The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-09-19


 The time is notable for the number of women of independent fortune who have turned from mere idle amusement and set themselves to be helpful to their generation. It does not take woman of brains long to find out that about the most empty and unsatisfying pursuit of all is making a business of pleasure. To Mrs. Emmons Blaine, recently appointed a member of the Chicago Board of Education. the reaii- zation came early. when her young husband, the favorite son of James G. Blaine, died in 1892. After three years of happy married life she was left a youthful widow, to plan her life and rear her little boy alone. She was Anita Mccormick, daughter of Cyrus Mccormick, and inheritor of $3,00O,00o. Her child, Emnions Blaine. was not TO- bust, and her first thought was how 10 rear him properly. She was hisniy educated and intellectual naturally looking below the surface. of things. She had the splendid psychological fac- ulty of putting herself in the place Of other people and looking at conditions from their viewpoint. This was par tfcularIy true in case of those hnan- cially less fortunate than herself. Long ago 1t was said of her:
 "She Is always thinking of some way to help people"
 When her son reached school age Anita Blaine thought many an hour over the question of where he should be Instructed No woman living Is more thoroughly one of the American people than Mrs. Blaine. but her son was too delicate in health to endure the wholesome public school training. His mother visited school after school. searching out a place where she might enroll her boy as a pupil. She herself was wise enough to understand just what she wanted.
 One day a lady in black called to visit the Chicago normal school. The principal, Colonel Francis Parker, was away that morning. but the teachers conducted the lady from room to room in the building. She noted everything with a discriminating mind and took her leave. She bought that day one of Colonel Parker's books on education and studied 1t. It did not take her long to decide that the right instructor
 for her boy was teacher trained in Colonel Parker's normal school. Not long afterward that gentleman receiv- ed a letter telling him that the writer had visited his school and desired him to call on her in reference to getting tutor for her son. The letter was signed Anita Mccormick Blaine" T don't know her. Who is she" said Colonel Parker. He was actually so rapt heart and soul in his work that he did not know the names of the very rich in his own town.
 We'll, the next step was that little Emmons Blaine was sent every day in a carriage from one end of Chicago to the other to attend the primary aca- demic department of Colonel Parker's normal school The next step after that, and the great one. was that Anita Mccormick Blaine found her own work, the task which. when, at the end, she lays it down finished, she can point to and say:
 This is my justification for being born"
 She founded a model normal school and placed Colonel Parker at the head. It was called the Chicago Institute and cost s5O0,000 to build. Mrs. Blaine herself personally assisted in the plan
 ming of the departments and of the buildings themselves. She made a
 study of pedagogy that she might
 know what was wanted. The object of the institute was to train every per son who took It's course to be an edu- cational expert Mrs Blaine even put | her teachers on a salary and sent them | to Europe to study and travel year in order to be better fitted for their work. To perfect her undertaking she
 allotted to the new teachers college regularly the sum of $s6,000 year for its running expenses.
 | This noble school for teachers, which
 both its founder and its working head, | Colonel Parker were too modest to all | low to be called by either of their names, is now connected with the de-
 pertinent of pedagogy of the Chicago university, Mrs. Blaine still footing the bills She is so quiet and so unostenta-
 tious in her philanthropy that surpris-