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462 HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
The Register of February 21, 189!), contained a biographical sketch
of Fanny Mills, who for many years made Sandusky famous as the "big
footed girl." She AVIIS a Avoman naturally modest and retiring and
disliked the notoriety Avhich the exhibition of her unfortunate condition
caused. By her business ability she accumulated considerable property
and for some years before her death she had retired and lived in comfort
in her home on South Columbus Avenue.
On February 26, 1878, and on several other occasions the Register
handed a lemon to a book called "Palm Branches," written by Miss
S. M. .Mills of this city. The book seems to have created as much local
excitement as "Three Weeks" did many years later nationally. It AVIIS
surely a Avann baby. The folloAving extract published in the Register of
April 13, 1878, gives a fair idea of the book. The Register says:
"Palm Branches is a dainty dream of romance, modulated to Aeolian
melodies, and illuminated throughout with the glowing tints of the
ra'inhoAV. The author Miss Sallie M. Mills has a Lamartine like predilection
for the sweets of fancy and diction, but her recitative sympathizing
with American skies has a brisker, more practical and less
voluptuous movement than that of the great French idylist. A better
indication of her Avay of looking at life might be bad by placing her
in contrast Avith her sister novelist Rhoda Broughton. the one emphasizing
with perverse energy, the grit, the grime, the bald physical nature
of things: the other, like the fair spirit of the dawn, projecting everything
into a state of rosy light, in which the commonest objects catch
something of a delusive idealism. The one belongs to the extreme ytfiith
of sentiment, the other to its age. We pluck a sample leaf from Unhook
(which by the AVII.V is quite prettily brought out and is sold at
Loclnvoods 812 Broadway) Preparations had been made for
"'LII.I.A'S BIRTHDAY PAKTV."
" 'The hoy.r at last arrived when 1 lit* guests began to come. Lilla
stood beside her mother ready to receive. Soft AVIIX lights gloAved from
the chandeliers. Delicious music pulsated through ihe rooms. Lovely
ladies floated through the mazes of the dance, Ii/the excitement and
hurry Daisy AVIIS for a moment forgotten. She Ava/sitting alone absorbed
in watching the dancers. The house AVIIS SO beautifully decorated and
the guests Avere so amiable and graceful. To Daisy the scene AVIIS fairy
like.
"'After n time she became conscious of some one standing beside
her. and a voice for which she had learned to listi'n was inviting her
to dance. She could hardly believe her senses but there he stood gloAvering
at her with a dark frown. She Avoudcred at herself for not being
frightened. A great calm Veined soothing over her. She looked into
his face while a HCAV brightness seemed Hooding the grand draAving rooni.
" "This Avaltz," ' she slid.
'""Yes."'
" And then she fclt/Tiersclf lifted into eternity. She seemed to be