Childhood of Lotta
Little Lotta Crabtree is an excellent example f the results of early training. Away in the fifties Lottie was a skinny little thing with freckles and hair redder than it is now, and she was taken all around the state of California by her mother and a small company, and was obliged to dance, sing and act much against her will, and as regularly as the time for rehearsal came around she would have a mad fit and throw her spidery little body on the floor and scream and ick and pound with all her might.
In one or two places it was thought that her parents were I treating her, perhaps “pulling her joints to make them limber,” and folks were going to do something about it, and that “something” would have been very unpleasant for her parents, but when the delegation went into the room Lotta soon convinced them that they had better depart.
Lotta never had any girlhood. She stepped with one movement over the gulf that separates child from woman, and at twelve years old was older than any woman at twenty-five, and then she stood still for many years, and now is going back to pick up the years of girlhood that the extractions of her life defrauded her of. But it is hard to gather up lost years again and have them as good as new.
~ The Kaleidoscope, San Bernadino, California, Saturday, July 4th, 1891, Page 3, Column 2
You can visit the memorial page for Lotta Mignon Crabtree.
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