educational interests of her youngest daughter. Some of her philosophic and scientific lectures have been translated and published in foreign countries.
BROOKS. Miss Ida Joe, educator, physician and surgeon, born in Muscatine, Iowa, 28th April, 1853. She is the daughter of Rev. Joseph Brooks. When she was very young, her parents moved to St. Louis, Mo., and she there entered the public schools, beginning in the primary department of the Clay school, when Dr. William T. Harris began his career as a teacher. Her father removed to the South after the war, and Miss Brooks went to Little Rock, Ark., in 1870. Two years afterwards, in conversation with a friend, she warmly argued that women should earn their own money, and he made a wager that she would not do it herself. As a joke, he found her a school in Fouche Bottom, where the gnats were so thick that a smudge had to be kept continually burning. She accepted the position and taught there
IDA JOE BROOKS.
faithfully and well. In 1873 Miss Brooks, with a liking for the work, began to teach in the public schools of Little Rock. The following year she was made principal of the grammar school, and in 1876 she was made principal of the Little Rock high school. In 1877 she was elected president of the State Teachers' Association. In the same year her father died, and the family came to shortened means, but were sustained by the independence and noble work of the daughter. In 1881 the Little Rock University was opened. Having become a Master of Arts, she was placed in charge of the mathematical department, where she taught until, in 18S8, she entered the Boston University School of Medicine, a course which had for years been her desire- She was graduated there with high honors, and afterwards took a post-graduate course on nervous diseases in the Westborough Insane Hospital. She spent one year as house officer in the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, being assigned half the time on the surgical and half the time on the medical work. That was an unusual appointment. Returning to Little Rock in September, 1891, she began the practice of her profession and from the start won recognition and patronage. Dr. Brooks is an earnest woman suffragist and a thorough temperance advocate.
BROOKS, Mrs. M. Sears, poet and author, born in Springfield, Mass. She is of English ancestry, descended from the Tuttles, of Hertfordshire, England, who settled in New Haven. Conn., in 1635, upon the tract of land now occupied by Yale College, part of which tract remained the family homestead for more than a century. She is of Revolutionary stock, her grandfather being one of Mad Anthony Wayne's picked men at the storming of Stony Point. Her family has been remarkable for strong religious inclination, high regard for education and culture. Some of the most noted names in American letters are descended from this stock. Among them are Presidents Dwight and Woolsey, of Yale, Prescott, the historian, Goodrich (Peter Parley), and many others. Mrs. Brooks received her education in the public and private schools of her native city. After her marriage she removed to Missouri, in 1859, and subsequently to Madison, Ind., in 1863, where she now lives. Her earliest contributions to the press appeared in eastern publications under a pen-name. Latterly her poems, essays and short stories have appeared over her own name in newspapers and magazines in various cities. She has been engaged in regular newspaper work in southern Indiana, as editor and contributor. The advancement of women has been a subject claiming her attention, and for the pant two years she has held the office of press superintendent for the State under the Indiana Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. Brooks partakes in a large degree of the family characteristics, and in associations of prominence, in both State and Nation, her aid and influence have been felt. In her literary work she displays great force and beauty of diction, originality of thought and clearness of perception. She has published in holiday form "A Vision of the Mistletoe" (Buffalo, 1888).
BROTHERTON, Mrs. Alice Willams, author, born in Cambridge, Ind. Her family is of Welsh and English descent, with six generations on American soil. Her father resided in Cincinnati, Ohio, and afterward in St. Louis, Mo., then in Cambridge, Ind., and again settled in Cincinnati. She was educated mainly in the St. Louis and Cincinnati public schools, graduating in 1870 from Woodward high school, Cincinnati. In October, 1876, she was married to William Ernest Brotherton. Since then she has resided in Cincinnati. Two children, a boy and a girl, compose her family. Her oldest son, a bright boy of eleven, died in 1890. Living from her birth in an atmosphere of books, she was early trained by her mother in careful habits of composition. Her first appearance in print was in 1872. Her specialty is poetry, but she has written considerable prose in the form of essays, reviews and children's stories. From the first her success, in a pecuniary way, has been marked. Writing only when the spirit moves, in the spare moments of a busy home life, she has contributed at intervals to a variety of periodicals, the "Century." the "Atlantic," "Scribner's Monthly." the "Aldine," the "Independent," and various religious journals. Her booklet, "Beyond the Veil" (Chicago, 1886), was followed by "The Sailing of King Olaf and Other Poems" (Chicago, 1887), and by a volume of prose and verse for
