# Woman of the Century/Edna Chaffee Noble

​NOBLE, Mrs. Edna Chaffee, elocutionist, born in Rochester, Vt., 12th August, 1846. She spent her childhood in happy, healthful living until the age of fourteen, when she went to the Green Mountain Institute, Woodstock, Vt, where she studied for four years. After a year of study there, she was allowed to teach classes, and she has been connected with schools in one way or another ever since. She first taught in district schools, where she "boarded around." and later was preceptress of an academy in West Randolph, Vt., teaching higher English, French and Latin. She was the first woman to teach the village school in her native town, where she surprised the unbelieving villagers by showing as much ability as her predecessors. When the committee came to hire her and asked her terms, she replied: "The same you have paid the gentleman whose place you wish me to fill, unless there is more work to do, under which circumstances I shall require more pay." The committee thought they could not give a woman a ​man's wages, hut she remained firm, and at length they engaged her for one term, but kept her two years. Her first study in elocution was with Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Frobisher, when she was fifteen EDNA CHAFFEE NOBLE. years old. They gave her careful instruction and developed her extraordinary talent, but forty-eight weeks in a year devoted to teaching left little time for the pursuit of art, and she would never, perhaps, have taken it up again, had it not been for one of those accidents which, though apparently most unfortunate, often turn the current of life into broader and deeper channels. After five years of annoyance and suffering from loss of voice, she resolved to study elocution again as a means of cure. For that purpose she placed herself under the guidance of Prof. Moses True Brown, of Boston, regaining through his instruction both voice and health and making rapid advancement in the art of expression. On Prof. Brown's recommendation she was invited to take the chair of oratory in St Lawrence University, where she taught until her marriage to Dr. Henry S. Noble. Probably the most important step ever taken by her was the opening of the Training School of Elocution and English Literature in Detroit, Mich., in 1878. Previous efforts of others in the same direction had ended in failure. Her venture proved to be a fortunate one. In speaking of it she seems surprised that people should wonder at the undertaking. She says: "If it is noteworthy to be the first woman to do a thine, why, I suppose I am the first in this particular field of establishing schools of elocution, But I didn't mean to be. I simply did it then, because it was the next thing to be done." She might now be a rich woman in this world's goods, but for her lavish giving, for she has earned a fortune; but she has a wealth of love and gratitude and is content. She once said: "As I have no children, I have tried to show the good God that I knew my place was to look after a few who had no mothers." "Speaking pieces" is but a small part of that which is learned by her pupils. Both art and literature are taught broadly, and. more than that, she exercises a wonderfully refining and elevating influence over the hundreds of pupils of both sexes who enter her school. She is a mother to every girl who comes to her. and has been so in a very practical way to many who were bereft of the benefits of a home. Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, who once visited her school, said to Mrs. Noble: "The strength of your school lies in the fact that you loved it into life." Mrs. Noble has never been content with simply doing well. She has studied with eminent teachers, at home and abroad, and has used every means for strengthening and perfecting her work, which now stands an acknowledged power in the educational world. Aside from her work in the one school, her personality has been felt in the schools which she has founded in Grand Rapids, Mich., Buffalo, N. Y., Indianapolis, Ind., and London, Eng., as well as by the thousands who have heard her as a reader and lecturer. She teaches from October to May each year in the Detroit school, and during May and June visits the Chaffee-Noble School of Expression in London. August she spends in "Lily Lodge," her summer home in the Adirondacks