Miss Alice Balfour and her brother, the ex-premier, have been inseparables since their childhood days at Whittingehame, in Haddingtonshire, and for many years past she has acted as her brother's housekeeper and trusted adviser. She is well fitted for the post, inasmuch that she was brought up by a mother - Lady Blanche Balfour - who firmly believed in home training for her children. The kitchen was handed over to Miss Balfour, and she has often been chaffed about the dishes she was wont to prepare when her knowledge of cookery was of a somewhat elementary character. Miss Balfour manages most of her brother's affairs, in order that he may not be distracted from his political work, and has also found time to travel and to write. In 1895 she journeyed through South Africa in a bullock waggon, the record of her journey being afterwards published under the title of "Twelve Hundred Miles in a Waggon." She rarely leaves London, however, when Parliament is sitting. Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox For many years Mrs. Wheeler Wilcox, "the most popular woman poet that America has produced," struggled hard as a journalist. To-day she is one of the highest-paid poets in the world. And yet her first book," Poems of Passion," was denounced in the Press and the pulpit, and, since it was the work merely of a young girl, created a tremendous sensation. And all because she wrote of the tender passion of love. Looking back on those days, Mrs. Wilcox candidly confesses that she would not express herself so to-day. But at that time she was passionately fond of Ouida's books. "They seemed full of fire and poetry to me," she says, and "Poems of Passion was the result. Since then she has written a poem almost every day of her life, and they are read by millions in two hemispheres. Three times a week her messages of hope and comfort are a feature of five large American dailies, and are syndicated afterwards among 250 smaller papers in the States. No one has a better understanding of the sentimental side of human nature, and that is why the writings of Mrs. Wilcox are so popular.

Miss Alice Balfour Warschcrwski