Woman of the Century/Kitty Smiley Cheatham

KITTY SMILEY CHEATHAM. CHEATHAM, Miss Kitty Smiley, actor, born in Nashville, Tenn., in 1869. She was educated in the public schools of that city and was graduated at fifteen years of age. While she was still a child, her father died, leaving his family in straitened circumstances. Realizing the necessity of personal exertion and prompted by her love for her mother, whose immunity from want she was anxious to secure, she cast al>out to see what her hands might find to do. The stage was her dream. She was even in childhood a lover of the theater Home-made theatrical amusement was her favorite pastime. Mimicry came natural to her. As she grew older her desire to become an actor was made known. By that time she had already won approbation as an amateur of more than average taste and still. Encouraged by critics and friends, she was enabled to overcome the opposition of her family and relatives to her adopting the stage as a profession, and in the spring of 1885 she removed to New York City to study singing under Errani, making such progress as justified her engagement when she was only sixteen years old. as leading lady in the J. O. Barrow "Professor" company. She met a flattering reception throughout the South. The following season she joined Col. McCall's traveling opera company and sang the prima-donna parts in the "Black Hussar," "Falka" and "Lrminie." The next season she played second parts in the Casino, in New York. Her prospects on that famous stage were flattering, but she foresook them for Daly's company, with which she has since been identified. In the Daly company she has played in ' The Midsummer-Night's Dream," "Love's Labor Lost," "The Inconstant," "The Foresters," and as "Kate," a part she created