They stopped a gentleman and said as best they could--"Unated Statis Hotel?" He did not seem to understand and passed on. Then they tried a lady and repeated the words "Unated Statis Hotel?" The lady talked about something but they could not understand a single word. Again and again they stopped people on the walk and repeated the strange words. Every one shook his head or talked rapidly about things they could not understand and not one could show the way to the "Unated Statis Hotel."
Poor Camilla began to cry with the cold and they were having a sorry time of it. They met an Irish servant girl going home from church. They repeated the words to her and the quick witted girl soon led them back a few steps and showed them the great brick block with its gilded sign "United States Hotel."
Now it was that we became familiar with Camilla's face in our streets. Her black felt hat and long dark green plume that was at once so singular and so very becoming, her big blue eyes with the sly twinkle in them, the smiling mouth and sweet tempered expression of her face won unusual attention and admiration. Children in the streets said "there goes Camilla Urso," and ran after her to see the pretty French girl who had come to live among us. Traditions of her girlhood days are still treasured up in many Boston families and pleasant stories are told of this part of her life. She here grew in mind and stature and she was no longer little Camilla but Mademoiselle Camilla Urso.
The first concert with the Germanias was given on the evening of December 11th, and from that time there was a brief space of financial happiness for our young Mademoiselle. For several months she had more leisure than she had ever known in her short life. Their headquarters were in Boston and the tours were short and easy.
There seemed to be no immediate prospect of returning to France and something must be done about Mademoiselle's English education. The family made their home at the United States Hotel and during the intervals between the short concert trips a private tutor came to their rooms to instruct her young ladyship in the language of the country. Nothing had been done even in French and she found herself woefully ignorant for a ten year old girl. It made very little difference for she took up the matter with enthusiasm and learned to read in an incredibly short time. Within three months she could express herself with tolerable ease in English and learned to read almost anything that was put before her either in French or English. How it happened she could hardly explain. It must have been the intuitive grasping of a mind prematurely active and retentive. She could read music as easily as a Boston girl of her age could read the daily papers, and it did not seem to her in any sense difficult to understand the much more simple alphabet of spoken language. She had only one objection to her tutor. He helped her over the hard words and all that and was not cross but as she confided to her aunt, "he was very disagreeable--she didn't like him for he chewed--and it wasn't pleasant."