“The first work she copied for her teacher was the Venus of Milo; when almost completed the iron, which held the clay firm, snapped, and all her work was spoiled.”
“But she did not shriek nor cry herself to sleep (that anybody knew), but bravely went to work again. Her works were exhibited in Boston and much admired. Her teacher said he had never seen surpassed her genius of imitating the roundness and softness of flesh. Look at other marble statues and see if the flesh looks soft and round like Harriet’s. One of her works, a girl lying asleep, was exhibited in London and in several American cities. She said once she would work as though she had to earn her daily bread, and, strange to tell, very soon after that her father wrote that he had lost his property and could send her no more money. And then she hired a cheap room, sold her handsome saddle-horse, and went to work in reality to earn her daily bread. Her first work, in her time of sorrow, was a fun-loving, four-year-old child. With the several copies she made from it she earned for her daily bread thirty thousand dollars.”
“And oh! grandmother,” I said (for I am a poor girl myself), “when our heavenly Father has work for us to do, it doesn’t matter whether we are born poor or rich.”
“Either way it takes hard work,” said grandmother.
With a shy glance into his satisfied face she opened her third paper:—
“Children have more need of models than of critics,” said grandmother, “therefore I will give you another model to-night. You will think I am always choosing for you stories of girls that work; but where can I find models of any other kind? What do girls amount to who think only of their own pleasure, and never persevere to the successful end? Now I will tell you about a girl who came in womanhood to live in an observatory. This is her home. She is a dear old lady with white hair, dressed in gray or brown, in rather Quakerish fashion. She said to the girls she teaches: ‘All the clothing I have on cost but seventeen dollars.’ In this unusual home (she is not a grandmother, either), she keeps the things she loves best,—her books, her pictures, her astronomical clock, and a bust of Mary Somerville, of whom I will tell you some time.”