798
THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
tried to persuade her to wear the long white aprons I think so pretty for little school girls, by telling her I wore them when I was a little girl. “ Well, but aunty,” she said, “ you lived in ancient times.” Well, I didn’t exactly live in ancient times, but you know until the past few years very few colleges were open to girls. I had a general knowledge of housekeeping that I saw no way of turning to a very profitable account. I did have some knowledge of painting and drawing, such as we acquire in boarding schools. I had taken lessons one year when I was about fifteen years of age, but combined with some talent and love for art, I had made unusual progress, and had a greater degree of excellence, probably, than anyone in the little city of Richmond, Ky., at that time my home. I had taught a few friends on china, having had more advantages in that line than anyone else in the town, and had taught so well that one of my pupils took the premium over me at the county fair.
I suppose I ought to have felt chagrined, but I felt pleased and flattered and encouraged to teach art, drawing and painting in oil, water and china. And so I opened a studio, teaching for several years. In that time d found that I was doing a great deal of hard work, with small profits and breaking myself down. I had not learned to teach and save myself. I concluded art in Kentucky did not pay. My ambitions were cramped. I was not satisfied. While in this frame of mind I chanced to attend a press association of Kentucky, and there I met one of the solons from Middlesborough, Ky. I was glad to meet this wise man from this interesting city of the mountains. Newspaper men are supposed to know everything, to be a walking encyclopaedia for the public’s use, and so I plied him with many questions, as to the advisability of my going into business in Middlesborough, suggesting real estate as a probable opening. To my astonishment and pleasure he encouraged me, and so I decided at once that was the thing I would do, my parents having gone to Southern Florida the fall before to escape the chilling blasts of winter. I returned to Lexington, where I then had a studio, dismissed my class and told my friends I was going to Middlesborough to be a real estate agent. Most of my friends protested. Who is going to chaperone you? Who is going to meet you? Who is going to help you? were some of the more important questions put to me. But I told them I couldn’t be having a chaperone all my life; I couldn’t always expect the pleasure of someone meeting me, and I had no reason to expect any but Divine help.
It was in the latter part of April, and the May sales of town lots were near at hand. I had no time to lose if I wished to be on the ground and get information necessary to my success. I had absolutely no knowledge of the business, but my father and grandfather, having been most distinguished inventors of the day, and my mother a woman of more than ordinary ability, I knew I had an inherent right to a degree of intelligence, and I had heard Dr. Willets say in his celebrated lecture on sunshine, that one of the most useful and best traits for woman to possess (a good square word; it was found in all the dictionaries), was “ Gumption .”
The word embraces a great deal; and so I determined to cultivate gumption, and bring into use all the intelligence I could command.
I shall never forget the night I left the city of my birth, Lexington, Ky., and bade farewell to the most beautiful, the most hospitable and devoted people the sun ever shone upon. To give this in exchange for a new town in the mountains, among total strangers, to embark in business I had no knowledge of whatever, with no financial backing, defying as it were the code of Southern usages in sundering the bars and going into new fields of business not before tried by a Kentucky woman, I knew it was a venture and I was taking desperate chances, but the occasion demanded this at my hands and I determined to risk it. Nothing ventured, nothing won, an adage worth remembering. These and many more were the thoughts that passed through my brain when I was given time for reflection as the 10 o’clock train rapidly lengthened the distance between those I loved and myself.
When I had taken my seat I discovered I was the only lady in the coach, with about twelve or fifteen men, principally rough men of the mountains, for we had by