The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-03-13
Young Girls Statue Of
 President Lincoln Is
 Thought Best Likeness
Touched By Appeal of Poor Child, Mar5yred President
 Permitted Her to Make Model In Clay

wanted to see her sweetheart and 1
 granted her request In advance.
 '|These visits to the White House
 continued for five months Through
 all this time the personality of Lin
 coin was gradually sinking deeper and deeper into my soul. was mod cling the man in clay, but he was be- ing engraven still more deeply upon
 my heart. i "Then finally came the great trag- edy. I was in our house on Capitol Hill that terrible night. My parents | had been out for the evening. They returned about midnight, and as they were entering the house some one 1 hurrying past called out to them that i the President had been murdered | The murder of the President of a great nation is a most terribly tragic things at best. I we'll remember how i thoroughly awed were all the people I met at the time of the assassination i of Garfield and Mckinley. That the 1 assassin should reach so high appa1ls
 even the person who has no personal | tie to that dignitary.
 | ''So of course I was moved beyond
 measure at the death of Lincoln. I
 was prostrated. It was days before ! could pull myself together and realize l that the thing had actually happened.
 I think the horror of it may have 1 had the effect of impressing even
 more vividly upon me the personality | of the martyred President. The sue l cess of the statue that I subsequently,
 made was attributed to its trueness
 to the actual Lincoln. My ability to 1 produce it was unquestionably due to | those half hours in the quiet of the
 Presidents office, and to the soaring 1 in of the image by the great tragedy | It must not be supposed that the l governmental authorities commission I ed Miss Ream to make a statue of
 Lincoln without competition. On the 1 contrary, all of the great Sculptors l of that period submitted models. The
 committee, after many weeks of care | full study, decided that the model of 1 fered by the little Ream girl surpas- sed all others, and she was conse- quently given the commission for the l statue, for which shv received $1O,- 900. This enabled her to spend sev-
 era1 years in Europe completing her education in art.
 Her statue, '"The Vest has been 1 presented to her native state of Wis
 consin, and is now in the state capitol at Madison.
 Miss Ream was the first white child O,
 When child her father went to
 Washington to live, having secured l a position there. Several years later
 the family moved West again, and
 she was educated at Christian Col
 1ege, Missouri. During the Civil War
 the family returned to Washington,
 and Miss Ream became & government
 clerk, working in the Postotf1ce De-
 partment.
 !
 and did not have the least idea that she possessed any talent as a sculptor
 The discovery of her artistic talent , was purely accidental. She had been asked for a, photograph of herself by the little college in Missouri which she had attended, but Major Rollins a friend of the family, thought il 5 much nicer to furnish a head of the girl in clay. He therefore took her
 to the studio of Clark Mills. It was t the first time she had seen a sculp- tor at work, and it filled her witt 5 strange delight.
 fsWhy, I could do that" she laugh = in1y exclaimed. "A1 right, little . girl,'' said the. sculptor, There is f piece of clay, see what you can dc l with it'' Much to the delight anC
 surprise of Mills she produced = fairly good likeness of him. Ina I was the beginning of her great ca
 reer Every day for the next fev I years was devoted to hard work ant Il | study.
 : She still stuck to her job in tn Q Postoff1ce Department, but each after | noon when through work, she would f hurry off to the Mills studio wher S she modelled under the instruction h of the genial Mills. After supper sh y would go to her room and far into . the night would study books on anat 0 omy. She worked so hard that th' n l natural roses faded from her cheek Y and her little body became so thi1 |. that she only weighed ninety pounds y But she had found the real reason 2 for being on earth, and her succes was most marvellous.
 f What a vast difference there wa |, in her coming to Washington afte t her triumphant years in Europe. Sh f was beautiful, gifted, popular ant S reigned as leader of the social ant { artistic sets in the city where sh t had spent her childhood as an obscur' f postal clerk. Then she met the pop e ular and handsome Lieut.. Richart $ Hoxie, of the United States army
 Their wedding, which took place il ;t 1878, was one of the most brillian v ever staged in Washington. Presiden e Grant was one of the guests, and tn d ~