Her parents follow her. As there is
room in the compartment for forty-eight persons without crowding, she
arranges places for her parents, and after much laughter and joking the
latter settle off to sleep. The Italians stare at her; but not I. I sit
with my back to her. She sits down, back to back with me, then turns her
head and asks me, in Italian, some question about time, place, or the
like. I reply as best I can. She (in English): "You are Italian?" On my
reply, she tells me: "I hardly know twenty words in Italian; I only
speak English, although I have been living in Rome for two years."
She then went on to relate that she was an American, born of poor
parents out on the Indian frontier; she was twenty-six years old, a
sculptor, and was on her way from Carrara, where she had been
superintending the shipment of one of her works, a statue of Lincoln,
which the Congress at Washington had done her the honour of ordering
from her. It was only when she was almost grown up that her talent had
been discovered by an old sculptor who happened to pay a visit and who,
when he saw her drawing, had, half in jest, given her a lump of clay and
said: "Do a portrait of me!" She had then never seen a statue or a
painting, but she evinced such talent that before long several
distinguished men asked her to do busts of them, amongst others,
Lincoln.
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