EVA KATHERINE CLAPP.

VA KATHERINE CLAPP was born in Bradford, Ill., August 10, 1857. Her father removed from Western Massachusetts and preëmpted a section of the best farming land in the State. There he built a log house of the frontier type, and in this his children were born. Miss Clapp's paternal grandmother was Lucy Lee, who was a direct descendant, on her father's side, from the famous Indian princess, Pocahontas. Her mother was Ann Ely, from Litchfield, Conn., a direct descendant from Lady Alice Fenwick, a romantic figure in collonial times, of Old Lyme, Conn. Miss Clapp passed the first eleven years of her life under her mother's watchful care, on her father's farm. After her mother's death she lived with a married sister. She attended school at Amboy, at the Dover Academy, and subsequently at the Milwaukee Female College. While her studies were pursued in a desultory manner and at irregular intervals, she learned very rapidly and easily. When about sixteen years old she visited for a time in the large eastern cities, and subsequently taught school in Western Massachusetts. She commenced to write at an early age. Her first story, written when she was twenty years old, was a novel entitled "Her Bright Future," drawn largely from life. Some thirty thousand copies were sold. This was followed by a A Lucky Mishap" and "Mismated," which reached a sale of about ten thousand copies; "A Woman's Triumph," and a serial first published in one of the Chicago dailies as "Tragedies of Prairie Life," and subsequently published in book form as a A Dark Secret." She has written many short stories and sketches, and has done considerable editorial work. Her poems have had a wide circulation. Miss Clapp's writings are characterized by a high moral tone. "Her Bright Future" is in itself an eloquent sermon on the evil of intemperance, while "Mismated presents forcibly the errors in our social system which its title indicates.

"

Miss Clapp's poems have appeared in the Chicago Current, the Interior, the Chicago Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Inter Ocean, the Boston Budget, and she writes regularly for the Boston Transcript, and the Register, of Berlin, Germany. Her poems are to be published in book form, under the title, "Songs of Red Rose Land."

Miss Clapp became the wife of Dr. C. B. Gibson of Chicago, in 1892, and spent a year in Europe, where Mrs. Gibson made a special study of the literature of Germany and France.

I. R. W.

GOLDEN--ROD.

WHEN the swift field spider weaves
'Mong the dry late garnered sheaves,
And the cricket's ceaseless song
Echoes shrill the whole night long,
From the hill,

Shorn and still,
Plaintive pipes the whip-poor-will.

By the brooklet's reedy edge,
By the dusty wayside hedge,
From the fragrant, fertile sod
Steps my Princess Goldenrod.
All in state

Doth she wait,

When the summer groweth late.

Motley is her retinue:
Dragon-flies of steely hue,

Mail-clad beetles-warriors bold-
Bronze-brown bees with belts of gold,
Courtiers true,

Come to sue

E'er the sunshines dries the dew.

Butterflies with wings out spread,
Purple, richly broidered
With heraldic quaint device;
Timid hares and shy field mice-
Here they meet,

At her feet,

In the sultry August heat.

From no well-kept garden bed
Doth she lift her yellow head.
Gorgeous-hued is she and wild-
Summer's wayward gypsy child.
Her rich sprays
Softly blaze

By the homely weed-grown ways.

In her tawny, tangled hair
Spanish colors doth she wear-
Royal, fervid tints that hold
All the summer's burning gold;
And each line,
Clean and fine,

Glows with exquisite design.

Through my idly dreaming brain, Princess of the blooming train, Ah! how many fancies chase, Musing on thy ardent graceCome and go,

To and fro,

Like the ocean's rhythmic flow.

A DREAM OF SAPPHO.

pain

The breasts of all the listening dryad train, My heart throbs swifter, sudden made aware Of her sad eyes, shadowed by dusky hair,

Soft-crumpled where the drowsy Loves have lain. She comes while faint, sweet odors everywhereThe white day-lilies' souls-float thro' the air. Hover and drift above the garden's space.

Ah! stately singer, hushed are lute and lyre; What dost thou hear, with pale, impassioned face, In this cold age? No more thy deathless fire Thrills in a kiss or hallows with its grace

The sweet yet bitter pain of love's desire.

THE SOLDIER'S WIDOW.

Ar the dim close of the November day
She stands alone, amidst the falling snow,

By her lost hero's grave; while backward flow
The currents of her musings. Once again life's

May;

Youth, love and hope in rosy colors play

Around her head; when, hush! the bugles blow!
And o'er her dreams a lifelong loss and woe,
Like yon dull cloud, sinks cheerless, cold and
gray.

Columbia's children, of your birthright proud,
Oh! in this peaceful year's calm autumn-tide,
Let to new deeds of love your hearts be vowed
For those whose dearest ones have fought and
died

For us. By generous act with fervid phrase allied,
Thy pride, America, prove justified.

TO VICTOR HUGO.

Majestic mother of a hero-race!

Old France in arts and honors still the first.
The twain republics, thy proud breasts have nursed
Clasp hands across the billowy ocean's space
O'er the great dead, whose words with us abide.
Once more we own our father's debt to thee,
Whose fervid breath fanned Liberty's faint spark
Until its beacon fires flamed through the dark,
And still shall flame, till all mankind is free.
With seer's gaze he saw the rushing tide
Of years that banish errors gray and old;
In that free France his prophet-song foretold,
High aspiration crowned and satisfied.

He turns from strife to sleep, his message told.
-Sunset.

MARY R. P. HATCH.

RS. MARY R. P. HATCH, poet and story writer, was born in the town of Stratford, N. H., June 19th, 1848. She is the daughter of Charles G. and Mary Blake Platt. Her ancestors were English. The Blakes settled in Dorchester, Mass., in 1620, and the Platts in Stratford, Conn., the families presenting a long line of illustrious names, from Admiral Blake, the naval hero, to Senator Platt, who managed the Copyright Bill in Congress. The list includes the Blakes, Judsons and McLellans of literary fame. Mrs. Hatch's life has been spent in the Connecticut valley. In childhood she possessed a quiet manner, a sensitive disposition, was a close observer and a student of nature. She early developed scholarly and literary tastes. At the age of fifteen she left the common schools and attended the academy at Lancaster, eighteen miles from her home. There she studied the higher mathematics, rhetoric, Latin and French, and there her ability as a writer was discovered and recognized. From that time she contributed sketches on various subjects for the county papers, and articles under her pen-name "Mabel Percy," from time to time appeared in the Portland Transcript, Peterson's Magazine, Saturday Evening Post and other papers and periodicals. Since then, under her true name, she has written for Zion's Herald, Springfield Republican, Chicago Inter-Ocean, the Writer, the Epoch, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and others. After leaving school she became the wife of Antipas M. Hatch. Their family consists of two sons, and as the wife of an extensive farmer she has been a busy woman. Her management of her home has left her some time to devote to literature, and her versatility has enabled her to do creditable work in the wide realm of short stories, dialect sketches, essays and poems, grave and gay, vers de societe and verses in dialect. "The Bank Tragedy," published serially in the Portland Transcript, was issued in book form and was a great success. Other stories from her pen are "Quicksands,” “The Missing Man" and "Polimpsa: A Psychical Study." Mrs. Hatch is painstaking and careful in all her work, following out lines of thought suggested by little things, and making everything count for its greatest value. Personally she is petite in figure, a blonde, with regular features and an aspect of frailness. She is a pleasing conversationalist, keeps thoroughly posted on the current events of the day, maintains a lively interest in political and religious matters and possesses a generous fund of common H. A. T.

sense.