She was a good girl. There was a certain deep note about all that her
heart uttered. She had a mind of many colours. And there was the very
devil of a rush and Forward! March! about her, _always in a hurry_.
And now--no Roman elegy--I will hide her away in my memory:
Here lies
VINNIE REAM
Sculptor
of Washington, U.S.A.
Six-and-twenty years of age
This recollection of her is retained by
One who knew her
for seventeen days
and will never forget her.
I have really never seen Vinnie Ream since. We exchanged a few letters
after her departure, and the rest was silence.
Her statue of Abraham Lincoln stands now in a rotunda on the Capitol,
for which it was ordered. Later, a Congress Committee ordered from her a
statue of Admiral Farragut, which is likewise erected in Washington.
These are the only two statues that the government of the United States
has ever ordered from a woman. Other statues of hers which I have seen
mentioned bear the names of _Miriam, The West, Sappho, The Spirit of
Carnival_, etc. Further than this, I only know that she married
Richard L. Hoxie, an engineer, and only a few years ago was living in
Washington.
XLIII.
It was a real trouble to me that the Pope, in his exasperation over the
conquest of Rome--in order to make the accomplished revolution recoil
also on the heads of the foreigners whom he perhaps suspected of
sympathy with the new order of things--had closed the Vatican and all
its collections.
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