WOMAN AND HOME.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1868, 21 March 1889, Page 4

WOMAN AND HOME.

she sweet poetess, Lucy Larcome was a mill-hand.

Adelaide Phillips, the singer, now dead, was a treasury girl, and so for a time was Sara Jewett, actress. Pretty Maud Granger, with the gold-brown eyes and shapely form, first earned her livelihood by running a sewing machine.

Minnie Hank’s father was a German and a shoemaker in the most straitened circumstances. Her voice early attracted the attention of one of New York’s richest men, who bad it cultivated, aud thus opened the way to fame for her. Charlotte Cushman was the daughter of poor people, who, however gave her an excellent education in the public schools. In order to maiutain herself she aspired to become an opera singer, but accidentally losing her voice, became an actress instead. The mother of Clara Louise Kellogg strained every nerve to give Clara a musical education, and at one time was a professional spiritual medium. Miss Kellogg failed three times. Each time she retired, not discouraged, but to devote herself to the still further development of her voice. Finally she took the public by storm. Her first failures were her last.

The lady doctors and lawyers have had the hardest time to enter professional ranks. Nevertheless, they have made great headway since Elizabeth Blackwell vainly applied for admission to the medical colleges iu New York, Boston and Philadelphia. She was finally admitted as a student in the medical college of Geneva, N.Y. Her youth was one of struggle, hardship, discouragement, and restricted meaus.

Edmona Lewis, sculptor, is colored. Overcoming the prejudice against her sex aud color, and self-educated, Miss Lewis is now successfully pursuing her piofession iu Italy. Only one other colored lady ever gained distinction in the fine arts; that was the singer who called herself “ The Black Swan.” and who flourished about fifteen years ago. There lias never been an authoress or actress of color beyond the merest tyro, but no on© can predict what the future may hold for colored people.

We have had two great female astronomers, Miss Herschell and Miss Mitchell. Both were single women, and both took up the study of astronomy in order to help their brothers. Miss Herschell’s pathway to fame was over a smooth road, but Miss Maria Mitchell had everything to battle with. She was the daughter of a small farmer in Nantucket, who was obliged to eke out his income by teaching a school at two dollars a week. Maria was constantly occupied with household duties, and she describes her childhood as “ an endless washing of dishes,”

It is a curious fact that so many of our celebrated literary women were the daughters of farmers, and began their life-work by teaching school—gradually acquiring fame and affluence by writing. Take the Cary sisters to begin with, and Mrs Lydia Sigourney, the poetess, before them, then Grace Greenwood, and lastly Ella Wheeler. Ella Wheeler never taught school, bat her parents were poor farm people in the west. The first poem she ever wrote she sent to Mrs Frank who saw enough merit in it to accept it. Ella has bought her parents a home out of her own earnings, and is in every respect a most excellent daughter.

Clara Morris’s mother was a cook in a restaurant in Cleveland when Clara was a lanky girl of 15 years of age. Manager John Ellsler advertised for some extra girls for the pantomime he was getting up. Clara applied for a place in the extra ballet. She wore an old, faded calico dress, much too short for her long legs, a thin shawl, and a ragged woollen scarf wrapped around her head. When the extra girls were no longer required Clara was retained for small parts. That was the beginning of the career of the great emotional actress, Clara Morris, who, by the way, is of English, not American, birth. Anna Dickinson began life as a schoolteacher. Wearying of this, she one day wont to Mrs John Draw, manageress of the Arch Street; Theatre, and entreated her to give her an opportunity to go upon the stage. Mrs Drew heard her recite, told her that sho had a very bad accent, that she did not think she would ever make an actress, and advised her to go back to her school teaching. The war broke out soon afterward, giving Miss Dickinson an opportunity to emerge from obscurity. Sho still secretly cherished histrionic aspirations ; but years were destined to elapse before she was enabled to test whether Mrs Drew had been a true prophet or not. —Celia Logan in Chicago News.

An Illinois paper has the following —Tho funeral services of the late William P. Lewis were somewhat hurried to enable his estimable and grief-stricken widow to catch the 2 o’clock train for Chicago, where she goes to visit friends.