England, when she sang the rôle of Elsa in "Lohengrin," brought out by manager Gye in Covent Garden theater. In Nice, in 1876, she made a deep impression. In Paris she revived the fortunes of the Théâtre Ventadour by her rendition of Lucia and of Gilda in "Rigoletto." In 1877, in the Royal Italian Opera in London, she sang the rôle of Elizabeth in "Tannhäuser," scoring a great success in that majestic character. In August, 1878, she was married to Ernest Gye, the oldest son of Frederick Gye, director of the Royal Italian Opera in London, England. During the winter of 1878 she sang in the Imperial Opera in St. Petersburg, Russia, and afterwards in Moscow, Milan and Brussels, always with increasing popularity. In 1879 and 1880 she appeared in Covent Garden, London, as Gilda, Amina, Marguerite, Elvira, Elsa, Mignon, and Ophelia. In the last-named rôle she has no rival. In 1883 she sang in "Faust" and "Rigoletto" in Washington, D. C., and closed her operatic tour in Philadelphia in April of that year in "The Flying Dutchman." On 3d April, 1884, she sang in Gounod's "Redemption" in the Trocadéro, Paris, where that composer conducted his own work. In March, 1884, she sang in the Royal Opera house in Berlin. Her operatic career has been one long line of successes. Her voice is a pure soprano of great flexibility and wide range, and her dramatic powers are of the highest order. She is equally successful in concert and oratorio. Her repertoire includes most of the famous rôles. In May, 1886, at the opening of the Colonial Exhibition in London, she sang the ode written for the occasion by Tennyson. Among her acquaintances in Europe is Queen Victoria, who visits her at Mar Lodge, Albani's home in the Scotch Highlands, and meets her as a friend. Madame Albani-Gye is unspoiled by her successes.
ELIZA DOWNING ALBRIGHT.
ALBRIGHT, Mrs. Eliza Downing, church and temperance worker, born in Philadelphia, Penn., 13th March, 1847. She is descended from Puritan ancestry, dating back to that goodly company of 20,000 emigrants, Englishmen of the adventurous and thrifty class whose sails whitened the Atlantic between 1630 and 1640. At the age of eleven years Eliza Downing was graduated from the public schools of Philadelphia, and later she studied under private teachers and in some of the institutes in which the city at that time abounded. In 1867 she was married to the Rev. Louis M. Albright, D. D., a graduate of the Ohio Wesleyan University and a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church. After marriage she was engaged with her husband in teaching mathematics and natural sciences in the Ohio Wesleyan Female College, in Delaware, Ohio. Later she was a teacher of mathematics in Lewis College, Glasgow, Mo., and De Pauw Female College, of which Dr. Albright was president. More recently, in the itinerancy in Ohio, Mrs. Albright has been occupied in good work as a pastor's wife in connection with the churches and districts in which her husband has successively served. For the last six years they have resided in Delaware, Ohio. When the temperance crusade began, Mrs. Albright threw herself into that new movement. She became corresponding secretary of the Ohio Woman's Christian Temperance Union at its organization, in 1877, and for three years, until family cares made necessary her resignation, she did a large amount of work in the way of correspondence and public speaking. She has been identified with the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as district secretary and speaker. At present she is one of the national officers of the Woman's Home Missionary Society and is also chairman of the State executive committee of the Young Woman's Christian Association. A clear and effective speaker, she is in constant demand for public addresses in the interest of these and other causes. While in sympathy with every movement for reform, Mrs. Albright counts her duties to her family first and highest. Naturally a student, with strong physique and great energy, she turns to account every opportunity for personal improvement.
ALCOTT, Miss Louisa May, author, born in Germantown, Penn., 29th November, 1832. Her birthday was the anniversary of the birth of her father, the late A. Bronson Alcott, the "Sage of Concord." Louisa was the second of four daughters, only one of whom, Mrs. J. B. Pratt, is now living. Surrounded in childhood by an atmosphere of literature, she began to write at an early age, her reading including Shakespeare, Goethe, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Miss Edgeworth and George Sand. Her first poem, "To a Robin," was written when she was eight years old. In 1838 the Alcott family removed to Boston, and she lived in or near that city until her death. Concord was longest her home. Their life in this latter town was interrupted by a year spent in an ideal community, "Fruitlands," in the town of Harvard, where they abstained from meat as food. The experience Miss Alcott described in an amusing sketch, "Transcendental Wild Oats." Returning to Concord, the Alcotts lived for a while in a house that was afterwards Hawthorne's home. Her father, a distinguished lecturer and teacher of his time, was one of the first to insist that gentleness was more influential than the rod, and to show that education should bring out the best that was in a child's nature, not simply cram a young mind with facts. Miss Alcott received her instruc-
