ing, but get the money
quick! The live cow herself isn't worth half that!"

The members of the Bonheur family married, one by one, including the
father. Rosa did not marry: she painted. She discarded all teachers, all
schools; she did not listen to the suggestions of patrons, and even
refused to make pictures to order.

And be it said to her credit, she never has allowed a buyer to dictate the
subject. She followed her own ideas in everything; she wore men's clothes,
and does even unto this day.

When she was twenty-five, the Salon awarded her a gold medal. The
Ministere des Beaux Arts paid her three thousand francs for her "Labourge
Nivernais."

Raymond Bonheur grew ill in Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine, but before he
passed out he realized that his daughter, then twenty-seven years old, was
on a level with the greatest masters, living or dead.

She began "The Horse Fair" when twenty-eight. It was the largest canvas
ever attempted by an animal-painter. It was exhibited at the Salon in
Eighteen Hundred Fifty-three, and all the gabble of jealous competitors
was lost in the glorious admiration it excited. It became the rage of
Paris. All the honors the Salon could bestow were heaped upon the young
woman, and by special decision all her work henceforth was declared exempt
from examination by the Jury of Admission. Rosa Bonheur, five feet four,
weighing one hundred twenty pounds, was bigger than the Salon.

But success did not cause her to swerve a hair's breadth from her manner
of work or life. She refused all social invitations, and worked away after
her own method as industriously as ever. When a picture was completed, she
set her price on it and it was sold.

In Eighteen Hundred Sixty she bought this fine old house at By, that she
might work in quiet. Society tried to follow her, and in Eighteen Hundred
Sixty-four the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Eugenie went to By, and the
Empress pinned to the blue blouse of Rosa Bonheur the Cross of the Legion
of Honor, the first time, I believe, that the distinction was ever
conferred on a woman.

And now at seventy-four she is still in love with life, and while taking a
woman's tender interest in all sweet and gentle things, has yet an
imagination that in its strength and boldness is splendidly masculine.

Rosa Bonheur has received all the honors that man can give. She is rich;
no words of praise that tongue can utter can add to her fame; and she is
loved by all who know her