Page:Women of distinction.djvu/244

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

attended the most excellent public schools of that great city, where she necessarily laid a broad foundation upon which she has built a more recent and most tasty structure. She is of foreign and American parentage, and has always given evidence of that thrift which is now an important characteristic of her.

After spending sufficient time in the public schools she entered Fort Edward Collegiate Institute, New York, where she was further prepared for lifers duties, into which she has so earnestly entered. She began public service on the 16th of November, 1886, by reading for a concert of young talent. It is needless to say more of her first effort than that it was a success. Since that time up to September, 1892, she has given nearly eight hundred concerts in tliirty-one States of the Union and has also appeared with much acceptance in Halifax and St. John, New Brunswick. She has appeared before the public in Boston, Mass., more than sixty times with great satisfaction and credit; at the Boston Theatre twice, before about five thousand persons. She has also appeared in Philadelphia, and was there greeted by an audience of over five thousand on the 17th of November, 1890, at the Academy of Music. At Fanueil Hall she read for the Irish League after a speech made by Ben Butler. In the National Pageant, given by Cora Scott Pand, she took part in four speaking tableaux in the Boston Theatre, at Newport, R. I., and Union Square Theatre, N. Y. She spent one season at Bouccicault's Dramatic School in New York, and was pronounced by him a genius as an actress, as well as by ex-Secretary Noble, Hon. Fred.