to write the history of his trip, but his health became so bad that he had to give up his task. Her father died while Elizabeth was yet a child. She was educated at home until 1880, when she was sent to Indiana, Pa., where she remained in a boarding-school until 1881. Impaired health forced her to leave school, and she returned home. The family moved to Pittsburgh, and there she began her literary career. She saw an article in the Pittsburgh "Dispatch" entitled "What Girls are Good For." She wrote a reply to the article, and though the reply was not published, a paragraph appeared in the "Dispatch" the day after she sent the communication, asking for the writer's name. Miss Cochrane sent her name and received a letter from the editor, requesting her to write an article on the subject of girls and their spheres in life for the "Sunday Dispatch." This she did. The article was printed, and the same week she received a check for it and a request for something else.
ELIZABETH COCHRANE.
Her next subject was "Divorce," and at the end of the article appeared the now famous signature, "Nellie Bly." Miss Cochrane assumed it on the suggestion of George A. Madden, managing editor of the "Dispatch." who got it from Stephen Foster's popular song. The divorce article attracted attention. She was invited to the office and made arrangements to accent a salary and devote her time to the "Dispatch." Taking an artist with her. she went through the factories and workshop of Pittsburgh, and described and pictured the condition of the working girls. The articles made a hit. Miss Cochrane became society editor of the "Dispatch" and also looked after the dramatic and art department, all for a salary of ten dollars per week. She decided to go to Mexico to write about its people. At that time she was receiving fifteen dollars per week. She went, and her letters printed in the " Dispatch " were full of interest and were widely copied. She had never been out of her State before, but she traveled every where in Mexico that a railroad could take her. Her mother was her companion on that trip. Returning to Pittsburgh, she became dissatisfied with that held, quit the " Dispatch," and went to New York City. She did syndicate work for a while. One day she lost her pocketbook and all the money she possessed. She was too proud to let her friends know, and she sat down and thought. Before that she had written to the "World," asking the privilege of going in the balloon the " World " was about sending up at St. Louis, but, as final arrangements had been completed, her suggestion was not favorably received, low finding herself penniless, she made a list of a half-dozen original ideas and went to the "World" office, determined to see Mr. Pulitzer and offer them to him. Having no letter of introduction and being unknown, she found it almost an impossibility to gain an audience. For three hours she talked and expostulated with different employés, before she finally exhausted their denials and was ushered into the unwilling presence of Mr. Pulitzer and his editor, John A. Cockerill. Once there, they listened to her ideas and immediately offered her twenty-five dollars to give them three days in which to consider her suggestions. At the end of that time she was told that her idea to feign insanity and, as a patient, investigate the treatment of the insane in the Blackwell Island Asylum was accepted. Miss Bly did that with such marked success and originality of treatment, and attracted so much attention, that she secured a permanent place on the "World" staff. She originated a new field in journalism, which has since been copied all over the world by her many imitators. Her achievements since her asylum expose have been many and brilliant. Scarcely a week passed that she had not some novel feature in the "World." Her fame grew and her tasks enlarged, until they culminated in the wonderful tour of the world in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds. That idea she proposed to Mr. Pulitzer one year before he approved and accepted it. Owing to delayed steamers. Miss Bly lost fifteen days on land, but she was the first to conceive and establish a record for a fast trip around the world. Since Miss Cochrane "girdled the globe." others have repeated the feat in less time. Her newspaper work resulted in many reforms. Her expose of asylum abuses procured an appropriation of $3,000,000 for the benefit of the poor insane, in addition to beneficial changes in care and management. Her expose of the " King of the Lobby" rid Albany of its greatest disgrace; her station-house expose procured matrons for New York police-stations; her expose of a noted "electric" doctor's secret rid Brooklyn of a notorious swindler. Miss Cochrane left journalism to do literary work for a weekly publication. She is now a resident of New York.
COB, Miss Emily M., educator, born near Norwalk, Ohio. She was graduated from Mt. Holyoke Seminary, in 1853, with the honors of her class. For a time she turned her attention to oil-painting and other art-work, for which she has a talent. She then taught with success in seminaries and colleges in New England and Pennsylvania, and afterward in the Spingler Institute, in New York City. Realizing more and more the futility of building upon the imperfect foundations of character usually laid in early childhood, she saw clearly that the hope of the world is in the right training of the little children. That led to the establishment of the American kindergarten, the first school of the kind in New York City. The American kindergarten system is the result of more than
