People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1897 — SHE PAINTS SIGNS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

SHE PAINTS SIGNS.

Tha Newest of New Women Is Miss Edna Waymack. The newest new woman is Miss Edna Waymack of Belfontaine, Ohio. Hers is the distinction of being the only feminine out-of-door sign painter in the United States, says the New York Journal. Mips Waymack hesitates at nothing in her line of business, no matter how arduous the work. She has painted huge advertising signs on the face of perilously steep cliffs, a task few men would undertake. Many large spaces, such as barn sides, the roofs of houses and the like, scattered all over the country, testify to the ability of this young woman as a realistic brushwielder.

She is perfectly at ease on ladder or scaffold, and she can scale a taut rope in a way to make an old tar blush with envy. Swinging before the precipitous face of a mountain, she often works for hours laying on alphabetical color schemes with a steady hand and a touch that never loses its evenness. Miss Waymack has many large contracts for big natural canvases which she hopes to fulfil next summer. For the most part her signs are made in the interests of several large tobacco firms. The most daring piece of sign-paint-ing she has ever undertaken is the lettering on the rough surface of a cliff at Bellefontaine, Ohio. This rock looms up above the surrounding meadow for a distance of some 350 feet with a sheer fall of 300 feet to the base of the cliff. For four days Miss Waymack swung at the top of this dizzy height, spending about eight hours each day on the big sign she had engaged to paint. Every day, and all day long, a throng of men, women and children gathered at the foot of the hill watching the woman artist at work in the upper air.

Miss Waymack is accustomed to this sort of thing, however, and is not the least bit disturbed by the curious crowds that usually watch her operations and pass critical comment upon her work. The working costume of the intrepid artist consists of a short, serviceable skirt of blue serge, a “jumper” of the same material, and a Tam O’Shanter cap pulled well over her face to keep out the rays of the sun. In manipulating her brushes Miss Waymack wears a pair of coarse mittens, a characteristically feminine fact, just as are the dainty patent leather boots that incase her small feet. Her apparal is always scrupulously neat, scarcely a paint speck being noticeable on her garments. Miss Waymack has been pursuing her unique career as a sign painter since 1593, and has traveled more and farther than is the case with most business women. She is a comely blonde, and has enjoyed a good common-school education. Being a bright conversationalist, and a clever pianist, she is much

sought after in the quiet social circl63 of Bellefontaine, where she lives with her aged mother.

EDNA WAYMACK.