wood Institute, Pittsfield, Mass. She is a member of the Maplewood Alumnæ Association, and at its first reunion she contributed an original poem, which appealed with especial interest to the members of her class who were present.
Mrs. Williams has musical ability of no mean order. She played in public before she was out of her teens, and taught instrumental music for several years with excellent success. When cooking-schools were first opened for instruction, she wrote on culinary education and the philosophy of good living, from the Boston and New York cooking-schools, for Southern, Western, and Eastern papers, often receiving in reference to them complimentary and appreciative letters from utter strangers.
Mrs. Williams was a newspaper correspondent at Mount Desert Island, Maine, for twelve summers, and was acknowletlged as an active force in bringing into notice a section of that country which is now widely known. Her correspondence from Saratoga, at one time the queen of Spas, was considered worthy of being placed on file. It may well be said that, wherever Mrs. Williams set the impress of her facile, graceful pen, it exhibited that subtle quality recognized as "style."
At one time Mrs. Williams was a paid contributor to eleven newspapers. She has been a contributor since 1881 to the Boston Transcript. She has also contributed to the Youth's Companion, Arts for America, the Houaehold, and other publications. A series of lectures on literary, historical, and art topics she has presented in many States with gratifying success. In her ceramic art lectures, which are fully illustrated by specimens, she was a pioneer, and, having visited the leading potteries and art museums in this country in pursuing this fascinating branch of study, she is an acknowledged authority on the subject.
Mrs. Williams has treated with consummate skill the mystery of Mary Stuart. Her strong rendering of the Queen's plea, on trial for her life before the English bar, often shakes the belief of those who have always thought the Queen was guilty. More than that cannot be done for a great historic doubt. Mrs. Williams's essay on the subject of Mary Stuart is pronounced by Mrs. Livermore to be a "gem of literary condensation." A professional and prolific writer thus expresses his appreciation: "Mrs. Williams is one of the most alive anti immediate students, not only in the Stuart chronicles, the great masters of art, the literature of the. early civilizations, but in the lore of the Queen who 'launched a thousand ships, and burned the topless towers of Ilium,'—Helen of Troy."
Mrs. Williams has given some of her choice entertainments before several notable charities: the Jackson Park Sanitarium for sick babies and the Model Lodging House in Chicago, through the auspices of the famous Archie (Arkay) Club of that city; the Bethel Social Settlement, Aged Couples' Home, and the Saint Barnabas Cuild of Nurses, Minneapolis; the Berkshire County Home for Aged Women, Pittsfield, Mass. ; and the Educational and Industrial Union, Buffalo, N.Y.
At a moot court, convened in Boston a few years ago, for the trial of the cause célèbre, Sir Francis Bacon vs. William Shakespeare, Mrs. Williams, after repeatedly declining, consented to espouse the Baconian side, and, as the junior barrister, opened the case in a most eloquent and finished manner. So lawyer-like were her arguments that she was highly praised by the late Judge Nathaniel Holmes (formerly Dean of the Harvard Law School, and ex- Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Missouri), the late Professor Smith, of the Dorchester Latin School, and even by the noted Shakespearean commentator, Dr. Rolfe. And yet Mrs. Williams is not a Baconian. Personally she is rather retiring, and the bulk of her work has been done in a quiet way. She is a member of the New England Woman's Press Association.
GRACE LE BARON UPHAM (in the literary world Grace Le Baron) was born in Lowell, Mass., June 22, 1845, the youngest daughter of John Goodwin Locke and Jane Ermina Starkweather Locke. Her father was a son of the Hon. John Locke, of Ashby, Mass., and a lineal descendant of Deacon William1 Locke, of Woburn, founder of the family in New England. Her mother was a daughter of Deacon Charles Starkweather,
