Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1872-07-12
STORY OF A BRAVE GIRL.
Her Poverty, Struggles, Pluck, and Final
Triumph.

Her Poverty, Struggles, Fluck, and Final
Triumph.
Eli Perkins in New York Commercial Advertiser.
Last Saturday large crowd of friends
with bouquets end smiles and kind ben.
ledictions thronged the steamer City of
Paris to see off young and interesting
lady. Many of the best people in the
metropolis took her hand and bid her
1" God-speed" across the Atlantic, and
success at Milan, Italy, whittier she goes
to perfect herself in music and the
opera. She went with the intention of
returning to New York after two years
prima donna, perhaps an
other Jenny Lind for none can conjec.
ture what Providence has in store for
the fair young singer. ~
If the writer did not always 90 to
nature, and did not found everything
he writes upon the basis of absolute
truth, you might, perhaps, doubt the
story which | now tell, and which came
to me from the lips of the same young
lady.
+ fa,@ POOR GIRLS STORY.
/ Miss Emma A. Abbott was born in
Chicago about twenty years ago. In
1854 her father, then music teacher,
took her to the little village of Peoria,
in Illinois. The little child then took
intense delight in music. She had
dreams of singing in public at the age.
of six. When they read to her stories
of actors and singers on the stage, she
thought they meant coach, and won
dered, with infantile fancy, how they
could throw bouquets into a stage.
From six to nine she sang about
home. catching every tune she heard
her father play, and, to the surprise of
everybody, began herself to play the
guitar. She became so proficient that
at the age of nine her father, very
poor man, chained down with large
family of children, brought her out with
her. brother George at a concert in
Peoria. Her debut took so we'll that
her father, man of restless genius, but
shftless aud always unfortunate, de-
cided to take little Emma on concert
tour, which he did, keeping her thus
occasionally employed with varied for
tune until she was thirteen years old.
AT this age she went to Mount Pulaski
in company with some Peoria children.
While here they wanted her to play her
guitar and sing, so she got up a concert
"on her own hook" Though wearing
short dresses, she went to the Pulaski
printing office, got out her own. hand
bills, and then went and posted them
around town. On one of these billsnow
before me it says:
Miss Abbott will sing The Merry
SWISS Girl, a chorus. =
chorus meant, but it looked nice, and
SO she had them put it on the bill. She
drew quite house, took in seven dol
lars, and. took it home to her mother.
After giving concert at Lincoln, in a
school-house, she came home again, and
gave guitar lessons to upils twice as old
as. she was at twenty cents per lesson.
She now went to school, but her father
being too poor to pay her tuition, the
little child-woman borrowed the money
from friend agreeing to pas, it after
she should become teacher. - .-.ss
Atfifteen, little Emma succeeded in
securing class of twenty poor children,
who came to recite at her mothers
house. At the time she sang in the
Hebrew Synagogue-a kind old rabbi,
Marx Moses, teaching her to pronounce
in Hebrew and German.
The spring of her sixteenth birthday
found her father poorer than ever be-
fore, and our little woman, TO help her
mother, tried to secure a clerkship in a
store, but failed. In great distress, she
heard of school, nine miles from
Peoria, which was in need of a teacher.
Thither she went on foot, through the
mud and slush. She found the princi-
pal trustee, kind old man, at dinLer.
"What do you want, my little wo.
man ?n asked the old farmer, as he laid
down his knife and fork to survey our
little heroine. So
Olive in Peoria, sir, and walked"
"Whatl walked, child2 ~ interrupted
the old man in astonishment.
Eyes, sir, and l want to teach your
school,
"Well, declare. my child, there are
fifteen applicants, but you're a pretty
girl, and plucky as Julius Cesar. Have
| you got your certiticate2h