Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/281

212 Miss Foster's school-days were spent in Lowell, Mass., where she was graduated from the high school. She afterward studied at the Berlitz School of Languages, and spent several years in the study of art and outdoor sketching.

In her teens she sent sonnets to the Boston Transcript and afterward to various magazines, contributing short stories to the Youth's Companion. In 1896 she assumed the duties of assistant editor of The Household, eventually becoming its editor. In 1900 she assumed her present duties on the Youth's Companion. Her first book, "Hortense, a Difficult Child," was published by Lee & Shepard in 1902. This book had an immediate sale, and before six months had been .sent to European countries and the Hawaiian Islands.

Miss Foster's home is now at Annisipiam, Mass. She leads a very quiet and retired life, and is not a member of any club. Her chief characteristics are a fondness for outdoor life and the love of children. She has a large calling list of little folks, and most of her leisure hours are spent with them.

All the agreeable impressions gained in reading Miss Foster's stories are strengthened by a personal meeting with the author. She is wholly unaffected, and her simplicity of manner, joined to a pleasing directness of speech, refreshes one like green pastures and still waters.

ALOME THOMAS CADE ("Clayton Thomas") was born in Charlestown, Mass., in 1867. She belongs to a good old Maine family, whose members have been prominent factors in the history of the State. Holmes Thomas, her father's paternal grandfather, was a Sergeant in Peleg Wadsworth's regiment in the Revolutionary War. Her father, Spencer Churchill Thomas, married Eunice Ann Clayton, of Farmington, Me., and just before the birth of their daughter they moved to Charlestown, Ma.ss. The subject of this sketch began her education in the ('iuirle.s- town public schools, subsequently taking lessons from private tutors. At an early age she displayed the gifts of harmony and improvisation, and long before she knew a note on the piano was an object of interest to those who watched her childish fingers unerringly extract melodies from the keys. Subsequently developing talent as a vocalist, at the early age of fourteen she toured with an opera company appearing in several leading parts. At the age of twenty she was travelling as a member of the Balfe Opera Company of New York, with which she scored her chief success as Lady Harriett in "Martha." Later she spent four years touring under the auspices of the Redpath Lyceum Bureau.

Feeling a strong desire to gather laurels in the field of musical composition, she became a diligent student in the higher departments of music, studying in London with Randegger (under whom she did her first work in composition) and with Henschel. In Paris and in Belgium she is a great favorite. She has a high soprano voice of great purity and sweetness.

In 1894 Miss Thomas began composing concert songs, and in 1900 she began publishing them in London. While residing in that city she studied composition and harmony at the Guild Hall, under Professor Gadsby. She also instructed pupils on the piano, finding a somewhat select and congenial field in teaching ladies who could sing to play their own accompaniments.

As among the most pleasant experiences connected with her foreign travels she recalls her stay in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands. Yet there were incidents connected with her visit to Wales which render it memorable. Her father's family being formerly dwellers in the south of Wales, she took a special pleasure in learning the language, songs, and folk-lore of the country. While visiting the old Malvern parish church, which Jenny Lind used to attend, and to which she was a most generous contributor. Miss Thomas noticed that, while many others had been honored with memorial windows and tablets, there was nothing to signify remembrance of her. The man in charge, questioned as to the reason of this strange omission, replied that he supposed "nobody had ever thought about it." Miss Thomas took pleasure in placing a wreath of