Mrs. Russell Sage is one of the richest women in the world. Her husband left her £14,000,000 when he died in July, 1906, and she intends to devote her entire fortune to the benefit of humanity. She was born at Syracuse in 1828, in somewhat humble circumstances, and when she married Mr. Sage nearly thirty years later, the millionairess and her husband were quite poor. . "We were not poverty-stricken," says she, "but just able to keep the wolf from the door." In the first three years of her widowhood she is said to have disposed of 5,000,000, and although she employs an army of secretaries to deal with the hundreds of begging letters received every day, she lives in simple style at Fifth Avenue, New York, with three servants, all nearly as old as their mistress. Her greatest pleasures are derived from her love of flowers and her pet birds, and her chief aversion is tobacco. Some time ago she resigned from the Society of Mayflower Descendants, because the men smoked at the annual banquet, in spite of her protests.

Mrs. Russell Sage Photo Fleet Agency