Page:Women of distinction.djvu/368

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.

one year. Here she remained two months, and the promised aid failing to come, she was notified to leave for non-payment of bills, as the school had no beneficiary fund. She asked for work to pay back the board of two months but at the time there was no place open to her. She found employment as a domestic and was earning some money to refund to the institution. But before she had been at her new home two weeks the president found employment for her in the nursing of sick in Leonard Medical Hospital, where she could also attend a few classes in the literary branches at the same time. He thus went for her and she accepted this new work and at once entered upon duty. During the following three years she found work enough at the school to keep her going in some way, attending only a few classes daily and studying hard at night. She was in the meantime developing some talent as a songstress, and began to attract much attention at the commencement exercises each year, at the same time standing first in two of her daily classes. At commencement of her third year she carried off the first prize in a recitation contest among the young ladies of the seminary.

When she left Shaw University, having worked and supported herself for three years, she began public life in reality. She taught one winter in the Greensboro Normal and Collegiate Institute, and then went North and took lessons in elocution and music under a very popular and noted Italian professor of New York City. Since returning from the North she has traveled extensively, singing and reading before the public in the large cities and towns. She speaks with freedom and ease. She