under the constitution was chosen to the first and several succeeding senates. Miss Chaffee spent a year at Monson Academy, twenty years in teaching school, and three years as a member of the school board of her native town. She was left alone by the death of her mother in 1884, and was married in July, 1890, to Lucius D. Alden, an early school-mate but long a resident on the Pacific coast, and she still occupies her father's homestead. Her poetic, and far more numerous prose, writings have appeared in various newspapers of Springfield, Boston, Chicago, and Minneapolis, in several Sunday-school song-books, and in quarterly and monthly journals. One doctrinal pamphlet of hers has lately been translated by a British officer and missionary in Madras into the Hindustani tongue, and many copies printed. Copies of another were voluntarily distributed by a county judge in Florida among members of his State legislature. Two years ago, under an appropriation, made by an association whose conferences reach from Maine to California, of a sum to be distributed among writers of meritorious articles, Mrs. Alden was selected to write for Massachusetts.
ANNE REEVE ALDRICH.
ALDRICH, Miss Anne Reeve, poet and novelist, born in New York City, 25th April, 1866. From her earliest childhood she showed a fondness for composition, spending hours from the time she learned to print in writing stories and verses, although she had the usual healthy childish tastes for romping and all out-of-door sports. At the death of her father, which occurred in her eighth year, her mother removed to the country, where she at first took charge of her daughter's education, which was afterward carried on by competent tutors. Miss Aldrich displayed remarkable proficiency in compostion and rhetoric, which was counterbalanced by what she herself calls an amusing inaptitude for mathematics, so that, while she was translating French and Latin authors for amusement, she was also struggling over a simple arithmetic, whose tear-blotted leaves she still preserves. In her fifteenth year a friend suggested to her to send a poem to "Scribner's Magazine." Although the verses were returned, with them she received a friendly note of encouragement and praise from the editor, who from that time often criticized the young girl's work. She wrote constantly and voluminously, usually destroying her work from month to month, so that but few of her earlier verses are extant. She also read widely, her taste inclining to the early English poets and dramatists and to mediæval literature. When she was seventeen, her first published poem appeared in "Lippincott's Magazine," followed by others in the "Century" and various periodicals. In 1885 Miss Aldrich's mother moved back to New York, where they now reside. Her first book was "The Rose of Flame and Other Poems of Love" (New York, 1889), and she has published one novel, "The Feet of Love" (New York, 1890). Miss Aldrich dislikes country life and is fond of society. Her family is of English extraction. Her ancestors were Tories in Revolutionary days, and their large estates were confiscated by the American government because of their allegiance to the crown.
FLORA L. ALDRICH.
ALDRICH, Mrs. Flora L., doctor of medicine, born in Westford, N. Y., 6th October. 1859. Her maiden name was Southard. Her father was a farmer, and her childhood was spent on a farm known as "Sutherland Place." Her paternal ancestors were among the original Dutch settlers of the Hudson river valley at Kinderhook and Hudson. Among them are the names of Hoffman and Hubbard. Of the Southard family little is known, as the great-grandfather was an adopted child of a Hudson merchant and could remember only that his name was Southard, and that he was stolen from a port in England. From all that can be gathered he is believed to be of good English family, and
