gives a luminous insight into the character of its author, and is at the siime time an interesting illustration of the changed conditions of the modern American woman's life. Several years ago Mrs. Gooch removed with her family to the city of Saltillo, Mexico. She, who in her American home was famous as a housewife, went to Mexico almost entirely ignorant of the domestic manners of those most unyielding devotees of ancient custom, and set up her home among them, expecting to order her household affairs after the same comfortable fashion which made her home in Austin, Texas, a place of ease and plenty. The story of the dis-illusionment told in the opening chapters of her book is exquisitely ludicrous. To a woman less keenly alive to the humor of the situation it would have been less profitable as a lesson than it proved to the author. After a determined effort to force the immovable Mexican customs, she found herself compelled to yield to the inevitable. She
FANNY CHAMBERS GOOCH.
might be compelled to do without a cooking-stove and to forego the delights of attending to her own marketing and shopping, but her genial soul demanded that, if foiled in her domestic plans, she would at least refuse to be shut out from social intercourse with the people among whom she found herself. That was hardly less difficult than to keep house in the American fashion with the help of Mexican servants and furniture. Her neighbors looked with small favor on Americans in general, having learned much to prejudice them against their brethren across the Rio Grande, and little in their favor. But here was an anomaly in the shape of an American, a woman full of the independent spirit of her people, hut as full of sympathy and ready appreciation as the most courteous Latin. The result was that Mrs. Gooch obtained an insight into the innermost life and less superficial characteristics of our neighbors, which she afterward used in her book on Mexico so successfully as to give the work a peculiar value. Returning after some years to her former home in Austin, her descriptions of her Mexican experiences so entertained her friends that she was asked to prepare a series of articles on the subject for a Texas newspaper. Mrs. Gooch at once set to work. She soon found, however, an embarrassment of riches in the abundant material her memory supplied, and, abandoning her first intention, she decided to publish her work in book form. Her first intention had been to limit her book to her experiences in Saltillo, but the greatness of her overmastering idea soon proved that intention too narrow, and, putting aside her pen, she returned to Mexico, where she spent some time in its principal cities, mingling with its people in every station. She was fortunate in earn ing on her new venture to have letters to the leading men and women of the Mexican capitol. When the literary portion of her work was complete, she went to New York and superintended the publication of the work. The book at once attracted the notice of the leading reviewers and became very successful. The year following the publication of '"Face to Face with the Mexicans Mrs. Gooch was married to Dr. D. T. Inglehart, of Austin, and has since devoted herself almost entirely to her extensive domestic and social duties. At present she has in contemplation another literary venture, the subject of which is to be Texas.
GOODALE, Miss Dora Read, poet, born in Mount Washington. Berkshire county, Mass., 29th October, 1866. Her life and literary career have been intimately associated with those of her older sister, Elaine Gondale, now Mrs. Charles A. Eastman. The story of the childhood and remarkable literary achievements of Dora is similar to the story of Elaine's early life. At the age of six years Dora composed verses that are simply remarkable, in certain qualities of rhythm and insight, for so youthful an author. She was an earnest student, and she enthusiastically cooperated with her sister in publishing a monthly paper tor the entertainment of the family. In conjunction with her sister she published "Apple Blossoms: Verses of Two Children," selected from their earliest work, (New York, 1878); "In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers" (1879). and "Verses from Sky Farm," an enlarged edition of the preceding volume (1880). Dora's verses are no less praiseworthy than those of her sister, and the achievements of these two remarkable girls, when the older was fifteen and the younger twelve years of age, set the critics of the world to work, and stirred them as critics had not been stirred by the work of virtual children since the time of Chatterton.
GOODRICH, Mrs. Mary Hopkins, originator of village improvement associations, born in Stockbridge, Mass., in 1814. Her maiden name was Hopkins. She inherited the same intellectual qualities which marked her cousin, President Mark Hopkins, of Williamstown, with others of the name hardly less distinguished. She was born with a love of nature and a humanitarian spirit She was left an orphan when barely two years old, and was brought up by older sisters. From the planting of a tree, when she was five years old, dates practically the beginning of the Village Improvement Association which has made of Stockbridge, Mass., the most perfectly kept village in the United States. After an absence of many years in the South, she returned to find the village cemetery in a neglected state, and she resolved to attempt to remedy that and other unnecessary evils, and, as far as possible, by the aid of children. To interest them she had a tree planted for every child in town, to care for themselves, and that
