at least in New England, to venture in the role of lecturer. She began to come into prominence in the old Land League days, and made her first public appearance in Boston at the time of a visit to
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KATHERINE A. O'KEEFFE.
that city of the lamented poet and patriot, Fanny Parnell. She has since made a satisfactory development as a lecturer, gaining steadily in strength and versatility, as well as in popularity. Among her lectures are "A Trip to Ireland," "Landmarks of English History," "Mary, Queen of Scots," "An Evening With Longfellow. "An Evening With Moore, "Catholic and Irish Pages of American History," "An Evening With Milton," "An Evening With Dante." "History of the United States " "The Passion Play," and "Scenes and Events in the Life and Writings of John Boyle O'Reilly." Some of those lectures have been given before large audiences in the cities and towns of New England. In 1892 she delivered the Memorial Day oration before the Grand Army of the Republic in Newburyport, Mass. She was one of the evening lecturers in the Catholic Summer School, New London, Conn., in the summer of 1892. She is patriotic and public-spirited. She has a keen sense of humor, dramatic instinct and a self-possession not common in women. She has found time to do some excellent work as an original writer and compiler, and has published a "Longfellow Night" and a series of school readings. She furnishes local correspondence to the "Sacred Heart Review," of Boston and Cambridge, and is an associate member of the New England Woman's Press Association.
OLDHAM, Mrs. Marie Augusta, missionary worker, born in Sattara, Western India, in November, 1857. Her maiden name was Marie Augusta Mulligan. Her father was from Belfast, Ireland, and an officer in the British army on service in India. Her mother was born in India and was of the old "Butler" stock, also of Ireland. Her mother was early left a widow, with three daughters and one son to care for. Although accustomed to the ease and luxury of Anglo-Indian life, she was yet a woman of clear judgment and energy, and she saw that, to raise her family for usefulness, her life of ease must cease.
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MARIS AUGUSTA OLDHAM.
She opened a dressmaking and millinery establishment and was enabled to give her children a practical idea of life and a fair education, and to make them more self-reliant than Anglo-Indian children are wont to be. When Marie was fifteen years of age, a great change in the family life was caused by the advent, in Poona, of William Taylor, the American evangelist, now Bishop of Africa.
Her oldest sister, Lizzie, became the wife of A. Christie, a government surveyor, who one day announced that a long-bearded, fine-spoken American was holding very extraordinary services
in the Free Kirk. The family were all rigid Episcopalians, but curiosity was too strong for their prejudices, and to the Free Kirk they went They had never before heard such pungent and direct
presentations of gospel truths. When, at the close of the service, the evangelist requested all who there determined from that time to become followers of Christ, to rise to their feet, Marie was the first to respond, followed by her sister and her brother-in-law. A new trend was given to the whole inner life of the family. Marie became an earnest working member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1875 she became the wife of William F. Oldham, at that time an active layman in the church, who had been led to his religious life by hearing a few words of testimony spoken by Miss Mulligan, in a meeting which he had entered through curiosity. She went to Bangalore, South India, with her husband, who was a government surveyor. While there her sympathies induced her to open a girls' school, which she did, unaided, conducting it alone until help was furnished her. In 1879 her
