Temperance Union, her responsibilities have been immense, but they have been carried with a steady hand and an even head. She has met the demands of her enormous constituency in a remarkable degree. A paper having a circulation of nearly one-hundred-thousand among earnest women, many of them in the front rank of intelligence and advancement of thought, and all of them on fire with an idea, needs judicious and strong, as well as thorough and comprehensive, editing. This the "Union Signal" has had, and the women of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union have repeatedly, in the most emphatic manner, indorsed Miss West's policy and conduct of the paper. Soon after she went to Chicago to reside, some Chicago women, both writers and publishers, organized the Illinois Woman's Press Association, its avowed object being to provide a means of communication between woman writers, and to secure the benefits resulting from organized effort Miss West was made president, and is now filling the position for the fifth consecutive annual term. Her work in that sphere has been a unifying one. She has brought into harmony many conflicting elements, and has helped to carry the association through the perils which always beset the early years of an organization. She has been a wise and practical leader, inaugurating effective branches of work, which have been of great value to the association. She is a member of the Chicago Woman's Club. She has no love for city life. Its rush and its roar tire her brain; its squalor, poverty, degradation and crime appall her. She has an unusual capacity for vicarious suffering. The woes of others are her woes, the knowledge of injustice or cruelty wrings her heart. That made her an effective director of the Protective Agency for Women and Children, but the strain of that work proved too great, and she has stepped outside its directorship, although remaining an ardent upholder of the agency. Her heart is in her Galesburg home, the home of her childhood and youth, and when she allows herself a holiday, it is to spend a few days with the home folks, who are, notwithstanding all her public interests, the center of the universe to her. Miss West, in 1892, visited California, the Sandwich Islands and Japan in the interests of temperance work.
WESTLAKE, Miss Kate Eva, editor, was born in Ingersoll, Canada. Her life was spent in the adjacent city of London. She is a Canadian by birth and in sentiment, though she comes of English parentage. Her first literary work, outside of occasional sketches for local newspapers, was a serial story entitled "Stranger Than Fiction," published in a western monthly magazine.
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KATE EVA WESTLAKE.
She entered active journalistic work as sub-editor of the St. Thomas "Journal," which position she held until she assumed the editorship of the " Fireside Weekly," a family story paper published in Toronto, Ont Among the best known of her longer serial stories are "A Rolling Stone," "Eclipsed" and "A Previous Engagement" Two others of her stories have been published in book form in the United States and Canada, and it is, perhaps, in the field of fiction she does her best work, although her series of humorous sketches, written over the pen-name "Aunt Polly Wogg," is widely read and very popular. She is quiet and retiring, strongly sympathetic, with a keen sense of humor and a ready wit In religion she is a Baptist in politics a Liberal, and in all questions of progression and social reform she takes a warm interest.
WESTOVER, Miss Cynthia M., scientist, inventor and business woman, born in Alton, Iowa, 31st May, 1858. Her great-grandfather was Alexander Campbell, founder of the Campbellites. Her father is a descendant of the Westovers, of Virginia, who settled early in 1600 near the site where Richmond now stands, and her mother was from a well-known English family, named Lewis. Her father is a noted geologist and expert miner. From the age of four years, being a motherless girl, she accompanied him on all his prospecting tours from Mexico to British America.
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CYNTHIA M. WESTOVER.
Naturally, from her early surroundings, she became an expert shot and horsewoman, and she also acquired an intimate knowledge of birds and flowers, the habits of wild animals and many other secrets of nature After graduating from the State University of Colorado, she took a four-year course in a commercial college, where she was considered a skilled mathematician. In early womanhood she went to New York City to perfect her musical education, and after singing acceptably in several church choirs, she received an offer of a position in an opera. The practical side of her nature asserted itself, when she took the civil service examination for custom-house inspectors. She was promptly appointed and, with her usual force and energy, began to learn French, German and Italian, perfecting her Spanish and acquiring a general knowledge of languages, which placed her in an incredibly short space of time on speaking terms with most of the nationalities coming to our shore. Commissioner Beattie, of the street-cleaning department of New York City, appointed her his private secretary. She is the only woman who has held a position by appointment in any of the city departments. During the illness of the com- missioner for several weeks, she managed successfully the affairs of the entire department. Many Italians were on the force, and for the first time in their experience they could air their grievances at headquarters. Lately she invented a cart for carrying and dumping dirt, for which the Parisian
