Many years ago--don't ask me how many--there was a young woman, Bertha von Hillern by name, a poor art student seeking money enough to take her abroad, who engaged with the management of a hall in Louisville to walk one hundred miles around a fixed track in twenty-four consecutive hours.

She did it.

Her share of the gate money, I was told, amounted to three thousand dollars.
I shall never forget the closing scenes of the wondrous test of courage and endurance.

She was a pretty, fair-haired thing, a trifle undersized, but shapely and sinewy.

The vast crowd that without much diminution, though with intermittent changes, had watched her from start to finish, began to grow tense with the approach to the end, and the last hour the enthusiasm was overwhelming.