378 FAMOUS LIVING AMBBICANS her indebtedness for having revealed to her what it meant to be a genuine teacher, the dignity that should pertain to the profession, the consecration and deep seriousness demanded therein* Removing with her family to Texas in the following au- tumn, she spent a year under private tutors, and then took the competitive examinations for a scholarship in the Sam Houston Normal School, which had just opened at Huntsville. She not only gained the scholarship, but received the remark- able average of 100 per cent. This was because in this in- stance, as always, she put her whole heart into the task be- fore her, paying no attention to anything else imtil this was out of the way. It is said that the news of this achievement preceded her to Huntsville, so that her arrival was looked forward to with keen interest. We are told also that her ap- pearance created universal surprise, for **they had expected at least to see a dignified school-marm, whereas she, a slip of a girl of eighteen years and very small for her age, seemed a mere child. However, she lived up to the reputation she found awaiting her at the school, for she more than held her own, and when graduation day came she was one of two honor students. ^ ^^A miracle of faithfulness" she has been called, and also
- the story-book lady, both designations being truthful and
apt, for her every achievement has followed conscientious and painstaking effort ; and so the story of her life reads like a page from a good old-fashioned fairy tale where virtue is always appropriately rewarded. One friendship formed at the Sam Houston Normal School was destined to have an important bearing on her subsequent life and to result in the greatest happiness that can come to a woman — happy wifehood and motherhood. It was there that she met Percy V. Pennybacker, a fellow student, and their engagement tinged with rose-color the next two years for both of them, years spent by her in teaching, first in Texas and then in Missouri, and by him in foreign study and traveL Returning to this country, Mr. Pennybacker became superin- 1 Peter Molyneauz in Texas Club Woman for June, 1914.
