and family portraits in oil of an earlier date. She has spent much time in travel in the United States and Canada, and in the study of French, German and music. Reared in affluence and with a reasonable expectation that her inheritance would be ample for life, she, from childhood, loved literature for its own sake, unconsciously paving her way to more practical results in the future. After several years of married life, finding herself confronted by trials and reverses of fortune, thrown upon her own resources for the support of herself and two invalid children, she was forced to lay aside for a time her congenial literary pursuits and have recourse to other accomplishments that would bring speedier returns. She taught large classes in French, her pupils very creditably performing French plays in public. During many years she has successfully taught music, her pupils having numbered thirty-five at one time. They have rendered operettas and cantatas before large audiences. She has always devoted every possible moment to the loving care and companionship of her children, who are so delicate that most of her nights for ten years have been vigils over their sufferings. In all that hard, lonely fight with adversity, her faith and courage have never wavered. The vocation for which she was intended by nature and by culture is literature. Her love for her favorite calling has remained unabated during the years in which she has had so little time to spare for it, contributing in a somewhat desultory way to periodicals and magazines under assumed names.
OBERHOLTZER, Mrs. Sara Louisa Vickers, poet and economist, born in Uwchland, Pa., 20th May, 1841. She is a daughter of Paxson
and Ann T. Vickers, cultured Quakers of the time, and her early educational opportunities were good. The family were active abolitionists. Besides the hundreds of fugitives assisted on their way to Canada, the home entertained such guests as John G.
Whittier, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison and Bayard Taylor. Sara's ancestors were public-spirited.
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SARA LOUISA OBERHOLZER.
She naturally came, to the front early, taking a prominent part in literary and organization work from childhood. Her education was received in Thomas' boarding-school and in the Millersville State Normal School. She began to write for newspapers and magazines at the age of eighteen. She was at that time active president of a soldier's aid society, which rendered efficient assistance to the Boys in Blue during the Civil War. Ill health interfered with a medical course of study, for which she had prepared. In 1862 she became the wife of John Oberholtzer, a worthy and able man. They resided in Chester county until 1883, since which time their winter home is in Norristown, Fa., and their summer residence in Longport, N. J. Their children are Ellis Fax son and Vickers, the former already somewhat known in the world of letters as editor and economist. Mrs Oberholtzer is a person of various talents. Her published books are "Violet Lee and Other Poems" (Philadelphia, 1873); "Come for Arbutus and Other Wild Bloom" (Philadelphia, 1882); "Hope's Heart Bells" (Philadelphia, 1883); "Daisies of Verse" (Philadelphia, 1886), and " Souvenirs of Occasions" (Philadelphia, 1892), consisting mainly of poems read by the author on public occasions. A number of poems have been set to music by different composers. Among those best known are " The Bayard Taylor Burial Ode," sung as Pennsylvania's tribute to her dead poet at his funeral service in Longwood, 15th March, 1889, and " Under the Flowers," a Decoration ode. She has written extensively for periodicals and magazines on economic subjects, biography, travel, ornithology and other topics, and has done considerable local reporting She is the author of numerous dialogues and charades. She is listed in catalogues of naturalists and has one of the finest private collections of Australian bird skins and eggs in the United States. Interested in the uplifting of humanity, she has always given her close attention to the introduction of school savings-banks into the public schools since 1889. She made an address on the subject in the first meeting of the Women's Council, in Washington, in February, 1891, which is printed in their "Transactions." Her address on school savings-banks before the American Academy of Political and Social Science, in Philadelphia, in May, 1892, and printed in pamphlet form by the Academy, is popularly known. Her "How to Institute School Savings-Banks," "A Plea for Economic Teaching " and other leaflet literature on the subject have broad circulation. She has been widely instrumental in establishing school savings-banks in the United States, Canada, Australia and the Sandwich Islands. She has recently been elected world's and national superintendent of that work for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, which enlarges its channels. She has aided in instituting the university extension
movement, and delights in every opportunity that leads to educational and moral progress, being through all most distinctively and happily a poet.
O'DONNELL, Miss Jessie Fremont, author, was born in Lowville, N. Y. She is the youngest daughter of Hon. John O'Donnell, a man of influence and wealth. Her mother was a woman of literary ability. Miss O'Donnell studied in the Lowville Academy and later spent several years in Temple Grove Seminary, Saratoga Springs, N. Y., graduating with the highest honors of her class and as its chosen orator and poet. With no thought of preparing herself for any career, and being free to follow her inclinations, she divided
her time between horseback-riding and the pursuit
