When she was a very little girl, no more than eight years old, she was so beautiful that as she stood at the door of the pump room in Bath to sell tickets for her father's concerts, everyone bought them from her. When she was a very young woman her father engaged her to marry a Mr. Long, sixty years old. She did not seem to mind what arrangements her father made for her, but continued to sing and attend to her business, till after the wedding gowns were all made and everything ready for the marriage, when she happened to meet the brilliant Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose plays were so fashionable, and she fell deeply in love with him. She told Mr. Long she would not marry him, and without much objection he gave her up, but her father was very angry and he threatened to sue Mr. Long for letting his daughter go. Then the beautiful lady ran away to Calais and married Mr. Sheridan without her father's permission; but she came home again and said nothing of what she had done, kept on singing and helping her father earn money for his family. One day, Mr. Sheridan was wounded in a duel which he had fought with one of his wife's admirers, and when she heard the news she screamed, "my husband, my husband," so that everybody knew she was married to the fascinating playwright. Sheridan for some reason did not at once come and get her, nor arrange for them to have a home together. For a good while she continued to sing; and once hearing her in oratorio, Sheridan fell in love with his wife all over again. He took her from her home and would never let her sing again in public. They remarried publicly and went to live in London. He was not at all a rich and famous man at that time--only a poor law-student--but he would not let his wife make the fortune she might easily have made, by singing. This must have made his beautiful wife very sad, but she made no complaint at giving up her music and letting him silence her lovely voice, but turned all her attention to advancing his fortunes. She worked for him even harder than she had for her father, and that was saying a great deal. When he became a great writer of plays his wife took charge of all the accounts of his Drury Lane Theatre, and when he was in the House of Commons she acted as his secretary. Sheridan died in great poverty and wretchedness, and it is believed had his self-sacrificing wife not died before him she would have looked after his affairs so well that he would not have lost his fortune. Gainsborough painted the portraits of Sheridan's father-in-law, and of Samuel Linley; and it was said that this last portrait was painted in forty-eight minutes. Among his other portraits are: eight of George III., Sir John Skynner, Admiral Hood, Colonel St. Leger, and "The Blue Boy"; but he was first and last a landscape painter of highest genius. XVI JEAN LEON GEROME (Pronounced Zhahn Lay'on Zhay-rome) _French, Semi-classical School_ 1824-1904 _Pupil of Delaroche_