In short, I was given a choice of attending a business school in Chicago at the expense of my father’s two college friends or of coming on to New York City to attend school. It was up to me. The latter plan appealed to me, and I remember I felt the very trip East would in itself be an education to me whose travelling experiences had been necessarily limited.
The remainder of the summer of 1916 was then devoted to preparations for my trip East, my Chicago benefactors taking me to Marshall Fields’ where I was outfitted properly from head to toe. I thought my fairy existence had actually begun.
During the summer of 1916, while I was still working at Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company, the Republican National Convention was being held in the Coliseum, not far from my place of business. United States Senator Warren G. Harding, former Lieutenant-Governor of Ohio, was nominating Charles E. Hughes for the Presidency of the United States. Morning after morning I bought the papers, watching the progress of the proceedings with avid interest, most particularly, of course, any mention of my beloved Warren Harding.
In the spring of 1917 when Mr. Harding came over to New York to help me find a position (or rather to place me in one) I told him of how I had followed the convention items in the Chicago papers. He expressed his regret that I had not at that time gotten in touch with him for it would have been a pleasure, he said, to see that I had a “front seat” during the convention at the Coliseum.
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In the fall of 1916 my Chicago benefactors put me on the train for New York and at the Pennsylvania Station in the Big City I was met by Mr. Carter. I was put immediately in school; the school selected was the Ballard Secretarial School 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 Ignacy 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. Paderewski 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 class at Ballard to attempt such a thing before graduation, strengthened my faith in myself and tended to dignify me in my own estimation.