teacher and reader. After a successful year in the Nebraska Wesleyan University she was called to a position in Cotner University, Lincoln, where she still fills the chair of professor of oratory and dramatic art.
PARKHURST, Mrs. Emelie Tracy Y. Swett, poet and author, born in San Francisco, Cal., 9th March, 1863, and died there 21st April, 1892. She was the daughter of Professor John Swett, a prominent educator of California, known as "The father of Pacific Coast Education" and the author of many excellent educational works, which have been in wide use in the United States, England, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Australia. Both Professor Swett and his wife were inclined to literature.
.jpg)
EMELIE TRACY Y. SWETT PARKHURST.
Emelie was educated in the public schools of San Francisco, ending with the normal school. She made specialties of French and music and was proficient in art and designing. She went, after graduation, to Europe and spent some time in France. Returning to California, she taught vocal and instrumental music in a female seminary in Eureka. She became the wife of John W. Parkhurst, of the Bank of California, in 1889. Her literary career was begun in her youth, when she wrote a prize Christmas story for the San Francisco "Chronicle." She was then fourteen years old. She served for a time as private secretary to a San Francisco publisher, and while in that position she wrote and published much in prose and verse. She contributed to eastern papers, to the San Francisco papers and to the "Overland Magazine." She collected materials for a book on the best literary work of the Pacific coast. Soon after her marriage she organized the Pacific Coast Literary Bureau, and out of it grew the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association, and she served as corresponding secretary of the latter organization. She contributed to the "Magazine of Poetry," the "California Illustrated Magazine" and many other high-class periodicals. She wrote much in the editorial line, and her literary work includes everything from Creek, French and German translations to the production of finished poems of high merit. She wrote a biography of Charles Edward de Villers in French and English. She dramatized Helen Hunt Jackson's Indian novel, "Ramona." Her life was crowded full of work.
PARTON, Mrs. Sara Payson Willis, author, born in Portland, Me., 9th July, 1811, and died in Brooklyn, N. Y., 10th October, 1872. She was a daughter of Nathaniel and Sara Willis. She received the name Grata Payson. after the mother of Edward Payson, the preacher, but she afterwards took the name of her mother, Sara. The family removed to Boston in 1817, where her father for many years edited "The Recorder," a religious journal, and the "Youth's Companion." Sara was a brilliant and affectionate child. She was educated in the Boston public schools, and afterwards became a student in Catherine Beecher's seminary in Hartford, Conn. She received a thorough training, that did much to develop her literary talent. In 1837 she became the wife of Charles H. Eldredge, a Boston bank cashier. In 1846 Mr. Eldredge died, leaving Mrs. Eldredge, with two children, in straitened circumstances. She tried to support her- self and children by sewing, but the work prostrated her. She sought vainly to get a position as teacher in the public schools. After repeated discouragements, she, in 1851, thought of using her literary talent She wrote a series of short, crisp, sparkling articles, which she sold to Boston newspapers at a half-dollar apiece. They at once attracted attention and were widely copied. Her pen-name, "Fanny Fern," soon became popular, and her "Fern Leaves," as the sketches were entitled, brought her offers for better pay from New York publishers. She brought out a volume of "Fern Leaves," of which eighty-thousand copies were sold in a few weeks. In
