Page:Women of distinction.djvu/323

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.
251

is pursuing her study in elocution, which course she will soon complete. She is also reading medicine preparatory to entering school to finish a course in this great profession. In the near future she will become an author. She is ascending slowly the ladder of fame. She is a reader of the best works and keeps abreast of the times. She has many accomplishments that mark her a cultured lady.

May heaven bless her! The future of few female writers is prospectively brighter than that of Miss Alice E. McEwen. Her aim as a writer is not for mere social attainments, but for the betterment of her people.

CHAPTER LXII.

MRS. CHRISTINE S. SMITH.

Eleven years ago a girl of fifteen summers stood at a wash-tub in the kitchen of one of her neighbors in Muncie, Indiana. This neighbor, a white lady, was in need of some one to do her washing, and she engaged to do it the subject of our sketch, who lived next door and who was attending the city high school. As the girl stood at the tub with her bare young arms playing in and out of the foaming suds, the lady for whom she was working asked what she intended to make of herself. The brown-eyed girl, whose complexion was not less fair than that of the woman for whom she labored, quickly responded, "A school-teacher." Some years