for Girls which is an endowed school housed in the Y. W. C. A. Building, which building, Central Branch, was at that time down on 16th Street between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.
I entered six weeks late but through the out-of-school-hours' tutoring of my dear teacher and friend, to whom I will give the name of Miss Helen Anderson, I was enabled to catch up with the class very quickly. I studied hard. The Carter family was an intellectual one and Mr. Carter early began to dictate to me in the evenings, which was a great help. I received A's in everything when the spring came and I was graduated.
In early spring, in April I believe, there was a request made to the Y. W. C. A. Employment Bureau for a stenographer for one whom I shall call Mrs. Emma Laird Phelps, publicity manager for Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist, and I went to be interviewed. I had several hours in the afternoons which I knew I could devote to this work and in that way make some extra expense money. Mrs. Phelps hired me after giving me some trial dictation, and I was launched upon my first stenographic position! During this employment I had occasion to do some special work with Mme. Paderewska and in this connection I met her famous husband.
Inasmuch as I had, when in high school, not been allowed much freedom where boys were concerned, I knew comparatively little about them. I had had my ideal American in my heart for years and all others paled into insignificance beside him. True, I had endeavored to weave romance several times into friendships with boys I had known in Marion, after I became almost seventeen years of age and was a junior in high school, when mother permitted a few "dates"—few and far between. But somehow these fellows, as well as those I met after I left Marion—in Cleveland and in Chicago—all seemed to have things "wrong with them."
However, I was beginning to receive attentions from men whom I would meet even casually, and the fact that I was able to hold a secretarial position, and had been the only one in my
