A PROMINENT AMERICAN WOMAN.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 96, 25 April 1907, Page 6

A PROMINENT AMERICAN WOMAN.

In an article on the home life of Mr. William J. Bryan, who has twic© contested the Presidency of the United States, and, it is understood, will be a candidate again this year, an American journal says that on his political journey Mr Bryan is almost invariably accompanied by his wife. And on these journeys, and through her almost constant association with the most intimate details of his political work, Mrs Bryan has come to have such a knowledge or politics as no other woman ever possessed. Her husband holds her his wisest adviser, and prudent politicians have learned: to reckon upon her judgment when they seek to bring him to their views. She writes but little, and that chiefly for their own paper, the Commoner; nor does she speak in public. Withal, she is as potent a force in the political as in the home life of the Bryans.

Classmates in college, she and her husband were married shortly after graduation, when she studied law and was admitted to the bar, not with any expectation of practising, but merely that she niigH_ help _'* Will "—as she invariably caiiv. him—in his office, work. All through their married life she has been studying things that would help Will—shorthand, type writing, proof reading, the art of editorial expression and the mysteries—which in 1896 proved unfathomable to so many—of bimetallism.

Some years ago I was a guest at the Bryan home in Lincoln. Coming to breakfast at an hour which seemed abnormally early to the jaded mind of a New York, morning journalist, I found a vacant nlace. - "Where is Mrs Bryan ?" I asked.

■ " Oh,'.' said her husband, " three times a week she goes to the university before breakfast for an early class in German. You see," he continued with a smile, "I can't readNGerMan, and she thought it might be a good thing to have someone in the family who -could get at first, hand the sentiment of the German Press."

Nevertheless, the.breakfast was admirably served. This in itself is not of importance, but ielpsto illustrate the fact that for all her intellectual work, Mrs Bryan is no Mrs Jellaby, but a thoroughly competent working housewife. The Byran home has ever been a model of neatness and good domestic management. ■ Much of the work of the Bryan household centres about the weekly newspaper, the Commoner, which is "the vehicle of such of Mr Bryan's views as he cannot find occasion to express upon the platform. The Commoner the name of an associate- editor, but the true associate is Mrs-Bryan, whose work for it fills a / large portion of her busy days. Next to the enormous mass of political correspondence which needs daily attention, it is the chief day's work, and husband and .wife work over its copy and proofs together in the library, where political portraits, busts and engravings, illustrate famous debates in the United States Senate look down upon them. v