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Today's Featured Biography
Rosa Bonheur
 A girl of something over ten, of sturdy build, with a dark complexion, deep blue eyes, and strong features crowned by a head of clustering curls, is sitting in the window of a plainly furnished room, high up in an apartment-house in Paris. In a cage at her side is a parrot, which, with its head on one side, is gravely calling out the letters of the alphabet, while the child as gravely repeats them, interrupting the lesson every now and then by a visit to the other side of the room, where a pet lamb greets its young mistress with a friendly bleat.
This is our first glimpse of Rosalie, known now to all the world as Rosa Bonheur, the painter of "The Horse Fair" and of many another picture, which have earned for her the distinction of the best animal-painter of her time.
Her father's family belonged to Bordeaux. Raymond Bonheur had gone up as a youth to Paris to study art. After the usual apprenticeship to privation which art exacts from her servants, he had become moderately successful, when the condition of his parents, now old and poorly-off, moved him to return to Bordeaux and do what he could to make their life easier. As the chances for a professional artist were small, he adopted the modest employment of drawing-teacher. His skill soon brought him pupils; among them a young lady from Altona, between whom and her teacher a mutual interest sprang up which led to their marriage. Raymond Bonheur brought his wife home to his father's house, where she was welcome...
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