ote church music.

Helen Hood is one of America's few really gifted musical women. Boston
has been her home and the scene of her chief work, although she has
travelled abroad, and studied for two years with Moszkowski. Endowed
with absolute pitch, she has composed from her earliest years, and her
music won for her a medal and diploma at the Chicago Exposition. Her
most important work is a piano trio, while her two violin suites are
also made of excellent material.

Mrs. Jessie L. Gaynor has won an enviable position for herself, chiefly
as a composer of children's songs. Her work is marked by bright and
pleasing rhythms, excellent discretion in the proper choice of harmony,
and a fluent ease that makes her productions unusually singable. It is
not given to many composers to be able to make any real appeal to
younger hearers, but Mrs. Gaynor is possessed of the sympathetic insight
that enables her to win the utmost popularity with them. Her work is not
confined to this vein, but includes some more ambitious songs for older
performers, and even vocal quartettes.

Eleanor Smith is another song writer who believes that children should
be given the best of music, and not allowed to listen wholly to the
popular rag-time tunes of the day. Her position as music teacher in the
Cook County Normal School has enabled her to put her ideas in practice,
and her songs for boys are delightful bits of worthy music. She, too,
has done more ambitious work, such as a Rossetti Christmas Carol, the
contralto solo, "The Quest," eight settings of Stevenson's poems, the
Wedding Music for eight voices, piano, and organ, and a cantata, "The
Golden Asp."

Mrs. C. Merrick, who publishes her works over the name of Edgar Thorn,
is another talented woman who displays great gifts in small forms. Her
"Amourette," for piano, has often figured on concert programmes. In her
two collections, "Forgotten Fairy Tales" and "Six Fancies," many of the
numbers show a rare imaginative charm. The same composer has produced
several effective male choruses, which have been sung by the Mendelssohn
Glee Club and other organizations.

Among other song-writers, Mildred Hill, of Louisville, has been able to
preserve the real Southern flavour in some of her works,--a result that
is seldom attained, in spite of the countless efforts in this direction.
She, too, has insisted in putting good music into her children's songs.
Mrs. Philip Hale, a resident of Boston, has produc