“BY A COUNTRY GIRL”

I am writing this piece of personal history, not because it contains any great amount of interest for people in general, but because it may be an inspiration for some young woman who may chance to read it—and she may be induced to step out and try a similar plan for herself. Therefore, prosaic though it be, it will be, nevertheless, a true story from first to last.

I was born and grew up like many another healthy youngster, with no marked precocity. Because there were no good schools near by, the children of the family were taken to a village in the county, and placed in what was then the best private school in that part of the State. I was then eight years of age, and this trip of sixteen miles in wagons across the snow one January day was my first glimpse of the outside world. I recall vividly now the impressions that came to me that first night and during the first days. There were in the family two older sisters and a brother, and four or five cousins and half-uncles. I had heard them discuss the wonders of this new world before we made the move. We had 201 a play-house in the barn. It was in this barn that the marvelous stories were told, and plans were made for what we meant to do and to be when once we were there. I remember that I would dig my toes in the ground, standing ready to swing, but listening open-eyed, and then let myself go high in the air, dreaming of the great future. So, the village, quaint and quiet, except for the school, was to my youthful imagination a part of Paradise.

We lived in this village and attended this school for three years. My mother died the first year, and a married sister came to take charge of the household, which was co?perative in its nature, every member of the family having his share of the daily tasks. The school was a good one, not only for its time, but judged even now by modern standards. It knew little of the principles of pedagogy, and had meager equipment in library and laboratory, but for a period of a quarter of a century, under the influence of its one principal, it had the power to transform the lives of hundreds of crude country boys and girls. What was taught was well taught, and the men and women who went from the school are known to-day in places of great responsibility. But the facts learned were a small part of that school’s work. Somehow, under the inspiration of that principal and the assistants whom he had the wisdom to employ, the school had a spirit akin to that of Rugby.

And so my story is more than half told. When once the mind is awake and the soul is stirred, there 202 is something within that bids us neither stand ............