le she studied
music. Her career in Boston was much the same as that of many young
aspirants for artistic honors,--"church choir and chores," it has been
facetiously called. By this it may be understood that she earned her
board by assisting in the household duties, while her church choir
position enabled her to pay for her vocal lessons. Her splendid voice
and musical intelligence soon enabled her to obtain concert engagements,
and before she went abroad she sang in many festivals and at the Handel
and Haydn Society concerts, on one of which occasions she was associated
with Parepa-Rosa.

Being possessed of much ambition, and with the energy which
characterizes the natives of the State of Maine, Miss Cary organized and
gave a concert in Music Hall, which brought her enough funds for a
year's study abroad. Her Puritan training forbade the idea of opera, and
it was her intention to study for concert and oratorio. At the end of
her year she was discouraged, and declared that she sang no better than
when she arrived. To this her teacher, Giovanni Conti, made no dissent,
for his one idea of singing was _opera_. Miss Cary flung down her music,
and left the room in disgust. And now came a curious mental revolution:
having refused to consider the possibility of singing in opera, and
having on that account left her teacher, she shortly afterwards met an
impresario named Lorini, for whom she sang. He offered her an engagement
to sing in Italian opera, and she accepted it. For two years she was in
Lorini's company, taking all kinds of parts. In 1869 she went to Paris
for further study, and while there met Maurice Strakosch, who was at
that time forming the Nilsson concert company, for a tour in America.
Miss Cary accepted the engagement which he offered her. The company
consisted of Miss Nilsson, soprano; Miss Cary, contralto; Brignoli,
tenor; Verger, baritone, and Vieuxtemps, violinist. This tour lasted two
years, and in 1873 Miss Cary again appeared in opera, creating the part
of Amneris, with Italo Campanini as Rhadames, when "Aida" was produced
at the Academy of Music in New York. The following year Miss Cary sang
Ortrud in "Lohengrin."

In 1879 and 1880 Miss Cary was a member of the Kellogg Concert Company.
During the last years of her career, 1879 to 1881, she sang again in
opera, adding to her repertoire the contralto part in "Favorita."
Campanini and Gerster were the tenor and soprano. In 1881 she made her
last appearan