She was at one time secretary of the Theosophical Society of the United States, and president of the Rochester Brotherhood. She is now in affluent circumstances in a home in Aldrich, Ala., a mining town named for her husband. Mr. Aldrich fully sustains his wife in all her work, and she is in turn assisting him to carry out a plan of his, whereby persons accused of crime shall be defended before the court, at the public expense, as diligently and ably as such persons are now prosecuted. The town of Aldrich is a quiet, peaceful, moral and refined community, where the rights of all are respected, and where drink and tobacco are almost unknown. Mrs. Aldrich is vice-president of the Woman's National Industrial League, vice-president of the Woman's National Liberal Union, and one of the founders of the Woman's National University and School of Useful and Ornamental Arts.