Woman of the Century/Louise Bowman McClain

MtCLAIN, Mrs. Louise Bowman, author, born in Madison, Ind., 9th August, 1841. She was educated in the common schools of that city, graduating from the high school when but little more than fourteen years of age. LOUISE BOWMAN McCLAIN. While in those days she exhibited remarkable facility in the stiff, formal lessons of the text-books, her mind and heart were fast developing along another line wholly independent of the discipline of the school-room, and at an early age she had shown a great fondness for poetry. That fondness was partly inherited and partly due to the inspiring scenes amid which she grew up. Her mother, Emily Huntley Bowman, who was a cousin of Lydia Huntley Sigourney, was herself a poet of more than ordinary ability. Her father, Elijah Goodell Bowman, was a man of strong mental powers and wide and diversified knowledge, and to his careful and healthful pruning is due much of the symmetry which her work possesses. Mrs. McClain has never published a book, but her poems, sketches and stories have appeared in various papers and magazines of Indiana and other States. Her work is of a high order, pure, refined and elevating. She is the wife of Rev. T. B. McClain, of the Methodist Fpiscopal Church.