For eight or ten hours a day she chipped away at the block with chisel and a leaden mallet weighing four pounds and a half. Muscles made strong and flexible by much rowing and other exercises enabled her to keep up this hard work day after day. The block of marble was finally turned into the head of a lovely maiden, her hair entwined with poppies and a star on her forehead. Beautiful as was this head of Hesper, Harriet Hosmer felt that she must study more. She was very desirous of entering the studio of John Gibson, a noted English sculptor who was then residing in Rome. Now Mr. Gibson, hearing that Miss Hosmer was young and rich, feared that she might be easily discouraged before real difficulties. However, as soon as he saw the daguerreotypes of her “Hesper,” the great sculptor said to her father, “Whatever I can teach her, she shall learn.” At the very beginning of her work with Mr. Gibson, Harriet Hosmer showed him that she was not the sort of girl who gives up easily. The iron rod in a clay copy of the Venus de Milo which she had modeled in order that her teacher might have an idea of her work snapped, and the figure fell to pieces. However, without stopping to complain, she started at once to make another model. Harriet Hosmer continued to work steadily with John Gibson. Then one day a message came from her father stating that he had lost his fortune and could no longer send her money. Miss Hosmer sold her fine saddle horse, and took an inexpensive room for herself. Now she was actually to work for her living. Miss Hosmer became an important figure in the art and literary circles in Rome. She numbered among her friends the Brownings, Hawthorne, the Thackerays, and many other interesting people. In the years that followed, many a beautiful statue emerged from unshaped marble through the transforming touch of Harriet Hosmer’s hands. Her statue “Puck” shows a merry little elf, sitting cross-legged on a toadstool, his left hand resting upon a lizard, his right, clasping a beetle. Some of her other important statues are “Œnone,” “Beatrice Cenci,” “Sleeping Faun,” and a statue of Thomas H. Benton. “Zenobia in Chains,” which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the most famous of all. This is a colossal statue, representing the beautiful Queen of Palmyra taken prisoner by the Roman Emperor Aurelian. Harriet Goodhue Hosmer so loved to watch beauty grow under her fingers that she was willing to give up the care-free, easy life that she might have had as the child of a rich man. Because she developed her talent through hard, serious work, she won for herself a high place among the sculptors of America. [Illustration] Julia Ward Howe— Whose Battle Hymn Sang Itself Into the Hearts of a Nation