interest her scholars in the work in those countries. They always had a full house on missionary Sunday. Her lectures have been given by request in a number of churches, school-houses and conventions. One young lady, a member of one of her societies, is now a missionary in Japan. Mr. Meech has been pastor of the South Vineland Baptist Church for seventeen years. During his vacations Mrs. Meech frequently filled his place. She addressed an audience for the first time in Meadville, Pa., in 1867, in a Sunday-school convention. In 1890, in company with Mrs. Ives, of Philadelphia, she commenced a series of cottage prayer meetings in Holly Beach, N. J. They visited from house to house, talking with unconverted people and inviting them to the meetings. The religious interest was great Since then she has frequently held Sunday evening services in the Holly each Church, which is Presbyterian in denomination, and which years ago refused her the use of their church for a missionary lecture, because she was a woman. In March, 1891, the South Vineland Baptist Church granted her a license to preach. Since receiving that license, she has held a number of meetings on Sunday evenings in Wildwood Beach, N. J., and in Atlantic City, N. J. She held aloof from temperance societies till about three years ago. As the church did so little, and the evil increased so fast, she joined the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1889. She was made county superintendent of narcotics the first year. Two years ago she received an appointment as national lecturer for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the department of narcotics. She edited the Holly Beach "Herald" in 1885, but could not continue it for want of means. She has been engaged in business as a florist and art store-keeper for some years.
.jpg)
VELMA CALDWELL MELVILLE.
MELVILLE, Mrs. Velma Caldwell, writer of prose and poetry, born in Greenwood, Vernon county, Wis., 1st July, 1858. Her father was William A. Caldwell. Her mother's maiden name was Artlissa Jordan. They were originally from Ohio, removing to Wisconsin in 1855. The call of war, which, at the age of five years, forever severed Velma from a father's love and care, explains the intensely patriotic spirit of all her writings. He perished in the frightful mine before Petersburg. When twenty years of age Velma Caldwell
became the wife of James Melville, C. E., a graduate of the Wisconsin State University, since well-known as an educator and a prohibitionist. Her productions in verse and prose have appeared
extensively in the St. Louis "Observer," "St. Louis Magazine," "Housekeeper," "Ladies' Home Journal," "Daughters of America," Chicago " Inter-Ocean," "Advocate and Guardian," "Weekly Wisconsin," "Midland School Journal," Chicago "Ledger," "West Shore Magazine"
and many other publications. She is at present editing the "Home Circle and Youth's Department" of the "Practical Farmer " of Philadelphia, Pa., and the "Health and Home Department" in the
"Wisconsin Farmer" of Madison, Wis. She is a devoted follower of Henry Bergh, and with her pen delights to "speak for those who can not speak for themselves." For ten years past her home has
been in Poynette, Wis., but she has recently removed to Sun Prairie. Wis., where her husband is principal of the high school. She has been one of the most voluminous writers in current publications that the central West has produced. She is always felicitous in her choice of subjects, and her work has been very remunerative.
MERIWETHER, Mrs. Lide, author and lecturer, born in Columbus, Ohio, 16th October, 1829. Mrs. Meriwether's parents resided in Accomack county, Virginia, and it was during a temporary sojourn in Columbus their daughter was born. Her mother dying a few days after her birth, Lide was sent to her paternal grandparents in Pennsylvania. Setting forth in her seventeenth year to earn her own living, she and her only sister, L. Virginia Smith, who afterwards as L. Virginia French became one of the best known of Southern authors, went as teachers to the Southwest Almost ten years after that practical declaration of independence, an act requiring much more hardihood forty years ago than now, Lide Smith was married and settled in the neighborhood of Memphis, Tenn., where, with the exception of a few years, she has since remained. There she lived through the war, passing through the quickening experiences of four years on the picket line with three young children. After the war she led a simple home life, devoted to husband and children, to the needs of neighbors and to personal charities, of which she has had a large and varied assortment Though a reader and living in a rather literary atmosphere, she scarcely began to write until forty years old, nor to speak, a work for which she is even better fitted, till she was over fifty. The duties which came to her hand she did in a broad and simple way, while the thought of another work, which must be sought out was growing and her convictions were ripening. Then, when, as she says, most women are only waiting to die, their children reared and the tasks of the spirit largely ended, began for her a life of larger thought and activity. While many of her poems are imaginative, her prose has been written with a strong and obvious purpose. Her first literary venture, after a number of fugitive publications, was a collection of sketches, which came out under the name of "Soundings" (Memphis, 1872), a book whose object was to plead the cause of the so-called fallen women, a cause which both by her precepts-
