EVE, Miss Maria Louise, poet, was born near Augusta, Ga., about 1848. She is of old English
MARIA LOUISE EVE.
ancestry. Her first literary success was a prize for the best essay awarded by "Scott's Magazine." She has since contributed, from time to time, articles on literary and other subjects to some of the prominent magazines and papers. In 1879 her poem "Conquered at Last" won the prize offered by the Mobile "News" for the best poem expressing the gratitude of the South to the North for aid in the yellow fever scourge of the preceding year That poem was reproduced in nearly all of the papers and many of the magazines of the North, and also in some periodicals abroad. Its great popularity throughout the North, attested by the large number of letters received by her from soldiers and civilians, cultured and uncultured, was a compete surprise as well as a great gratification to her. In June, 1889, a short poem by her, entitled "A Briar Rose," won the prize offered by the Augusta "Chronicle." At the request of the secretary of the American Peace and Arbitration Society, in Boston, as a message of welcome to the English Peace Deputation to America in October, 1887, she wrote a poem, "The Lion and the Eagle." The underlying thought of the "Universal Peace," as found in one of her published poems, led the secretary to communicate with her in regard to it, and she has since written a number of poems bearing on the subject, which is perhaps the most practical work that she has done on any of the great lines of advancement and progress. Possessing that order of mind which crystallizes in thought rather than in action, she feels that anything she may hope to achieve must be chiefly through the channels of literary effort. Her writings are comparatively small in bulk, her endeavor being always toward force and directness, rather than vxpansiveness of thought.