Page:Women of distinction.djvu/210

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154
WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

pass through Baltimore and Havre de Grace alone with her child. Being intimately acquainted with the family of the celebrated Dr. Peter Parker, who had recently returned to Washington City from China, and knowing that they intended to visit the East, she consulted them about the matter. Dr. Parker told her the only way she could travel with his family was to go as far as New York as their slaves, she and her child. She readily consented; and thus one Saturday morning in the month of June the mother with her child arrived in Providence, R. I. She found after reaching Providence that the educational facilities were not as good for the colored youth as those in Boston, so she sent Zelia to Boston to school.

This girl possessed great dramatic and artistic powers. During her stay in the New England school she would always be called upon to declaim in the presence of visitors. She declaimed before the great educators, Bigelow and Green. They said to her, "Go on; you have talent; improve it." But, alas! like many others, she had no one to depend upon but a poor mother for her support. Her mother sent her to Wilberforce in 1870. She was graduated in 1875. She returned to Providence. In 1878, June 27th, she married Inman E. Page, the first colored graduate of Brown University, and now President of Lincoln Institute at Jefferson City, Mo. Her life has not been one of continual sunshine, and yet it has not been at all times the opposite. Having a strict moral principle, she could never wink at anything that was wrong or seemingly wrong. Perhaps