husband, believing himself called to the gospel ministry, prepared to leave India to fit himself in an American college for his life work. Mrs. Oldham heroically consented to four years of separation from her husband, while she in the meantime should support herself in India. In one year she was, largely through the kindness of the ladies of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Meadville, Pa., enabled to join her husband in Allegheny College. After spending two years in the college, she entered Boston University as a sophomore. While there her health was menaced, and after a season of rest she entered Mount Holyoke Seminary, South Hadley, Mass., Leaving that school in the spring of 1884, she. in the same year, sailed with her husband to India, where they hoped to live and work. She visited her mother and friends a few weeks, holding herself in readiness to go wherever her husband might be sent. Bishop Thoburn, presiding over the India missionary work, appointed him to the South India conference in the fall of 1884, to go to Singapore in far-off Malaysia and plant there a self-supporting mission. The Bishop, seeing the delicate-looking little wife of his newly-appointed missionary standing with her mother and sisters, asked her if she wished the appointment changed. She, though remembering the five years of separation from her home and friends, and looking at the long one in prospect in the distant mission field fourteen days journey by sea and land.answered: "Dr. Thoburn, if my husband has been appointed to open a new foreign mission in Singapore, we will go and open it." Arriving there, she was an inspiration in all branches of the work. She assisted and encouraged her husband in his work among the boys and men. She taught in the boys' school, opened the work among women, and was appointed first president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Malaysia, where with Mrs. Mary Leavitt she organized the work. She, with ladies of her union, was deeply interested in the welfare of English, American and German sailors, visiting the saloons and persuading them to attend gospel and temperance meetings. To reach the women of the different nationalities with a more direct and efficient agency became her aim. Two English women who, like herself, were then in mission work, gave their aid, and by their untiring efforts a permanent mission was established among the women of that beautiful island. America, through the women of Minnesota, furnished the money, and Australia supplied the missionary. Miss Sophia Blackmore. After years of incessant labor, the Oldhams, not only to recruit their health, but in the interest of missions, returned to America, coming by way of China and Japan. Mrs. Oldham, though busy with her husband in a large church in Pittsburgh, Pa., is in much demand on the platform to plead for the work among women in the foreign mission fields. She has written much in behalf of that work and is a contributor to the "Gospel in All Lands" and other missionary periodicals.
OLIVER, Mrs. Grace Atkinson, author, born in Boston, Mass., 24th September, 1844 She is the daughter of a well-known merchant of Boston, James L. Little. In 1869 she became the wife of John Harvard Ellis, a talented young lawyer, the son of Rev. Dr. George E. Ellis, of Boston. Her husband died about a year after their marriage. That was a sad event for Mrs. Ellis.
.jpg)
GRACE ATKINSON OLIVER.
In order to divert her mind from her trouble, she was advised by Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale to write for his magazine, "Old and New." That was her first literary work, which was succeeded from time to time by contributions to the "Atlantic Monthly." "Galaxy" and "Scribner's Magazine." She was for some years a regular contributor to the Boston " Transcript " on book notices, and she wrote also for the "Daily Advertiser." In 1873 she wrote the "Life of Mrs. Barbauld," which is an interesting work and well received by the public. In 1874 Mrs. Ellis spent a season in London, Eng., where she enjoyed the best literary society of that metropolis. While in England she met some members of the family of Maria Edgeworth. They suggested to her the writing of the life of Miss Edgeworth. That book was published in the famous "Old Corner Bookstore," in Boston, in 1882. In 1879 she became the wife of Dr. Joseph P. Oliver, a physician of Boston. Subsequently she wrote a memoir of the revered Dean Stanley, which book was brought out both in Boston and London. In the winter of 1883-84 she edited three volumes of selections from Anne and Jane Taylor, Mrs. Barbauld and Miss Edgeworth. Mrs. Oliver is at present engaged upon a work of great value and importance, upon which she is bestowing her usual labor and painstaking. The subject will relate to the lives and reminiscences of some Colonial American women. She has also been engaged recently upon the "Browning Concordance, edited by Dr. J. W. Rolfe, and soon to be published. Her reputation as a writer is established. Mrs. Oliver is a woman of unselfish and generous impulses. Blessed with a competency, she is always ready with time and means to do even more than her part in every good cause. She is a kindly, public-spirited woman. In the year 1889, after the death of her father, Mrs. Oliver bought and fitted up a house in Salem, where she moved in the last month of the year. In that place had lived in the time of the Revolution her great-grandfather, Col. David Mason, a noted man, who figured in "Leslie's Retreat," at the North Bridge, in February, 1775. Colonel Mason was. it is said, a correspondent of Dr. Franklin, and
