>i!niilfUlin LIFE'OF-MAli ii w mi i THE LIFE OF MARY LYON (^^^^c^^-^i-^c^ A^y ^^^^ THE ^_LIFE OF MARY LYON. BY BETH BRADFORD GILCHRIST BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (Xit Bitierjiitie ^tt^^ Cambnti0e 1910 COFyRIGpX, I9IO, BY BETH BRADFORD GILCHRIST ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published April jqio SECOND IMPRESSION PREFACE Every book has many authors ; the title-page names but one. To all those who in countless ways have furthered the making of this book, I gratefully acknowledge my debt : men and women who knew Miss Lyon personally ; their sons and daughters ; alumnse of Mount Holyoke and people holding no affiliation with it, some of them concerned with other schools ; members of the college faculty who throughout the work have given me so wise a seconding. The warm helpfulness which Miss Lyon evoked in life has met her biographer at every turn. The book is immediately derived from a re- quest made several years ago by President Wool ley, voicing a demand that has been gath- ering force through more than thirty years. In its preparation all known manuscripts bearing intimately or remotely on Miss Lyon's life have been read, but it is not unlikely that some writ- ings exist which have escaped the inquisitor's eye. The college wishes to complete either in vi PREFACE original or in copy its collection of such docu- ments, and information regarding any letters or papers which may be known to the reader will be welcomed by the librarian of the college. B. B. G. December, 1909. CONTENTS I. Afteb Sixty Years 1 II. At Home 13 III. At School . 39 IV. Teaching 84 V. BBEAKiNa Ground for Mount Holyoke . 158 VI. The Founding of Mount Holyoke . .217 VII. The Founding of Mount Holyoke (Continued) 258 VIII. The Cost of Pioneering .... 327 IX. As Her Students knew Her .... 354 X. An Appreciation 407 Appendix A. Chronology of Mary Lyon's Life . . . 433 B. First Charter of Mount Holyoke . . .436 C. Course of Study 437 D. Earliest Form of Diploma .... 442 Bibliography 443 Index 455 ILLUSTRATIONS Maby Lyon {jphotogravure) Frontispiece From a miniature painted in 1832. Site of Maby Lyon's Birthplace, in Buckland, Mass. 14 The cellar of the house is seen in left foreground. From a photograph by Asa S. Kinney. Clessons Riveb in Early Autumn 30 From a photograph by Asa S. Kinney. The White Homestead at Ashfield 56 From a photograph by Asa S. Kinney. Programme of the Exhibition at Ashfield Academy Febbuaby 13, 1818 60 Facsimile of Lettee to Miss White dated Febbu- aby 26, 1834 184 Mount Holyoke in 1837 248 From " The History and Antiquities of Every Town in Mas- sachusetts,^' by J. W. Barber, Worcester, 1839. Mount Holyoke afteb the Additions of 1840-41 286 The cupola shown in this picture, though planned by Miss Lyon and voted by the trustees, was not actually built until 1860. X ILLUSTRATIONS Maky Lyon Chapel and Administration Hall on THE Site of the Fibst Building 324 From a photograph by Asa S. Kinney. The Grave of Mary Lyon . 350 From a photograph by Asa S. Kinney. Mary Lyon at Forty-Eight 360 From a dagtterreotype. THE LIFE OF MARY LYON THE LIFE OF MARY LYON CHAPTER I AFTER SIXTY YEARS When one dies who in life has counted foi much, his fellows do not leave him unmemorial- ized. Though he is no longer here to speak for himself, print seems to make less final the sen- tence of the Great Silence. It is a pledge that not yet shall he join the ranks of the unknown dead. Such a compulsion Mary Lyon's death laid on her contemporaries. To perpetuate the know- ledge of her was to them a duty owed no less to love than to humanity. The first memoir, a col- laboration appearing after two years under the name of Edward Hitchcock of Amherst College, its editor and co-author with Miss Hannah White and Mrs. Eunice Caldwell Cowles, as- sisted by Mrs. Zilpah Grant Banister, all inti- mate friends of Miss Lyon, carried into far cor- ners of the world the inspiration of her living. 2 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON A reprint with changes followed, and still later another memorial, written by Fidelia Fisk on somewhat different lines. Mrs. Sarah Locke Stow's semicentennial history of Mount Hol- yoke opens with a sketch of its founder which is an epitome of careful research. But though an age may photograph its dominant spirits, it cannot take their measure. A life must re- cede physically to appear in its true propor- tions. Only when time has had a chance to catch up with it and to turn the stuff of its dreams into the fabric of reality, can men dis- tinguish how far-reaching were the filaments it spun into the future, how surely it helped by its own foreshadowing to evoke a world that was not when it lived. For while every person- ality transcends its allotted span, a great man stands, a Colossus, bridging generations. The present view is certain not to be reproduced exactly on the other side of half or of twice a century; he may look bigger from over there or less significant ; it is the same figure, but the point of view has changed. Such a shifting of ground calls out this book. The early chroniclers of Mary Lyon wrought AFTER SIXTY YEARS 3 in the shadow of her time, themselves a part of what they wrote, and the end was not yet. With the lapse of sixty years since her death, their judgment calls, not for reversal, but for filling out. Phases of which they took little note bulk large in our eyes, slighted points grow sig- nificant. The values they emphasized were the values of their day. They knew the daring ge- nius of the woman of whom they wrote ; they recognized that the forces she had set in motion had not yet worked to their legitimate conclu- sions. She put her trust in the future, and the restatement of her life in modern terms is a debt already somewhat overdue. On what was worthy of print and of the dead our grandfathers held high notions. Their me- morials, like their manners, breathe a measured unfamiliar courtesy. They would dignify the dead, forgetting in the might of what they did those humannesses that had endeared them to their kind. Even down to recent decades, American letters have set up marble statues on the graves they have delighted to honor. To the generation that knew an original this mattered little; memory could breathe upon the stone 4 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON until the red blood ran through its veins. So at first the men and women who had known her thought the early Lives of Mary Lyon adequate. The stiff and rather formal lines of her figure filled out under the touch of reminiscence. The sparkle came back to her bright blue eyes, the pink to her cheeks, bespeaking, as one has writ- ten, "a joyousness of spirit far more rare in those days than now." To us who have not their advantage only the facts remain, held in a tissue of words into which we have no wand to conjure life. Yet among us still dwell a few who loved the woman and who would not that, with them, remembrance of the tingling touch of her per- sonality should vanish from the earth. The materials out of which to reconstruct her figure leave much to be desired. She never made ready for a biographer. She left little rec- ord of herself in words. Her many letters, hur- riedly written, unstudied, missives of occasion, dealt strictly with the business in hand. While she held in highest reverence the ability to write, she herself wTote practically nothing be- yond what necessity required. The sole excep- AFTER SIXTY YEARS 5 tion is an unsigned booklet of a hundred pages, "A Missionary Offering," struck off at white heat during a time of financial stringency in the affairs of the American Board, which, as we have evidence, found enthusiastic readers of the more critical sort. A few circulars and pam- phlets exist, relative to the founding of Mount Holyoke, the most important bearing unmis- takably Miss Lyon's imprint, though in but one case her signature, and all directed solely to enlisting in her project the interest and aid of her generation. She was too busy building her ideas into the tissue of society to make notes of what she was about. For hers was preemi- nently a pragmatic genius: she spoke most clearly in her deeds. So she elaborated no sys- tem of education on paper. " One principle re- duced to practice [is] better than ten in theory," she said. This quality, while it gave her nature sanity and poise, makes it unlikely that she will ever receive full credit for the breadth of her edu- cational outreach. A singular modernity dis- tinguished her, and she foimd few or none to whom she could disclose her whole mind. 6 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON In what many looked on as robust accomplish- ment, she saw but a beginning. Of this a pas- sage speaks here and there in letter or pam- phlet or catalogue. Now and then, in talks to her girls in afternoon "hall," she dropped a word or two ; illuminating sentences shine out from the jottings of student note-books, the too infrequent outposts of her dreams. Thinking much of others, seldom of herself, careless of her rights and spendthrift of her strength, a woman with whom to know was a physical pas- sion ; to do, a spiritual necessity, yet who did not what she would but what she could to her it mattered little that her ideas might pass into usage, uncopyrighted. To give them currency mattered much. The letters, both those she received and those she sent, serve to fix the personal note. The first place her among her kind, they reflect the everyday judgment of those with whom she held intercourse. The second class of letters is by far the more important. Out of the thousands that she must have written only a few score manuscripts remain : business notes, alert and terse; friendly chats with relatives AFTER SIXTY YEARS 7 and acquaintances; occasional answers to the many inquiries regarding some department of her school. They are eloquent of her life: no leisurely rambles through the pleasant byways of conversation ; to the point, yet fluent. The independence of their swift running hand seems more at home in our day than with the precise penmanship of the thirties and forties. Frag- ments of time sujQSced for the writing ; a wait in a dentist's oflSce, the interval between stages of a journey, moments snatched from the greedy duties of an executive position. Written when men wrote even their letters of friendship formally, there is about these letters a virility that makes the labored epistles so character- istic of the time sound more stilted. They are quite free from self-consciousness and from any attempt to be either eloquent or witty; she was too simple and direct and unselfcentred to be intentionally clever. But she never had time to perfect her style. It is much easier to be diffuse than concise, and her brain teemed with thoughts that crowded unrebuked to the tip of her pen. All her more public writings bear the mark of haste in an unpruned exuberance of 8 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON idea. " I thought I could put it all on one sheet, and probably I could if I had time," she apolo- gizes once, with a sound instinct of self-criti- cism. They are essentially the letters of a per- son at home in action, telling big things simply, without pictorial effect. Such letters as some of these, scouts write in war time. In reading, one gains the sense of a vast energy, the onrush of an irresistible personality. There is something alive here. And every now and then a bit of vigorous or delicate phrasing, a tender simpli- city of expression, denote them hers as certainly as does her signature. Supplementing the letters in helping to re- vivify her figure, come the recollections of those who knew her. Here we must tread gen- tly, for we are stepping on memories. They are less clear-cut, less distinct, less trustworthy, than contemporary records. But after all due allowances are made, something valuable re- mains. Those set down within a few years of her death may be accepted practically as they stand. Of the later ones, when scores of people, through the mists of a quarter or even a half century and more, testify independently to her AFTER SIXTY YEARS 9 possession of the same qualities, their word is of worth. Memory does not always fail in old age ; often it bridges nearer scenes to quicken the long-past days of youth. From such original documents as these, from Miss Lyon's correspondence, her personal and family papers, letters reminiscent of her, note- books of her students and faculty, pamphlets and catalogues of her own and of other schools, this book takes its departure. In some cases previous writings, notably the first memoir, have been referred to for facts or quotations not otherwise obtainable. But is it worth while to disturb the dust on these papers in order to visualize an ill-paid teacher of girls ? Mary Lyon was not a pro- found thinker; she added nothing to the sum of the world's speculation. She was no scholar in the sense of one who gives his life to reclaim from nescience some narrow plot of knowledge. She traveled little ; save for isolated excursions. New England circumscribed her bodily life. True, she founded a school ; but one may do that any day now, many other people did it then. 10 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Were this all, perhaps it would not be worth while. Were she merely one who, stepping out of the rank and file of her contemporaries, took the initiative, there would accrue to her only the interest of daring. But some picturesque people have the good fortune to be born at the right time. They confer distinction on their generation, their generation confers distinction on them ; it is a mutual affair. Mary Lyon grew up and did her work in the roomy half -century that, the world over, sheltered so many begin- nings. People were waking to an interest in the world they lived in, too vulgar for the gen- teel eighteenth century ; everywhere speculat- ing and experimenting, questioning old stand- ards, calling on each other to stop and look and listen. Miracles were then no fables, they hap- pened every day. The sun took pictures, the lightning ran errands, water unrolled an Alad- din's carpet at one's feet. A holy world was not afar off, the vision of saints, but a thing whose imminence was demonstrable by mathematics and in whose coming human enterprise must bear its part. Even the day of doom was a date foreknown and scheduled. AFTER SIXTY YEARS 11 Men and women joined hands in brother- hood. A passion of sympathy welled up in their hearts, driving them into the ranks of the abo- litionists ; sending them on missions to China, India, Africa ; building hospitals, asylums, re- formatories. The abounding energy that was abroad swept over the country in great revivals of religion ; quickened literature, science, edu- cation, industry; hurled westward a tide of emigration that rolled over the great plains, crested the Rockies, and broke on the coast of California. At the turn of the century it knocked on the reserves of Asia. Out of the clamor of many voices rose the national note, clearer, more insistent. Isolation was going, commu- nion was coming. What was true of America was true also to a large extent of Europe. The modern world was taking root. And here we who would look at our origins find Mary Lyon, a compelling figure, standing at the beginning of to-day. She, too, adventured with her fellows. There were many expeditions then fitting out, and for many goals. We who live in a generation widely experienced in the higher education of women have forgotten that 12 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON it once served the purpose of a Golden Fleece. It is hard for us to realize that women have not always been, as a class, " citizens of the intellec- tual world." We have forgotten how lately our mothers landed on these shores, how critically their passports were examined, how long they remained in residence before they were allowed to take out naturalization papers. The educa- tional conviction that gripped the nineteenth century called for men and women of creative imagination who, through the fog of what was, could see what ought to be. Her possession of this imagination gives to the life of Mary Lyon an interest for more than the student of educa- tion. In company with discoverers of all ages she embarked on chartless seas. No ship had passed that way before. She might who could foretell ? sight the coasts of a new world. CHAPTER II AT HOME Mary Lyon was born, February 28, 1797, in Buckland, a town of Franklin County, then in- corporated as a part of Hampshire County, in Massachusetts. One who would seek her birthplace has a choice of ways of approach. An advocate of trains buys a ticket to Shelburne Falls, and puffs beside the memory-haunting Deerfield River. A lover of the open road leaves the val- ley, and with the help of a venturesome yet deliberate little trolley, climbs to Conway and thence by stage to Ashfield. Or he may drive to Ashfield from Williamsburg, if the legs of the horse be stout. Mary Lyon lived upon the heights. Whether the Mecca be gained from north or south, it is by a road always a-tilt upon the hills, a road that runs its rocky midlap, tree- fringed and weather-roughened, through a farm. A bar has of late halted the traveler 14 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON from Shelburne Falls and sent him on an up- ward circuit of wild pastures. Coming from Ashfield, one finds the way longer and sharper, but there is no danger of getting lost. Men working on the road will set a wanderer right ; should he err again, only to be brought up roundly in some dooryard terminal, an agile white-bearded old man directs him, calling at- tention by the way to " the most beautiful glen in the world," a rating one feels no mission to dispute. Thereafter a chair-bound invalid cheerfully reassures distrust. Who are these people who know their own landmarks ? The road swerves about the shoulder of a hill and a signboard points across the fields : " To the Birthplace of Mary Lyon." A fence or two and a damp pasture give on an 6pen slope. Gray stone- walls crisscross its quiet face, some going definitely about their business, others halting suddenly as though they had forgotten with what intent they first set out. A little brook scrambles down over the cool, shadowed rocks. Beyond it young pines whisper to- gether; on this side ancient apple trees stand in knotted dignity, a group of elms, scattered AT HOME 15 birches, and maples start up the slope at the top the sheep go silently, silhouetted against the sky. Midway, naked on the hill- side, lies an old cellar-hole. Ferns cling in the spaces between its stones. Out of one corner grows a butternut, a bush of dogwood crouch- ing at its foot. In front the ground slips down past faint traces of an old road to a gray wall and the woods. A bronze tablet, set in a boulder near, marks the spot as other than any hillside and any cellar-hole. The driver, if such a commodity was included in the livery bill, has given word of the passing of the house. Disuse, followed by a habit of ripping off clapboards, loosened its hold on the slope and it was taken down forty years ago. One does not miss it. Mary Lyon was primarily an out-of-door product, a creature with whose composition hills and the open sky had more to do than houses. The sight of her "mountain home" adds to know- ledge a sense of intimacy. Sympathy with a person's loves leads closest to his heart, and to this "wild romantic little farm" she gave such a wealth of tenderness as strong natures often 16 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON lavish on the places that have passed into their blood. How quietly the sunshine sleeps, seeming to hold in a spell of warm remembrance the child who once ran riot here. The whole slope talks of her to a wise listener. Over this rough rock- threshold she bounded to the little waterfall. Here her busy fingers threaded the June grass for ripe strawberries. The tangle of cinnamon roses to the southwest of the cellar-hole has it run wild from the old garden ? Perhaps one or another of the gouty apple trees in slim straight youth rained petals on an eager little face. These grassy hints of ruts led her to church on Sabbath mornings through a "wild winding way," where in summer "the family pony gave the mother her horseback ride," and in winter sped "that little sleigh, packed so snugly and gliding so gently." Along here, too, in the days when this green echo of a road, lusty and brown, climbed over the hills to Ash- field, came visiting aunts and cousins ; " child- ish days," they were, "when the homes and houses of uncles and friends form no unim- portant part of the geographic literature." AT HOME 17 And still, as in those far-off years, the top of the hill "invites each aspiring heart." Where she has led the way, one who knows her Mary Lyon follows, up the brook, beyond the apple trees, over juniper and ground-pine and out- cropping rock-ledges sparkling with quartz and mica crystals, by laurel bush and stunted thorn-apple, up, ever up, across the grass, green and juicy in spring, in autumn dry and slippery and nibbled short by the sheep. Up this steep she used to run, the nearer summits sinking as she went, until, where the winds never cease to blow, the kingdom of the hills was spread out before her. Everywhere, mountains, moun- tains, and more mountains. An ocean billow- ing on every side, wave heaving after wave to where the farthest crests break in faint blue against the sky. A choppy sea runs to the south ; to the north hills roll in longer sweeps. Some of them bear names that carry far, Greylock, Wachusett, Monadnock, Holyoke, Tom. And in between surge a multitude of lesser heights. Color clothes them, infinite as the sea's and as changeful; the sun kisses their wooded crests, but a soft bloom creeps 18 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON out of the valleys and muffles their sides in shadow. One may stand here and see no more human sign than a white steeple or a bit of road march- ing sturdily away, and over its shoulder flinging back its endless invitation. But move to the north, and out of the green directly below pricks the tiny village of Buckland. Snugly it nestles in the valley, the insistent spire of its little white church pointing upward, New Eng- land's symbol. So it looked years ago to that other watcher ; and here on the top of the world the energy that pounded in her veins used to boil over. Simply to be alive was joy. For very exuberance of gladness her laugh rang out, rollicking to the nearest hilltop, startling the colts in the next pasture. Now only an infrequent whistle breaks the stillness as a train crawls through the valley. Though it lies apart from the trodden way, the hillside is not so hard to come at. A hun- dred years ago matters were different. When busy grist and carding mills made noises on every running brook, and a man's world was AT HOME 19 measured off by the stride of his horse, a town fended for itself in sturdy isolation. It housed, fed, warmed, clothed, and entertained itself; the nearer it lay to the wilderness, the more independent was its habit. Buckland, at the close of the eighteenth century, lay very near indeed. Starting out in a humble way as a squire" s deer-park, it had attained incorporate existence during the Revolutionary War. Ash- field, the parent, could count its years but two or three decades further, and among Ashfield's earliest settlers were ancestors of Mary Lyon. By inheritance she was a pioneer. Most fam- ilies feel that they have done their share toward reclaiming the earth if they have found them- selves once or twice in the skirmish-line of civi- lization ; when the main column comes up they fall into step again with the rank and file. The child's forefathers, on her mother's side at least, were of a hardier breed. Not that she came of a race of New England nomads. Wherever they went, there they set their mark upon their times, and there the majority of them stayed ; but in almost every generation the old fire broke out anew, and, curiously enough. 20 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON with few breaks in the line of Mary Lyon's de- scent. Even her father and mother, born and bred in Ashfield, to make their home moved over the line to the side of Putnam Hill in the newer town of Buckland. From there her bro- ther pushed on, in those capacious days when western New York held the wilderness. In the second decade of New England immi- gration two men of the name of Smith sailed for settlements on Massachusetts Bay. Lieu- tenant Samuel Smith landed from the Eliza- beth, of Ipswich, in 1634; Reverend Henry Smith is known to have been in the colony two years later. Having accomplished the voyage, they were still ready to clasp hands with oppor- tunity, and newer outposts on the Connecticut soon lured them both to Wethersfield, where, after eight or ten years of preaching, the minis- ter died. Theological differences of opinion, those whetstones of New England hardihood, soon split the church, and the majority of its members, in the interests of "peace and har- mony," again fared forward, led by Reverend John Russell, who had stepped into both Mr. Smith's shoes, having become with Puritan AT HOME 21 thoroughness at once the pastor of his church and the father of his family. To the north, in the Indian valley of Norwottuck, they founded Hadley. There the intrepid Smiths halted just long enough to unite the two lines: the granddaughter of the lieutenant married the grandson of the minister. Their son Chileab was one of the first on the ground at South Had- ley. That he did not stay longer would appear to have been not wholly his fault in a day when one man's beliefs were every man's business. "Having agreed with Mr. Edwards who had just been dismissed from the Northampton Church," as the chronicle runs, Chileab Smith inclined to help populate Ashfield, which, un- der the name of Huntstown, by the middle of the eighteenth century boasted two families. Here he became the most picturesque figure in the town's history and the great-grandfather of Mary Lyon. The wilderness broke against his clearing. He rose up with danger and lay down with in- security. His stockade held out hospitality to other families. To come to close quarters with nature makes a man not only quick of eye and '22 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON hand and wit, but also generous. Those early settlers did not ask favor from life. Hardily they reached out to pluck good from the future, and ever, as is the way with pioneers, hope perched on their shoulder. No pessimist ever breaks new trails, it is not worth while. The minds of the Smiths moved as stoutly as their bodies. Lieutenant Smith and his son, grandfather of the Ashfield Chileab, besides holding many religious and civic oflfices, w^ere prominent in educational concerns. The lieu- tenant, with four other " pious and able men," divided the management of Hadley's share of the Hopkins bequest, an English legacy in- tended " to give some encouragement in those foreign plantations for the breeding up of hope- ful youths in the way of learning, both at the grammar school and college for the public ser- vice of the country in future times." His son succeeded him in the trust and stood staunchly in a small minority that opposed any scrimp- ing of the scholarly repast spread before those "hopeful youths" of Hadley. When Chileab of Ashfield refused to pay for the support of a church that he did not attend, his orchards AT HOME 23 were torn up and lands belonging to him were sold to pay his tithes. He and his sons resisted bravely, and for ten years with frequent trips to the General Court in Boston fought the in- justice of a union between church and state. Their final victory made that quarter of the world a more tolerant place in which to live. Of this stock came Mary's mother, Jemima Shepard. Behind her lay generations of clean and hardy living ; in her veins ran the blood of men and women who had met life with stout hearts and had worn old age with virility. The stalwart Chileab was ordained by his sons a Baptist minister at eighty years. History is more reticent about the Lyons. They, too, came early to Ashfield. During the Revolutionary War mention is made of Aaron Lyon, senior, as of "a meet person to pro- cure evidence against certain persons who are thought to be inimical to the American States." He was a patriot. Perhaps from him came his son's notably lovable disposition. Unseen, they stood about the cradle of the little Mary Lyon, these alert, vigorous people of her race, and gave gifts to the child. What 24 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON had been their own they gave her, a sound body, a dauntless spirit, a venturesome mind. Into her hands they put resourcefulness. And then at the last, instead of the wicked fairy, one stepped forward who added a merry heart. Her home supplied the contact with solid fact needed to temper this dower to a normal growth. Early she felt the rough edges of life. Before she was six her father died. Her first recorded memory is of this death that came so harshly to the mountain home, while the De- cember sun shone on the white slopes and the neighbors whispered, one to another, " We have all lost a friend the peacemaker is gone." That " first cold winter of widowhood" bit deep into the child's remembrance. A little rock-ribbed farm clutching at a New England hillside offers insecure support to a woman with a lusty family, and Mary was the fifth of seven, six daughters and one son. A second brother had died the year before she was born. Though children, if they get enough nourishment, like hardy bulbs, root best in the cold, on poverty such as was hers many would have been stunted. Too elemental to be fastidious, she AT HOME 25 made it succor her, drawing health from what might have dwarfed one less vital. All her life she had a way of forcing bleak circumstance to serve the ends of her spirit. Yet there is a frost that kills. Only the country could have offered life without loss at the terms the Lyons had to pay ; where so much comes free, inde- pendence and even generosity may go hand in hand with scanty means. Only in old New England could it have mattered so little to be poor. There the world gave a chance at competence, instead of wealth. Money was not highly esteemed ; people had little of it, perhaps because they had for it few uses. America was young, and money is seldom reckoned among the chief assets of youth. Unsmothered by things, minds had plenty of room in which to work. Education was the badge of the only aristocracy recognized; at the head of the intellectual hierarchy stood the minister, a col- lege-bred man. The phrase carried a rare and high significance. With their purses empty of money, people's thoughts became full of invention. Mrs. Lyon was a master- magician, and under her touch 26 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON the little farm yielded a wealthy penury. Of her in loving remembrance the daughter wrote long afterward : " Want at that mountain home was made to walk so fairly and so gracefully within that little circle of means, that she had always room enough and to spare for a more restricted neigh- bor. I can now see that loved widow just as I did in the days of my childhood. She is a little less than forty years of age and her complexion is as fair and her forehead as noble and as lofty as on her bridal day. Now she is in that sweet little garden, which needs only to be seen to be loved. Now she is surveying the work of the hired man and her little son on that wild ro- mantic little farm, made, one would think, more to feast the soul than to feed the body. But almost always she was to be found busy, both early and late, amid her household cares and amid the culture of the olive-plants around her table. In that little domain nothing was left to take its own way. Everything was made to yield to her faithful and diligent hand. It was no mistake of that good-hearted neighbor who came in one day, begging the privilege of AT HOME 7 setting a plant of rare virtues in a corner of her garden, because, as he said, there it could never die. The roses, the pinks, and the peonies, those old-fashioned flowers which keep time with 'Old Hundred,' could nowhere grow so fresh and so sweet as in that little garden. And nowhere else have I ever seen wild strawberries in such profusion and richness as were gath- ered into those little baskets. Never were rare- ripes so large and so yellow, and never were peaches so delicious and so fair, as grew on the trees of that little farm. The apples, too, con- trived to ripen before all others, so as to meet in sweet fellowship with peaches and plums to entertain the aunts and the cousins. . . . "At that little mountain home every want was promptly and abundantly met by the boun- ties of summer and by the providence for winter. The autumnal stores, so nicely sorted and arranged, alw^ays traveled hand in hand through the long winter, like the barrel of meal and the cruse of oil. The apples came out fresh in the spring, and the maple sugar, that most important grocery of that little neighborhood, was never known to fail till the warm sun on 28 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON the sparkling snow gave delightful indications that sugar-days were near. When gathered around that simple table no one desired a richer supply than was furnished by the hand of that dear mother. The simple school-day dress, too, so neat and so clean, was amply sufficient in [the] view of those young minds, while the rare gift of the Sunday suit, kept ex- pressly for the occasion, formed an important era in the life of the possessor and was remem- bered with grateful smiles for many days to come. The children of that household, thus abundantly supplied, never thought of being dependent or depressed. They felt that their father had laid up for them a rich store in grate- ful hearts and among the treasures which will never decay, and that their mother, who was considered in all that little neighborhood a sort of presiding angel of good works, was continu- ally adding to those stores. I can now remem- ber just the appearance of that woman, who had a numerous household to clothe, as she said one day, ' How is it that the widow can do more for me than any one else .^"' Under such a mother the child laid the foun- AT HOME 29 dations of her life. She was bred to making the most of things. Simple pleasures yielded her a vivid joy, and years later she blessed the home that had taught her how to be happy on little. "Economy," she flashed one day to her stu- dents, " is not always doing without things. It is making them do the best they can." This living up to the possibilities of things, great and small, was a fashion of the time ; everybody of standing practiced it, from the man who had most to the one who had least. The habit, gained in childhood, of disdaining no trifle, opened before the woman many doors that must otherwise have remained to her forever closed. At the same time she knew when to be lavish ; there are privations that do not pay. On a farm one sees the adjustment continu- ally going on between one's self and the sources of life. There the peas have short shrift between the vines and the kettle, the potatoes come brown out of the earth soon to go into bins in the cellar, the apples drop from the trees into ready hands a mouth is not far distant. When Mary Lyon was young the round of a farm's enterprise met every want, warming, feeding. 30 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON clothing. The widely divergent complications of the modern economic system sprouted in narrow quarters. The wool sheared from the sheep that fed on Putnam Hill, she carded and spun into thread ; of the thread she wove cloth and on horseback carried it to Pomeroy's mill on lovely Clessons River, to be dressed ; out of the cloth that her hands had made she fash- ioned garments and wore them. This early ex- perience gave to all her later ventures that touch of practicality which comes only from a per- sonal accounting to the great facts of existence. Common sense lay, a solid substratum, under her most daring plans : she never divorced the- ory from circumstance. A little farm, capably managed, teaches adaptability ; and her meth- ods were always shaped with an eye to actual achievement, nor did she grow wedded to one set way of doing things, even her own. Con- vention did not fetter her. She saw it to be no static thing, but another adjustment, and her earth-bred sense taught her when to respect it and when to set it aside. She made acquaintance with humanity amid the kindly influences of a big, busy family. The AT HOME 31 jostlings, clashes of will, mutual concessions, which make for ease of intercourse with one's kind, were hers early. Together all the children of that household worked, not with an enforced industry, superimposed to keep them active ; each fitted into the scheme of accomplishment. As a matter of course she learned all the arts of keeping house. Perhaps here, too, in a day when nursing was a neighborly service, freely rendered, she gained that acquaintance with the face of illness which enabled her, years after, at a glance to tell the nature of a malady. Stockings, sheets, counterpanes, as well as cloth- ing, came from her quick fingers. To the whir of spinning-wheel and loom making quiet music in every home she used to give credit for the character of the women of her youth. They had no nerves; theirs was fretless productive labor, and usefulness clothed them with con- tent. The child's inventive spirit would seem to have budded characteristically. She was still a very small person when she left her task and climbed up in a chair to study the hour-glass. Questioned by her mother as to what she was 32 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON doing, she answered that she thought she had found a way of making more time! Practical little Mary Lyon ! She argued wisely from the premises at her disposal. If time were such a valuable commodity, why not make more of it ? So she grew up, busying her brain to help her mother, adoring her elder brother, lavishing on all she loved a wealth of affection that could not do too much to make them happy. A frank, spirited, lovable child, possessed of an energy that was almost volcanic and of a sweet teach- ableness that won hearts. Through glad eyes she looked at the world and found it good, and the people in it. Often she found it highly en- tertaining. Her laugh lay very near her lips, and to her keen sense of humor she added a gift of putting amusing things in words, that made her merry company. As soon as she could toddle a mile she went regularly to the nearest district school. But when she was only six or seven, this school, in the itinerant fashion of its kind, careless of the disabilities of short legs, or perhaps desirous of suiting other small constituents, moved a mile farther from the Lyon homestead. After this AT HOME 33 her schooling progressed irregularly a term here, a term there, in Ashfield or in Buckland, while she lived with relatives or friends, help- ing in the family, as the custom was, for her board. We do not know what books she had. The Bible, certainly. What New England home was without it ? On its pages children learned to read In the beginning God created the hea- ven and the earth. Like Daniel Webster, she probably was unable to remember a time when she could not read the Bible. Watts's Psalms and Hymns, the poetry of old New England, must have been hers early. Beyond this, little. Those were days of few books, printed and bound in leather ; men and women formed the greater part of every library. Children gath- ered about grandparents and aunts for stories. Then in the firelight the kid and his master passed over London Bridge, Indians crept stealthily through the forest, old battles raged once more. She heard much thoughtful talk, grave discussion of knotty dogmas. Old New England reared children on theology. The shadow of the giant Edwards lay long over the 34 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON land, etching a religion, prickly on the outside but very tender at the heart. If there were few books, there were fewer newspapers. News passed from mouth to mouth, coaching between villages; it had not then even dreamed of pricking hotly through the air on a wire. Yet Buckland and its fellow towns were not cut off upon their hills. What stirred the whole loosely knit community stirred them in time. " I remember," wrote Miss Lyon, "the thoughts of my young heart when the subject of foreign missions first began to find its way into the family circle and was spoken of as one of the marvelous things of the age." The isolation of life gave strength to its cur- rent, and what it lacked in breadth it added to depth. A child's attention, roaming few fields, explored them thoroughly. Mary soaked up information like a sponge. She seems never to have been confronted with more than she could hold. And, like a sponge, when occasion squeezed ever so little, she gave it out. Already people liked to hear her talk; she did it in headlong fashion, the words tumbling so fast out of her mouth as sometimes to make her AT HOME 35 speech almost unintelligible. We catch a glimpse of her in a time of spiritual renewing at Buckland, perched at recess on the crooked limb of a big beech tree behind the school- house, recounting to those gathered about her the way of salvation as she had learned it at home. Not that she had " experienced religion," as the old phrase went. A child's world reflects the currents that move its elders, and she was young, with an insatiable curiosity about life and a facile gift of phrasing her discoveries. Everything proved food to her appetite; she fed as hungrily on unlettered learning as on the lore that is coldly stored in books. Her interest in the common crafts of men is oftener found in boys than girls. During her teens the first brick house was built in Buckland. The son of the builder and owner has recorded that she would come often to the yard, and telling him that she wished to learn to make brick, would help turn them up, load them on the wheel- barrow, and later put them in the hake. With all the other things that she learned, she did not learn to play. It was an accom- plishment which from abuse had in her youth 36 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON fallen into disrepute. Play, as a few moderns practice it, a relaxation that is a recreation, was a sealed art. A high seriousness held New England. It took even its pleasures in the path of duty. Busy battling with beasts and men, throwing up defenses against the wilderness, debating theological outposts, had left it scant time and less inclination for amusement. When a moment off guard costs dear, one does not practice irresponsibility. Yet with all its austerity of outline, the New England that held the child Mary Lyon in its toil-worn arms possessed a noble loveliness. She was bred on beauty, not of man-made things, but of nature and of soul. Her sensitive little heart drank it in unconsciously; only in looking back did she understand. Out of the eyes of the men and women of her childhood acquaintance looked the sincerity that comes of facing high verities. They walked, their feet in the furrows, their heads among the stars. Beliefs were to them what houses and lands, stocks and bonds, are to their descendants, tangible possessions. By them they took hold on Heaven and swung it close to Earth, until AT HOME 37 this life became but its antechamber. Ideals were their only luxury. As the Greeks loved beauty, old New England loved right. Duty was its ecstasy. A cold passion ? Let none who have not bowed at that shrine deny warmth to its votaries. For duty done for love grows lovely and clothes its worshipers in noble lines. About the child the world moved to high and stately music. Persons of distinction came and went, men and women whose "lives went by their consciences as their clocks went by the sun." The cool-colored New England Sab- bath wrapped her from sundown to sundown in mighty thoughts. Want, walking gracefully, smiled at her. Generosity grew up beside her. Her mother, vigorous, thrifty, wealthy only in love and helpfulness, broke for her the bread of life. Before her the year unrolled its glories. The pageant of the seasons passed across the hills : spring veiled itself in a translucent mist of pro- mise; summer reveled in jubilant fulfillment; autumn's wildfire torched the slopes to flame ; winter glittered in frozen white against the blue. Always she loved wild and lovely sights better 38 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON for this early initiation into the mysteries of beauty. The mountains were her first teachers. From them she stored up power as simply as she drank energy from the soil. They grounded her in the laws of perspective. She had a gift for salient facts, and " on the whole" grew to be a favorite phrase of hers. They taught her the worth of noiseless work, seeing to it that she never mistook clamor for force. The quiet undeviating round of the seasons gave her pa- tience; she caught the secret of waiting fret- lessly for the forces of God to act. They did miracles that no eye might see, and Mary Lyon never required a human audience. Not that she knew what was happening to her ; un- conscious learning goes deepest. The hills fed her imagination. What lay beyond their far- thest peaks ? Nay, what lay between ? She could not know it, but almost they spanned her life. And ever they held out their invita- tion. Some day in the fulness of time she would make answer. CHAPTER III AT SCHOOL For a person of enterprise and energy the early nineteenth century in America was un- questionably a time to be young. The United States found itself in the position of a man who, having secured the title to his homestead and be- gun housekeeping in a small way, looks about for further furnishings. The values of the situa- tion inhered quite as much in its deficiencies as in its possessions. Yet hitherto people of foresight had usually seen to it that they were born boys. A boy, within the scope of his abil- ity, promoted speculation; he might become almost anything. A girl was obviously intended for a home-maker and her preparation included little study; nature has been at some pains to teach humanity to avoid superfluous things. Seventeenth-century Dr. Thomas Fuller, in his "Church History of Britain," briefly dis- cusses the "conveniency of she-colleges." 40 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON " Nunneries also were good she-schools where- in the girls and maids of the neighbourhood were taught to read and work ; and sometimes a little Latin was taught them therein." But nunneries had gone out of fashion in Protes- tant Britain ; and as even a limited knowledge of the classics appeared unnecessary in house- wives, the thrifty founders of this country did not propose to give it to them. Thereby they made no unkind distinction in intellect; they believed in learning for a boy only when he meant to use it. Harvard was established be- cause, as the Massachusetts settlers quaintly phrased it, they " dreaded to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present min- istry shall lie in the dust." Their point of view coincides with that of many people who queried two hundred years later, " When girls become scholars, who is to make puddings and pies V The idea of a woman preacher, lawyer, or teacher of anything less simple than the A B C's never having occurred to either Puritans or Cav- aliers, it was quite as foreign to their thought that a girl should care to go to college. Educa- tion, moreover, was an expensive utility. In AT SCHOOL 41 New England, where most was publicly made of it, a town often had more than it could con- veniently do to furnish its boys with the supply of knowledge that the law required. The dame school with its horn-book and primer suflSced for girls. Inability to write her name did not impugn a woman's gentility ; many ladies of the Revolution made their mark. A few fashion- able schools prolonged a rich girl's education, but in most of them the graces crowded out solidity and even sense. An exception appears in the history-flavored Moravian Seminary at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. With something more than French, painting, and manners, it schooled the gay colonials and the belles and beauties of the young republic ; their names run the polyglot gamut of its population. In the South girls more often stayed at home, some- times studying with their brothers' tutor and putting on polish by a trip to Europe. Not that there were then no blue-stockings, but they as until lately learned women have been, history through were exotics. More than a decade before the end of the eighteenth century Lucinda Foot in Connecticut prepared 42 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON with her brothers for Yale, and after exami- nation received at twelve a Latin certificate from President Stiles containing his pronounce- ment that' "she is fully qualified, except in regard to sex, to be received as a pupil of the freshman class in Yale University." Later she studied the full college course, and, with Presi- dent Stiles for a tutor, learned Hebrew. The sisters of Jonathan Edwards read Greek and Latin in their father's study. So did other New England girls. Yet Maria Edgeworth's words, written about the year that Mary Lyon was born, express the practice of America equally with that of England and the continent: "From the study of the learned languages women, by custom, fortunately for them, are exempted." Defoe's academy remained a project only of ink and paper: "To such whose genius would lead them to it I would deny no sort of learning." In Scotland Mary Somerville studied in secret lest she should be thought unsexed by science. No European country granted equal educa- * "Testorque omnino illam, nisi Sexus ratione, idoneam ut in Qassem Recentium in Universitate Yalensi Alumna admitteretur." AT SCHOOL 43 tional facilities to boys and girls. The earth belonged to men. For them it had been created ; women came on the scene as a pleasant and in- deed a necessary afterthought. The ages had built a wall about them, shutting off the world's activities. By stealth or with some friendly help from the other side a few had always man- aged to climb over and eat of the tree of know- ledge, but the wall still held. Toward the end of the century two bombs exploded near this barrier; it did not stand so stoutly afterward. The war for independence in America was ^y an experience from which the people concerned never recovered sufficiently to be quite certain that what had been must continue forevermore. Their faith in precedent had met a shock. The other bomb was the invention of machinery. It drew women out of their world-old setting and thrust them into new relations. After people had grown wonted to seeing them do familiar work in a strange place and in a strange way, they were less fearful of the dan- gers incident to further scene- shifting. When one woman could accomplish what it had taken more than one to do before, the 44 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON others, of necessity, cast about for something fresh. They hit on school-teaching. In all but the most rudimentary form it had been hitherto a manly enterprise ; but as life in the new land gained security and homes pushed further from sheltering villages, fortune, in shifting the edu- cational base from town to district, gave men much more of it than they cared to handle, and they promptly relinquished the part least remunerative. While the farms kept busy the larger boys and the young men, neighborhood schools were taught by women. In winter the colleges flooded the country with muscular un- dergraduates eager to replenish their purses, until far into the nineteenth century many colleges arranged their calendars to include a long school-keeping winter vacation. It fur- nished an experimental course that supple- mented richly the classic humanities. But women's capital was meagre even for the small summer venture, and their desire for more knowledge, coupled at last with their abil- ity to use it, won for them their opportunity. Reverend Timothy Dwight's coeducational experiment at Greenfield Hill, William Wood- AT SCHOOL 45 bridge's New Haven school for girls, ventures by Yale students, Philadelphia's academy, the beginning of Miss Pierce's Litchfield School, and other sporadic attempts in the last decades of the eighteenth century, offered a few of them a welcome chance at more liberal learning. While these private advances were in making, the pressure of demand gradually broke down the door of public schools. In 1790 Gloucester decided that " Females . . . are a tender and interesting branch of the Community but have been much neglected in the Public schools in this Town." Other towns sooner or later ar- rived at Gloucester's point of view. Odd hours were first allotted to girls' instruc- tion, intermediary scraps of time, noonings, the left-overs from the more important job to be performed on boys. Now girls no longer sat on the steps of the schoolhouse to which their brothers had dragged halting feet, and ab- sorbed the third "R," as it were from the at- mosphere, while the arithmetic lesson floated through open windows from stumbling recita- tions. Insistent pecking at the fallen crumbs of knowledge had conquered. If it had come 46 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON more easily, would they, after all, have cared so much ? Academies, those nurseries of general cul- ture, that in the latter half of the eighteenth century had started to the relief of a decadent learning, began to admit girls. Soon, over New England and its environs, new academies sprang up, offering education to all young peo- ple on equal terms. From these the older gen- eration of our own time drew its intellectual life. The boys they either fitted for college or passed on with liberal interests into the less ex- acting professions and the trades ; to the girls they gave the assets that made school-teachers. On this situation fell Mary Lyon's youth. An old profession was enlarging its borders, accommodating itself to deal with new mate- rial and to employ new services. In pay it gave little beyond a frugal livelihood ; its intellectual refreshments were meagre. Its glory lay in its possibilities. As yet an inchoate thing, this education of girls, a scanty affair of memory and book, it awaited the hands of its exploit- ers. Its aims, methods, ideals, were yet to be annoimced. Persons of creative force might do AT SCHOOL 47 with it what they would. One accomplishment it had already made : a girl's schooling was be- come of some small public interest. Ajar be- fore her stood the door that led to knowledge. Through this crack Mary Lyon pushed curi- ously ; it widened to admit her, and she, passing on, left the way more open behind her. She did not drink decorously of the wells of learning, she was too thirsty for that. Their refreshment she took in gulps, and all too soon they showed a dry bottom. How could it fare otherwise with one of whom a teacher has tes- tified that in four days she devoured all that scholars were wont to learn of Alexander's Eng- lish Grammar, and poured it forth at a sin- gle lengthy recitation ? Her progress through arithmetic was equally swift; her trenchant brain cut to the heart of an operation and mas- tered its reason quickly. In all this it must be admitted that, whatever other qualities she showed, she did not show discretion. The wells were not sunk very deep in country districts. So thdroughly alive was she that, unlike many children, she found it no more of a task to use her mind than her legs. With the 48 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON same joyous zest she entered into both activi- ties. Given a book, it seemed as impossible for her to stop short of its finish as to halt half-way up Putnam Hill. " I should like to see what she would make if she could be sent to college," said one of her teachers. But no college admitted girls, and she did not have money to go away to school. When the educational means of her home and of the town neared exhaustion she set to work to earn. In 1810 her mother married and went to live in- side the lines of Ashfield, taking with her the younger sisters ; the three oldest were already wives. For a year Mary kept house for her brother and he paid her a dollar a week to in- crease her fund. After his marriage she still made her home with him, romping with the merry babies that came to the hillside, a doting aunt. Spinning and weaving added to her re- sources. She began to teach, receiving in her first position seventy-five cents a week and board, a price then not uncommon. By such resorts her store grew slowly. Now and then she took a term at school. When she was nineteen. Reverend Alvan AT SCHOOL 49 Sanderson founded an academy in the thrifty village of Ashfield. A Williams College gradu- ate, dying on his feet, he put his final efforts and a part of his small fortune where he thought they would count for most, into an institution that should give to the ambitious young people of the Franklin County hills what the public schools denied them. The experiment of start- ing a school dependent for support on the pay- ment of tuition met in many of the Ashfield villagers caution and distrust, and even Mr. Sanderson's relatives withheld encouragement. In this dearth of sympathy he turned to two people who from the first accorded him cordial help. "Thomas White, Gentleman," as Mr. Sanderson's will denominated one of the trustees of the school, justice of the peace and at times the town's representative in the legislature, shared the expense of fitting up the building; and when village prejudice shut many doors against students from a distance, Mr. and Mrs. White at great personal inconvenience opened their own home. Here in 1817 came Mary Lyon in a blue homespun gown with running strings at neck 50 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON and waist, crude, awkward in gait, fresh from the untutored hills. The scholars looked at her with laughter on their lips. But she soon ceased to appear to them a joke. It is not easy long to feel superior to a person of whom one cannot keep within reciting distance. When she had been given study after study to hold her to the more deliberate pace of her regular classes, on a Friday afternoon as she was start- ing for home the principal handed her Adams's Latin Grammar, the accepted pabulum of the incipient classicist in the days when a beginner was hurled head-first at a language and left with- out the aid of introductions to make acquaint- ance. He assigned the first lesson and told her to omit her extra studies while at work upon it, congratulating himself upon having at last found a clog to her energy. On Monday she returned to school, and that afternoon, in the large room where all the enterprises of the academy went forward, occurred the recitation of which Ashfield long talked. Called early in the session to take her place on the central bench where students sat to recite, her prompt answers soon roused general attention. Schol- AT SCHOOL 51 ars let fall their books to listen, leaning forward in amazement and admiration, while, as the sun dropped down the sky and behind the hills, Mary Lyon went through the Latin Grammar. Scarcely a slip she made, her tongue twist- ing swiftly through labyrinthine windings of declensions and conjugations, her face intent, her hands absently weaving her handkerchief through her fingers as she talked. "How did you ever do it ?" asked her seat- mate afterward. " How could your head hold it all in so short a time ?" And Mary confessed that she had studied all Sunday. Questioned in later years about the episode, she said : *' Oh, it was at one of those schools where they do nothing but study and recite. . . . You just learned what was in the book. I traced out the likenesses and differences among the declensions and conjugations and could commit anything to memory quick, when I was young. And as to the rules of syntax, they are so much like those in English grammar that it did not take long to learn them. So you see, it was no great feat after all." 52 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Her lightning method of disposing of a sub- ject became the wondering pride of her school- fellows. She brought to such exploits an un- crowded mind; being large and sparsely fur- nished, it dispensed a. spacious hospitality, and she had to a remarkable degree the ability to concentrate her attention at a given point. This perfect focus resulted in a sort of bodily transference of a study from the book to her brain, a kind of mental photography in three dimensions procured by a short time exposure. Skimming was not to her taste, nor did she ever trust to superficial acquaintance. Except- ing such a gambol as this with the Latin gram^ mar, hers cannot be called mere rote learning. " You know I always found difficulties, doubts, and inconsistencies in grammar," she told her sister four years later, showing that she had long before begun to think between the lines. But there was no magic about her proficiency : when she studied, she was all there all the time, and the ability to use herself as a whole formed, as well, one of her greatest social and executive assets. It preserved her impressions. Her memory held names and faces as indelibly AT SCHOOL 53 as facts. "No one could study like Mary Lyon and no one could clean the school-room with such despatch," said a fellow student. While her intellect was capturing their im- aginations, her likableness was winning the hearts of her schoolmates. Amanda White, the Squire's graceful brown-haired daughter, was attracted at sight. Long afterward she wrote : " I loved her from my first acquaintance, and felt that her heart was made for friendship ere I had been one half-hour in her society. We accidentally fell in company when she first became a pupil in the Academy at Ashfield, as we were returning from church, where we had attended a lecture. We needed no formal intro- duction. Her frank, open countenance invited confidence, and a mutual feeling of interest was at once awakened. We chatted upon various subjects, and on learning that I was expecting to enter the school also, she requested me to take a seat with her. I did, and pursued the same branches so far as I could keep up." So began Mary Lyon's dearest girl friendship. It is not recorded that anybody who ever knew her disliked her. Before acquaintance 54 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON prejudice fell away. And who could help liking this breezy school-girl, with the sparkling eyes, clear rosy skin, and wealth of short burnished curls, the kindly voice, and willing ways, who, as Amanda continued, was "ever ready to lay aside her books and lend a helping hand to those of weaker intellect ? Though nearly thirty years have passed I seem now to see her cheer- ful laughing face turned upon me as I pre- sented some Gordian knot in my studies for her to unravel." Her mind never seemed to tire. She stole from sleep to learn, awake, so said the family where she boarded, on an average, twenty hours out of the twenty-four. Diffi- culties exhilarated her ; more things to do only gave her more capacity for doing. " She is all intellect," people said of her; "she does not know that she has a body to care for." What she did know was that her time grew short. Along the street that in after years edi- tors and scholars, gentlemen of cultured leisure, trod in genial dignity, beat the swift feet of an eager girl. Hotly her days passed from her. The money so toilsomely won fell away even AT SCHOOL 55 under the simplicity of her demands. All her small household store it is said she gave in ex- change for the means of living while she stud- ied. That first term she paid for her board with two coverlets, spun, dyed, and woven by her- self. She had reached the point of leaving the academy when, at the suggestion of "Squire" White, the trustees voted her free tuition. Re- port says that she taught enough classes to equalize the obligation. It was probably not long after this that, by invitation of the Squire and his wife, she went to live in the big white house that stood midway of the village street, its open front door framing in summer a glimpse of further green. In simple well-bred dignity it stands there still, with an air of quiet- ness that only long residence can give. It was built in the final decade of the century before last, when Mr. White married ; behind it the ground dips to an apple-strewn meadow, on whose further side a brook flows beside stately elms of the Squire's planting. This house became her adopted home. The southeast windows in the second story look out 56 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON from the chamber she shared with the lovely Amanda. A quaint brass knob lifts the latch as one enters the room ; countless times it has turned under the hand of Mary Lyon. For here, after school-days were long done, she came often, as to a place where she belonged, and always she held it in her heart, as it in turn held her. In this home she first made acquaintance with the amenities of living. Delicate high- bred Mrs. White and the genial Squire ordered life in a manner she had not known. Genera- tions of gentlefolk lay behind them. It is not the mere doing of a thing that counts, she discovered, but how it is done. She came to Ashfield oblivious to much that would have troubled many girls ; so intent was she on her purpose that she did not see her crudities. In- deed, it was never her habit to compare her- self with people. But at those infrequent mo- ments when she did slip into introspection, all her life, as is often the way with attractive per- sons, she underrated her own charm. When she went to live at Mr. White's, she acknowledged that she needed help at many AT SCHOOL 57 points. It is still told in the family that she learned new ways with wonderful rapidity. Her awkwardnesses began to slip away under the Squire's kindly mimicry, only he could do it, taking her into a room by herself and showing her how she looked to others. She grew more heedful of her dress ; Amanda saw to this. That faculty of hers for concentration worked against anything that had the ill-fortune to be unable to secure her attention. She could be intensely absent-minded when uninterested, and she was always oblivious of her clothes. "Oh," she once cried impulsively to a room- mate in the years when she held an arduous executive position, "don't let me ever go to breakfast without my collar!" Her friend Amanda has written that when they were away at school together she never let Mary out of her sight without inspection, " as she was very likely to leave off some article or put on one wrong-side-out. She was one of the unfortunate ones whose wearing apparel seemed doomed to receive the contents of every overturned ink- stand or lamp, but she met every such accident with the same good-humor and pleasantry she 58 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON manifested on all and every occasion." The words call to mind the plaint of the head of a small boarding-school in New York State who fell in company with Miss Lyon at a time when the latter was full of her Holyoke plans, too full for silence. She talked and all the men present gave her interested attention. "There were spots on her dress," announced the keen-eyed and immaculate one in grieved triumph, " and she didn't know it !" Seldom did the small accessories of living manage to obtrude themselves on her conscious- ness. It was no sketch of herself that she struck off when she said of some women : " It seems as if everything that belongs to them had feet and went to its place, as soon as it was done with." Amanda adds : " I made it a point to attend to the nameless little duties necessary to our comfort [in the room], leaving for her share such as she could not well overlook or omit." But to give an impression that she grew up into a careless woman would not be true. One who knew her well tells us that in her earlier teaching years, when " a friend, anxious that . AT SCHOOL 59 she should add more of feminine grace to her great strength of mind and character, directed her attention to some small defect, she replied with the best humor in the world, ' I have cor- rected more such things than anybody ought to have.' " For all the help the Squire's household gave her she thanked them with beaming eyes and smiling face. Yet with aching hearts they did it, as a duty owed to the feeling Amanda has noted as already upon them, " that she was fitting for some important station." Here she laid the foundation of a social cul- ture which enabled her to pass among her kind with ease as well as with innate cordiality. Too simple ever to become a "fine lady," she had no taste for a husk of manners. People interested her tremendously, and a country training better than any urban refinement fitted her to mingle with all sorts. Village intercourse is very inclusive; life presses close, thrusting one, unless she turn hermit, into acquaintance with more than her own order. So it came about that, although in proportion to the time spent, probably none ever carried away more learning from Sanderson Academy, 60 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Ashfield's contribution to Mary Lyon's devel- opment was not most notably intellectual. The Squire was a Whig in politics, he took a New York paper; his neighbor. Squire Paine, im- ported his news from Boston. These sheets supplemented the Boston "Recorder," "The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine." The Bible and commentaries held a central place in household interest. Colleges did not dig- nify spoken languages by a prominent place in their curricula, and people who were busy living found little time to read. She dated her literary awakening later and at another place. Yet of all her schools Ashfield Academy held her longest, and its genial influences, she de- clared at the end of her life, first roused her mental energies and imparted an impulse that never ceased to act. " Many who would other- wise never have had access to anything worthy the name of literary advantages received there the rudiments of an education. In that quiet retreat among the hills the intellect was stirred, the taste refined, and intensity given to the de- sire for knowledge. To mind and heart that institution was what the mountain airs are to I EXHIBITION. r I I i VSHFIELD ACADE>IY. I ^ FKBUV-tRX IS, 19 IB. a^i s .^ t1 ORDER OF EXERCISES. 1 ft'CLOCTC, P. K. 1st. Prayer, by Rev. Gamaliel S. Olds. Snd. Salutatory Oration, by Samuel Colton. 2rd. Dialogue on " Village Politics," by John A. Nash, and Hiram Owfx. 4th. Oration on the character of Aaron Burr, by Eleazer. \V. Stqrrs. ^. Sth. ." Sacred Drama," by Misses Amanda White, Hannah White, Violett ^ Harwood, and Emily Smith. . ^ 6th, Oration on the inspiration of man, by Elijah .Paine, Jun. ^" ^ 7th. " The Exile," a Drama, by Nithan Loomis, E. Paine, Jun. S. Colton, ^ ^ E. W. Storrs; and Misses Esther B^ment, Hannah White, Violktt js'^i '^ Harwood, Harriet Smith, Polly Newhall, and Louis Sanderson, ^'i ^ 5> I EYENINU. . I ^ 8tli. Prologue to " Christianity in India." by Levi Cook, Jun. ^ ^ th. Christianiry in India. a I)rama, by E. Paine, E. W. Stokrs, K. l.Iouts, * ^ D. Beloikc, S. Bemest, H. Owen, S. Ccm.ton, E. iMont.acui,, S. i*" Ws Graves; and Misses Amand\ White, Esthlr Bement, Mahv Lyon, * *| Emily Smith, Laury A. Luce, and Marv Paine. j^ ^: Kill. Prologue, by Samwei Colion. ;^ !> ^c5>>>*^>^^^ ;; >^'-i{"C.^^**x.'- : : ,:;. ...w. ....%>*..*.aa \ L****"!^ >< ^^V^\^^';^'^<^y'>.yv.OJ>J:iA;;v.,^v '..v^vv AT SCHOOL 61 the physical powers." Under Elijah Burritt, brother of "The Learned Blacksmith," and known to the nineteenth century as the author of "The Geography of the Heavens," she cal- culated eclipses, and with a fellow student made an almanac. One of her maps is extant, its colored lines testifying alike to the nicety of her workmanship and to the limited area but spacious accommodations of the United States in that early decade. Geography, arith- metic, logic, rhetoric, English grammar seem to have been her regular subjects during one quar- ter. Scrutiny of an old exercise programme yields her name in the cast of a school " drama." \Miat twentieth-century problem-play would one not give for a chance to have seen " Chris- tianity in India," and heard the dialogue be- tween Mary Lyon as the mother and the boy who acted the infant in the bulrushes ! During the next few years she studied as opportunity offered. Terms of teaching gave her terms of learning. For improvement in penmanship she attended a writing-school in Buckland taught by one Daniel Forbes, a fa- mous master of the region, called by the boys 62 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON for his unbirched yet effective discipline " little holy Daniel." The boy who showed her how to make brick, grown an old man, remembered having seen her sitting behind a work-bench in one of his father's carpenter shops, temporarily turned into a school-room. She took her seat among the scholars until they asked that a chair be placed for her at the master's table. Hearing the younger pupils recite paid her tui- tion. The monotonous toil required to lay the foundation of skill in an art demanding in its productions the delicate precision of a steel engraving could not have been to her liking, spirited as she was. But without it no educa- tion was then considered passable, and she had the will to hold herself to what might prove dis- tasteful. The school-master who has himself set down this account goes on to tell how one day he gave her a Latin caption for her copy. She handed back her book, asking that he write it in English; she would not seem wiser than she was, she said. Once she took a little of the scanty inheritance that was her share of her father's estate, and went for a term to Amherst Academy, precursor of the college, and one of AT SCHOOL 63 the leading academies in Massachusetts, where, as an account has it, " her homespun apparel, her extraordinary scholarship, and her bound- less kindness, were about equally conspicuous." Here she plunged into the study of chemistry. Subsequently, a summer of teaching in Conway yielded her more science under the tutelage of Reverend Edward Hitchcock, pastor of the church there, and trustee of Sanderson Acad- emy ; later, in turn professor and president of Amherst College. She made her home in his family, and Mrs. Hitchcock gave her lessons in drawing and painting, for many years yet to be popularly held, with music, embroidery, and manners, as the essentials of feminine educa- tion. That she had never been taught to sing caused her lifelong regret, so dearly did she love melody and so strong grew her sense of the " practical importance" of vocal music. " I have sometimes felt," she wrote in after years, "that I would have given six months of my time when I was under twenty, and defrayed my expenses, difficult as it was to find time or money, could I have enjoyed the privileges for learning vocal music that some of our pupils enjoy." 64 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Meanwhile, in 1819, her brother had moved to western New York. It almost broke her heart. He was her darling, and his babies with tiny hands had woven an enchantment about her life. To snap it hurt, and the pain did not dull for months. With the home on the hillside broken up, she followed her sisters to her mo- ther's house. Before she went if we may credit tradition, always an uncertain informant both the tall angels of teaching, love as well as religion, had brushed her with folded wings. Of the latter her word assures us. On the way home from church she met him of a Sabbath in the fields. He was clothed in the ruddy beauty of the year, and the girl who had ever made response to loveliness felt within herself a sweet and joyous sense of God. Quaintly we are told in one of the biographies that her intellect had always approved God's government ; it had been the theme of her uncle's morning and afternoon sermons. Now, as she walked, her whole being seemed to open, flower-like, toward the Giver ' of the earth's life and her own. She sought the hills and they ministered to her. That such AT SCHOOL 65 should have been her first personal experience of God, rather than some form of the agonizing self-torture so prevalent at the time, is signifi- cant. Happiness always lay at the heart of her faith. Love, so says the story that has passed from mouth to mouth, took her by the hand, but she broke away. She had possibilities of more to give, dimly she perhaps already felt, than any man of her home hills could receive. So we glimpse her, driven by an instinct as yet vague and unbodied, a restless mastering desire, born of hard circumstance, of starving appetites and unfed aptitudes, that, whether or not it had al- ready forced her to forego the natural life of other girls, impelled her on, out into the world to seek her own. She was again at Ashfield Academy when Amanda White made plans to attend a school near Boston which, since its coeducational start three years before, by the simple device of drop- ping the "young gentlemen," had become a woman's seminary. It is said to have possessed a unique reputation for the opportunity given for advanced study, affording girls a chance at 66 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON branches of learning which no other school al- lowed them. The mere thought of going to Mr. Emerson's seminary at Byfield bespoke a more than ordinary thirst for knowledge. The story current in the White family re- counts how one day Amanda found her friend in tears. Pressed for an explanation, Mary con- fessed that she too wanted to go to Byfield. "And so you can!" cried Amanda. "Oh, no, J. cannot." "Father will find a way. Talk with him." Mr. White proposed a loan. It would not be well, he said, to disturb her little property then ; later when she was teaching she could repay him. But she might not make a success of teach- ing, she objected. It is altogether credible that somehow, be- tween her independent spirit and the Squire's ever-ready generosity, the matter of her going was adjusted. Together from the room they had shared in the White homestead the two girls set off for Byfield. The stage route be- tween Boston and Albany ran through Ashfield village, but the young adventurers did not go AT SCHOOL 67 by coach. The Squire himself drove them with their trunks in his spring wagon drawn by two horses, the first vehicle of the kind known in that part of the state and an object of admiring note even in the capital. The road was long and the goal in itself a bit of an audacity. What should young women already out of their teens want of more school- ing, and why should they go for it so far.? Theirs would be no easy intercourse with home, for letter-writing was a costly indulgence. To await the convenience of some chance traveler who would act as private post without charge taxed patience; to send a single sheet by the fast mail taxed purse. Envelopes were un- known, and the space required in folding the sheet so as to present a clear surface for the address lessened its capacity, while a scrap of extra paper doubled the cost. In the view of a schoolgirl away from home in the early twen- ties, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ap- peared almost as commodious as does the whole United States to-day. Vivaciously Miss Lyon described that jour- ney to some students at a time when European 68 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON travel was still a bold and infrequent exer- cise : '*You can hardly understand, young ladies, what a great thing it was to get to Byfield. It was almost like going to Europe now. Why, it took us three long days to go from Ashfield to Byfield. Good Esquire White, who was one of my fathers, took me in his own carriage with his daughter. I was really a little homesick the second night, when I realized that I was so far from home. You will laugh, and you may laugh, for I am going to tell you that the next day I was very homesick. We lost our way and I did not know as we should ever find the noted Byfield, for the good people near Boston did not seem to know very well where it was. And can you believe it, young ladies. Miss White and I both cried ! I cried just as hard as I could ; and I really think that I outcried my friend whose good father smiled upon us. But we found Byfield, for he did something better than weep; and when he went back to Ashfield he told our friends that he had left us in a good place and that we could come back the next fall." AT SCHOOL 69 That arrival in the spring dusk, in the quiet village near Newburyport, preluded the most wonderful summer of her life. Sooner or later to every keen young brain comes a moment of illumination, an experience that seals its in- tellectual citizenship. Often it is from a teacher that a student learns more than from books, at whose quickening contact his mind, awake be- fore, yet seems to himself to shake off sleep and look out through withdrawn curtains on a world made new. This happened to Mary Lyon when at Byfield she came in touch with Reverend Joseph Emerson. A man of inde- pendent reputation in his day, he is now best remembered as her teacher. Born of a versatile New England family which related him remotely to Ralph Waldo Emerson, they had the same great-grand- father, he, too, had become a minister. But though ill health forced him to desist from preaching the millennium to a church in Bev- erly, it could not divert his inclination to hasten the coming of a righteous world. Initiative in old New England usually proceeded from the ministry. Twenty-one years before the first 70 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON normal school in Massachusetts, Joseph Em- erson opened his seminary, with the avowed in- tent of preparing women to be more intelligent teachers. To his work he brought Harvard scholarship of credit in a class that had in- cluded Channing and Story, experience as a popular and interest-provoking tutor at Cam- bridge and elsewhere, wide reading occasioned by a delight in literature, love of philosophy, and a passion for system. Below the what and how he always sought the why. "It is thinking, close thinking that makes the scholar," was his dictum. Recita- tions were conducted by means of topics, a device said to have originated with him. Follow- ing after Socrates, he asked questions, search- ing, inquisitive questions, eliciting a combina- tion of fact with fact, discovering relations. His students were led by the order of their studies to perceive the apt quality of the figure which likens knowledge to a tree, and they developed a nice sense of intellectual equilibrium which made them ever afterwards good climbers. His was a broader recognition of values than the age encouraged. But while he believed AT SCHOOL 71 Latin and Greek had been somewhat over- worked educationally, he agreed with Pesta- lozzi that the potent interplay of word and idea by which the mind advances the ball of thought down the field is the greatest ground-gainer. Therefore, he said, " The study of language, at least of one language, is the study of studies, with which all others are necessarily and most intimately connected." His emphasis on know- ledge of English influenced all Miss Lyon's later practice. A citation from his remarks on this point gives insight into the conditions with which as a teacher she went forth to grapple. "Children and youth are taught to read what they do not understand, to spell what they do not understand, to define without understanding the definition, and to commit to memory the words of Grammar, Rhetoric, Geography, History, Philosophy, Logic, etc., etc., while scarcely a sentence is understood. In studying these branches the pupil does indeed acquire ideas ideas of words both visible and audible, but not of the objects which they signify. As it respects use- ful knowledge and the power of recalling or 72 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON producing practical thoughts, his understand- ing remains almost wholly barren and void. Words, acquired in this parrot-like manner, cannot be intelligibly used and are but lumber in the mind." As a natural corollary of his stress on the language he led students to read English lit- erature ; not the romanticists, contemporary letters are seldom taught in the schools, but Pope, Thomson, Gray, Cowper, Goldsmith, Young. Milton's verse beat in long majestic waves against their ears. No sign exists of their knowing Shakespeare, though their teacher did. His history lectures were bird's-eye glimpses of nations; introductions to Homer, Greek phi- losophy, ancient and modern conquerors, the orators of antiquity and of England; but he recommended further acquaintance, directing with critical comment to Gibbon, Hume, Gold- smith and others. A score of American chron- iclers were presented with the words, " My dear young friends, let not your hearts fail you at the sight of such a formidable company of his- torians. . . . Remember the study of your own history is not a business to be despatched in a AT SCHOOL 73 few months." While utility, broadly interpreted, was his touchstone of the worth of a study, society being more in need, he thought, of dy- namos than of encyclopaedias, he seems to have denied gender to mental capacity. " Fear- lessly pursue celestial truth wherever the Word and Spirit lead," he wrote a former assistant. " Be not frightened at the sound of Philosophy ! Metaphysics! Speculation! Human Reason! Logic ! Theory ! System ! Disputation ! These can never harm you so long as you keep clear of error and sin." An odd chase, truly, to be urged on a woman in the early nineteenth century! But in this inhered Joseph Emer- son's finest accomplishment, his stimulus to unending alertness. He would appear to have succeeded in getting out of the minds of those who came under his teaching "that criminal and stupefying notion that they knew enough already." Once and for all he disarmed them against knowledge, whatever its time or manner of attack. " He who is not willing to be taught by the youngest of his pupils is not fit to have a pupil," he said. His theories he impressed upon his students. 74 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Education ought to produce a vigorous mind in a vigorous body. The doctrine of ill-health, having served a young lady well in literature, had grown more popular than ever in life. " It has been the unhappy mistake of some," the teacher remarked in a public lecture," that in order to be amiable they must be weak, in order to possess delicacy of feeling their constitutions must be sickly." He urged young women to know themselves. *' Many fail of accomplish- ing what they undertake for a want of know- ledge of their own weakness, and many do not undertake what they might perform from igno- rance of their own strength." Since the reason for getting knowledge is to use it and the reason for improving one's mind is the better to use knowledge, without moral direction one be- came, to Mr. Emerson's thought, at best a dere- lict, at worst a ship manned by a pirate crew. He declared frankly for Christianity as the only safe pilot, but of small denominational differ- ences he made little. In the Hebrew Scriptures, his inheritance from that Puritan theocracy which had ruled commonwealths by the Word of Jehovah, he found a complete manual of life. AT SCHOOL 75 Unlike his fathers, he did not go to it for di- rect mandates. Great thoughts lend themselves in every age to new in-readings, and Joseph Emerson administered Biblical principles to diet, exercise, mental development, school meth- ods, and spiritual problems with an impartial dexterity a trifle disconcerting to another gen- eration. He had a gift for revivifying the past, and to the receptive minds of his students he transmitted the recognition of the eternal un- staled freshness of all human experience. Such was the teacher who now laid hands on Mary Lyon. An exuberant nature like hers gains much from the touch of a wise theorist. It steadies, clarifies, defines. Instinctive grop- ing in the dark gives place to a seeing stride that carries a mind far. Mr. Emerson revealed her to herself. But though her thought took color from his, she was too instinct with life to be warped into imitation. He recognized her virility. Better disciplined minds had come to his seminary, none, he told his assistant, that equaled Mary Lyon's in 'power. To her the school was a revelation, and she gave herself to it unreservedly. Each day 76 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON dawned for her a fresh adventure. Amanda wrote home: "Sister Mary is quite provoked that I have taken all the paper without leaving her any room to put in a word. She sends much love to all. She is gaining knowledge by hand- fuls time with her is too precious to spend much of it in writing letters." She grudged the very hours it took to eat. After lingering at noon that she might ask questions of Mr. Em- erson, her hurrying feet brought her to her boarding-place, late for dinner but bubbling over with animated speech. One who was then the small son of the household set down his recollections of this habit: "I remember Miss Lyon better than Miss White, probably because she was more demonstrative, full of talk on sub- jects started in school and questions which my father liked to put, so that she could hardly take time to eat even when she came to the table." She lived not by bread and butter in those days. Time was her fortune. Long ago she had given up trying to make more of it, but always she stretched her days to their utmost grasp. The whole seven were now pressed into the ser- AT SCHOOL 77 vice of study. Against remonstrance for mis- using Sunday she protested with honest vigor. To learn was a debt owed to opportunity, and the days were all too few in which to pay it. She gave over Sunday study only when a greater good had succeeded in convincing her of its honest right. She had never been averse to ren- dering to God the things that are God's; she had only been kept busy settling first other claims which seemed more immediately press- ing. The decision to make more room in her life for the unseen came about through the ap- pointment of a students' prayer meeting for those who were Christians. It laid on her the necessity of making up her mind whether or not to go. After hard thought she took time from study and attended the meeting. In after weeks, while she added to her intellectual gains, a feeling of spiritual poverty grew upon her and she set herself to supply her lack, an enterprise in which she was characteristically ready to include others, though signs indicate that it was probably no easier for her than for other healthy young people to talk about her inner experiences. 78 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON In those months at Byfield her life broad- ened, she gained poise and balance. Her na- ture was righting itself after the gusty driving of her first imperious youth. Never again would she thoughtlessly maltreat her body or neglect her soul to favor her curious mind. To the universe about her she began to return more steadily a three-fold response. Of that golden summer but three remem- brancers remain. Two recall the student : a note- book containing Mr. Emerson's "Concluding Instructions," devoted mainly to the subject of argumentation, and a slender sheaf of com- positions, three or four themes, the titles of others, notes of Mr. Emerson's criticisms. Thoughtful, deeply imaginative in spots, with here and there foreshadowings of a powerful simplicity of phrasing, this work bears the stamp of its kind in a certain generality of note, due in this case possibly as much to the imper- sonal dignity of the subjects as to the inexperi- ence of the writer. The titles discover a point of view that has quite vanished from the aca- demic world. English students do not now write on the Goodness of God, the Value of the AT SCHOOL 79 Bible, Benevolence, Cyrus, Queen Mary, Eden. Our youthful ancestors were called upon to deal with remote and weighty matters. " Very well drawn" is Mr. Emerson's comment on a sketch of Cleopatra. An epigrammatic sen- tence he notes as indicating "an uncommon degree of ease." "Was Caesar Justified in Crossing the Rubicon.?" favorite riddle of classic schoolmasters draws from him the inspirational sentence, "I often think of the remark of one minister to another : * If I could preach as well as you I would preach twice as well.' " The other memento is a little handwritten book, found among Miss Lyon's papers after her death ; one of those volumes of commemo- ration current within memory and known to the older chapters of the school-girl fraternity as an album. Here friendships were put to press. Their fragrance lingers about these yel- lowing brown-spotted pages, scored with ad- monitions to a suppositively forgetful memory, and with those sad foreshadowings of death which form so pleasant an indulgence in the sunny immunity of youth. 80 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON " Farewell ! Remember Nancy ! " " Life's wild dreams are flying fast, Hope's gay meteor's light is past," wrote aging people in their teens and twenties. To her who was " made for friendship " all this lugubriousness spoke, as like solemnities have done to countless others, of young and rainbow days, glad hearts and close-linked purposes. Perhaps sometimes as those days drew into a remoter past, she conned with a smile this ros- ter of old school-fellows, summoning back to their melancholy pennings remembrance of the warm fleshly hands that wrote. With most of them hereafter she had little acquaintance. But there is one name, signed to a scriptural quota- tion in chirography "faultily faultless," that grew dearer to her, "Z. P. Grant." Be- tween Mr. Emerson's stately and ceremonious young assistant and the impetuous student from the Franklin County hills developed a friend- ship that proved one of the determining factors of the latter's life. These parchment-like pages represent an educative force which had long been operative AT SCHOOL 81 on men with or without fortune, but which the Byfield seminary was among the first to press into the common service of women. Mental magnanimity, a product of the rubbing of new against familiar scenes, comes at second-hand cheaper and often almost as effectively as by travel. Its enlargements are to be had at any school draining a wide area; in proportion to the extent of territory at a school's command are the facets of its point of view. Byfield, ac- cording to the catalogue of this particular year, drew its students from all but one of the New England states ; often it gathered from a wider sweep. Amanda wrote home that Mr. Emer- son "is of the opinion that they [the 'young ladies'] will profit more by spending consider- able time in visiting and conversing with each other than to spend it all in study." They shared their backgrounds. They were still young and malleable, despite the excess of their years over the common schoolgirl age ; but not all were of equal youth. Mary told her mother of the ad- dition to the student body of a minister's widow from Maine, apparently over thirty ; a circum- stance that she said "would be remarked as 82 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON uncommon in any school but Mr. Emerson's." In itself this arrival was an enlightening epi- sode. That Mary Lyon, in love though she was with learning, could have lived untouched by all this give and take of experience is- impos- sible of conjecture in one with such a human gift. But her reply to it remains, of necessity, conjecture. So, too, does the warm sympathy that one feels must have bound her to these whose names are written in her little book. Together they were fitting themselves to be of use in the world. From her the call to service met a ready an- swer. Mr. Emerson had but expressed an in- stinct of her nature in crying out against " mere book- worms, literary misers," who "have so much to read they have no time to act." Long afterward she turned a flashlight upon these early years, and the impression was pre- served in jerky fashion by the pen of a note- taker. Fitly it stands at the end of her school- days. " In my youth I had much vigor was always aspiring after something. I called it loving to study. Had few to direct me aright. AT SCHOOL 83 One teacher I shall always remember. He told me education was to fit one to do good." She went out from his presence committed to the eternal quest of the mind. It was not in her to become a recluse, even had necessity relaxed its hold upon her fortunes. She had too keen a taste for life to sit at a window with a page of print under her hand and look out upon the world ; she must be down in the thick of the street where things happened. Brim- ming over with energy, she might be counted on, if they advanced with a lagging step, to help them happen. CHAPTER IV TEACHING Education's last word is work. For when necessity tugs, a man or woman stretches to fit its measure. Hence, the problem of a wise choice of occupation resolves itself into finding one's point of greatest natural elasticity. But since many people give equally well in more than one direction, inquiry must often shift to the varying merits of different kinds of work. Some pursuits, by drawing more vigorously than others on the whole nature, afford a more liberal education. Miss Lyon arrived at the opinion that a wo- man, "capable of teaching and having taught well, [is] ready for any other sphere of useful- ness." The theory betrays itself so frankly as one of the ripe fruits of experience as to play no part among the factors operative on her own decision. Nor was she inevitably a teacher, except in that broad sense in which she said, TEACHING 85 "Teaching is really the business of almost every useful woman." Were she living to-day, one cannot readily picture her a pedagogue. In any comer of history she would have done the unexploited thing. Liking for unworn ways ran in her blood ; her eldest sister had taught with repute in Buckland. She knew what it meant to hunger and thirst after knowledge, and her home had bred her to generosity. Youth's most pressing engagement is with acquisition, but Mary Lyon never cared to keep it alone. Even in the enchanted days at Byfield she wanted to share her good things. The son of the family with which she boarded, a delicate boy of ten or twelve years, and much of a stay-at-home, wrote after the span of a life- time, "I have not wholly forgotten some not very successful experiments in teaching gram- mar which she volunteered upon myself. Some tears resulted from the operation, if not much learning, though she was all patience and good- nature." Seven years earlier her first venture had missed giving satisfaction. She herself used to say that she failed in government. A remark 86 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON of one of her later pupils to the effect that " her mirthful tendencies threatened her success as a teacher" may shed light on the situation. Discipline has often made shipwreck on the reefs of laughter, and Mary Lyon laughed so easily ! The next school went better, but Buck- land people told her she would never equal her sister. This early unsuccess led her to doubt her ability, and once, in a fit of the blues, she declared that she would never teach again. But ever the quenchless flame of her spirit burned up anew and drove her on. "Teach till you make a success of it ! " she cried to her Holyoke students, reading them the caption of a chapter out of her own experience. To her, fresh from INIr. Emerson's seminary, was offered the position of assistant in Sander- son Academy. No woman had ever been con- nected with its teaching force, and at the head stood, as usual, a college graduate. *' Try her," Mr. White urged the principal, who thought that, like his predecessors, he needed a man's aid. Five years later the trustees bluntly crossed precedent again and elected her pre- ceptress, with Miss Hannah White, Amanda's TEACHING 87 sister, to help her. The attendance roundly attested her popularity. Probably it was not a mixed school ; the previous winter had seen the last of that kind which she ever taught. Her choice and her forte lay with girls. Circumstances led her naturally into this ab- sorption. Two years after her first appointment to Sanderson Academy, an invitation surprised her to help Miss Zilpah Grant the ensuing summer open in a new building at London- derry, now Derry, New Hampshire, one of the first incorporated academies in New England designed exclusively for women. Desire said. Go! Gratitude to Ashfield ordered, Stay! As debate between them ran high, the opportunity grew upon her spirit, a thing of vigorous possi- bilities. She believed heartily in the plan for the new school, with its promise of graded study and more time for preparation on the part of teachers. Always she liked to pull good down out of the clouds, and in the end she accepted the new position. It gave her that which is of invaluable con- sequence to the future leader, the training of subordination. Association with Zilpah Grant, 88 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON primarily, like Joseph Emerson, a theorist, filled out her proportions and tempered her ex- uberance. Together the two friends tried out their own and others' schemes, and these Miss Lyon tested further' in the hills. For Adams Academy, like many others in that rigorous time and climate, found it practicable to keep its doors open but half the year. The warm months she gave Miss Grant; winter saw her either in Ashfield or in Buckland, usually teaching the "select schools for young ladies" that made her famous beyond the county. The two towns vied with each other to secure her services. By climbing to the third floor of that first Buckland brick house to whose build- ing she herself had lent a hand, the twentieth- century pilgrim may stand in one of her school- rooms. As when she taught here, it presents the aspect of a barrel-vaulted hall. Four fireplaces, one in each corner, secure it plentiful venti- lation ; at either end light falls through oblong windows topped by a third of fan-shaped glass. Board benches run along the side walls ; in the middle of one opens the door where the stairs drop steeply down. Inconveniently remote TEACHING 89 from the street, the hall grew too small as well, and Ashfield lured her back. For a winter or two the academy building was given over wholly to "young ladies." Then Buckland fitted up a new and larger place. All the old joiners, so goes the story, chipped in and built Graham's hall "about as quick as Jonah's gourd grew." Wherever she went she drew girls from all the towns around and even from beyond the state. Teachers came; fathers brought their daughters ; men interested in schools suggested to their young townswomen that they enter Miss Lyon's and learn her method. So effi- cient were the pupils she sent out that commit- tee-men were chosen in November instead of March that they might engage her students ; and attendance for a term served a girl in place of a certificate. A teacher coming into the region twenty years later found the recollection of those schools still lingering among the hills, the afterglow of a kind of pedagogic golden age. Continually she introduced new methods. She began by substituting for the multiplicity of learning then in vogue a few plain subjects studied thoroughly. " In teaching never intro- 90 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON duce studies which would not be profitable to the scholars, merely for the sake of having the school appear well," she said. "Rise above such things." Each succeeding winter saw an addition to the branches taught, and soon an assistant, and later two, became a necessity. " What new plans have you adopted ? New books ?^' questions one of these women in a letter written after but six months' separation. " Make as much effort to gain knowledge from objects around us, from passing events, and from conversation, as from books," I find in the notes for one of her Buckland talks. "In most respects you will be directed in your con- duct by your own good judgment, as you all mean to do right and all undoubtedly can judge well," she told her students, giving them a form of government whereby under her guidance they voted the few regulations in force over their daily lives, and from their own number elected officers to keep tally on their execution. "Be faithful," sheenjoined, "not only for your- self, but that faithfulness in school may be fash- ionable." She was the first in Buckland to use maps in TEACHING 91 the study of geography. Another winter she experimented with the monitorial system, then fighting its way against prejudice to the people's favor. In place of a single long recitation she substituted two shorter ones on the same sub- ject, conducting the first herself, and leaving that of the next half-day to the monitors in their small divisions, while she passed briskly from group to group, aiding as need called. "Use invention of your own," she told the monitors, "or you will never be good teachers." "My recitation is taken up principally in general questions and remarks," she wrote Miss Grant. The two drew their inspiration from far fields. Years before Horace Mann made his famous seventh report they had investigated Pestaloz- zi's theories. A combination of his method with the monitorial scheme was made to work admirably in their joint school. To system Miss Lyon gave all the praise for her success in the hills. Doubtless the woman had quite as much to do with it. In her skillful hands the new ways worked, and people came to see how she did it. Requests multiplied for permission to spend half a day observing in her 92 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON school, and she, remembering the courteous reception her own investigating spirit had met in Boston, could not refuse. Colonel Leavitt of Heath, who was devoting a winter to the scrutiny of schools, spent several days in Ash- field, studying her methods. Alert herself, she waked up her students. She asked them ques- tions that made them think. *' What course would you take to educate a girl from four to twenty?" "What are the advantages of the monitorial system.? What its evils?" Studies developed unexpected possibilities. " In all my attempts to teach grammar I think I can safely say that I never saw so much lively interest in the subject among so many as I now see from day to day," she wrote Miss Grant, apologiz- ing in the next sentence for her " seeming ego- tism." Across the span of eighty years the Eng- lish teacher may envy, but she has no heart to condemn this modest elation. One is not wont to think of grammar as under any circum- stances lending itself to the production of a "lively interest." Lavishly she spent herself for her students. Busy from morning till night, she devoted her TEACHING 93 evenings one winter to a class in history, de- fending herself for giving so much time to two people on the ground that " it is what I so much need." The episode aptly expresses her cheer- ful habit of turning sober duties inside out, and in their rosy linings rechristening them opportunities. It is natural to desire the whole of a good thing, and Ashfield and Buckland, forced to share their brilliant young teacher, made an attempt to secure a monopoly of her attention. So, too, did Miss Grant. Four years after the opening of Adams Academy the trustees and the principal, differing on a point of policy and both equally stubborn, agreed to dissolve part- nership. Miss Grant moved apparatus, teach- ers, and many of her pupils to an academy in Ipswich, Massachusetts, whose proprietors, against her coming, had hastened to incorpo- rate it. At the old Indian Agawam, grown a thrifty sea-coast town, breathing strange ori- ent odors, and easy of approach from Boston, conditions favored the addition of a winter session to the school year, a departure which the principal justifies in a letter to her favor- 94 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ite helper. "Most academies are closed in winter, and many wish to attend who cannot devote their time in the summer." She offered her the post of assistant principal. The letters that traveled westward from Ips- wich, "written with cold fingers but a warm heart," reveal between their restrained lines an almost importunate longing. Miss Lyon found herself in the complimentary but uncomfort- able position of being pulled hard at the same time in opposite directions. Miss Grant wanted her all the year round at Ipswich ; her towns- people wanted her all the year round in Frank- lin County. Both incited ministers, the patrons of learning, to press on her attention reasons why she should do as they individually wished. Both assured her of unique fields for doing good; both advised her that she hazarded health and usefulness by division of energy; both tugged at her heart-strings, the one with the call of closest friendship, the other with the claims of early gratitude and home-grown bonds. The county ministers* association passed resolutions requesting her to stay, and, failing TEACHING 95 to carry their point unaided, attempted to in- duce Miss Grant to move west. But Buck- land's reply to the latter's argument in favor of the more abiding quality of Ipswich Sem- inary lacked authority. Its plans for a perma- nent school of its own fell through, and Miss Lyon in the winter of 1829-30 taught her last in Franklin County. The seminary to which in six years of upbuild- ing she had grown indispensable, and where, nearly half the time as acting principal, she now wholly spent her abounding vitality for four years more, was doing with continuity, apparatus, and a certain amount of accommo- dation, what with little of this advantage she had been trying to accomplish in the hills. Derry-Ipswich was one of those headlands that within a decade of each other had taken form out of the chaos of feminine education. For public opinion, still in its lightest mood, touched the matter of women's schooling. It called for extreme youth in the subject and quick finish in the process. While their brothers acquitted themselves as respectable citizens, girls were intellectual tramps, seeking shelter for a term 96 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON or two under one literary roof, then blithely taking to the road again to pause later, if chance offered, at another. They seldom stopped to form ties. In this haphazard fashion, careless of the beginnings and ends of terms, on the move as fortune and fancy favored, they made acquisition of parlor tricks that after marriage were generally sloughed off as precipitately as they had been taken on. An ability to sing lan- guishing airs, tinkle piano-keys, lisp French phrases, and sketch impossible landscapes, the conventional stock in trade of the youthful spinster, betrayed likeness to a mirage; it af- forded an airy spectacle having no connection with terra firma. By the real emergencies of life a girl and her education were soon parted. A few wise w^^omen, acting independently, set themselves to break up these habits of vagrancy and to give a girl something worth keeping. Among them, Mrs. Willard, successively at Middlebury, Vermont, and Waterford and Troy, New York ; Miss Beecher at Hartford, Connecticut; Miss Grant and Miss Lyon at Derry and Ipswich, deserted the fashionable sands to build on the rock of self-respect. They TEACHING 97 had to draft their own plans ; the thing that was in their minds had never been patterned. Each wrought from her own point of view, and her school reflected her personality as inevitably as does all self-directed work. The fact that Derry-Ipswich had a plan at all separated it from the guileless company of ordi- nary boarding-schools ; the inclusions and omis- sions of that plan distinguished it from its ven- turesome contemporaries. Most of them essayed to manage a judicious compromise. In advanc- ing to an exposed position their commanders prudently kept control of the old entrenchments. One eye they still trained on the conventions. Miss Grant and Miss Lyon boldly fixed both upon life. With fine disdain of criticism they built squarely on Joseph Emerson's doctrine of the perfect respectability of women's brains. The aim of Derry-Ipswich was not to " finish," but to help each student find and sharpen the tools whereby, with the help of time, the great op- portunist, she might more nearly finish herself. It came as a direct outgrowth of the older sem- inary, breathing its atmosphere of order, schol- arship, and thought, but having a practical 98 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON adaptation to existing educational conditions which that school, stimulating as it had proved in the case of individuals, conspicuously lacked. ** Mr. Emerson's plan . . . presupposed too much previous improvement," wrote Miss Lyon. " The course was too rapid for ordinary minds and also for such as were young or but little improved. We have more classes, our course is slower, and the increased number of teachers will enable us to execute our plans thoroughly." Small schools with a family semblance serve best the ends of small girls ; bigger ones profit by numbers. Hence, a single school cannot seek to become all things to all ages without loss of efficiency. Derry-Ipswich, choosing a high altitude, deliberately narrowed its field. It encouraged numbers, setting value on that traffic in points of view which is commonly called conversation, at the same time cutting off promiscuous attendance. It sought to at- tract students at an age " past that of the com- mon school girls of New England," and for sev- eral years before Miss Lyon left the seminary it had refused entrance under fourteen. To the needs of an older growth of girls every cog TEACHING 99 in its machinery was adapted. Waste of power, like waste of time, its promoters held, may pro- ceed from doing things legitimate enough, but not the best, or from doing the best at the wrong time a mismatching of the action, the girl, and the hour. To search out the perfect fit is a teacher's business ; an insight Pestalozzi bequeathed to the nineteenth century. Academically, the seminary presented "a thorough and extensive" and continually en- larging course of English studies, carefully graded, which, superimposed on the district or public-school foundation, advanced a pupil by examination and led to a diploma. This course crystallized into three years, embracing "pri- mary studies" and two "regular classes." A small preparatory department, allowed to start at Ipswich, was soon dropped, and in time, though not until after Miss Lyon left the sem- inary, the catalogue's specification of the de- sirability of a certain amount of knowledge on admission passed into entrance requirements. Yet many came who did not take the regular courses, and divisions were always made up without regard to the time a young woman had 100 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON spent at the seminary, but with strict attention to her readiness for the subject. The required work included no "accom- plishments." The study that could not prove its worth in the general scheme, no matter how well it might look on paper, found itself struck out. " Away with French and music and paint- ing from our school," Miss Grant once wrote her associate, "until its worth is so much dimin- ished that it must be patched and puffed up with these appendages." The words are to be taken more as a slur upon contemporary modes of schooling than as pronouncing against the arts 'per se. Drawing and painting were offered ; Lowell Mason and his teachers came from Boston to give lectures at Ipswich Seminary; singing classes flourished and pianos awaited practicing fingers. Out of class Miss Grant sought to school students to social ease. She cared much for appearance, but she trusted in the hard study of plain subjects to give it, conceiving true culture as an emanation from a thinking personality. How successfully she proved her proposition may be judged from Miss Susan B. Anthony's remark that the first TEACHING 101 "fashionably educated" teacher she ever had came from Ipswich Seminary. From there, too, proceeded that pattern of gracious ele- gance. Miss Hannah Lyman, first " lady princi- pal" of Vassar, whose fitness for the post Miss Grant, then Mrs. Banister, guaranteed to Presi- dent Raymond, and through whom she be- came somewhat actively concerned in the social organization of the college. At Derry-Ipswich higher branches were im- posed only on a thoroughly prepared basis. " If you wish to have a polished education," Miss Lyon said in one of her talks, "have a good foundation. You would find it hard to polish a piece of sponge, but not to polish steel. . . . Some give to individuals a surface improve- ment which seems to hang upon them like tin- sel. Others put on gold; it does not go on so fast. . . . Surface improvement is rapid when something new is brought before the mind; then it will sink down ; [the] solid is more uni- form." In their emphasis on fundamentals Miss Grant and Miss Lyon did not lay a unique stress. Miss Abigail Hasseltine long practiced it in Bradford Academy ; and at Hartford Miss 102 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Catherine Beecher once suspended all other studies and for six months turned the atten- tion of her whole school to the so-called " lower branches." The way they were studied at Derry-Ipswich robbed them of elementariness. Attention centred on the thing behind the sym- bol ; the country behind the map ; the language behind the grammar ; the relations behind the numbers. The student awoke to discover that the simplest fact of everyday acquaintance may engender a philosophy. Nothing derives its authority from books. Grammar is " made by the people," the skeleton of living speech. "The grammarian," Miss Lyon concluded a series of stimulating talks, punctuated by pene- trating questions, "like the geographer, does not make rivers or mountains, nor name them, but records what these are and the names by which people call them." Teachers were di- rected, wheneyer a subject permitted, to encour- age questions outside the immediate lesson, but connected with it ; perhaps in memory of Joseph Emerson's dictum that it takes know- ledge to put a wise interrogation. Among the " General Directions for all the TEACHING 103 Teachers" occurs this passage : " In each study, let the teacher pursue such a course as will lead the pupils to feel that their text-books contain only the elements of the study. Let the teacher refer to distinguished scholars in that branch. . . . Let the teacher inspire the scholar with a spirit to pursue the study more extensively in future life." Under such train- ing brains grew supple with exercise. Try to demonstrate without looking first to see how a proposition is done in the book, Miss Grant suggested in geometry. In class the natural juiciness of knowledge flowed in free discus- sion. As at Byfield, students of "intellectual philosophy" were led to consult their own minds and to test the author's conclusions by the original in each girl's possession. Concerned with many studies at once, a "mind does not become imbued with any of them," said Miss Grant. Against this kind of desultoriness she guarded by making the "se- ries" the unit of work. Five "series" gave an academic year. A study might run through more than one "series," but each student's schedule generally held but two subjects at a 104 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON time. The steeping process was expected to give her time and energy to become interested in what she did, and by narrowing the range of impressions at once converging on her brain, enable it the better to care for what it received. Derry-Ipswich had no use for a mind that leaked. After introducing a bit of information the teachers helped foster the acquaintance. They had one rule for this : Review ! Review ! Review ! An ordered way of living, held by Miss Grant as a postulate to systematic study, presented a problem which existing conditions made even more defiant of solution. Mrs. Willard's Troy Seminary, housing and schooling under one roof, had at the time a notable appearance. Scattered through the coast town, where the nearest approach to concentration came with the building of a house for the principals and thirty-three students, a quarter of a mile from the seminary. Miss Grant's girls kept the same hours. They swayed to the rhythm of habit, and that way lies ease. Born autocrat though she was, a radical part of Miss Grant's educational intent lav in con- TEACHING 105 trolling students by leading them intelligently to approve and voluntarily to assent to the reg- ulations necessary for the community life of a large school. "The government is intended to be in rather than over them," she said. But while Derry-Ipswich conveyed the effect of being ruled by the consensus of public opinion, that opinion took its direction at the will of the principals. To the spirit of the seminary, fos- tered in its earliest years, bequeathed and de- veloped from generation to generation of stu- dents, they looked for cooperation in executing as well as in making the laws. External re- wards and punishments fell outside the plan. To excel gave one a possible chance of doing something for the school, and it was bad enough to have to report one's self for break- ing a law of one's own voting. This system of self-reporting, which Miss Grant had initiated as Joseph Emerson's assistant, and used so successfully in her own seminary, she did not recommend to indiscriminate employment. A teacher must first consult the moral barometer of her little community. If a sluggish conscience clouded the tube, it was no weather for self- 106 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON government. Truth was popular at Derry- Ipswieh and, without spying, its teachers man- aged to keep a fair idea of the sincerity of the reports. The seminary stood for the vital contact of life with life. To secure this personal relation against the caprices of time and chance, the school was divided into "sections." These served the purpose of easy administration of detail, and at the same time provided ready- made a bond of intercourse between students and teachers. A woman made it her business to know intimately the girls making up the small group to which she acted as "friend and adviser," and to help them to an all-round growth. " Speak of them as though they were your younger sisters," the principals said to new assistants. A jest on some dullard's limi- tations, escaping in teachers' meeting, would bring the quick words from Miss Lyon, "Yes, I know she has a small mind, but we must do the best we can for her." But with all her in- corrigible optimism, hers was also that ability, rare in women, to recognize and do the inevi- table thing without either reproaches or repin- TEACHING 107 ings. She could expel a scholar as good-hu- moredly as she had received her. " I am sorry for you," she would say, "but the good of the institution requires it." The good of the school! At that bar stud- ies, methods, privileges, persons, came to judg- ment. Its emphasis stamped indelibly on these young minds a sense of individual obligation to the group. Beyond themselves, beyond their sections, they saw the school. So the seminary led them gently into those wider recognitions which make for citizenship. Neither the moment nor the manner had been stumbled upon by chance ; things did not happen accidentally at Derry-Ipswich. Frankly it declared its programme. After childhood and early youth, before permanently entering on a sphere of action, there is " a time when our youth of both sexes need not simply a salutary moulding influence, but when they need a mighty power put forth upon them rousing their souls to great and noble deeds of benevo- lence. . . . Let a lady once become settled down at the head of her own family with a nar- row soul, and however amiable and lovely she 108 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON may be, ... a narrow soul she will carry with her to the grave." In its expansive power in- heres the value of a large school for girls of this older growth. "They need to have their views and feelings drawn away from self and beyond the family, they need to learn by prac- tice the true Christian philosophy of sacrificing private interest to public good." Religion is the Atlas on whose shoulders, by these teachers' belief, rests the fabric of civili- zation; and when at its malleable time they sought to mint girl nature to useful woman- hood, Christianity was the "mighty power'* they invoked. In an age when its sanctions were often interpreted with partisan emphasis, they refused to draw denominational lines. " Not what I think or what you think, but what is truth .^" questioned Miss Lyon. The outlook of her generation and of her training contrib- uted to the answer, but the majority of her words breathe a truth to the human spirit that knows no untimeliness. The seminary pre- sented the uncommon spectacle of a commu- nity actually living by the social teachings of the Bible. It was one of the regular text-books ; TEACHING 109 a course, conducted much like any efficient Bible-study class, ran through the three years, students reciting in sections on Monday morn- ings. Tri-weekly morning talks by the princi- pals quickened time-worn passages to new and persuasive meanings, for Miss Lyon, at least, possessed a freshness of outlook that compelled attention. Deepening perceptions sought a channel through which to act, and custom answered to demand, until for every girl a half- hour of quiet alone at the beginning and end of day, when devotion was recommended but not made obligatory, steadied nerves as well as souls. Only the deftest touch may with impunity seek to guide a life to sanctuary, and their suc- cess bespeaks for these women deep sagacity. History makes an enlightening comment on this point. It was on a scriptural rock that principal and trustees had split at Derry. The trustees, content with present results but fear- ful for the school's reputation and their own, remonstrated against the prominence given Biblical teaching. They lived to regret their action, for the high repute of Adams Academy passed from Derry with the passing of Zilpah 110 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Grant and Mary Lyon. Only two years after- ward, in debt and disillusion, they attempted by humble terms and a complete concession of the involved point to lure Miss Grant back again. Still later they opened negotiations with Miss Lyon, then at the head of Mount Holyoke, to secure a principal who should restore the academy " to its former state." A recipe for the lady, compounded of experience, learning, ac- complished manners, and general acceptabil- ity to the community, imposed on a firm reli- gious character, suggests that experience may have proved to the writer's satisfaction that what he asked was procurable. Time, blur- ring most of the individualities, has conveyed an impression of the teachers of the school at Derry and Ipswich, many of them its own grad- uates, that does not lack the lighter tones of grace and charm and beauty. The seminary grew in numbers and repute. From four the first summer at Derry, the teach- ing force had increased, by 1834, to nine, with five assistant-pupils. The catalogue three years later remarks the large proportion of teachers to students about one to fifteen as though TEACHING 111 contrary to frequent custom. Qualitatively also, these women formed a somewhat notable group : most of them, proceeds an earlier record, '* have individually had the entire charge of a school for young ladies." Students came from all over the country and beyond. Teachers swarmed to the seminary, ambitious girls wishing to fit themselves, women already embarked on the profession. "It has often numbered among its pupils," wrote Miss Lyon, "those who have been employed as teachers in schools of almost every grade, those who had, as they supposed, completed their education years before. ' ' Heads of academies sometimes spent from six months to two years in the school as pupils, not of the assistant variety. Special attention was often paid to the needs of this class of students by practical talks on school-teaching. The seminary sent its product to every state in the union. Some prefer not to start a new school in the West until they can get an Ipswich scholar for a teacher, runs contemporary testi- mony to the efficiency of its output. On every student who went to teach, Derry-Ipswich pressed its twin injunctions to sincerity and 112 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON modesty. *' Don't use high-sounding terms with regard to your school ; don't call it an acad- emy until it is one." "Don't talk about your great responsibility, but rather feel it in your heart." Had more people shared the scholarly ideals of these Ipswich students, the cult of ambitious titles would not have thrown into confusion so much of the educational appara- tus of the United States. Through her presence and her absence the seminary remained the principal's, but much of its daily impulse flowed from Mary Lyon. Miss Zilpah Grant, dark, personable, and com- manding, but handicapped by fragile health, contributed an effective figure-head and a brain equal to devising and fitting together the ma- chinery of its running gear. Her lively associate furnished the sinews of success. Without her it requires no stretch of fancy to surmise that Ipswich Seminary would never have had the span of life it enjoyed. The position brought her a peculiar personal delight, in addition to her professional pleasure. The two women drew each other with all the force of their un- likeness. Throughout her life people yielded TEACHING 113 Miss Grant the centre of the stage, for there she incontestably belonged. "It is an intellect to govern a state or adorn the bench," aflSrmed President Raymond. "Gail Hamilton" spicily wrote of her in the "North American Review" ^ under the title, "An American Queen"; and in all innocence of intentional humor it was said after her marriage that European visitors came to this country to see Niagara and Mrs. Ban- ister. The fact that Mary Lyon lavished on her the sunniest affection of a big heart bespeaks for the lady's statuesque proportions a certain warmth of life. To the temperate, polished, well-poised woman, the vigor and color of the younger appealed with the alien charm of prod- igal abundance. Through characteristic re- serves of correspondence her affection breaks now and then in some phrase which gathers emphasis from the stately pen that wrote it. The quaint formality of " My dear Miss Lyon," between friends, slips ever and again into " My very dear Sister." The ease of their relations silently testifies to Miss Lyon's ability as a lieutenant. She owned ^ October, 1886. 114 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON the gift of wise reserve that conserves friend- ship, and by virtue of its exercise two strongly independent women worked in harmony. The younger could suggest plans by the score, and leave the other to choose among them. That she had her own thoughts, not always coinci- dent with those of her associate, a single pas- sage in one of her later letters witnesses. It breathes a fine loyalty to her professional supe- rior. With a quiet mind Miss Grant could de- part on those long rest-seeking vacations that absorbed a year and a half of her time during Miss Lyon's assistant-principalship. She left her seminary in safe hands. That young woman had never yet done a half-hearted thing, and she did not begin when she commenced teaching. All her life she ap- pears not to have given herself to pursuits in which she could take no interest, but her method often reversed the ordinary weeding-out process. "Anything may become interesting which we think important," she used to say. She taught well, primarily because she liked to teach. So apt was she at squaring her deeds with her words, that when we find her advising TEACHING 115 students, "Clear perception is next important to attention, let them [your scholars] not be indefinite," it entails no license to apply the words to her own class-room manner. " There was no such thing as a pupil slurring over a re- citation with her," remarked President Hitch- cock. But before trafficking in ideas, as in goods, one must open up a line of transporta- tion. Teachers, as she told her students at Hol- yoke, must be able "to have their minds meet other minds." Failing to effect a junction, no matter how valuably freighted either side may be, the whole enterprise fails. "Knowledge must be drawn from the scholars' minds, put in order and replaced," she continued. "The teacher recalls it in a happier manner than the scholar has experience to do." The activity of her own intellect carried her a good deal more than half-way to meet her stu- dents. The harder one was to get at, the more eagerly she sought some point at which to es- tablish communication. Her energy still throve on opposition. " Make the dull ones think once a day," she cried. "Make their eyes sparkle once a day. They must pass over some things 116 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON which they do not understand, but when you do [attempt it], make them think." The fruit of thought in her own vivid phrase is "an appetite for knowledge," and this she was singularly fortunate in whetting in her stu- dents. One who was both her pupil and fellow- teacher has said of her method, "She did not think so much of a perfect lesson, nor take so much time for examination on the text-books as many teachers do, but she made the hour one of delightful improving conversation and exhilarating mental activity. ' ' Truth went sing- ing through her class-rooms out into the world, and girls scampered blithely after, their faces flushing to the zest of the chase, their minds closing in on a new joy. "There are peculiar sweets derived from gaining knowledge, de- lights known only to those who have tested them," she writes. She would have her girls miss none of their legitimate joys. Brains good at digging up facts often lack the knack of hitching them to conclusions, and the world is full of conclusions flourishing in cheerful immu- nity from facts. " It is important that the mind should become particular as well as general," TEACfflNG 117 ran a note-taker's quill ; " that it be trained to definite action, and if it can be united with free- dom of thought it will be happy." Her method involved no less of plan because it was " active and flexible." Her versatility betrays itself astonishingly in the range of subjects which she taught. " In whatever department of literature or science engaged, a looker-on would suppose that to be her favorite pursuit," President Hitchcock declared. Mental arithmetic was one of her hobbies. She wrote of having "a delightful time teaching history." "The plan of instruc- tion must be good," was her advice to a young teacher, "to render history interesting and profitable. . . . On few subjects do teachers fail more than on this." Her ear rejoiced in the majesties of the Old Testament ; the cadence of its English, the splendor of its imagery. She loved Milton, the full-throated Puritan. Had specialization come earlier into fashion, what would have been her choice ? One who knew her and taught with her, queries, "I often wonder what a teacher of literature she would have made !" Remembering her delight 118 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON in things reasonable, that turned the march of Jonathan Edwards's argument into intellectual recreation, fancy at first tends to allow to phi- losophy the balance of her favor. But her in- tense curiosity toward natural science halts conjecture. President Hitchcock inclined to think chemistry and Butler's "Analogy" the subjects which she taught the best. " In almost all her schools she lectured on chemistry," he added, "and performed the experiments with much success." For this her preparation had been as thor- ough as she could make it; her active spirit abhorred any inadequacy. The better to equip herself for work the first year at Adams Acad- emy, she hurried from her school in the hills to Amherst College, and the lectures of Professor Amos Eaton. Something of the vitality of her person has clung to recollection of her, and long afterward undergraduates of the time re- membered how she used to come into class, a corner of her shawl trailing on the ground. A little later, again under Amos Eaton, then " Pro- fessor of chemistry and experimental philoso- phy, and lecturer on geology, landsurveying. TEACHING 119 and the laws regulating town offices and jurors," at the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York, she spent a vacation studying in the first in- stitute of technology in the country. A cir- cular, preserved among her papers, explains the school's then advanced method. "In the course on chemistry students are divided into sections, not more than five in a section. These are not to be taught by seeing experiments and hearing lectures according to the usual method, but they are to lecture and experiment by turns, under the immediate direction of a professor or a competent assistant." " We shall have at least one section of ladies to work as within," scrib- bled Professor Eaton on the back of the sheet. " Would it not be well for you to spend the term here ? You would then be well prepared." He adds a word about laboratory apparatus sent to Derry. "I shall attend what lectures are given to the Rensselaer School while I am here, principally in chemistry and natural philoso- phy," she wrote from Professor Eaton's home on the day of her arrival. How long she stayed we do not know, but at every turn of life she availed herself of the chance to learn. 120 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON In nothing was she less visionary than in her attitude toward the rewards of her profession, a hardy union of enthusiasm and common sense being perhaps her most persuasive quality. A persistently logical mind would not let her, after sowing intangibles, look to reap tangibles, and she did not confuse for others the issues of choice. "Never teach the immortal mind for money," she cried. "If money-making is your object, be milliners or dressmakers, but teach- ing is a sacred, not a mercenary employment." What she had to say on the motives that might justly lead a woman of her generation to make extraordinary efforts to become a better teacher, was based on intimate acquaintance with American school conditions in the fourth dec- ade of her century, and she said it candidly. It amounts to this. If you seek more learning for the love of it, or from a desire to make yourself more useful, the gain is worth the cost. But if you want it to give your services a greater money value, the facts will not bear you out. Comparatively few positions offer flattering sal- aries; these are mostly abundantly supplied, in some cases so superabundantly as to produce TEACHING 121 a degrading rivalry. Nor do they give oppor- tunity for the greatest usefulness. The pupils in these schools seldom make the best students. Often a teacher with "a good mechanical and military tact at getting along, who labors faith- fully merely for the sake of the money at the end of the year, will do as much good as the most benevolent teacher." If you really want to see yourself count, take a small school in the back woods ; there are plenty of chances in the West. It will pay you little in money, but it will pur- chase those unnegotiable securities which are the legitimate returns of love and patience and self-giving. Wrote a visitor to Ipswich in 1833 : "In fif- teen minutes after I arrived I was gratified with a sight of that noted and truly wonderful wo- man. Miss Lyon. . . . She is the perfect image of health." Referring to another person : " Her expression reminded me of her in a moment, just such full, smiling, happy blue eyes, plump rosy cheeks, sandy hair, and as much more in- tellect and intelligience as you can conceive." The reference to her hair introduces contro- versy. Miss Lyon's hair being " red, " " auburn," 122 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "sandy," or "light brown," according to the describer. Before me lies a lock of it, brown, with dominating glints of red. Perhaps the nearest approach to the truth is contained in the word of one who, but a few years later, used as a child to love to sit and look at that hair. She calls it a "golden-auburn." The "noted and truly wonderful" Miss Lyon was the same and yet not the same as the impetuous girl who had tried to mould other raw material and failed. She had taken plenty of time to get herself in hand. The miracle of life, which is the miracle of becoming, worked fast in her, yet, so capacious was she, with an effect of deliberation. The years reveal her, preeminently, as a growing power. One can- not plunge as she did into work, and come up, after more than a decade, unchanged. By teaching she was taught. Yet there remains for the lover of youth a compelling charm about that earlier figure. It stands out as April against June, impulsively yielding to the stirrings of life; a creature of contrasts, easy smiles and tears, high spirits, dark depressions, quick likings, swift aversions. TEACHING 123 yet withal warm and sound at the heart and holding in its very abandon the seeds of a wealthy flowering. Youth is always a see-saw, and it was inevitable that Mary Lyon should play the game thoroughly. When she was up, she shot very high indeed ; and when she went down, she was buried in depression. Opposi- tion's little finger tumbled her in the dust of discouragement, from which she bounded up as easily. She liked to go away by herself and cry, and her ever-present humor twinkles in the midst of tears in a story told of her after she had been for some time a teacher. Asking one night how long it would be before tea, she was told to her evident disappointment that it was nearly ready, but might be delayed to accom- modate her. "Oh no," she said cheerfully, "I was only wishing to have a good crying- spell, and you could not give me time enough." Be- low this fitful surface her will held steady as the needle to the pole ; directed by the insights of her profession, it swept her out of the rapids and into the deeper waters of an equable and sunny life. Once having made up her mind that she had better uses for her time than to 124 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON spend it in a "good crying-spell," she cried no more; and those who saw her later, unruffled by redoubling anxieties and rebuffs, found it hard to believe that her calendar had ever held an April leaf. A very April's child was the self-distrust that handicapped her first teaching years. She thought lightly of her dignity, and feared close association with students lest she lose her in- fluence over them. In a houseful of girls at Buckland she had recourse to the device of in- troducing a subject to root out the frailties of undirected table-talk. The unshadowed light of youth showed evil and good alike, with pitiless distinctness, and she had not yet learned to make an ally of time. With that amazing self- knowledge which was always hers, she gauged her abilities justly ; her possibilities she had not discovered how to measure. So she preferred not to do at all what she was not sure that she could do well. "That is one of the things which I cannot do," she used to say, " but this I can do very well, or so well that no one will suffer loss ; and I want this for my part to-day." But her work laid its big, inexorable hand upon TEACHING 125 her and pushed her out into paths that she had shunned. For the people who feel constrained to prac- tice what they preach, advice is a boomerang. She who ate and slept in the fractions of time remaining from more congenial pursuits, whose delight it was to throw herself bodily to a rav- enous learning, must ill press regularity upon a school. If she sat up all night to study, could she convincingly counsel her girls to go to bed ? The responsibility for dispensing advice neces- sitated on her part close inspection. Under the scrutiny it appears to have shown unexpected excellencies, for we find her soon closing a let- ter to Miss Grant with the suggestive sentence : "I believe I must be exceedingly cautious not to encroach upon the time for sleep, even to write to my dearest and best earthly friend." The scholar in her began to teach. The scholar was more immediately interested in studies than students, in intellect than char- acter. Her own education had been a haphaz- ard affair, without calculated order; her own appetite, too keen to question what it fed on. In turn to make fine scholars summed her aim. 126 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON As she taught, the scholar passed over into the teacher who chooses wise roads to wise ends. Through what is, she glimpsed what ought to be. Creative imagination stirred powerfully within her. The future woman in hiding within every present student emerged and claimed the centre of her thought. The woman was to hope and desire and love and dare and do, as well as to think, and she felt it quite as much a part of her business to open a girl's eyes to her op- portunities in living as to stimulate her intellect. No fortunate juxtaposition of people or happy conformity of circumstance can have been es- sential to the development of this view in Mary Lyon, though undoubtedly both contributed to its quickening. Students caught her own ardor for goodness, and morals, like the measles, are most readily transmitted by way of a microbe. She taught the Copernican system, which infinitely en- larges the scope of one's universe. "If you would make the most improvement, don't con- fine your desires to self ; take an extended view look at the whole," she urged. "Let none of your feelings be exhausted on trifles." She TEACHING 127 came to see people, she said once, as contrac- tions, and she liked to think what they were contractions of. " Our thoughts have the same effect on us as the company we keep," she told her girls, and she put them in the way of thinking largely. "Make them bigger than their mothers and fathers!" It was a cry out of her heart. She was dreaming of a race of women strong-bodied, big-brained, great- souled, and she wanted to help her dream come true. How did I happen and what am I for ? The riddle that keeps humanity guessing found her ready with an inspiriting answer. Her talks on every-day affairs, health, habit, the use of money, dress, manners, secrets, called to a high self-respect. They sparkled to her lips from a heart warm with human kindness and an un- derstanding fed on keen observation of people. Laughter rollicked through her character- sketches; humor, smiling delicately, winged shafts that were always pointed by shrewd sense. She had a keen eye for form, and eccen- tricity in little things hurt her feeling for har- mony, betraying inner disorder. " Who would 128 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON be glad to have me prepare a few coats ready for any one to put on ?" she asked once at Buck- land in speaking of self-knowledge. " Who will endeavor to put it on if it belongs to her ? " It was a breezy talk blowing from high sunlit spaces, and the seeds it scattered ripened to a generous symmetry of life. She infused into girls her own foresight of what they might become ; perforce, since she believed in them, they began to believe in them- selves. "You were the first friend who ever pointed out to me defects of character with the expectation that they would be removed," wrote an Ipswich pupil in one of the few letters of this kind which have been preserved. An- other says that but for Miss Lyon's " kind coun- sel and instructions" she would never have be- come a missionary to the Indians. Still another tells of success in banishing "that *long face' which you were so faithful in assisting me to leave off at Ipswich. . . . Mr. has told me but once that I looked ' sober. '" She shrank, at first, from much speech on things that concern the soul. Her contempora- ries noted that for many years she taught the TEACHING 129 Bible as she would any other book, finding in it, most emphatically, intellectual pleasure. But need, whenever she heard its call, bugling all her energies to action, brought out in time her articulateness on this point also. Yet, so far did her ideals outstrip her appreciation of her success, that at the close of her life, when others found her most eloquent, she felt least satisfied. Such was the final insight that her teaching brought her. Diflfidently at first, more and more confidently as her touch gained experience, she sought to enlighten spirit as well as mind and heart. Out of much observation she came to believe that a person goes further when consciously linked with God ; she believed that to align one's self with Him enlarges all one's powers, as though a creature that had been battling against a mighty force suddenly turned and swam with the current. " [A] great mistake [is made] by good people in supposing religion counter to principles of nature." To her thought it was the supremely natural thing in the world. "Our minds are so constituted that nothing but God can fill them." Her faith was very simple. The theology she 130 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON owned took color from Calvin's determining brain, but one who knew her best in the Hol- yoke years now says, " I did not know she was a Calvinist." The wonder is that in the genera- tion when she lived she could have so laid her emphasis as to leave the point in doubt with memory. Religion with her was primarily nei- ther an intellectual assent nor an emotional ex- perience, but a life. As such she quickened it in her girls. On no a priori grounds she sought to lead them to make the " Great Decision," only as experience showed her its fruits. She went about it without bustle or excitement. Visitors and townspeople seldom knew of what might be going on beneath their eyes. They should never be irregular for the sake of religion, she counseled teachers. Her gospel was like herself, buoyant and vig- orous. She preached it in her smiling blue eyes and in her strong and joyous life ; she preached it in words that grew more sure with time. Hers was a call to happiness. " God wants you to be happy; he made you to be happy." "A duty need not be unpleasant." Healthily she warned against the asceticism which finds vir- TEACHING 131 tue in deprivation : " You have no right to give up your happiness because you are willing to." Out of her own nature she defined her terms. "Happiness is inactivity," she said at Holyoke. " God has so made us that the remembrance of energy makes us happy." "Holiness leads to the most vigorous action. Real holiness tends to make the character energetic." To work with God in the world was the Christian op- portunity as she saw it ; in her own phrase, " to labor with God as children with a father, to walk by his side, to unite with Him in his great work." To this strenuous holiness she called her girls. But she never presumed on her posi- tion to importune, or belittled religion by be- seechings. Hers, to put the proposition ; theirs, to become, or no, partners with opportunity, adventurers for God. Life was not life in her eyes without independence. "As well believe for others as to educate in the highest sense. Passive education is mechanical." " [Do] not at- tempt anything," her note-book reports, " be- cause I think it best, not unless you believe it is desirable, practical, and expedient. Feel the force of it." 132 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON This sense of the otherness of every person underlay the remarkable stability of her work. She found people different and she did not try to make them alike. " We do the most good by making the most of ourselves that we possibly can. Each is to try to make the most of her own powers and not to try to become somebody else." Instead of setting a standard for her school, she led each girl to fix her own. "We expect your best, not what is good for another, but yours." That brains are unequally distrib- uted through the human species, seems never to have troubled her ; what mattered was that each person should know how to use what she had to the best advantage. So with the bundle of tendencies that makes habit. She herself took no stitches in girls' characters; she put them in a way to mend their own rents. And she always helped them fasten the end of their thread by the simple expedient of inquiring from time to time how they were succeeding in what they had set for themselves. But individ- uals have rights as well as propensities, and among them is the right to choose one's own good. " If you really rather spend your money TEACHING 133 on yourselves, spend it," Miss Lyon said once at Ipswich in talking about giving. "I charge you spend it on yourselves. If a spark of bene- volence [exists] I would kindle it into a flame, but ... I don't want artificial fire." . Meanwhile she lived the full life of a suc- cessful teacher, made fuller in her case by the liberal compulsions of her nature ; bearing her part in diflScult days' work that have little of outward happening notable enough to mark their sequence. Her letters reveal the passage through her mind of some "floating ideas" for enriching the study of English, and her dissat- isfaction with many of the schoolbooks of the period. She finds in their prevalent style little of the "elevated simplicity" that she desires, and she deplores their carelessness as inimical to " solid scholarship." She tries to secure a re- publication of Edwards's " History of Redemp- tion," remarking, "Sometimes I almost fear that we shall read our minds all away . . . with a perpetual succession of books of mush- room growth." With all the care of the semi- nary resting on her shoulders she yet made time during her last summer at Ipswich to teach a 134 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON woman who worked in the kitchen to read. The woman was about forty years old, and had been ashamed to let any one know of her inability. Somehow, in that quietly absorbent way of hers. Miss J^yon found it out, and straightway began to teach her alone in her own room. It is but one of the kindly deeds which were always flow- ering unobtrusively beneath her busy feet. We come upon the trace of another class of them in a letter written by the father of one of her pu- pils, accompanying an enclosure of money, per- haps the final payment on a loan which she seems to have made the girl. His sincere and hearty thanks are Miss Lyon's for her " kindness to our family and this dear child in particular." Some- thing more valuable than money passed be- tween the two. " If I am worth anything to society," the girl wrote her sister, "I owe it in great measure to dear Miss Lyon." Such honest words, the unsalaried increment of the teaching profession, repay grinding anxieties. For she knew her days of dark perplexity, days when at the close of school she " seemed to have but just physical strength enough left to bear her home, just intellect enough to think TEACHING 135 the very small thoughts of a little infant, and just emotion enough to tremble under the shock." Her position brought her into wider contacts. She came to know the townspeople as only one who put conscience and care into the selection of boarding-places for scores of girls could know them. " Your friends here inquire after you daily," Miss Grant wrote in one of the earlier Ipswich winters ; " you have found favor in the eyes of this people." Down the years flash glimpses of visits to neighboring academies, of short vacations passed in scholarly Andover. As men and women in her own line of work found her out, they applied to her for advice and cooperation in their educational^ schemes and for criticism of their text-books. Hearing a report that she had been induced to consider a position at Greenfield, Miss Beecher wrote in haste: "Will you write me immediately if there is any prospect that I could induce you to join the faculty of the H. F. Seminary." Re- quests for the recommendation of teachers multiplied. The path to the seminary's hos- pitable door was worn wide, and many people 136 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON trod it. On the days of semiannual public examinations, carryalls from Andover rolled over to Ipswich to- help swell the audience of coming events, when the calisthenics class light- ened the mental programme by evolutions per- formed with a discipline described by one of the teachers as " not quite equal, perhaps, to West Point Cadets." Nor did an older civilization pass Derry- Ips- wich by. Of the visitors from Europe, probably the most notable, though not perhaps the most inquisitive, was General Lafayette, who in his indefatigable demonstration of America Re- visited, stopped at Adams Academy in the sum- mer of 1825. It is a dramatic picture of the marquis's arrival that Miss Lyon's torn old letter gives. The stage is set with darkness and canopied with lightening- rent clouds. A hun- dred girls, white as their gowns, cower under the crashing thunder. Enter "three horsemen riding full speed." Presto ! Terror turns to de- light, dread to expectation. Cheeks flush and eyes sparkle, heedless of the tremendous thun- derclap that shakes the building as the courtly Frenchman enters. One feels inclined to quar- TEACHING 137 rel with time for tearing the sheet across at the very point of the introductions. It is a pity that so little of Mary Lyon's wit has come down to us. Only here and there a smile lights up the tale of her who must have laughed so often, persisting, as it seems, in despite of her biographers. Perhaps the good people about her were too busy chronicling her other qualities; perhaps, too, they a little dis- tmsted the virtue of humor. The readiness with which, on occasion, she packed a whole philosophy into a sentence betrays a nimble tongue. And she was quick at repartee. But one or two of her hons mots persist, slipping withal so lightly from her lips as to betoken an irrepressible ease. " She could be a very merry woman," one has written of her later Holyoke days. And ever her heart tempered her wit to kindly speech. Catherine Beecher, somewhat out of health, wrote to arrange a meeting : *' I want you to come, therefore, prepared to be as calm as a clock when you talk to me. ... I can listen much better than I can talk, 'provided you will not be too interesting." To slur the point would belittle one of the 138 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON triumphs of her gently masterful nature. There was little in her life to feed high spirits. Good cheer had less vogue among earnest persons in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century than later, and the religious attitude of New England tended to blight any but the most hardy humor. Nor did she at any time in her life escape the touch of personal grief. Separa- tion from those she loved always hurt her, and she felt keenly the far-scattering of her family. Ties of blood bound her closely, and the ills and sorrows of her relatives and friends struck cruelly at her heart. In her sister Lovina Lyon Putnam's sickness she tasted a bitterness harder to endure than death. Worn with nursing her husband, Mrs. Putnam fell ill of fatigue which resulted in derangement of mind, and she was taken to the Hartford asylum for the insane. At once the youngest sister came to care for the sick man and the five little children "left, like orphans, while their father and mother are still living," and Miss Lyon gave both of her money and time. During these months she wrote weekly letters to her sister in the asylum. Mr. Putnam's death preceded his wife's discharge. TEACHING 139 She came home to her family a widow, and Mary lingered in the region that she might be near them. But her sister's recovery proved incomplete, and the anxious years of her fur- ther illness in Hartford were brightened only by hope and by the sight and report of her gentle self-restraint when free from the clutch of her disease. Less than a month before her death, to Miss Lyon with the care of Ipswich Seminary full upon her came sudden word of the passing of her next younger sister, Ro- sina, "a kind of darling among us all," as she wrote. So she paid her toll of sorrow to the years, and they gave her to walk in a sweet surety of unseen things. Her way did not lack those abundant ifs that like sign-boards on every life-road point conjecture to the might-have-been. Two in particular which she set her face to pass, not without hesitation, need a word of explanation. The year after her summer at Byfield, her bro- ther came on from his western home and tried to persuade her to go back with him as a teacher. His children were growing up, and Chautau- qua County in New York could give them but a 140 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON poor kind of schooling. Love drew her power- fully. But her friends felt that her preparation, elaborate for that day, fitted her for a position of wider usefulness than could be hers as the teacher of a frontier school, and in the end her brother went home alone. Later Rosina Lyon followed him to Stockton and taught there until her marriage. This way, too, was open to Mary. If tradition be true and she spoke her first no on the hills of Buckland, it was not her last. She reached her definitive decision probably at Ipswich, when, as we are told by her biograph- ers, an opportunity presented itself which she thought offered as great a chance for happiness as marriage was ever likely to bring her. After that, though men might come and men might go, they occasioned her no disquietude of mind. What were the claims and attractions of the man or men who aspired to become the hus- band of Mary Lyon, we have no means of know- ing, but it is impossible to resist the suspicion that they, solitary or several, left her most in love with girls. In the summer of 1833 occurred the first and last breathing-space of her busy life, and with TEACHING 141 one exception her only considerable trip. She went for change and recreation, pushing south as far as Philadelphia and west to Detroit. Let it be remembered that these were days when a traveler left Boston by stage at three o'clock in the morning on an eighty-mile ride to the docks at Norwich, Conn., where one boarded the night boat for New York. The entries in her journal from day to day are short, mere clues for memory ; but on the last pages of the book she jotted descriptions of such things as she seems most particularly to have wished to remember. The whole shows her to have jour- neyed as she lived, with her eyes open and with an objective interest in all she saw. I find a single note of shopping, but she was such an indefatigable sightseer that it is not surprising to come upon the line : " Sick visited by the Dr.," scribbled in Philadelphia. Sundays she always saved intact, spending them quietly and going once, or sometimes oftener, to church. *' Visited Cambridge College, library, botanical garden, and Mt. Auburn," is one of the earlier entries. .The "burying ground" at Princeton drew her, probably to the grave of the college's 142 THE LIl'E OF MARY LYON third president. She stopped at West Point; and called on Mrs. Emma Willard, with whose seminary she would indubitably have ac- quainted herself while a student at the Rensse- laer School. Here are notes of visits to hospi- tals, prisons, porcelain works, schools for girls ; of attendance on commencements, as passing westward she came within range of these mid- summer festivities ; of meetings of the educa- tional society. But she had her holiday, too. It is the things that she considered memorable which, JFalling from the pen of an educational expert, bespeak her range. A colorful panorama of the city of Mexico delighted her with its scenic effects and she investigated its mechanism. She knew all about the George Washington, *' the most splen- did boat on Lake Erie," in which she voyaged from Detroit to Buffalo ; rigging, crew, capa- city, nothing escaped her mention. A pas- sage of minute description details the method of building a big bridge which was one of the sights near Philadelphia. Her miscellany of small facts includes items on coal-mining and Indian pronunciations. TEACHING 143 Wild beauty moved her deeply : leaping wa- terfalls, down which she scrambled, helping her- self along " by trees, shrubs, and naked roots" ; far-flung mountain views in the Catskills "peaks, like a vast ocean of luxuriant green," "the long and varying course of the Hudson whitened with sails." She noted gleeful talk and laughter within the mountain house ; with- out, " the sweet stillness reminds you of a gal- lery of paintings." Niagara, where she spent a day and a half, wrapped her in glorious content,, though she owned in a letter to Miss Grant that she had feared disappointment and had deter- mined to have no "second-hand emotions." Its memory she put away among her dearest treasures. Quite as one would expect, she fin- ished viewing it to her satisfaction, both in day- light and by the full moon, which gave her sight of a lunar bow ; and she came away with no re- grets for having left anything undone, though she has confessed to "a feeling like that of a hungry man, who sits down to a table covered with the richest dainties, and just as he begins to taste is driven away to return no more." Her method is so spiced with personality that I can- 144 the; life of MARY LYON not resist quoting from her conclusions. " Much, I think, depends on the manner of visiting the falls. The American side should by all means be visited first, and I think the visit on the Canada side should be reserved for the con- clusion. All the little broken prospects and parts of views should be taken from the American shore and Goat Island, and sufficient timeshould be allowed for the mind to expand and enlarge and prepare to take in the greatness of the overwhelming view on the Canada side." The deepest joy of the summer must have come with the renewing of family acquaintance. The Lyons had been gradually gathering in Stockton and Fredonia, New York, and a little colony of relatives welcomed her, facing west- ward, and again on her return. There were new faces to be learned, familiar ones whose lines she must bring up to date in her memory, and a blank that wrung her heart. In a letter to Miss Grant we glimpse a laughing-faced boy who loves to be with his new aunt and talk with her, and who seems, whenever she looks at him, to body forth his joyous mother. We get the impression that it was a friendly place to her. TEACHING 145 this West, with much of novelty and interest, but with little of strangeness, for she was a friendly person. Her instincts reached out broadly. The chambermaid at Rochester came within the radius of her human kindliness ; the journal notes a talk and the girl's name and home county. And all along the way she met men and women whom she knew, some of the women old pupils of hers in New Hampshire or Massachusetts. She came home enriched and refreshed. This journey, with a few subsequent months at Ipswich, cuts cleanly across her life. It marks the end of her career as a teacher, though she did not break loose entirely from the class- room. She had now grown to the full stature of her womanhood. Hereafter changes in her are less outwardly apparent. Attention must shift to watching the effect which her eruptive energy produced on the configuration of the educational landscape of her times, for it was no less revolutionary a change than this which she set out to accomplish. Toward the end of the summer of 1834, she wrote her youngest sister: "I am about to embark in a frail boat on 146 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON a boisterous sea. I know not whither I shall be driven, nor how I shall be tossed, nor to what port I shall aim." By appending a few mutilated fragments of Miss Lyon's talks at Buckland, Ashfield, and Ipswich, one may not hope to give a later gen- eration any adequate conception of her fluent, incisive speech. Yet the quality of the woman is rendered most graphically in her own words. Gathered as are most of these from the pen of an unwonted young note-taker in the early thirties, through nearly eighty years they have pr.eserved their freshness. In the notes on teach- ing, a reader must remember that she spoke to women of whom many would find places in the ungraded public schools. How shall we lead children to think ? In a lesson make one or two points very luminous, and the pupil will gain more than if this light were thrown over the whole. Don't be so long as to be tedious. . . . Teach your scholars to use definite and appropriate language have TEACHING 147 them use mathematical language definitely. ... Give out topics. Let the children write a specified number of items on their slates. Always write with them. A teacher should have ability to trace cause and effect. Never adopt any plan you see in a school, unless you see the object. Have lessons recited correctly, promptly, and clearly; have [them] short. In familiar parts ask little children ques- tions. Be careful not to have them raise their hands too much. Don't ask them, " How many of you think so ?" to questions they all know. Mix new facts with old ones. Have more than half of the questions such that all can answer them. Don't let children use vulgarisms ; have them use simple common terms rather than technical terms. ... A little child will not re- cite well unless he has a definite thing to learn. Give a little dull stupid boy of ten years old two or three pages to read and understand so that he can answer questions he will not learn anything. Have little children study a very little while, not more than fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen in the afternoon. 148 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Give them something definite and have them learn it perfectly. To lead them to learn their lessons perfectly, have the lesson short at first. Learn to despatch business ; learn to ask a great many questions in fifteen minutes. Gain influ- ence over the class. Give proper commendation when a class recites well. To interest scholars, the teacher should be interested and should appear interested. A teacher may be interested, however dry the study. A teacher should never say the studies are so dry and dull, and she has been over them so many times, she cannot feel interested. . . . Let your scholars see you expect they will do well. Have perfect system in lessons, but in little things have variety. Sometimes turn aside from the common course in reciting have something different. Always have some- thing which is not in the lesson, but have it short. Always expect some strange oddity in school. The school must not be made a place of literary amusement. Don't pledge your schol- ars that you are going to make the lessons interesting, let it come in accidentally. Be care- ful not to give more explanation than neces- TEACHING 149 sary. Lead them to help themselves. . . . Avoid giving extra lessons for punishment. How to lead scholars to remember : learn to discriminate. The teacher should discriminate and tea^h the scholars to. Ask the more im- portant questions over more than once. By being definite and too minute, a great deal is lost. Remember things in round numbers. Bring in a definite point or principle in every lesson, and dwell a few moments upon it ; make it very clear and then go on with the lesson with rapidity. . . . Have comparisons and con- trasts. [In history] compare one character with another. . . . Have all scholars exert as much mental effort, but [the] younger should exert it less time; then they should have things to amuse them and promote their health. To teach children to learn fast, have some- thing for them to learn as quick as they can. Give them a list of words, or the Latin nu- merals, or something similar, and give them a few minutes to study and then call upon them to recite. The best thing for them [to] under- stand is mathematics. The manner of sitting affects a recitation 150 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON very much : leaning and lolling, etc. are very foreign to literature. Learn to sit with energy. A scholar who leans and lolls when she recites will jumble over her lesson and blunder along. The teacher should stand, herself. Have young children stand. Three or four smart scholars will always raise their hands, but you must be careful not always to call upon them. By general instruction gain the attention of the whole school ; bring in every scholar, even the dullest. Excite public interest. Have every scholar feel interested in the school, [and let] a patriotic feeling expand their minds, enlarge their hearts, and make them bigger than their mothers and fathers. The two or three last weeks are of very great importance to every scholar. If they are well improved, they are like clinching the nail after it has been driving six months. If it is not clinched, it will not take more than six months for it to work out, and then it will be worse than before, because there will be a vacancy. It is very important a teacher should not be schoolified. Don't talk about your school every- where. TEACHING 151 After the school was opened, we had a talk from Miss Lyon. She said we must make it a special object to begin right. Our characters will be greatly influenced by the course we pur- sue this winter. Habit is more powerful than principle. We must not try to appear learned and superior and strive to be the centre of the circle. Avoid saying smart things. Fear not. Just do our duty. . . . Strive to promote the happiness of others. Cultivate interest in one another. Endeavor not to impart our bad feelings. Wear a cheerful face. Be quiet in the street. A young lady who is ready to do her part is much less noticed than one who is not. Early rising, young ladies, is not rising at any particular hour, for what is early for one may be late for another. Early rising for any indi- vidual is rising at the earliest time proper for her under the existing circumstances. The hour of rising should not be decided on in the de- licious dreaminess of the half- waking, and more than half-dozing, state of one's morning slum- bers ; but the decision should be made when you 152 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON are up and awake, with all your powers in vig- orous exercise. In deciding, you must take into view your age. Young persons, who have not fully attained their growth, need more sleep than those of mature age. You must consider the state of your health. Feeble persons, with constitutions made to run only half the three score years and ten, need more sleep than the strong and healthy. Some allowance, too, must be made for the temperaments of differ- ent individuals. Some require more sleep than others, but those who need a large amount should take their additional sleep in the early part of the night. Who was it that said, " One hour's sleep before midnight is worth two after .^" Yes, Dr. Dwight, a man of large ex- perience and careful observation. Now, young ladies, you are here at great expense. Your board and tuition cost a great deal, and your time ought to be worth more than both ; but in order to get an equivalent for the money and time you are spending, you must be systematic, and that is impossible unless you have a regu- lar hour for rising. If that hour is five, and you are on your feet before the clock has done strik- TEACHING 153 ing, then you are punctual ; but if you lie five minutes, or even one, after that hour passes, you are tardy and you must lose a little respect for yourself in consequence. Persons who run around all day after the half-hour they lost in the morning never accomplish much. You may know them by a rip in the glove, a string pinned to the bonnet, a shawl left on the balustrade, which they had no time to hang up, they were in such a hurry to catch their lost thirty minutes. You will see them opening their books and try- ing to study at the time of general exercises in school. But it is a fruitless race they never will overtake their lost half-hour. Good men, from Abraham to Washington, have been early risers. . . . Now, young ladies, I want every one of you to fix on an hour of rising for a week to come. Be sure not to fix on too early an hour, for it would not injure your character nearly so much to make a mistake and decide to rise at six, when you might rise at half-past five without any injury to your health, as to fail of meeting your own appointment. 154 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON We have no more right to misuse the body than to take a neighbor's property. ... If all the human race attended to the body as they ought, health would be so general that sickness would be an accidental circumstance. ... A case of sickness would be like one deformed tree in a well-managed orchard. The present race of females are very fee- ble ; we must try to have the next generation stronger and more healthy. If a feeble mother, when she comes from her bed-chamber, can hardly stir, and looks so sick, and has no spirits, and is afraid to have Susan go out for fear she will wet her feet or the breeze will touch poor Mary too roughly, her children will soon be as sickly as herself. But if, on the contrary, she looks happy and cheerful in the morning and does the little she does do with a good grace, and is not afraid to have the breath of heaven touch her children, they will be strong, healthy, and vigorous, their intellectual powers will brighten and grow and beam forth from their eyes, and they will be much more likely to be good . . . and will do ten times the amount of good in the world. TEACHING 155 Men judge of the whole sex by their own wives. In deviating from custom avoid everything odd. Respect fashions, if they are modest, even if you do not follow them. Avoid rigidity and declaiming against articles. Never speak, unless you have something to say. Never occupy a long time in saying what could be said in a few minutes. If you look a sentence before you utter it, it will not be necessary [to speak]. It is the mark of a weak mind to be continu- ally comparing the sexes and disputing and making out the female sex as something great and superior. Giving ought not to depend on eloquence ; it should be the result of cold judgment. It is better to have a settled plan. . . . Don't give so much but your benevolence will hold out all winter, and all the year, and as long as you live. . . . People can do all their duty. WTien they 156 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON have given all they ought, they do wrong if they give any more. Never neglect your heart because your con- duct is wrong; neither neglect your conduct because your heart is wrong ; but purify foun- tain and stream together. Those who have the care of children fre- quently instil prejudice into them ; bring some truth before them so often they get tired of it. . . . Mother, exceeding careful of a daughter's health, speaks to her every little while about it, prudence ; caution ; damp feet, says so much about it daughter gets tired, treats it with scorn, minds nothing about it. Some- times this is owing to the manner. ... I pre- sume every one of us has some association with some very important subject by which we have gained a disgust. . . . We must act right ; per- haps after a long time we shall get rid of it. . . . You can do all that is required, however it may be as to feeling. . . . Goodness does not depend on loving duty but doing it. TEACHING 157 Heaven is not a rest from delightful labor. There is a great mistake in concerning our- selves with that part of our work which belongs to God. We are to use the means; we have nothing to do with the success. CHAPTER V BREAKING GROUND FOR MOUNT HOLYOKE "It is one of the nicest of mental operations to distinguish between what is very diflScult and what is utterly impossible," Miss Lyon wrote Miss Grant. The problem for a given case, del- icate in the second solution and the third, in the first puts a person, as Mr. William James would say, completely to his trumps. What has been done, one may confidently predict can be done again. It is the initial venture that wears the face of hazard. Yet Mary Lyon never attempted anything which she was not reasonably sure that she could carry through. Her daring, after all, resolves itself into a mar- velously acute grasp of the factors entering into a situation, among which she did not through mock modesty fail to reckon her own personality. She accepted herself simply and without complacency. " True humility consists, not in self-depreciation," she said, "but in a BREAKING GROUND 159 just estimate of one's own powers or charac- ter." Time had taught her fully to rest on her abilities. She knew, too, how to lean on some- thing bigger than herself. " All that ought to be done can be done," she declared with Kant. What she essayed to do was to take the edu- cation of women out of the field of business ventures and secure for it the same permanent provision that two centuries of the American public had given the training of men. Since the inception of Harvard, colleges on stable founda- tions had multiplied ; but as yet " the vital prin- ciple," as Miss Lyon phrased it, was lacking from the higher schooling of girls. Their teach- ers, like children playing on the seashore, had built houses of sand. They built them still. Investigation reveals a state of inextricable confusion in the affairs of these early schools, whether incorporated or not; their lines of cleavage are dubiously marked. As late as the spring of 1837 Miss Lyon wrote of the wide use- fulness of certain contemporary schools : " This may be very great for a time, w here there is no principle of perpetual life, as is the case with some of our most distinguished female semi- 160 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON naries. Amidst all their prosperity they have no solid foundation, and in themselves no sure principle of continued existence." A few years earlier she had said : "Those which appear to have the strongest claim to such a standing are so dependent on their present teachers, and their funds and accommodations are to such an extent the property of private individuals, that it would not be safe to predict even their existence the next century." Do not women as well as men need public aid in getting an education ? she questioned. On certain persons who had asked her help in planning a new school for girls she commented in a letter to Miss Grant : " They have no idea of doing it except by shares, with the expecta- tion of an income. They look at schools gen- erally just as they would at mercantile busi- ness." The standpoint furnished her with the sub- ject for a witty cartoon. " Suppose a gentleman, having a large family depending on him for sup- port, finds his health not sufficient for the du- ties of his profession. Casting his eye around, he looks on the office of a president of a college BREAKING GROUND 161 as affording more ample means, and a more pleasant and respectable situation for his fam- ily, than any other he can command. But a new college must be founded to furnish him the place. He selects a large village in New Eng- land, or at the West, or at the South, as may best favor the accomplishment of his object, and where he can find buildings which he can buy or rent on some conditions, though they may be far from being adapted to such an end. He purchases his apparatus, or has none, and procures professors on his own responsibility. Thus prepared, he commences, making his charge to the students such as will meet the rent of buildings, furniture, and apparatus, and the salaries of his professors, besides furnish- ing a handsome support to his own family. What could such a college do to encourage thorough and systematic education in our coun- try ? But this is scarcely a caricature of the manner in which some female seminaries have been founded. And where the benevolent prin- ciple has existed, it has been confined to indi- viduals, as if the trustees of a college should depend upon the generosity of the president to 162 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON furnish the students gratuitously with all their facilities for improvement, instead of obtaining them by public benevolence." To conserve present gains and to make sure of future advancement, she saw clearly that higher schools for women must be "founded, endowed, and sustained." Full of the ripe fla- vor of the woman is this passage from a hastily written manuscript: "Some are devising one way, some another, to awaken public attention on the subject. But as yet much more has been felt and said than done. Some would have the subject written into notice, others would have it talked into notice. Others again, who have much more confidence in facts than in theory, would above all have one example given of a seminary that is founded and endowed by the benevolent public. But the great desideratum is to obtain funds ample enough to found one seminary which would furnish the public with a fair example of its peculiar benefits. Funds for a second or a third could undoubtedly be more easily obtained than for the first." As she intimates, the thought of permanence was not new. Things seldom happen out of a BREAKING GROUND 163 clear sky. Years of eventless agitations, of slow and toilsome approximations had set the stage. Time waited for the great actor visibly to body forth ideas that were as yet held in solution in the air. Mrs. Emma Willard's "Address to the Public," presented to the New York legislature in 1819, asked for state aid in founding perma- nent seminaries for girls which should be at once adequately equipped and " secured against ad- venturers of fortune." She based her claim on women's value to the nation as teachers and mothers. Her sketch provided for a three years' course of systematic "literary" study, supplemented by optional " ornamental branches" and by "housewifery," with atten- tion to "religion and morality." Trustees were to be responsible " to provide suitable instruc- tion," the only duty she specifically assigned them. "The idea of a college for males will naturally be associated with a seminary insti- tuted and endowed by the public ; and the ab- surdity of sending ladies to college may, at first thought, strike every one to whom this subject shall be proposed," she writes, hastening to dis- pel "the phantom of a college-learned lady.'* 164 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Despite Mrs. Willard's verbs, her "Plan'* gives no evidence that she was thinking of a school which should be either wholly a public trust or the exclusive property of the state. Widely circulated among politicians and ed- ucators at home and abroad, the Address pro- voked much thought. In 1825 a bill was intro- duced into the legislature of Georgia entitled, "An act to establish a public seat of learning in this State for the education of females." Joseph Emerson, in a lecture delivered three years earlier, quoted from Mrs. Willard's writ- ings. In the same address we find him indulg- ing the "enrapturing hope" that before long schools for women, "very greatly superior to the present, will not only exist but be consid- ered as important as are now our colleges for the education of our sons. The distinguished honor is probably reserved for our rising re- public to exhibit to the world examples of such female seminaries as the world has never wit- nessed. But where such an institution shall be erected, by whom it shall be founded, and by whom instructed, it is yet for the hand of Provi- dence to develop." BREAKING GROUND 165 To trace here a direct transference of thought might be logical and chronological, but it would certainly be unwarranted. The notion of per- manence could hardly have failed to occur to any earnest teacher of girls in the early nineteenth century. Many men and women dreamed dreams. A popular theory holds that ideas which make no practical difference are negligible. Yet the most notable of these early teachers sought persistently to have their thoughts even- tuate in action. Mr. Emerson proves an excep- tion. The man himself was his school, and he seems never to have sought to prolong its life beyond his own. From Byfield to Saugus, from Saugus to Wethersfield, Connecticut, it jour- neyed with him, gradually lowering the age of its clientele and ceasing altogether shortly be- fore his death. Mrs. Emma Willard, encouraged by the New York legislature's reception of her "Plan," in 1819 moved from Middlebury, Vermont, to Waterford, New York, where an academy had been incorporated for her use and granted a share of the state's "literary fund." The re- 166 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON commendation of five thousand dollars en- dowment, reported to the legislators, was de- feated, and the next year the regents decided that the academy had no right to receive any part of the state money. Twelve months later the trustees petitioned, again in vain. That year Mrs. Willard moved by invitation to Troy, of whose corporation she rented the building and lot of ground which became the nucleus of a rapidly growing plant. An appeal to the legis- lature failed to secure endowment, and alone, paying yearly rentals, she built up the famous school for which in 1837 she at last gained in- corporation, the city having conveyed to the trustees of the seminary just enough of its pro- perty to enable it to pass under the authority of the regents and so become entitled to share in the state fund. It is said that Mrs. Willard her- self furnished the trustees with money to secure the transfer. The fact of the presence in the seminary of many non-paying pupils witnesses to its having been essentially private ; and when from his mother's hands Mr. John Willard took over the administration, he again leased from the city. In 1872 ]VIr. and Mi-s. John BREAKING GROUND 167 Willard retired. But a school with such a her- itage could not be allowed to lapse. The fol- lowing year the trustees succeeded in raising money to complete their purchase, "and the perpetuity of the school was assured."^ Dur- ing twenty-three years continued merely for day pupils, in 1895 it was reorganized, re- turning to the earlier traditions under the name the Emma Willard School. Academically, Mrs. Willard believed in a combination of solidity and grace. Catalogues of the forties and sixties reveal a large number of studies, but no organized curriculum. "Di- plomas are awarded to pupils having credit- ably passed examination in the full course of English studies, with Latin or one of the mod- ern languages." No entrance requirements are set down, and ** pupils are admitted at any time," but the earlier catalogues specif y attend- ance on the public examinations at the end of the term. Miss Catherine Beecher fared less fortunately than Mrs. Willard. Beginning modestly over a store, she moved into the basement of a ^ Emma Willard and Her Pupils, p. 815. 168 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON church, where, as she says, "nearly one hun- dred young ladies had only one room, no globe or large maps, and, most of the time, no black- board and only two teachers." These teachers met the requirements of their community by hearing a rapid succession of parrot-like recita- tions run through the day "at the rate of one for every eight, ten, or fifteen minutes." The unscholarly work that resulted drove Miss Beecher to a larger plan. But her proposition for a commodious study-hall, a library, a lec- ture-room and recitation rooms, amused "the leading gentlemen of Hartford" whose aid she invoked. Women of influence then committed themselves to its approval, and in the year when Miss Grant went to Ipswich, Hartford Semi- nary passed into incorporated life in a roomy building. Eight teachers were installed, each responsible for not more than one or two sub- jects. Pupil assistants eked out this force of in- struction. Recitation periods stretched to hour lengths. Miss Harriet Beecher's " composition " work appears particularly notable for its antici- pation of modern English modes. Subject to Miss Beecher's oversight, families in the city BREAKING GROUND 169 continued to house non-resident students and teachers. But the burden of administration, academic and social, broke the principal's health. "I was obliged to train most of my teachers as well as myself," she said. Alone, she could not go on. Wishing to keep what she had won for Hartford Seminary had roused admiring comment even in Europe and to reach out toward a broader life, she broached to Miss Grant the proposal of a merger, and to the citizens of Hartford the subject of en- dowment. Dr. Lyman Beecher reenforced his daughter's representations. But after much weighing of pros and cons, the uncertainty of success in securing the permanence of even one school, and the wide usefulness of Ipswich Seminary, decided Miss Grant to decline. Hart- ford failed to treat the plea for endowment seri- ously, and so, for lack of " half the funds be- stowed on our poorest colleges for young men," Miss Beecher saw the ground that she had toil- somely gained lost in less time than it had taken to win it. The seminary's decline speaks for the truth of Miss Lyon's caricature. " My suc- cessor," wrote Miss Beecher, " though an able 170 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON teacher, was a man who had a family to sup- port and could not use all the school income, as I had done, to retain the highest class of teachers." " If you can put into operation a permanent school on right principles, you may well afford to give up your life when you have done it," Joseph Emerson told Zilpah Grant, fearful on account of her health to close with the offer from Adams Academy. Despite its bequest of four thousand dollars and its ambition for longevity, the academy at Derry seems to have been, like the seminary at Ipswich and count- less others of that day and since, the property of a joint-stock company whose affairs were managed by a board of trustees. At Derry the trustees paid the teachers ; a document shows that they offered Miss Lyon the inviting salary of six dollars a week and board to induce her to return for a fifth year. The Ipswich trustees leased the building to Miss Grant, rent free, on condition that she furnish the requisite instruc- tion.* The principal supplied most of the appa- ratus and the library. x\s early as the initial year at Derry, Miss Lyon offered to help her BREAKING GROUND 171 friend furnish a chemical laboratory. Such di- vision of ownership appears, upon their sepa- ration, to have put Miss Grant in Miss Lyon's debt; and when in 1839 she herself left the seminary, the care of this "school furniture" pressed heavily upon her. Eventually she gave it to Monticello Seminary, together with a stu- dents'-aid fund which had latterly been in use at Ipswich. Her withdrawal was, like Miss Beecher's, due to overwork. Collapse came inevitably under a system which, while withholding the necessary facilities, recklessly piled on one per- son responsibility for housing, instructing, and moulding the characters of a rapidly changing procession of students, in a day when it was hard, as Miss Grant said, to keep "even one teacher longer than the time necessary for her to become independent in her own depart- ment." Not long after she left, the school was sold, becoming the property of its new princi- pal. Through all these years Miss Grant never quite gave over the hope Mr. Emerson had voiced. Miss Lyon at first was little inclined to 172 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON accent permanence. She was young, and life stretched long before her. "Never mind the brick and mortar," she cried, "only let us have living minds to work upon." But her friend continued to talk to her about a seminary whose buildings, library, and apparatus should be held as were those of colleges for men. And time, revealing more and more intimately the imperious need of her generation, acquainted her also with the thought of death, not as some far impersonal event, but as an actual ceasing of her activity upon the earth. Some day she could no longer reach those living minds. What then ? So she passed into the recognition that fully to secure its fruits, a life must relate itself with the future. Having admitted the idea, she put herself unreservedly at its disposal, and furthered her friend's work for Ipswich Sem- inary with growing enthusiasm. Their plans included "a seminary building free of rent," containing a large hall, laboratory, library, reading-room, and several recitation rooms, furnished with books and apparatus ; a roomy residence hall surrounded by a few acres of ground ; and the commitment of all money BREAKING GROUND 173 matters to "an agent appointed by the trus- tees, to whom he should be responsible." The matter was agitated, prospective trustees ap- pointed, Rufus Choate among them, and public apathy discovered. A project for turn- ing the movement toward founding a New England seminary for women-teachers met a like response. In the process certain ideas got into wider circulation : notions of continuity, sounder scholarship, older students, education for social service, better housing, less narrowly local viewpoints. Miss Lyon advocated a cen- tral position for the school, and for each stu- dent a room " exclusively her own." Quite how radical was the last provision, the twentieth century may not easily gauge. For a while she favored proving the feasi- bility of the scheme in temporary quarters at Amherst, where the buildings of Mount Pleas- ant had fallen vacant. To attend college lec- tures would be of advantage to the young wo- men, and an advance by stepping-stones was better than no move at all. Make a start, she urged, then call on people to perpetuate it ; '* You know this is the way everything is done in New 174 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON England." But after all, removal from Ipswich on these terms looked too rash to hazard. Even her "highest hopes" could see nothing more stable than rent " collected by dollars and cents from the farmers and mechanics all over Frank- lin and Hampshire counties in order to make the experiment of three years." And there were people, as always, who missed the point ; she had to "pull down some of their castles. Their plan, at best, would make the institution all a personal affair," she wrote Miss Grant, for much of the activity went forward during the chief's absence. In the early spring of 1833 the "board of prospective trustees" met and dissolved. An attempt during the following months to revive the project also failed. The prime mover in this posthumous essay was an enthusiastic minister, "a young man and not worn out," whom Miss Lyon frankly warned of his liability to incur the epithet "chimerical." The flagging of her own victorious health probably contributed to her discouragement. A permanent plant for the higher education of women looked far off to her that spring ; she gave the country twenty. BREAKING GROUND 175 perhaps fifty, years to grow up to the thought. "The public as such," she wrote Miss Grant, "know nothing of any consequence about the object, and care less than they know." The plan seemed dead and buried, but she could not lay its ghost. All summer from place to place it followed her, crying out in the voice of first-hand acquaintance with much that she had heard before. Ever stronger hands the idea laid on her imagination, until, if she could, she would not have loosed its hold. Her appren- ticeship had gone to gaining close touch with girls, their powers, their needs, their pitifully meagre chances. She had worked up from the ranks, keeping her eyes open, and there was not a phase of the feminine educational oppor- tunity of the time that she did not know: crowded heterogeneous public schools ; private schools, the chief part of whose apparatus Mark Hopkins defined in the next decade as " pianos and guitars and music-books" ; higher schools, shifting and uncertain, reaching out for wider knowledge under conditions fre- quently unhealthful for brains and bodies; teachers in these schools, always overworked. 176 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON frequently ill-prepared and ineJBScient, the best of them self-made scholars, often studying with their classes, the worst showing that somebody somewhere had bungled in the workmanship. " Oberlin Collegiate Institute" was opening its doors on a revolutionary programme, and she was deeply interested, giving of her money. But Oberlin proposed to fit every stage of hu- man development, beginning with childhood, and Miss Lyon believed in girls' schools of specific character. Moreover Oberlin admitted women, as it were, by virtue of their escorts. It had not been founded primarily for them, and it was not generally thought that they would care to take college work, a "ladies' course" being provided. The first two princi- pals of this department were women trained by Joseph Emerson. Coeducational in form, Oberlin could have only an indirect influence in raising the standard of women's schools. Mary Lyon knew the imperative need of the nation. A million and a half white children, scattered through the United States, were grow- ing up unschooled. Thirty thousand teachers, according to a computation of Miss Beecher's, BREAKING GROUND 177 must be had at once to cope with the situa- tion ; thirty thousand more to supplant incom- petents; ten thousand additional annually to meet the need of a growing people. The prob- lem of immigration pressed in the thirties. And from where schools existed came tales of slovenly instruction and unscholarly attitudes : "men unqualified in intellect and unworthy in character" ; in one small section of Indiana nine drunken teachers and another "who staked his last coat, and that unpaid for, at a horse- race and lost it" ; fifty or sixty ragged children huddled in a log-house in Ohio, " with a log or two left out for light and ventilation, making the air vocal for a radius of thirty rods, ... all reading, spelling, or studying in a tone of voice as loud as common conversation"; wealthy "young ladies," whose instructor endangered his popularity by bidding them lower their voices in study. These were the Americans of to-morrow and these their teachers. A young nation that recognized itself as an experiment, called for help, hoping after all to outlast the prophets of dissolution. Men could not aid her, they were increasingly busy about other 178 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON things, but there were women. " A lady in America," asserted Miss Lyon, "who is not patriotic, is not worthy the name of an Ameri- can. . . . Our country is yet too young to have a settled character, and it is in our power now to mould it in any form we please." She .knew them, the women of her gener- ation, adrift on the currents of a new world of steam and machinery, a world of brain. Dwarfed of full stature, unequal to opportunity, pitiful might-have-beens, too many of them lived, "among the common people, depressed and degraded "; in "the higher walks of life . . . to a great extent deficient in intellectual culture, in practical philosophy, in active and energetic habits," wives of educated men who, as a west- erner put it to Miss Lyon, had "never had a dozeji thoughts in all their lives." Unmarried women fell a prey to all the ills of idleness. Time, snatching their work out of their hands and flinging it to machines, had left them open to fresh employments. And the new world had need of them. Small clutching fingers tugged already at their skirts. But how shall they work unless they are taught .^ And how shall many BREAKING GROUND 179 of them be taught at exorbitant prices ? Again, it was President Hopkins who said that in the highest girls' schools a student's yearly expense was nearly double, and sometimes more than double, what gave a man his whole college course. And how shall they learn at moderate cost, unless society interests itself to give them the chance ? But how shall it give to whom it sees no need of giving? Most baffling puzzle of all, how may one woman so rouse people to recognition of the worth of women's work, that society shall secure to them, as it does to men, an opportunity for training ? These were the questions that confronted Mary Lyon dur- ing the summer of 1833 and the year that followed. Her answer has passed into history. It was already clear that the "vital princi- ple" must prove itself in a new school, a re- plica of none already existing. Somehow or other they had not promised convincingly enough to open the public purse. She set her- self to shape a plan which men could not reject. Growing in her mind, it passed through many phases. At Buckland, among the thirsty girls of the hill country, she had vaguely pictured 180 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "a seminary which should be so moderate in expense as to be open to the daughters of farm- ers and artisans and to teachers who might be mainly dependent for support on their own ex- ertions." Girls who were just entering woman- hood in homes without wealth, born, as she had been, to common ways, cried to her out of starved lives, and her heart yearned over them. Thoughts burned like fires within her. So strongly did her stress fall for a time on the needs of such young women as these, that her friends once believed a reduction of expense comprehended her main intent. " My thoughts, feelings, and judgment are turned toward the middle classes of society," she wrote Miss Grant. " This middle class contains the main- springs and main- wheels which are to move the world." Glimpses came to her of a high sim- plicity, a fashion of life "plain, though very neat." She queried: "If it were really plain, would it not be more respectable to have it 'professedly so .''" At one time the quick-moving West beckoned her. Miss Grant directed her attention to a definite site in Ohio, and later the promoters of Monticello Seminary in Illi- BREAKING GROUND 181 nois besought her to accept its leadership. But though New England now scorned the project, she saw that, winning New England, she won all. " Improvements in education seldom make any progress eastward," she said. "New Eng- land influence is vastly greater than its compar- ative size and population would indicate. It is the cradle of thought. New England mind car- ries the day everywhere, and the great business is to get the New England conscience enlight- ened and accurate." Seeing, men would believe. But how in the face of indifference secure the one convincing demonstration.^ "Honorably to do this," she wrote Miss Beecher, "from twenty to forty thousand dollars must be raised; and such a sum, raised for such an object, would form al- most an era in female education. ... I am convinced that there are but two ways to ac- complish such an object. First, to interest one, two, or a few wealthy men to do the whole ; sec- ond, to interest the whole New England com- munity, beginning with the country population, and in time receiving the aid and cooperation of the more wealthy in our cities. Each of these 182 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON modes, if practicable, would have its advan- tages. The first, if done at all, could be done sooner and with very little comparative labor. The second would require vastly more time and labor ; but if it were accomplished, an important and salutary impression would be made on the whole of New England." It was like her to choose the greater good. " This may seem like a wild scheme," she wrote her mother in the letter announcing her decision to leave Ipswich, " but I cannot plead that it is a hasty one." Before she went she had offered to abide Miss Grant's decision as to which of them should re- main and carry on the old work, which should go out to the new ; and when, in the early stages of effort, the committee in charge sent Miss Grant an invitation to become with Miss Lyon joint head of the proposed seminary, it carried her cordial seconding. The doing, rather than who did it, concerned her chiefly. Devoted lover that she was, with a wrench of the heart she pulled loose from the old ties. So with magnificent audacity she set out to accomplish that at which the most powerfully befriended of her educational contemporaries BREAKING GROUND 183 had failed. One must acknowledge at the out- set a feeling of hopefulness about the venture. She possessed to a notable degree qualities which, where they existed among the others, often obtained at a lower power, and in none were so fortunately combined. Miss Beecher, though brilliant, was erratic; Mrs. Willard had a family to remember ; Miss Grant lacked health. In that vigorous body of hers Mary Lyon owned a wonderful reservoir of life. Seemingly exhaustless, it fed the tireless de- mands of her spirit. This vast energy endowed her with a tremendous capacity for long-con- tinued work. Her mind, retentive, coherent, adaptable, inventive, gave her a complete hold on whatever situation was in hand. She had executive ability and a persuasive personality. Schooled to "perplexities and difficulties," of late she had learned to meet ridicule. At the beginning she was handicapped by not being able to get at her object directly ; eti- quette required a woman to be seen, not heard. The propriety of opening her lips, even at a prayer-meeting, agitated the thirties in pam- phlet discussion. Miss Lyon's experience with 184 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Ipswich had taught her conclusively the greater chance of success, attained with less friction, for a scheme which appeared to origi- nate with men. Otherwise, as she remarked to Miss Grant, " many good men will fear the effect on society of so much female influence, and what they will call female greatness." To withdraw herself as far as might be into the background, at the same time pushing forward a few gentlemen of independence and repute who would yet do what she wanted them to do, required a nice diplomacy. Incidentally, it meant a great deal of work. It was not easy to bring a group of men to the point of action and hold them there against their own skepticism. " To her," confessed President Hitchcock after- wards, "we pledged whatever of influence or time we could devote to the work, but . . . lit- tle did we imagine that any of us should live to see the work accomplished." She opened her campaign in the spring of 1834, with an unsigned circular addressed to the friends and patrons of Ipswich Seminary. These folders acquainted those into whose hands they fell with the new programme of an ^Facsimile of letter to Miss White, dated February 26, 1834] c^^^^n::;^<^-cx? ^^^*^ ^:^-2- -i^dA^-v' '^^-^-t.-ii^-rf*^^ BREAKING GROUND 185 undertaking already somewhat familiar. Its writer planted a thought with the point of a question, and left it to sprout. " To effect such an object," the circular inquires, " could not a separate and independent institution, simi- lar in character to the Ipswich Seminary, be founded and sustained by the Christian pub- lic ? Could not this be effected by some plan like the following ?" There ensued a concise explanation of the main features of the "plan." Most lay readers found it interesting and gave it their approval. So at this time did ministers, without whom none of New England's colleges had been founded, and by whom they were still largely professored. The ministers' associations of Hampshire and Franklin counties were the first to pass sanctioning resolutions, and later clerical societies of wider alignments more or less grudgingly followed suit. On the sixth of September, 1834, a dozen gentlemen, representative of the eastern and central parts of Massachusetts, met in Miss Lyon's private parlor at Ipswich, there to in- spect, according to David Choate, '* a few small seeds which Miss Lyon was wishing to put into 186 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON the ground somewhere and sometime, allowing us to have something to say as to the place and time and so forth, yet not wholly surrendering anything entirely up to any, and still allowing us the innocent fancy of thinking ourselves for the time being co-workers with her." Miss Lyon put it differently, " A meeting of a few gentlemen was held on Saturday, and Rev. Drs. Dana and Packard, Professor Hitch- cock, Rev. Mr. Felt, Mr. George W. Heard, Mr. David Choate, and General Howland were appointed a committee to make a commence- ment, and go on (provided they are successful) to appoint trustees, etc. A circular is soon to be printed with the doings of the meeting." This committee had power to add to its membership and to fill its vacancies. It repre- sented the enterprise before the public until a charter was granted and permanent trustees were named. Nearly twenty-eight years later Mr. Choate wrote of the birth of this fragile venture: "I shall never forget, I think, . . . how gently we tried to rock its cradle or how carefully we endeavored, at Miss Lyon's bid- ding, to carry it in our arms !" BREAKING GROUND 187 A thousand dollars was needed at once to finance the raising of the main fund ; thereby enabling the committee to assure people that not one penny of their gifts would be diverted to meet the expense of agents or of advertising. This sum Miss Lyon undertook to secure from women. In their beginnings, she said, every college and theological seminary found men ready with donations, why should not women's money give the first push to an attempt to ad- vance their education by the same method ? Then would the initial thousand dollars prove an argument hard to turn, witnessing out of slender purses to a mighty strength of desire. But it must come easily. " The success of the whole enterprise may depend on the prompt- ness with which this call is met." Few women held property, and fewer of those with access to wealth cared for such an impersonal thing as the public good. To hard-working mothers ambitious for their daughters, and to girls hope- ful of a chance to learn, she must look for much of the money. Nor did she propose to go far afield after it. In less than two months, and while still discharging her duties as acting head 188 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON of Ipswich Seminary, she had raised very nearly the full amount, mainly in and about Ipswich. Her own students and teachers contributed more than a quarter of the sum, the ladies of the town gave almost half, and former pupils and women in towns near by made up the rest. From house to house Miss Lyon went, pour- ing out a flood of joyous explanation ; talking so fast that her listeners found no chance to stem the tide of words until she had anticipated their every objection. Face to face with her, they saw things through her radiant eyes. A teacher in the seminary wrote of those calls: "She talked, now with the lady of the house, now with the husband. She told the husbands in a very good-natured but earnest way that she had come to get them to cut off one little corner of their estates and give it to their wives to in- vest in the form of a seminary for young ladies. She held before them the object dear to her heart the bringing of a liberal education within the means of the daughters of the com- mon people till it loomed up to them, for the time, as it did ever before her eyes. She put it BREAKING GROUND 189 to the lady whether, if she wanted a new shawl, a card- table, a new carpet, or some other article of elegance in her furniture or wardrobe, she could not contrive means to procure it. . . . Ladies, that in ordinary subscriptions to bene- volent objects did well to put down their fifty cents, gave her five or ten dollars of hard-earned money, collected by the slow gains of patient in- dustry, and gave it of their own free will, yea, gave it as a privilege from which they would not have been willing to be debarred. They paid it on the spot, grateful that it had come to their hands at such a time as that." These gifts dedicated anew to the undertak- ing her into whose hands they passed, and through her they committed irrevocably its masculine sponsors. She completed this first move, triumphant, but tired to the bone. Yet ever life renews itself, and her recuperative abilities were strong. One of the group of earli- est biographers tells us that at this time Miss Lyon, when brain-weary, could at will sink into semi-stupor for one, or even two or three days, rousing but seldom and taking little food. Out of such mental hibernations she came re- 190 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON freshed and " ready for a campaign that would exhaust anybody else." The college town of Amherst and the family of Professor Hitchcock offered her on leaving Ipswich a congenial place in which to " read, write, plan, and do a thousand other things." She pursued her study of science, and again grew to be a familiar figure at college lectures. One of her letters makes mention of a course in geology given by Professor Hitchcock, " which I have long desired to attend." This circum- stance, together with her earlier and later in- terest, gratified in the same company, takes subtler significance from the fact that IMr. Hitchcock, " one of the grandest of our teach- ers," as Mr. Birdseye calls him, and a growing authority on geology, was a pre-Darwinian evo- lutionist. Living in his home gave her many chances to discuss her project with intelligent men. Here she invited a few western Massa- chusetts leaders to listen to her plans and offer counsel. "Everybody liked to hear her talk," says Dr. Edward Hitchcock, " Old Doc," as generations of Amherst men lovingly call him. From under this hospitable roof she went BREAKING GROUND 191 forth on excursions. Any call for her presence issued by the new project found her ready to make prompt response, and other needs drew on her time. When the death of his only daugh- ter led Judge Wheaton to decide in her mem- ory to found a school, the Wheatons enlisted Miss Lyon's help. In their own town they sought to reproduce the lines of Ipswich Semi- nary for the service of home-keeping girls. Much thought she gave to forwarding their plans, much of herself. Wheaton Seminary opened in the spring of 1835, with Miss Eunice Caldwell, late of the Ipswich faculty, in the principal's chair, whither this able, self-dis- trustful, and altogether charming young woman had allowed herself to be conducted only by Miss Lyon's confidence in her adequacy to the position. Two years later the Massachusetts legislature empowered the corporation of pro- prietors to hold real estate to the amount of ten thousand dollars and personal estate to the amount of ten thousand dollars, to be devoted exclusively to the cause of education. Succeed- ing acts swiftly increased these sums. Miss Lyon's presence at Norton helped start the 192 THE LIFE OF IVIARY LYON machinery of academic routine ; in these initial weeks she planned there for quiet study by her- self, and there again and again in the two years and a half that ensued, she returned for con- sultation. But the great work of that fall and winter at Amherst was to plan for the embodiment of her own thought. Its different phases related themselves to each other, and out of broken arcs emerged a clear luminous round. All the drafts that she had drawn and altered, all the sheets that she had written and burned in her toils for the foundation of Ipswich Seminary, counted now. Her policies were hers, not her counselors'. She understood to a nicety when to concede and when to stand firm, and she had the courage to trust her own judgment. After- wards men like President Hitchcock looked back and marveled at the sagacity with which she sometimes withstood "the advice of wise and judicious friends." So inevitably did time prove her right, that, as one of their number said later, the trustees grew afraid to oppose her decisions. "I have much stronger desires to do some- BREAKING GROUND 193 thing towards establishing some general prin- ciples on female education than to accomplish much myself," she wrote on the eve of her ad- venture. The words crowd into a sentence the enduring import of her work. "Beyond any woman I ever knew," Professor William Tyler of Amherst College declared at the fiftieth anniversary of Mount Holyoke, " [she was] a woman of ideas and principles, and she be- came the founder of this institution simply as a means of incorporating and perpetuating them." Her policies shaped themselves toward three main ends : perpetually to secure to young women, on the same terms as it was provided for young men, a training that should fit them likewise honorably to serve society ; to equalize so far as might be their opportunity for this training and for the work to which it fitted them ; and to do these things now. She asked for " a fund to be committed to an independent, self-perpetuating board of trustees, known to the churches as faithful, re- sponsible men not as a proprietary invest- ment, but as a free offering, leaving them no way for an honorable retreat from their trust. 194 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON and binding them with solemn responsibilities to hundreds and thousands of donors, who have committed their sacred charities to their con- scientious fidelity. Give to a literary institu- tion, on this principle, an amount of property sufficient to be viewed as an object of great importance, and it is almost impossible to ex- tinguish its vital life by means of adversity." At the start she carried but one man's judgment on this point of free gifts. A member of the advis- ory committee proposed a compromise in the form of a neat little scheme for scholarships ; by contributing two hundred and fifty dollars in whole, half, or quarter shares, the one or more givers were to be entitled to send a student at fifteen dollars a year less than the regular terms. But in the end the committee by vote sustained Miss Lyon's objections, and agreed on unat- tached donations. After writing a friend, "This is the first attempt I have ever known of being made to advance female education by public beneficence," perhaps she was not* altogether surprised that people appeared a little slow in grasping her idea. The plant, thus provided by and held in trust BREAKING GROUND 195 for society, was designed to have an equipment better than that of the best private schools, and to furnish a large number of students with a home and facilities for intellectual work. Its teachers were to hold salaried positions under appointment by trustees, and its student body was to be strictly limited to " adult young ladies at an age when they are called upon by their parents to judge for themselves to a very great extent, and when they can select a spot con- genial to their taste." "Any provision in an in- stitution like this for younger misses must be a public loss far greater than the individual good," declared Miss Lyon. None of the customary favors were to be granted "to any particular place or to any particular portion of the com- munity except as the immediate vicinity must, of necessity, be more benefited than those more distant." "The character of the young ladies who shall become members of this Seminary the first year," she audaciously informed the public, " will be of great importance to the prosperity of the institution itself, and to the cause of female education. Those who use their influ- 196 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ence in making out the number will sustain no unimportant responsibility. It is very desira- ble that the friends of this cause should con- sider the real design of founding this institution before they use their influence to induce any of their friends and acquaintances to avail themselves of its privileges." The education to be supplied on this founda- tion naturally related itself " to the wants of the great mass of the community rather than of a few families. ... A female seminary adapted particularly to the wants of the great mass of the respectable common people would be well adapted, if not the best adapted, to the wants of the most genteel families in our cities, but the reverse would not probably be true." It must also be a growing education. For perma- nence, by Mary Lyon's definition, consists riot only in "perpetual vitality," but also in "con- tinual prosperity and usefulness." She was too wise to indulge in much specification. Know- ing her, one recognizes how sincere and vital was the one rule she laid down : the training here given would aim at an all-round womanhood, physically, mentally, spiritually developed. The BREAKING GROUND 197 new school was to be perpetually Christian, though it aligned itself with no denomination, and according to the programme advanced by the committee, it was " to have every advantage which the state of education in this country will allow." When she tried to give a closer definition of its intellectual point of departure, she found her- self hampered by the lack of any acknowledged standard in women's training. "A long list of branches to be taught," she wrote, "can be no standard at all. For, if so, a contemplated manual-labor school to be established in one of the less improved of the western states, whose prospectus we chanced to notice some two or three years since, would stand higher than most of our New England colleges." To the semi- naries at Troy, Hartford, and Ipswich she turned to make herself understood. Most in- telligent people knew about one of them, and in rural New England Ipswich's fame had no rival. The new seminary was announced as beginning at the point of culture where they then stood. " Of course there will be room for a continued advancement, ' ' she affirmed. "But 198 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON at the commencement ... it is to adopt the same high standard of mental discipline [as Ipswich Seminary]; the same slow, thorough, patient manner of study; the same systematic and extensive course of solid branches." "To meet public, not private wants," to serve the many, not the few, the life within these walls must befitted closely to the life with- out ; the academic must be made to further the uses of the big busy world. Over and over again she reiterated that the education here to be given was for service. " It is designed to culti- vate the missionary spirit among its pupils," declares the committee's second circular, im- mediately defining this use of the word mission- ary; "that they should live for God and do something." Into memory leaps Carlyle's im- perative, voiced in the same decade : " Produce ! Produce ! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesi- mal fraction of a product, produce it in God's name." But the only chance for unmarried women to " do something," other than domestic labor, factory-work, dressmaking, or millinery, was to teach, and for that few were fitted. Mary Lyon reached out to grasp for more of them a BREAKING GROUND 199 share in the world's work. She asked Chris- tian people to invest money in their training, picturing the Protestant church in America, for two hundred years a great social force iden- tified with the larger interests of humanity, founding colleges and theological seminaries to secure men fitted to its patriotic uses, but still saying to women, " We need not your services." In all this she uttered no pronouncement against the institutions of society. Most women, she thought, would marry, as they had always done, and marriage in that generation gave them plenty to do. But, for the majority, between girlhood and marriage fell years of waiting which were years of idleness. It appeared to her no disadvantage if they taught less than a lifetime; for this women had been given versatility. After marriage they would uphold their successors, and she commented on the benefits accruing to the public schools from such a "circulating system." The culture of mind and heart which would fit them to be- come good teachers, would also make them good mothers and useful members of society. Men talked a great deal about the "power of 200 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON WOMAN," seeming to prefer her in a native or wild state, where such training as she had came to her as a result of the natural attritions of liv- ing. Goodness sufficed this creature. She might happily possess physical charm, too, but it was thought unsafe to tinker with her mind. Mary Lyon was inclined to say little about "power" and less about "woman," but with all her soul she believed in women and in the necessity for their education. Educated women, she declared, " exert a power over society which cannot be exerted by mere goodness without intellectual strength." The question of mental capacity she seems not to have argued at all ; matters beyond the reach of words to modify always failed to draw her fire, and the hottest disputant may well have perceived an element of the ludicrous in trying to press the point against the person of such an antagonist. She believed in education for the common uses of humanity. It would help girls to face life more squarely ; it would give women poise, en- franchisement of spirit, setting them above the tyranny of vicissitude and circumstance. She had seen many of her Ipswich students in homes BREAKING GROUND 201 of their own, and had "noticed with peculiar interest the cultivated and good common sense, the correct reasoning, the industry and perse- verance, the patience, meekness, and gentleness of many of them." She wished that men could see these women and compare them with others, untrained, but similarly placed. She thought that then they would realize that the money ex- pended on their education had not been " thrown away." "Would it not be a less evil," she queried, "for the farmers and mechanics through the land, who are to spend all their lives in laboring to support their families, to have scanty stores of learning than for their wives, who must train up the children, to be thus scantily furnished .?" We have a jocular catch of the street, " No- thing is too good for an American." That every person has a right to a chance at the best de- fines the essentially democratic point of view, and Miss Lyon saw clearly that in a democratic country the road to highest usefulness ought to be as widely open to women as it was to men. Therefore the best education must no longer re- main the perquisite of rich girls or even of the 202 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON well-to-do. "I wish," she wrote a friend, "the same interest could be excited to extend female education to the common walks of life that exists with regard to male education." Of an- other she questioned : " Do not many value our highest female seminaries according to their expenses ? Is it not popular, or rather gratify- ing, to young ladies to attend expensive sem- inaries when perhaps their brothers would rather glory in being able to pursue their stud- ies at a moderate expense ? Is there not a general feeling that female education must be expensive, and those who cannot bear the ex- pense must do without it ? And is not this one reason why ladies are so much more aristocra- tic than gentlemen and why their aristocracy is founded on so much lower and more despicable principles.^" To republicanize women's education meant to lower the price, and only the application of men's methods made it possible to do this while bettering the quality. " How moderate are the charges in our colleges compared with the real expense of the privileges!" cried Miss Lyon. Hence, as a natural entail to society ownership, BREAKING GROUND 203 the new seminary advertised reduction of ex- pense. "Such a reduction could not, indeed, be expected to meet the wants of the more needy and dependent," remarked the founder. What it did attempt to do was to put within the reach of the great majority of " industrious and en- terprising" Americans, advantages which even the wealthy could not then command. "We hope and expect that it will be like our Colleges," runs the committee's circular, "so valuable that the rich will be glad to avail themselves of its benefits, and so economical that people in very moderate circumstances may be equally and as fully accommodated." Against only two kinds of young women did Miss Lyon discrim- inate : " harmless cumberers of the ground," as she called some who, she also said, might be personally very dear ; and those " whose highest ambition is to be qualified to amuse a friend in a vacant hour." Her declaration that the buildings should house the whole student body on identical terms, together with her plans for lowering ex- pense, met with opposition which will appear more particularly later. Again she triumphed. 204 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON to write, "The principle of entire equality among the pupils is to be adopted. The charges will be the same to all without reference to their means. Whatever of favor in this respect they receive will come to them not as an individual charity, demanding individual gratitude, but through the medium of a public institution, founded by the liberality of the Christian com- munity, not for their sakes as individuals, but for the sake of the children and youth of our country who must come successively under their care." These measures looking toward the object, the manner, and the means of women's educa- tion, were permanent policies. Beneath them all lies one fundamental and coherent recogni- tion : the social enterprise is a company having two partners. Both need to work, both need training to work well, and both return to so- ciety interest on any investment in their educa- tion. Mary Lyon was not in the business of founding a single school. " The ultimate result to be anticipated from the establishment of the proposed seminary is to encourage the benevo- lent public to build up and sustain literary in- BREAKING GROUND 205 stitutions for the benefit of females, and to pro- mote education among adults." The fact of the multiplication of such schools concerned her less than the method. Here, with her genius for hitting the bull's eye, she laid chief stress. A great national need winged her words. Should this need be met by public or by private enterprise ? In determining the means to be used to supply trained women for public service, she saw "the most important result of this grand experiment on the benevo- lence of the Christian community. ... It is testing the great question of duty on this sub- ject. This constitutes its chief importance. It is like signing the Declaration of Independence : the battles were still to be fought, but the ques- tion of independence was then settled." The difficulty lay in getting independence declared, but she never failed twice at the same point. The ways she took to overcome popular indifference form another group of policies, which she frankly ticketed as temporary, and whose duplication in other institutions she did not necessarily recommend. Promises of per- maiience, of better equipment, of more scholarly 206 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON work, had not moved society to action ; " the great and honorable among the good" had not turned aside to help her. But there are ways of getting at people on their own level, and draw- ing them up to where they can see further. " I was convinced," she wrote Miss Beecher in reply to an exhortation from the latter, "that, to give the first impulse to this work, something must be presented which is more tangible and of real, though of less value, and be made to stand out in bold relief. For this purpose we have chosen the reduction of expenses, as com- pared with other large seminaries not aided by the public. Every step we take proves it a good selection." In effecting this "bold relief," she proposed that students and teachers should join with the community at large. Such a com- bination would relieve the public of any sus- picion that it was being bled. Two devices she evolved: a plan for securing teachers who would take part of their pay in the joy of the work and of the good they could do, and a pro- ject for cooperative housework. At no points did she suffer more criticism and misunder- standing. Miss Grant at first opposed both de- BREAKING GROUND 207 vices. Yet Miss Lyon was probably right in her belief that she could not have succeeded without them. Whether one regard their adoption as evidencing a true or a faulty judgment, it may be enlightening to press inquiry into her exact attitude toward the two measures. In her view, they served the community as a guaranty of good faith on the part of the man- agement. " When any new mode of benevolent operations is commenced, it is generally de- manded by those who contribute, and some- times to a degree almost unreasonable, that the plan should bear striking marks of self- denial and economy. In obtaining the funds for the proposed seminary, it is necessary to meet this demand as far as possible. If funds for a second institution of the kind or a third should be raised, perhaps nothing of the kind would be necessary. No mode of economy is, however, to be adopted which will at all interfere with the greatest improvement of the pupils." In specifying that the housework would be done by all the students, sharing equally, she fur- nished those for whose money she asked with " a kind of pledge," as she phrases it, " or rather 208 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON illustration, of what is meant by self-denial and economy in the institution." Having adopted it as an expedient, her fertile brain swiftly found in the arrangement much promise. Hurriedly penned pages fill out the lines of print. She even came to write, "The main object of this proposed plan is not to re- duce the expense." While a slight reduction, she thinks, will indeed be effected, the low cost of hired service subtracts from the argument all conclusive weight. Certain other intentions are disclaimed. It is not a scheme whereby a stu- dent may partially earn her way. " Could the avails amount to any considerable sum unless this business should be made the leading object, instead of study ?"" Would it not be better for a girl to take all her time for a year or two, earn what she can, and then study ? She has no faith in any of the "manual-labor" schemes by which people propose to have women support themselves at school, "such as raising silk, at- tending to grapevines, spinning, weaving, etc., etc. I should expect," she writes, "that any attempt of the kind would become a bill of ex- pense, rather than an income." About the car- BREAKING GROUND 209 rying out of the plan, "there shall be nothing which will seem like productive labor, lest it should tend eventually to cultivate a mean and mercenary spirit among the members of the school." While still at Ipswich, she writes Miss White: "After the acquaintancie I have had with many cultivated and interesting families whose daughters performed in a systematic manner all their own labor, I have the greatest confidence that a system might be formed by which all the domestic work of a family of one hundred could be performed by the young la- dies themselves and in the most perfect order without any sacrifice of improvement in know- ledge or refinement." Such girls "would not stoop to receive a definite number of cents daily or weekly," but "with the utmost cheer- fulness and dignity" they would do their share for the sake of the school. Explicitly she declares that it is no part of the plan to teach " domestic work" ; that should be done by the mothers at home. Nor does it de- sign to affect the distinctions of society, par- ticularly the relations between mistress and maid. On this account there must be all stu- 210 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON dent work or none; mixing scholars and ser- vants is injudicious. Indirectly, however, it may exert "a happy influence " on social distinctions by preparing the students "to bear with true dignity the various and extreme changes'* which fall to the lot of American women. She goes on to say positively : " The adoption of a feature like this in an institution which aims to be better endowed than any existing female seminary in the country, must give it an attitude of noble independence which can scarcely fail to exert an elevating influence on its members.'* By freeing the establishment from " the will of hired domestics," the arrangement will promote the health, improvement, and happiness of the students. The exercise will be good for them; they will not become estranged from the ordi- nary conditions of home life ; and they will be relieved ^iX^om that servile dependence on com- mon domestics to which young ladies as mere boarders in a large establishment are often subject, to their great inconvenience." The de- vice will give to the whole round of life a tone ^mutual helpfulness and service. It will act as a "moral sieve" to keep out the self-centred BREAKING GROUND 211 and to bring in those, "whether more or less wealthy," whose thoughts and wishes go be- yond themselves. She questions whether it may not do away with much of the prejudice exist- ing among ordinary people against the educa- tion of women. Yet it is, after all, "a mere appendage, and not an essential feature of the proposed institution. If experiment should prove the plan to be impracticable or inexpe- dient (which, however, we do not expect), do- mestics could be introduced to perform the family labor, and the change would not at all affect the essential and more important fea- tures of the school." Perhaps only a thinker bred in the idealistic New England that shaped Ralph Waldo Em- erson could have conceived quite such an ac- companiment to the higher education. " I had rather stretch my arm or rise from my chair than be served by one who does it not from love," wrote Emerson at the beginning of the next decade. Only a very sane idealist could have made it work. Low salaries bore a much closer relationship to tuition than did " domestic work" to the cost 212 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON of living. " The charges to the pupils for board and tuition will be placed at cost, without rent for buildings or furniture," promised the spon- sors of the enterprise. To start the ball rolling Miss Lyon dared not ask too much, lest she get nothing. People must be broken gently to new notions. So she issued her first call merely for the production of the plant itself: buildings and equipment. On the academic side these included "a large seminary hall, recitation- rooms, a library and reading-room, chemical- room, etc., . . . and also library and appa- ratus." "Additional funds for other purposes would be highly valuable to the institution," people read in the printed pamphlet setting forth the matter, " but nothing farther is pro- posed in the present effort." Given the necessity for "moderate" tuition, the only alternative to endowed chairs is slender-salaried teachers. Against this Miss Beecher, as well as Miss Grant, protested. Miss Lyon was setting a dangerous precedent ; good schools waited on good teachers and good teachers on adequate pay. She was deflecting salaries in the wrong direction, they ought BREAKING GROUND 213 to go up, not down. Otherwise teaching would remain, as Miss Beecher vigorously declared, " the resort of the dull, stupid, and shiftless that can do nothing else." The profession could not be sustained by a missionary spirit. She feared Miss Lyon was "starting wrong," for all plans which tended to sink the price of tuition would probably be discountenanced by the best edu- cators. Her counter-proposals were not likely to commend themselves to a democratic person. She suggested getting around the diflficulty in one of two ways ; by charging a high price for tuition, with the understanding that a part or the whole would be remitted to all who could not pay, or by setting a medium price and re- quiring those who could afford it to pay rent, the rest living rent-free. Miss Lyon wrote Miss Beecher, "I thank you for your interest in my plans, expressed in the sincere way of criticism on one point." Both to her and to Miss Grant she disclaimed any in- tention of establishing a precedent. The ques- tion of salary was a legitimate consideration for a woman, though on her own list of motives for teaching it stood neither first nor second. 214 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON As usual, she had looked at the matter from all sides, and any possible loss the plan might en- tail seemed to her a less imperative issue than the present need of bringing into existence an example of the sort of thing that she had in mind. The following passages taken from let- ters to both women clearly reveal her attitude : "While the public are so little prepared to contribute liberally to an object like this, may it not be expedient that those who first enter the field as laborers should receive as a reward so little of 'filthy lucre' that they may be able to commend themselves to every man's conscience, even to those whose minds are narrow and whose hearts are not much enlarged by Chris- tian philanthropy ? If such a course should be desirable at the commencement, how many years or how many scores of years must elapse before it would be nolongerneedful, time alone can decide." "Neither do we consider it necessary that other institutions should adopt the same stand- ard, or that this institution should certainly abide by it evermore, though at present it is essential to our success." BREAKING GROUND 215 "I do not mean to ask any other one con- nected with the institution to make such sacri- fices as I can cheerfully make. This may not be necessary for my successor, but it is neces- sary in my case, at least for a few years." Miss Lyon found herself in the position of a modern manufacturer launching a new pro- duct, and with as keen a business sense she hit on much the same method. Here was a new brand of education for which she must create a demand. If at first she set on it a high or even a normal price, many people whose pa- tronage she wished to secure w^ould continue either to go without or to get their own or their daughters' training at neighborhood academies or at private schools. These sold an article neither so good in kind nor of so high a grade, but until a practical demonstration of the differ- ence could be given purchasers would be con- tent with it. To introduce the new education she proposed to put the price below par for a while, and with intimate knowledge of the un- selfish proclivities of women, she asked the first demonstrators to give a part of their services. This, then, was her proposition: to found 216 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON an institution of. the highest available culture which should fit young women for usefulness ; democratic ; independent both of the life of a single teacher and of the fluctuations of the money-market; the resource neither of slen- der-pursed gentility nor of financial promoters; enduring, as were colleges for men, "from generation to generation." It reads naturally to-day. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, the conception outlined a gigantic un- dertaking. The women of a locality which expected no direct returns had paid the antici- pated expense of advertising. With their money she put the idea before the general public, whose attitude was "yet to be determined by fair experiment." CHAPTER VI THE FOUNDING OF MOUNT HOLYOKE " When we decide that it is best to perform a certain duty we should expect success in it, if it is not utterly impossible," Miss Lyon had said at Ipswich. The next three years of her life passed into a practical illustration of her creed. Most founders of educational institutions have supplied capital from their own pockets. Be- yond what were stored in brain and body, she had but the scantiest resources. The problem which confronted her was how to bring a suffi- cient number of indifferent people, possessed of more or less money, to recognize the need and practicability of her enterprise. "If the funds can once be raised," she wrote, "the in- stitution may live and grow and prove its own character. The question of raising funds is the great and diffircult one, which outweighs almost all others." The quality of the men whom she asked to 218 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON help her appears in their acceptance of her de- sign. They were broad-minded persons, capable of according hospitality, as is noted in the first memoir, to " the complicated plans of a woman so unlike all other women they had ever met." They were also gentlemen of daring. It was a necessary quality of men concerned in what Miss Beecher characterized forty years later as an attempt "to gain perpetuity by endowments for an institution which should secure as high intellectual training for the daughters as for the sons of a family." Professor Hitchcock wrote in 1861 : "To be its advocate in those early days when most men treated the project as a quixotic dream was quite a different thing from what it is now, when the plan has had the prestige of twenty-five years of successful trial, and the name of its founder is enrolled high among the wise and eminent benefactors of the race." Before it could gain much headway the pro- ject must be fitted to " a local habitation and a name." For the former, various propositions were made by various people. The trustees of Abbot Academy at Andover offered *' to change MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 219 the character of the prosperous institution under their direction," and to erect buildings for dormitories and commons. Miss Lyon's own inclinations turned to the "genial soil" of the Connecticut, and "a small country village where," as she said, "the institution will rise up and grow under the protection of an ex- tended population rather than of one town." Both decisions she left to the committee. In- vestigation on their part narrowed the range of choice to South Deerfield, Sunderland, and South Hadley. All three were in western Mas- sachusetts and all offered large subscriptions to secure the award. No railroad then threw the balance of favor to any one of them. The only lines of track in New England joined Bos- ton with Worcester, Lowell, and Providence, not for several months yet to be opened for traffic. The decisive meeting was scheduled for Jan- uary the eighth, 1835. Though etiquette for- bade her presence at the committee's deliber- ations, its members wished Miss Lyon to be accessible for ^consultation. The mercury was below zero at Amherst, and it lacked three or 220 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON four hours of sunrise, when she and Professor Hitchcock, each wrapped in a buffalo robe, took seats in the stage for Worcester. Near the following midnight Mr. Felt came to tell her that South Deerfield had been negatived. The next day saw South Hadley chosen. In April a name was selected. Seminary came naturally. The term was then non-com- mittal, popularly used to denote a school of any grade. The Encyclopaedia Americana of 1836 ^ employs the word interchangeably with college, and in President Humphrey's usage two years later it covers both Sunday Schools and the most important colleges for men.^ Professor Hitchcock had already proffered the reading public a full-fed mouthful of pure Greek. Pangynaskean Seminary conveyed to the in- tellectual a reminder of that strongly stressed development of the whole woman. But most people do not listen when a man speaks Greek. Mr. Hitchcock's readers inclined to laugh, not pleasantly, but in derision. Mount Holyoke ' Vol. xi, p. 255. ^ Great Britain, France, and Belgium: A Short Tour in 18S5 (published 1838), by Heman Humphrey, President of Amherst College, pp. 277-287. MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 221 sentinels the east bank of the Connecticut River near South Hadley, and at the christening the committee voted to borrow a name of the moun- tain. There are fashions in words as in the cut of sleeves. Male and female went out of polite usage several decades ago. When Mary Lyon lived they moved in the best circles both in literature and life. Troy, Hartford, Ipswich: they were all "female seminaries" glorying in the word that falls quaintly on modern ears. Even so late as in the early sixties Vassar was incorporated as a "Female College." Mount Holyoke Female Seminary its very title breathed triumph. For when, on the eleventh of February, 1836, the Governor signed a char- ter empowering the trustees to hold property to the value of a hundred thousand dollars, its founder knew that the kingdom of letters had been divided. Long before that date Miss Lyon and her counsel had delivered the cause to judgment. "Conduct proves feeling. People will always give their money for that which they value most," she had been wont to say, and she would have her venture rooted in broad affections. 222 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "an object of delightful remembrance." Her wide acquaintance aided advertisement, old friends and new converts zealously scattering pamphlets and circulars. Agents traversed New England explaining the project and booking subscriptions. Reverend Roswell Hawks, col- league pastor at Cummington, was first among the ministers to engage in this work ; in one way and another he served Mount Holyoke un- weariedly for twenty years. Most of the solici- tors only temporarily relinquished their charges. One devoted a few weeks to canvassing a re- gion where he had influence, while the profes- sors of Amherst College supplied his pulpit. Increasingly through these years New England felt that tightening of the money market which led to the panic of 1837, and even promises came hard. Once Mr^ Hawks traveled for three months without getting a cent. Another solici- tor, shut up by a three days' snowstorm, wrote, *' Were not the times such as they are, 't would be pleasant to raise money for this grand enter- prise." But the campaign could not wait on time or opportunity ; the vocabulary of its com- mander held but one word Now ! MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 223 When the lieutenants faced failure, she took the field herself. Her green velvet money-bag grew to be a familiar sight through the country- side. "I wander about without a home," she wrote her mother and sister, " scarcely knowing one week where I shall be the next." A letter to Miss Grant dated at South Had- ley details succinctly one of these swift dashes from place to place. " I have not entirely given up going to New York this autumn. I am think- ing of going directly to New York from Boston. But it is almost impossible for me to predict my own movements. I spent last Wednesday night at Belchertown, Thursday night at Barre, Friday night at Amherst, and yesterday re- turned here. I leave to-morrow on an excur- sion around on the hills, for the sake of convers- ing with some individuals about our enterprise. I expect to get around to Belchertown the last of the week on my way to Boston. ... I am going to Boston to endeavor to find out whether it is safe for us to attempt anything there this autumn. If it seems expedient, I shall write to Mr. Hawks, and he will go on and make the attempt." 224 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON She traveled much with Mr. Hawks or an- other solicitor ; often a member of the commit- tee took her to call on an influential man whose interest they wished to enlist; sometimes she spoke to mixed audiences in district school- houses among the Franklin County hills. Her words flowed as easily in a stage-coach as in a parlor. The road between Boston and the Connecticut knew her so well that the time came when she could not go ten miles without a greeting from some fellow- passenger who, by naming, introduced her to the rest. They had all heard of her, and questions followed. In these years she came often to Ashfield, re- lying on Squire White to set forward her affairs in many a kindly way. " When I am wandering about, it is pleasant and consoling to think that under the roof of your dear home I can have a resting place when I need," she wrote Miss Hannah White. They were busy breathing- spots. In the east sitting-room of "White Homestead," the Squire's granddaughter has turned an inward eye back upon those far years when she was a child in the old house. " Often and often have I seen grandfather and Miss MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 225 Lyon sitting in this very room, a table, its leaves opened, drawn near the fireplace ; papers, plans of the seminary spread out upon it ; she on one side and he on the other. Sometimes they worked over them until after midnight." She paints a pleasant picture. One can almost see the fine portly Squire, his strong but kindly face moulded into thoughtful lines, and op- posite him the eager absorbed woman in her simple well-cut green gown, a bit of lace at the throat, firelight and candlelight shining on her clear skin and picking out the red-gold lights in her curly auburn hair whose generous coils glint through the meshes of the white turban ,that she always wore indoors. In the morning she would be up and away by stage, or the Squire would carry her where she wished to go. Early she had written him of her plans, as to one upon whose understanding she could rely; he gave largely and he influenced others to give. The care of her property, long since of her own earning, was in his hands, and we find her writing intelligently, with apparent knowledge of his investments, now and then counting on his liberality to advance on what he might not 226 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON be able, before she wanted the money, to con- vert into cash. Every cent of personal ex- pense and postage, the latter no inconsiderable sum, she paid herself, and in one way and an- other poured her savings freely into Mount Holyoke's till. In view of the small salaries paid in the best private schools for girls, it is surprising to find Miss Lyon herself among the largest donors to the project. But her name ap- pears on no subscription paper. The books in which donations are set down make significant reading. One of them records about twenty-seven thousand dollars sub- scribed by a few more than eighteen hundred people in ninety-one towns. The largest single sums entered here are two of a thousand dollars each; the smallest, three of six cents. Several two hundred and fifty dollar entries appear, and many of one hundred. But much is set down in fifty cents, single dollars, twos, threes, and fives. Something of the toilsomeness of the quest speaks in the faded ink of these pages. There are other lists. Between the lines one reads the programme of Mary Lyon's days ; up at all hours, out in all weathers, matching dif- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 227 ficulties and disappointments with an indomit- able will, facing rebuffs with irrepressible faith. The life brought wonder, dismay, and fear to the hearts of her friends. They begged her to look to her health, and wrought small protec- tions against the exposures of winter travel. But from the thing which she had set herself to do hardship could not turn her aside. The woman who, coming to close quarters with life, wrote to a friend, *' Our personal comforts are delightful but not essential," wrote also, and the words voice no heroic dream of inexperi- ence, they rise out of the thickest of the fight for Mount Holyoke, " Had I a thousand lives, I could sacrifice them all in suffering and hard- ship for its sake. Did I possess the greatest fortune, I could readily relinquish it all, and become poor, and more than poor, if its pros- perity should demand it." Mount Holyoke was all in Mary Lyon's head. Nothing existed to which she could point and say, "See! It works!" People had inclined to think that women's education could be promoted only "by local feelings, by party spirit, or by expectations of personal advan- 228 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON tage." "The plan is too great," some said. Though religious feeling operated powerfully in foundings for men, the attempt to apply to women's concerns the slogan "For God and Country," to which had risen Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Williams, Amherst, and most of their fellows, struck a good many esti- mable persons as unwarranted, indelicate, and even wicked. Half a century after these diflScult years, William Seymour Tyler, appointed professor at Amherst in 1836, later a trustee of Mount Holyoke, and subsequently first president of the board of trustees of Smith College, rendered account of the reception accorded to what he termed the first of the Mount Holyoke ideas: "That of an institution with a board of trus- tees, a permanent faculty of instruction, and a fixed course of studies, with suitable buildings and grounds, with proper endowments and permanent funds, with library and laborato- ries and apparatus and collections. . . . This whole idea, and every particular that I have enumerated, was disputed, repudiated, ridi- culed, before this institution was founded. But MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 229 now the idea and all the particulars are settled principles and established facts, and the credit of settling them belongs to Mount Holyoke Seminary. "The objections to this idea of equalizing the educational advantages of the two sexes j were many and various, and not always con- \ sistent with each other or consonant with the courtesy due to the gentler sex. It was an inno- vation uncalled for, unheard of until now since the foundation of the world, and unthought of now except by a few strong-minded women and radical men, who would level all distinctions and overturn the foundations of the family, of society, of the church, and of the state. It was unnatural, unphilosophical, unscriptural, un- practical and impracticable, unfeminine and anti- Christian ; in short all the epithets in the dictionary that begin with un and in and anti were hurled against and heaped upon it. Had not Paul said, ' I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence; and if they will learn anything let them ask their husbands at home' ? It would be the entering wedge to woman's preaching, 230 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON practicing, lecturing, voting, ruling, buying and selling, doing everything that men do and per- haps doing it better than men do, and so overstocking all the trades and professions, hincillae lacrymae ! ... At the same time it was insisted that such occupations as mathe- matics and philosophy were not suited to the tastes or the capacities of women ; they did n't want them and would n't undertake them ; and if they did, they would ruin their health, impair their gentleness, delicacy, modesty, and refine- ment, unsex them, and unfit them for their proper sphere. In short, it was like the famous logico-illogical borrowed kettle. First : it never was borrowed ; second : it had been returned ; third: it was broken when it was borrowed; and fourth : it was whole when it was returned. "Miss Lyon herself did not escape severe criticism. Her pupils and associates loved and admired her. All who knew her honored her. But it was not then the fashion to praise her. She had not yet been canonized. She was well- nigh a martyr, but not yet a saint. She was her- self strong-minded, they said. In person she was no fairy. In manner she was not one of the MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 231 graces. She was enthusiastic, quixotic, vision- ary, ambitious. Her masculine intellect was no judge of woman's capacities. Her robust con- stitution was no measure of ordinary women's health and strength and powers of endurance. It was unbecoming her sex to solicit subscrip- tions in person, to address public meetings, to ride all over the country with Mr. Hawks, and ask for sixpenny contributions." Even Miss Lyon's friends remonstrated against these departures from what they termed good taste. But Miss Lyon "insisted that it was better to violate taste than not to have the work done." "What do I that is wrong .^" she demanded. "I ride in the stage- coach or cars without an escort. Other ladies do the same. I visit a family where I have been previously invited, and the minister's wife or some leading woman calls the ladies together to see me, and I lay our object before them. Is that wrong ? I go with Mr. Hawks and call on a gentleman of known liberality at his own house, and converse with him about our enter- prise. What harm is there in that ? If there is no harm in doing these things once, what harm 232 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON is there in doing them twice, thrice, or even a dozen times ? My heart is sick, my soul is pained with this empty gentility, this genteel nothingness. I am doing a great work. I can- not come down." Naturally independent, she never tried to be queer. "In deviating from others, be as inof- fensive as possible," she said : " excite no need- less opposition." But in matters of moment, where she knew she was right, people must con- form to her, not she to them. One of her closest friends wrote: "She made the impression on every one with whom she had anything to do, from the common day-laborer to the president of a college, that if she set herself to do any- thing, it was of no use to oppose her." Three things, as she had once recommended to stu- dents, she now determined "cheerfully to en- dure," the " opposition and ridicule of ene- mies to the cause" ; "the imprudent measures and misrepresentations of those who profess to be inquiring after the truth" ; and " the discour- agements and cold-heartedness of real friends." To her the goal looked large, " possibly greater,' * one man suggested, "than to some others." MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 233 The words brought her no dismay. "The ob- ject of this institution," she said, "penetrates too far into futurity and takes in too broad a view to discover its claims to the passing mul- titude. We appeal in its behalf to wise men who can judge what we say. We appeal to those who can venture as pioneers in the great work of renovating a world. Others may stand waiting for the great multitude to go forward." But pioneering seems a bit reckless to most people. So many thousands of dollars was much to put into an untried scheme. "You may yourself make the thing go admirably," wrote another man ; " your successor may not be equally skilled, and there may be failure." It was a staunch supporter who warned her lest the wings of her imagination be carrying her a little too high. Fortified as she was against her friends, neither the indifference of ministers' associations nor the gibes of sarcastic editors could turn her from the dream on which her heart was set. Criticism did not take her by surprise. Misunderstanding did not daunt her. " I suppose you have heard that I was endea- voring to establish a manual-labor school for 234 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ladies," she wrote Miss White. "I have heard so." The calm centre of the storm, she preserved an integrity alike of body and of soul. More humor went into the making of Mount Hol- yoke than the world knows. " I shall write again soon and tell you some of the ludicrous things I am trying to do," she scribbled Miss Grant from an overnight stopping-place. Her merry heart sucked the venom from many a bitter episode, and left it powerless to poison mem- ory. Through shadow and through sunshine she turned a friendly face to all her kind. A solicitor who traveled with her for weeks but once saw her discouraged, and then only for a few minutes. She never sapped her energy by worry or wasted force in irritation. Quite sim- ply she could say, as she did say three or four years later, *' I learned twenty years ago never to get out of patience." Neither man nor wo- man succeeded in drawing her into altercation ; she would argue for her plans fairly and vigor- ously, but she would neither "talk back" nor allow another to do it for her. In the last months of this stormy session with MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 235 the public purse a particularly virulent article appeared in a so-called Religious Magazine. It aroused Professor Hitchcock to take up the cudgels in print. The editor-author believed in leaving a "young lady under the care of her natural guardians with all the influences of home clustering around her." But allusions to a "Protestant nunnery" and "servile labor," sarcastic personalities, and denunciations of women teachers as "masculine," could not de- flect Miss Lyon from the way of highest dig- nity. Pins in the hands of little men might prick, but she was too big to notice them. Mr. Hitchcock gave her his article, to be published or suppressed as she should choose. "That was the last I ever saw of it," he said. A simple faith was her working hypothesis of life. "Faith's business is to make things real," she said. More closely than most Chris- tians she acted on what she believed. Prayer was a habit with her, no ceaseless petition- ing, but a constant intercourse ; and she asked others to pray ; particularly she believed in the force of her mother's prayers. " Mary will not give up," her mother told an Ashfield neighbor. 236 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "She just walks the floor and says over and over again, when all is so dark, * Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass. Women must be educated they must be!'" A habit of prayer and a sense of humor forge invincible armor. Meanwhile many forces were working for her. The very articles that provoked adjectives like "chimerical" and "wicked" met eyes of dis- criminating intelligence. The nicety of empha- sis which made New England a citadel of intelr lectual conservatism and gave to its concessions a compelling weight rendered it vulnerable to argument. Mary Lyon appealed to the com- mon sense, the intelligence, the spirit of fair play in New Englanders. And the deep heart of New England answered her, beating, as it has nearly always beat, in the right place. Newspapers of the time noted in Northampton a " large and respectable " meeting of ladies and gentlemen from all parts of the county who gathered in the Edwards Church and, decid- ing that "females" had not yet received their due share of public attention, proceeded to put themselves on record as favoring the new pro- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 237 ject. But the centres of population, gallantly as they now and then responded, did not bear the brunt of financing the venture. Mount Holyoke was won in those countless unrecorded assem- blies in country churches and in district school- houses, where audiences saw the strange sight of a woman sitting in the teacher's chair, and paid her the compliment of going away thought- ful. A minister more than one was often present introduced Miss Lyon to these meet- ings. *' She did not need anybody to speak for her," a man said after one of them. Her ad- dress was as alien to common usage as was her presence. She had that directness of method which is the prerogative of greatness. There was in it no circumlocution, no confusion. Reli- gion she made a very simple vital experience, "It is you and I and God, nothing else"; the education of women, a very pressing need. She told of the new school that was being founded and offered her hearers an opportu- nity to help. A vivid quality in her speech took hold on their hearts and made her words per- sist in memory. After the span of a long life- time a man heard the echo of her voice as it 238 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON had sounded of a summer afternoon in the ears o^ a boy : " Don't think any gift too small. I ^/want the twenties [and the] fifties, but the dol- / lars and half dollars, with prayer, go a great way. We are to have prayer in the new build- ing, so let it be gifts with prayer." She spoke out of a great sincerity, and behind her words pressed the authority of her life. The plain-living, high-thinking people of New Eng- land farms and villages were not to be frightened by bogies. They knew that she knew what she was talking about. The schools at Buckland and Ashfield, the seminary at Derry and Ips- wich, reenforced her speech. Young women had come from them, not less, but more home- loving, healthy, and useful than they went. If she dreamed dreams, these hard-headed men and women, wringing meagre livings from rocky hillsides, understood very well that no- thing is more real than the stuff that dreams are made of. Their sons grew up to be editors, statesmen, preachers, presidents of colleges. They would give their daughters a chance, too. Miss Lyon made them a business proposition and they took her record as security, looking MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 239 to her to get their money's worth. One daugh- terless man, tilling a farm not over fertile and with five sons to educate, gave her a hundred dollars. Two spinster sisters living in the slen- der comfort of their time signed each for the same sum ; soon afterwards they lost their pro- perty, but rather than be denied the pleasure of fulfilling their pledges, they earned the money with their own hands. Of such gifts was Mount Holyoke built. Of course, people sometimes cruelly disap- pointed her faith. They were not usually those whose purses were most empty. The charming silver-haired lady who so graciously presides in "White Homestead" has sent the following account of an incident which is still a picture in her memory. " On one of the many occasions when, as a child, I witnessed the coming, the tarrying, and the going of Miss Lyon through the welcoming doors of this home, she arrived at early evening, unexpectedly, sure as always of a warm reception. The stage had brought her from Northampton, Amherst, or Greenfield, and she came full of expectation and enthusi- asm. Would Mr. White take her at once to 240 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON W , where, she had learned, was living a family of wealth who might give liberally for the seminary buildings then going up ? ' Supper and a good night's rest, Miss Lyon, and then my horses shall take you there.' Next morning, just as they were starting, my grandmother in her gentle way laid her hand on Miss Lyon's shoulder, saying, *Do not expect much, my dear Miss Lyon. We know the people. I fear you will not be successful.' With a beaming face Miss Lyon replied, ' Oh, I am told they are very rich and I am sure they will help liberally.' As Miss Lyon entered, on their return, I stood by my grandmother's side and saw the play of conflicting emotions over her mobile features as she grasped the arm of her friend, saying, * Yes, it is all true, just as I was told. They live in a costly house, it is full of costly things, they wear costly clothes' then drawing nearer and almost closing her eyes, she whispered with un- forgettable emphasis, 'But oh, they're little bits of folks!''' The distinctive gift of an organizer, ability to fit workers to the work, was hers in rare measure. People walked before her like open MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 241 books, casual talk yielding judgments which she seldom found cause radically to change. And it is no disparagement of the native fine- ness of her lieutenants to say that they were nobler men and women for working by her side. Dr. Humphrey, Mr. Hitchcock's predecessor in the Amherst presidency, once described Miss Lyon's influence over people as holding them in " a sort of enchanted circle ... by invisible attractions which it was hard to resist and from which very few wished to be released." Yet it must be said that she never tried to sweep others into accord with her by sheer force of her own momentum. From first to last many forwarded her plans for a time who did not see their way to continue in the work ; but when one helper fell away she found another. The ability to value and to use equipments quite foreign to her own, richly augmented her resources. Of the indefatigable Mr. Hawks she told Miss Beecher: "Whatever may be thought of my sanguine temperament, he cannot be charged with being over-zealous. But his deficiency in zeal is more than made up by his unwearied efforts, his never-ending patience and perse- 242 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON verance, his sound common sense, his careful observation of human nature, and his intimate acquaintance with New England people." She always sought skilled hands into which to commit definite duties. Her method of approach appears in the story told of her first interview with Andrew Porter. It was on a snowy day in April that she drove to Monson to acquaint one of the best business men in western Massa- chusetts with the trustees' request that he take charge of building, an oversight for which ex- perience had aptly fitted him. Mr. Porter was not at home and Miss Lvon awaited his return. During the days that passed before she spoke with him she prayed both for courage to make her request and for willingness to receive his answer. At first he verged toward refusal ; over- work had recently led to his partial withdrawal from business. She pointed out that this would give him more time, and asked that he withhold a final decision. Mrs. Porter allied herself with Miss Lyon. For three years she had desired her husband to relinquish business cares ; now she wished him to take them on " and trust the Lord for health." Eventually he accepted the com- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 243 mission, and for forty years "Deacon" Porter freely gave Mount Holyoke of his money and his time. "Deacon" Safford, a wealthy Boston manu- facturer and the largest donor to the project, was another trustee who caught his wife's en- thusiasm. He had himself cherished vague notions of more democratic education for girls. Of these he spoke to his brother-in-law, Dr. Edwards of Andover Theological Seminary, who told him that Miss Lyon was working along this line of thought. Already Mr. Safford knew her, but the pressure of other interests crowded the matter from his mind until she herself re- vived his recollections. From that time, his house became her Boston home. Wisely as she knew how to choose her aids, she commanded as well the subtler art of work- ing with them. An indefinable fusing influence went out from her. They might differ radically in opinion, they were one in loyalty. Scholars, farmers, business men, delicate and lovely wo- men lit their torches from her devotion. " It is an object that lies very near my heart," wrote Mrs. Porter of what she called, in its promise, 244 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "our beloved institution." Joseph Avery of Conway, another trustee who made the affairs of Holyoke as pressing as his private concerns, could so ill bear to see a cent of the money given it go to waste that he paid for a useless archi- tect's plan out of his own pocket, without de- creasing his large subscription. Miss Lyon her- self testified that Professor Hitchcock had been " compelled often either to give over the enter- prise or to perform labors to which few men would be competent." The blackest days of those chequered years drew on with the summer of 1836. " The times grow worse and worse," she wrote that spring. The trustees had promised to begin building when the pledges should reach the twenty-five thousand dollar mark. While pinching circum- stance deferred the date, their very caution dis- couraged confidence. " It is now more than two years since they began to talk about that school, and the building is not even commenced," cried a traveler. " Why don't they set the car- penters to work and then send their agents out to solicit funds .^" Sensing to the full the psychological value of MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 245 making a start, Miss Lyon had the previous summer thought of borrowing a few thousands on which to begin. Yet the trustees had not been idle. In March they had called for esti- mates of building, in May they had chosen a site. In July they reconsidered. To Miss Lyon's mind, guiltless of favoritism toward the spot selected, this action presaged danger. Lines of disagreement had been too sharply drawn before. "Another dark cloud seems now to be gathering over our prospects," she wrote Miss Grant, "perhaps one of the darkest that has ever hung over our enterprise, and yet I can scarcely tell why it should be so." Steadily she opposed reopening the question of location, lest it hazard all ; but she found several men so dis- satisfied with the place selected that she waived her own judgment and agreed to a special meet- ing of the building committee. At this session it was decided to call a meeting of the trus- tees. And then, with her heart full of forebodings, she went quietly away to Norton to spend the intervening days, and "to see," as she said, "how the new house comes on." The "new 246 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON house" was a dormitory which, against fears bred by its novelty, Miss Caldwell declared that Miss Lyon fairly "talked into being." Giving herself in generous thought to Wheaton, she escaped the wear and tear of conjecture about Mount Holyoke. It was never her way to an- ticipate decisions. "I do not ask you now to consider this question," she once advised a niece, " because I think it better to defer the serious consideration of important questions till they can be put into a definite shape and till the time has really arrived for considering them." By such restraints she carried without staggering a load that would have crushed an- other. Yet written to Zilpah Grant under the shadow of this threatening cloud, so bravely resisted, these rare sentences of self-revelation withdraw the veil for a moment from before the quivering intimate heart of her. "I do not know that I uniformly expect much in this world, but ere I am aware, I find myself in- dulging the prospect that the present trying cir- cumstances will be over, that in time I shall be settled down again in a pleasant field for doing good, where I shall not be constantly changing. MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 247 with no resting-place, and constantly meeting with one obstacle after another. I always fear when I find my heart thus clinging to the hope of future good." The trustees confirmed the site already chosen, but the "trying circumstances" held on tenaciously. Only a part of the contemplated building could be put up ; its completion must wait for easier times. With the cellar nearly dug, quicksand was discovered. On examina- tion, an expert pronounced the ground safe, but better a little farther back. Sixty feet from the road the digging began again. "I wish it could have gone much farther back, but this was something I could not control," wrote Miss Lyon. The authority on foundations raised a doubt about the quality of the bricks. No more could be had until they were made the next summer. A second expert reinstated the bricks in the good opinion of their purchasers. Work was going merrily when one morning, while the masons brealcfasted, the walls collapsed. " Then," said the man in charge, *' I did dread to meet Miss Lyon. Now, thought I, she will be discouraged." But as he hurried toward the 248 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ruins, she met him, smiling and exclaiming joy- ously over the workmen's escape. In the midst of these mischances the corner- stone was laid. A golden October day wrapped in the mantle of its deep content the intrepid men and women who gathered in South Hadley thus to seal their work. Some consciousness of the unique value of the occasion must have quickened their pulses, something of decorous rejoicing have looked out of their faces. Yet the day gave pause, not surcease. From it they took renewed devotion against the busy months to come. But to her who saw more than they all, whose sure-footed imagination already walked those unbuilt halls, traversing the length and breadth of them, whose eyes had peeped into room after room before one stone was set upon another, visualizing the very girls at study within them to her the day brought a draft of deep refreshment. The triumph of it thrills in her words to Zilpah Grant: "The stones and brick and mortar speak a language which vibrates through my very soul. How much thought and how much feeling have I had on this general subject in years that are MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 249 past ! And I have indeed lived to see the time when a body of gentlemen have ventured to lay the corner-stone of an edifice which will cost about fifteen thousand dollars and for an institution for females. Surely the Lord hath remembered our low estate. This will be an era in female education. The work will not stop with this institution. This enterprise may have to struggle through embarrassments for years, but its influence will be felt. It is a concession on the part of gentlemen in our behalf, which can be used again and again." She needed all the invigoration that such a day could give her. Though with visible ac- tivity, interest quickened, and gifts increased, the building committee continually faced a pos- sible suspension of work. Hard times shrunk payments on old subscriptions, dated new ones far ahead, and tied up money away from even Deacon Porter's ability to borrow. Quite how near Mount Holyoke came more than once to shipwreck, a few of the yellowed letters make very plain. But one stood at the helm who stopped at no personal sacrifice ; tireless, watch- ful, alert to each new peril. When men coun- 250 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON seled delay, she urged that they go forward. A torn letter, the dated leaf gone, lies under my hand, in which she sent word to her lawyer through his daughter that she wished to advance to the trustees, as she said, "the little that I possess as I am very anxious they should build. ... I suppose no one to whom your father has lent money which is now due could object to paying it with a notice of six months." Be- fore the river froze, lumber must be bought; and the month after the exercises around the corner-stone found Mary Lyon up and away, collecting overdue subscriptions, pressing others into the work, and calling in money owed her personal account that she might lend it on the doubtful security of a donation paper. In March Mr. Porter closed contracts with the mechan- ics for finishing the building. In May Mrs. Porter wrote Miss Lyon at Norton: "I rejoice to hear you think of coming next week. I think it important you should. I will now tell you in confidence that husband and I believe all the building committee are becoming discouraged about proceeding with the building, fearing it will not be possible to raise the ten thousand MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 251 dollars which will be necessary by the first of October, if they advance. . . . Now if you can come, it may raise their drooping spirits." Yet through the spring Mount Holyoke had been steadily gaining friends. Mr. Porter talked of it in New York, and wealthy men lent him approving ears. In Boston Mr. Safford issued invitations to a meeting at his house, and more than three thousand dollars was sub- scribed on a rainy night. It was not a day of huge fortunes. In her record of the evening Miss Lyon flashes a side-light on decorum in the thirties. "The gentlemen thought there would be no impropriety in their admitting three ladies to hear what was being said on the subject, Mrs. Safford, Miss Caldwell, and myself. Deacon Safford wanted that we should be present, and asked the opinion of several gentlemen, who thought it would be proper and approved of it." Later in the year, a gift came from as far south as Alabama. While men prepared the shell. Miss Lyon had^ made herself responsible for the furnishings, and here again she turned trustfully to women. When building commenced, she began sow- 252 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ing her letters broadcast through the country among her own and her friends' friends. Wis- dom tempered the request to their abilities. Her scheme provided for the furnishing of stu- dent rooms, each by a single town, through the united generosity of its ladies. This plan gave definiteness to aim and locality to interest. Any person able to contribute more than a moderate amount was urged to help swell the general furniture fund. And since what is every- body's business is never done, she committed the project in every community to one woman of influence and energy. But again her pres- ence proved more potent than print. These are the matters on which we have found her talking with the women while Mr. Hawks interviewed the men. Many towns failed in such trying times to reach the fifty or sixty dollar mark set for a room ; others were reported as engrossed in their own concerns. But sometimes a single person gave more than the specified amount. One man furnished a room in memory of his daughter; a woman promised to give most or all of the crockery. Small sums crept to the hands of women known to be interested. The MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 253 students and teachers of Wheaton Seminary contributed over two hundred dollars for one of the parlors. Gifts, big and little, from chil- dren, students, home-keeping girls, ladies of wealth, and women "eager and willing," but "chiefly dependent on their palm-leaf hats" for spending-money she welcomed them all gladly and put them all to use. In the widespread loyalty which they repre- sent, these records read like the donations to seventeenth-century Harvard when the united New England colonies rallied to the support of the first college for men, families giving to it out of their poverty a cow or a sheep, corn or salt, a piece of cloth or of silver plate. Yet by that perilous June two hundred years later, not a third of Mount Holyoke's necessary furniture had come in. "Everything that is done for us now," cried Miss Lyon, "seems like giv- ing bread to the hungry and cold water to the thirsty." That busy, busy year of 1837 ! With marvel- ous dexterity she kept all her balls soaring. Questions of teachers and apparatus, applica- tions of students, had long held her thought. 254 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON and to them she brought the experience of years. But when Mrs. Porter asked her to ex- amine dining and tea sets, she ventured on fresh ground. In the first weeks of summer the status of the furniture fund kept her constantly on the road. By midsummer South Hadley im- peratively demanded her presence. Now men labored on the interior, and the woman who in consultation with wise friends had planned the rooms and knew their every use by heart had much to do. She ate and slept at the home of the courtly Princetonian, Reverend Joseph Condit, and spent her days with the workmen. "When the joiner- work was done," wrote Mrs. Eunice Caldwell Cowles, " she made ready for the mason; when the masonry was done, she made ready for the painter; and when the painter had done, she saw to the drying. The workmen might complain of her interference and dictation, but it was little she minded the complaining if the work was done to her mind." Week after week, on Monday Mr. Porter drove the twenty-one miles from Monson, and on Saturday drove back. Were he present or absent, many questions came to Miss Lyon for MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED ^55 decision. She despatched them quickly, and as quickly reversed a verdict if later she saw just cause. Nothing short of the best satisfied her, the most convenient. " My head is full of closets, shelves, cupboards, doors, sinks, tables, etc.," she wrote her mother. " You will think this new work for me and indeed it is." That she could do it so successfully is the best refuta- tion of the charge that love of mental pursuits necessarily spoils a woman for practical con- cerns. In these months she put behind her an in- credible amount of work. Her salvation lay in despatch. "I have so much letter- writing to do that I seem not to have much time for any- thing else," was her lament, "and yet I have five times as much as I can do which I wish to do." The date of receiving students, more than once deferred, had now been set for the eighth of November. Already people questioned its possibility. All the money that the trustees felt justified in borrowing on the security of unpaid subscriptions was needed to complete the build- ing, and still the furniture ran menacingly 256 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON short. Expected bedding failed to arrive. Again and again that fall Miss Lyon drew on her own resources for hundreds of dollars. " I doubt not that I shall have all I need in this world, but I should be very much tried to want to obtain something for the seminary which I thought it best to pay for myself, but could not for the want of money." As a last resort an ap- peal went forth for the temporary loan of such things as were imperatively needed, to be re- turned when the women who were furnishing rooms should get their money raised. To en- tering students she wrote asking them to see what they could borrow among their friends, and to report to her ; a request, not a mandate, made with hesitancy lest it be misunderstood. In June she had written a niece: "Some- times it seems as if my heart would sink under the weight that rests upon me. How all can be done that must be done before the first of No- vember I know not." To her dearest friend she confided in mid-September: "When I look through to November eighth it seems like look- ing down a precipice of many hundred feet, which I must descend. I can only avoid look- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 257 ing to the bottom, and fix my eye on the near- est stone till I have safely reached it." Beyond South Hadley people laughed, de- nounced, or hoped, as was their way. Some of them prayed. But many kept company with the woman who once told Miss Lyon that, while she thought the plan excellent, she feared Mount Holyoke would prove like a wonderful machine Dr. Beecher used to tell of, "admi- rably contrived, admirably adjusted, but it had one fault it would n't gol " CHAPTER VII THE FOUNDING OF MOUNT HOLYOKE, Continued The hours dwindled toward the eighth of No- vember. For days from all points of the com- pass students had been converging on South Hadley by stage-coach and private carriage. Girls, stiff from riding almost continuously since before dawn, on the last afternoon of grace were swung from chaises by fathers and friends' fathers, to stumble through a side door into a five-storied brick building that rose, stark and blindless, out of a waste of sand. Deacon Porter was helping lay the front threshold, paint pots and work benches furnished the parlors, and Miss Lyon met them in the dining-room. There stood tables spread for the hungry ; near by, a merry group of young women were hem- ming linen and finishing off quilts and coun- terpanes. Hammer-strokes resounded through the house. Coatless, on his knees in " seminary MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 259 hall," Deacon Safford tacked matting, looking up with a smiling word to new comers : " We are in glorious confusion now, but we hope for better order soon." In Miss Lyon's parlor Elihu Dwight of the village laid carpet with girlish "help." Trustees' wives washed dishes in the kitchen, fragile Mrs. Porter, lovely Mrs. Saf- ford in her dainty French calico with its gay ribbons. Upstairs, young Mr. Dwight's con- temporaries were busy under soft-voiced direc- tion setting up beds, putting furniture in place, now and then dashing out to unload a cart freshly arrived at the seminary's door, lend- ing themselves to many labors. In time John Dwight gave his aid to Nancy Everett, and amid all the straitened hubbub of that No- vember day, two buildings of the later Mount Holyoke began to take misty shape within the future. Activity was contagious. Fathers found men ready to lend a hand for a moment, and trunks whisked upstairs. Students unpacked swiftly and came down ready to join in the joyous cooperation that turned work into play and removed homesickness afar off. "We were as 260 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON busy as bees and as happy as could be," runs the record. " The very pulse of the machine," Miss Lyon moved here, there, everywhere; greeting new students with the intimate word that bespoke remembrance of their letters ; call- ing for volunteers and setting them enthusiasti- cally to sewing, paring apples, unpacking fur- niture, giving out bedding as the boxes came ; or, with swift divination of individual need, insisting on sending her dinner to the room of some three days' traveler stealing the hearts out of their bodies by the warmth of her cordial touch, the sunny goodness of her face. Her spirit commingled with the adventurous soul of youth in an alchemy that gilded discomfort and transformed want into abounding plenty. What matter that the first night there were not beds enough to sleep on ? At Miss Lyon's re- quest the old families of South Hadley opened their hospitable doors to students as readily as their sons had given her of their young muscle. For weeks the women of the town had aided in carrying forward her preparations. " How kind the South Hadley people were to us !" one MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 261 writes under date of November eighth. Another girl's journal remarks: "Helped get the first breakfast at Holyoke. Miss Lyon and I were the first to appear in the kitchen." There had been no time for further diarizing ; the busy day sped on, unwritten. Examinations began to go forward amid the clamor of alien activities. Singly, in twos, in groups, the girls took them, teachers and students seated together on the stairs, or side by side on a pile of mattresses in a hall-way, little oases of scholarly seclusion. Classing by inquisition into real attainment held the spice of novelty for young women, many of whom had spent their lives attending schools, but who now with comic light-heartedness saw their bags of knowledge strangely shrinking. And then at four o'clock, when the last tack had been driven in " seminary hall," a pause fell on the fleet occupations. With examinations far from finished, and many loads of furniture still on the road, a bell rang and Mount Holyoke opened. Thus it will be seen that at its inception the new institution drew fortune from misfortune, strangling in its cradle privations that threat- 262 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ened existence, against odds winning a stronger hold on life. For beneath the merry bustle of those opening days, under the high-hearted breasting of inconvenience and even of aus- terity, were weaving fine filaments of personal loyalty and devotion. Such bonds were new to women's educational experience. The sense of Alma Mater, which under settled conditions might have grown more tardily, began to hap- pen at once as by a kindly magic. Yet there was about it no magic other than that of a won- derfully contagious personality acting along lines of generous partnership. In sharing the opportunity to work for Mount Holyoke, Miss Lyon communicated something of her own tenderness to the attitude of these first students. Responsibility discovered to them that they, too, belonged ; and the home feeling, so normally and yet so subtly conveyed at the outset, became the atmosphere of the place. "Our family" was an expression often on Miss Lyon's lips. When adversity pinched in the days that fol- lowed, she gathered her girls about her. *' This is an experiment," she would say, "and I can- not succeed without your help. The life of the MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 263 institution depends upon this first year." After- wards she used to speak with pride of those ear- liest students. Gallantly they responded to her appeals, their imaginations rallying at the trum- pet-note that bugled through her words. For us of a later and more trammeled generation a charm invests that spirited company of pre- collegians, setting off in the freshness of morn- ing upon their great adventure. They were in love with learning, and hardship could not dull their zest. To understand the early Mount Holyoke, whose launching was attended with so much heroic endeavor, one must view it as did Miss Lyon, and as she gave her girls in some measure also to see it ; a bundle of tendencies, the initial expression of a vast potentiality, the beginning of a movement world-wide in uplift. Its im- mediate mission in her thought was to go ex- ploring, nosing a way among reefs and rocks until, its hull kissing the waters of a wider opportunity, it should no longer be allowed to cruise alone. A pattern craft, propelled by a new power, she outfitted it for what in her mind was to be an endless voyage. " Much care will 264 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON be taken," declares the prospectus, "to adopt and settle principles which may be permanent and to form and mature a system of operations which may essentially outlive those to whose care it is at first committed." This work of organization presented prob- lems as difficult of conquest and as far-reach- ing in their solution as the financing had done. License and limitation joined hands before Miss Lyon: its pioneer position seemed to promise the enterprise a free field ; contemporary life and thought hedged it with restriction. She solved her puzzles along the line suggested by a sen- tence or two thrown out to her students in an- other connection. "Do the best vou can to- day." "I have seen many persons waiting to get ready to do something." Miss Lyon "did something" without waiting; and while study of the young Mount Holyoke shows that it bore everywhere marks of environment in a gen- eration less progressive than she, it reveals as unmistakably a modifying effect on the very conditions that restrained it- A single practical illustration suggests the extent to which her ideas suffered curtailment MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 265 through translation into fact. Among the ear- lier papers in her handwriting is a plan for a building to provide suites of rooms throughout, two bedrooms and a study being allotted to two students. These suites were to be grouped in six divisions, each housing a "section" with its teacher, and giving access to a "section" parlor. The groups would unite for " meetings and family devotion, but in all other respects be as distinct and independent as six separate and distinct families, occupying six separate houses." The heads of these groups were slated for the principal teachers, but in academic work section lines would be disregarded. A lover of analogy will find here curious hints and foreshadowings. There existed no ladder to give access to the new seminary. The first entrance require- ments English grammar, modern geography. United States history, Watts on the Mind, and arithmetic were plain matters, but the circu- lars which Miss Lyon sent to applicants two years before the doors opened, urging them to use the extra months in further study, form an enlightening commentary on current educa- 266 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON tional practices. Besides telling them what to study for preparation she found it necessary to employ some specification in her directions as to how to set about it in order to attain habits of clearness, accuracy, and rapidity of thought. To those who had made sure of their entrance- work advanced study was recommended. The greater the real capital on admission, she said, the greater will be the proportionate income, but " a superficial passing over any branch be- fore commencing it regularly in school is always an injury instead of a benefit." She superim- posed her seminary at first on "nothing . . . but that thorough course which should be pursued in every common school. But many who have been a long time at an academy cannot be re- ceived for want of suitable qualifications." The people's schools held a place close toher repub- lican heart, and anything which should lead them to give thorough attention to the funda- mental branches of an English education and enable them to hold girls until they had laid firmly the basis for higher work, would, she felt convinced, raise their standard. The various parts of the American educational machine MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 267 called for nothing more imperatively than for definition ; " Each should confine itself to its own appropriate business." And while she never at- tempted directly to untangle the feminine snarl, or to elevate the public school, she expected this result as a by-product of the new move- ment, her theory being that the imposition of an institution of specific character and rigid standard would, working downward, define the status of lower schools, lead to the estab- lishment of direct feeders for the higher, and necessarily bring system out of the existing confusion of studies. Two common faults in the order of women's education operated with its manner to limit the number of well-prepared candidates : an incli- nation to put little girls to hard study so as, in Miss Lyon's phrase, "to finish the child's edu- cation before her time seems of much value," and to defer acquisitions easily made in child- hood and which come later only with waste of time. Let her speak for herself here. The in- intellectual forcing of children is " like a man's borrowing money to become rich on such terms that in a few years the principal and interest 268 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON will render him a bankrupt." Where it does not result in " ruined constitutions, nervous excita- bility, sadness without a reason, religious de- pression, and the first appearances of mono- mania ... it often proves forever fatal to high intellectual cultivation, so that the child, instead of becoming a prodigy, as was expected, never attains even to mediocrity. Such repul- sive associations may be formed with the title- page and aspect of every text-book as will ren- der every future lesson a task rather than a delight. The most discouraging field which any teacher was ever called to cultivate is the mind of a young lady who has been studying all her days, and has gone over most of the natural and moral sciences without any valuable improve- ment, until she is tired of school, tired of books, and tired almo)st of life." "Among the things neglected till too late a period are the manners ; the cultivation of the voice, including singing, pronunciation and all the characteristics of good reading ; gaining skill and expedition in the com- mon necessary mechanical operations, such as sewing, knitting, writing and drawing ; and ac- quiring by daily practice a knowledge and love MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 269 of domestic pursuits. To these might be added some things which depend almost entirely on the memory, such as spelling ; and others which are suited to lay the foundation of a literary taste, such as a judicious course of reading, practice in composition, etc. Those who are to attend to instrumental music, the ornamen- tal branches, and the pronunciation of foreign languages, must commence early." Against both these malpractices the new enterprise threw its influence, "as this institution pro- poses to conduct young ladies through a regu- lar intellectual course after the age of sixteen." In the matter of instruction, from a twentieth- century point of view. Miss Lyon found herself facing the problem that confronts a man who tries to lift himself by his boot-straps. Mount Holyoke in action might pour a stream of well- equipped minds into the teaching force of lower schools ; where was the spring that should feed its own ? It would not have been consonant with her plans to admit men to the resident faculty in those early years. Women had yet to prove themselves as students, and as she said once to her girls, "Either gallantry or want of confi- 270 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON dence makes gentlemen let young ladies slip along without knowing much. They will make boys study." Nor at this critical stage in femi- nine education would one confident in the worth of women's brains, and eager to inspire girls with a belief in their own mental abilities, have chosen so to undermine their faith, even had the salaries she could off er admitted of men's intro- duction. Aside from these arguments there was one more definitive. President Garfield's clas- sic definition of a college a boy at one end of a log and Mark Hopkins at the other cuts cleanly to the root of the best educational growth of the time. A college made men through personal intercourse with men. In this light Mary Lyon viewed Mount Holyoke, as a plant for the development, not of intellectual gym- nasts, but of enlightened, useful women ; and with this aim she chose her teachers from the best material at her command. They were not scholars in the sense of persons versed in origi- nal research. The American university, even for men, waited on the threshold of another gen- eration. In the midst of such incertitude as this. MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 271 Mount Holyoke took its departure with less of compromise to the state of turmoil within and without than circumstances might have justi- fied. It provided a regular course of three years, called junior, middle, and senior, and the ma- jority of its first students remained throughout the year. Afterwards a year's residence was required. There was no preparatory depart- ment. Since people were unwonted to notions of a requisite age and any rigidity of intellectual requirement, some slight elasticity prevailed along these lines in tte beginning, which the second fall found unnecessary. But the initial students were chosen by careful sifting of over double the number of applications, and many were young women whose ages, to Miss Lyon's delight, ran well into the twenties; some of them had long been waiting for the seminary to open. Accessions from Ipswich and Wheaton helped provide for the small senior class. She gathered her nascent college out of its elements with the sanity which practice always lends to theory. Routine fell into the lines worked out at Ipswich, with its "series," its "sections," and its quiet half-hours at the be- m THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ginning and close of day. In subsequent years we find several "sections" of juniors corre- sponding to the freshmen of to-day, each in personal touch with one of the younger teach- ers. Regularity of habit, she declared, promotes health of body, as surely as does a systematic course of study, strength of mind. Walking and calisthenics were made the rule in an age that had not learned to rank air and exercise among commonplaces of training. Together, faculty and undergraduates constituted a com- munity designed to become in itself a social education. Among the moderns there is no clearer re- cognition of the enlarging function that col- lege friendships play in a girl's horizon than is to be found in Miss Lyon's words about the re- sults commonly incident to a home or small- school training. A girl so educated, she said, "is in danger of feeling that her mother and her sisters are of more importance in the scale of being than all the rest of the world, that her home is the centre of the universe and the stand- ard by which everything is to be tried. If she belongs to a plain country family, she looks on MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 273 the wealthy in cities and large villages as proud, extravagant, and haughty if she has been con- fined to the city or large village, she looks on every daughter of the hills and valleys as out- landish and vulgar." An antidote to this illib- erality is to be found in a large seminary, unit- ing such "refinement and elevation" with such "plainness, simplicity, and economy" as to draw the best quality of student "from all parts of the country and from all classes of the com- munity." Here will be checked "the spirit of monopolizing privileges" which naturally re- sults from the special care required by a little girl. "The young lady needs to feel herself a member of a large community, where the inter- ests of others are to be sought equally with her own. She needs to learn by practice as well as by principle that individual accommodations and private interests are to be sacrificed for the public good ; and she needs to know from experi- ence that those who make such a sacrifice will receive an ample reward in the improvement of the community among whom they are to dwell." " We must always consider the good of the whole" became a proverb among her 274 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON girls, and the mainspring of Mount Holyoke's life. Beyond the frankly educative she enlisted those unobtrusive suggestions that reach out so powerfully from the backgrounds of exis- tence. Even in the first experimental years every arrangement was made to yield a positive force, teaching silent lessons of sincerity, inde- pendence and interdependence, adaptability and economy ; and let it be always remembered that in Miss Lyon's use, economy "necessarily implies good judgment and good taste." " The right use of money is to accomplish what you wish with it," she said in one of her afternoon talks. " A poor man may not be as economical in spending fourpence as a rich man in spend- ing a thousand dollars." Conservation of en- ergy, avoidance of waste, convey her meaning to ears wonted to the word's more petty usages. " The great object of introducing economy into the seminary's affairs is to make the school really better," she wrote. Nowhere were there loose threads ; means served the ends to which she bent them with a completeness that deeply impressed those young experiencing natures. MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 275 "I never knew the value of time as I do here," one girl wrote a friend. But, conscious as was her intent in all this, danger lurks in speaking of her methods as though they were in some way separable from her singularly direct and whole-souled person- ality. The principles she wrought into the framework of Mount Holyoke are simply the records of her own reactions on life. To spectators the most notable of these un- academic persuasions, and the most hazardous, was undoubtedly the feature of cooperative housework. Distorted in the public mind, the project weighted her mail with "a multitude of serious and rather apprehensive inquiries about the domestic work, as though this was the main thing," inquiries which she fell into the habit of passing over lightly, "not sympa- thizing much with warm commendation or at- tempting to vindicate." "I was desirous that our warm friends who thought it an excellence should look upon it in its real light, as a small one; and strangers who might fear it to be a defect would feel it to be one easily submitted to." 276 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON But in those laborious days from which Mount Holyoke swung away, nothing about the plant cost her more incessant thought than did the manipulation of " the little appendage." It proved far easier to secure all her teachers than to fill the place of domestic superintend- ent, yet she abated no jot of her demand. She wanted " a lady of influence, of education, of an ability to plan and to gain power over others ; in short, one who, besides all her knowledge and skill in domestic affairs, would lead all the young ladies to look up to her with respect." When years of correspondence and interview- ing yielded only a woman who broke down at the outset, she did the work herself, writing a fellow educator, " Where we have had an inter- est in planning we can sometimes make up in zeal what we lack in skill." So heavy was the burden laid upon her that she used to say to her girls, " Had I known how complicated the af- fairs of our domestic system would be, I should never have undertaken it, but it brings a kind of atmosphere very important for literary pur- suits." What she meant by this remark appears to- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 277 ward the end of a letter written in May, 1838, to Reverend Theron Baldwin, then just opening Monticello Seminary. " For many weeks I was engaged many hours every day about the do- mestic department, sometimes contriving about the fitting of furniture and cooking utensils, again, planning for the division of labor and for time and place so that everything could be done in season and in order, without any loss to the young ladies and with no interference with studies or recitations. I had several points to gain, and sometimes my whole energy was devoted to one and sometimes to another. One point was that a high standard should be es- tablished for the manner of having the work done ; another, that every department of the do- mestic work should be popular with the young ladies. For three or four months I never left the family for a single half-day. I then said to the young ladies that I considered the family as organized, and that I wished to go to Boston to be absent two or three weeks, that I might, besides finding a little rest, know whether the wheels which I had been occupied so long in arranging could move without my aid. On my 278 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON return everything was in perfect order, and there has not been a time since when I could not be absent or sick three months without any sensible loss to the domestic department. Now I need not go into the kitchen once a month unless I prefer, though I do love daily to pass around from room to room in the basement story, and see how delightfully the wheels move forward. . . . "Our circumstances are so very favorable that I feel that the plan is scarcely tested for others. In the first place, we have none under sixteen, and nearly all are from firm, well-bred families of New England. Tliey have been gen- erally well educated thus far, and well trained in domestic pursuits. Again we have no do- mestics. If anything is not quite so pleasant the query never arises whether it is not more suit- able that domestics should do it. . . . We have a hired man who boards himself. He takes care of our garden, saws wood, and performs various little oflSces for our comfort. The family is so large that by a proper division of time all can be done and each occupied but a short time. No young lady feels she is performing a duty from MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 279 which she could be relieved by the payment of higher bills." In the "union of interests" that the arrange- ment secures, in its promotion of " social viva- city," easy acquaintance, and the home feeling, Miss Lyon sees definite advantages. Exercise she ranks first. " This is worth very much more than I anticipated, especially in the winter. The daily work brings an hour of regular ex- ercise, coming every day and the same hour of the day. . . . The oldest and most studious scholars are those who have always troubled me by neglecting exercise. But they walk more here of their own accord, without influence, than any young ladies of the same character I have ever seen. . . . Our young ladies study with great intensity, but they seem just as vig- orous the last of the term as ever. The vivacity and apparent vigor of our young ladies near the close of our winter term of twenty weeks, and at the examination, was noticed as unusual by gentlemen of discrimination. Whatever they do they seem to do with their might, whether it be study or walking or domestic work or gathering plants or singing." 280 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON That from the big, airy "domestic hall" of those early days, fitted with every device pro- curable to lighten labor, emanated the influ- ences which Miss Lyon publicly bespoke for it, we have abundant proof in the testimony of her students. "It was a daily object lesson in sys- tem and order, a beautiful example of success- ful cooperative housekeeping," one wrote years later. Teams, each captained by an older stu- dent and nominated " circles" and " circle-lead- ers," deftly and withal merrily despatched cook- ery, table-setting, dish-washing, and the like, a girl being " assigned to that in which she has been well trained at home." The few who had hitherto escaped such pastimes attacked new occupations with timidity or zest, according to their temper. Now and then, of course, came one whom housework galled ; but in the main they were happy young persons, the more cheer- fully, because unconsciously, learning lessons of adaptability, resource, and relativity that would stand them in good stead in after life. Without fanciful conceit one must allow to the "domestic work" of these early days a place not unlike that which athletics and student MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 281 government hold in twentieth-century college life. It developed team work and the gift of leadership, as truly as it bred the community sense that makes for citizenship. Seen in perspective, this phase of the Mount Holyoke enterprise falls into relation with other movements of the time, a triumphant flowering of the same New England spirit that blossomed episodically at Brook Farm and Fruitlands. Both seminary and colonies voiced a protest against the notion that there is any incom- patibility in a person's working with hands and with head. " Labor may dwell with thought," cried Emerson a declaration of the essential unity of man. Between lay all the dif- ference that divides success from failure. The lettered men and women who wiped dishes and milked cows at Brook Farm lived in too frankly experimental a fashion, and living is not an ac- tivity that results normally under glass. Mary Lyon used her cooperative venture as a means to something quite different ; circumstance had pushed her to close quarters, and she, as was her wont, had but devised a plan to get her way. How completely and perfectly it worked is best THE LIFE OF MARY LYON indicated by a story related of one of the mul- titude of doubters. A wealthy Boston judge, who on account of this feature of its life had long hesitated to send his only child to Mount Holyoke, went over the whole plant on the oc- casion of his first visit after her entrance. Later he confessed to Miss Lyon : " My only objection now is, that the domestic work is made so easy, your pupils will be spoiled for home experi- ence." So the year drew on through the disabili- ties, obstacles, and overwork incident to ini- tial ventures which must prove to a somewhat skeptical public their right to life. It is pleasant to read Miss Lyon's estimate of the result, her- self her most discerning critic: "On the whole \ the success of our institution in every depart- "^^vjnent is greater than I anticipated. I am more and more interested in this enterprise as a means of developing some important principles of female education, especially of the impor- tance and practicability of introducing system." A Thursday in August brought the first com- mencement, simply called "anniversary day," and the earliest of the superabundant com- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 283 mencement crowds. The programme, for all its quaint entries, summons to view a time that has left indelible marks upon our own. Pub- lic examinations, Monday and Tuesday, held with no preparatory drilling, as The Hamp- shire Gazette informs us a few years later, and conveying the "effect of pleasing lectures in the free interchange of questions and answers, instead of the tiresome repetitions of an ordi- nary school-room examination." Wednesday, a liberal exodus over '* the Notch " to Amherst's commencement. Thursday morning, the last examinations and the reading of compositions, interspersed with music, in a crowded "semi- nary hall." And there Miss Lyon would have had the graduating exercises, but she yielded to the representations of the trustees to her entire later satisfaction. Near noon the procession started up the vil- lage street: stalwart trustees, men of learning and of affairs ; that small earliest faculty, with the adjectives *' brilliant," "graceful," "charm- ing," "vivacious " sounding pleasantly along the way; white-gowned students, bare-headed under light parasols all turning their steps 284 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON to the waiting church, where the address would be given by a speaker from abroad, and the graduates receive their simple English inscribed parchments. But though this first orator had shunned food and sleep to rewrite his speech, having discovered after listening for a while to the examinations that "it would never do to present anything he had brought with him," his address was to draw from Miss Lyon the comment to Miss Grant, "good, but not quite as finished as I should have liked." Later, at the seminary. Mount Holyoke and its guests would sit down to the anniversary dinner. As in fancy one watches that procession a sentence of Miss Lyon's springs to mind. "Sorrow is sometimes remembered joy." Years that were gone, summers and winters of rebuff and struggle, pressed into her cup on this first commencement a poignant sweetness. It spar- kled in her eyes and kindled in her mobile face. One who went often to the " anniversa- ries" said that Miss Lyon never appeared so well as on such days. "Kindness, gentleness, ease and dignity of manner were always very marked. She was never disconcerted, never in MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 285 a hurry, and always seemed to have time to see every one and to well meet all that was laid upon her. There was at such times scope for all her powers." As the new enterprise proved itself, she who was its founder became also its builder. For all its disabilities at birth. Mount Holyoke never required that tentative period of adoption which is to be found in the history of many edu- cational organisms. It came into being as the people's own, grounded in wide affections ; and though it ever won new friends, from the first it began to grow. One cannot fancy Mary Lyon establishing anything to stand still ; she was not a stationary person. The continual turn- ing away of applicants for lack of room four hundred were refused the second year joined with ocular proof of the practicability of the experiment. "The institution must live," Miss Lyon wrote the public in the spring of 1839; "but whether its influence shall be extended and its principles disseminated, is yet to be determined. Much depends upon the prompt- ness with which the present wants of the insti- tution are met." Now at her appeal purse- 286 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON strings loosened somewhat more easily. The completion of the main building and the ad- dition of a wing at the southern end raised the housing capacity from eighty at opening until in point of numbers Mount Holyoke held its own with the largest New England colleges. And still there was not room enough. Girls unable to get in one year applied for the next, or waited two or three and tried again. A second wing to the north, designed by Miss Lyon, was not built until after her death. Meanwhile apparatus, library, and collections increased slowly through outside gifts and by expenditure of seminary funds. In passing out of the first hand-to-mouth stage and expanding into the proportions origi- nally planned for its initial appearance, Mount Holyoke, like all new communities, developed law. There were no regulations the first year beyond the rule of love ; but as life gained cer- tainty and numbers increased, this pressed for more particular definition. Miss Lyon met the need as she had met it at Ipswich, seeking to lead girls into wider social recognitions, reach- ing forward to an ideal in which reciprocity of MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 287 advice and deference should be the only gov- ernment. There were no arbitrary commands ; new rules often came by student request, and never without cause. If one were to be given, she would preface its enunciation with the re- mark that a person must pay the penalty of life in a community by giving up some of the privi- leges which might be enjoyed if she lived alone. After an explanation of its working, her girls could be counted on to adopt the measure. Com- mon sense and conscientiousness must guide them in reporting deviations, she said ; if they possessed these, they needed no explanation ; if they had them not, no explanation would do them any good. An attempt to picture in detail and for a different age this system of self-report- ing could only succeed in showing how time makes ancient good uncouth. The regulations looked toward the preservation of good breed- ing and scholarly attitudes. While some stu- dents found them irksome, more than one old lady has told me, " I never paid much attention to the rules they were only what seemed just and right, what one would naturally do." Beneath all her practices ran this warm co- 288 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON operative current. When the plans of a land- scape artist for beautifying the grounds proved too costly to be carried out, she asked the girls going home in the second spring vacation to bring back flower-seeds and shrubbery; she would have the ground enriched and the yard fenced. They returned, their trunks full of roots and seeds that blossomed gayly in the summer months. She made the seniors feel that it was their privilege to help her keep order in the house, gently hinting at ways in which they might aid ; from all classes she asked suggestions which should serve to make her afternoon talks helpful and timely, fitting closely student needs ; she impressed on them the invigorating understanding that they bore a part in making Mount Holyoke a success let them remember in whatever they did to seek its good. "You have all embarked in this ship," she said, "and if the ship sinks must sink with it." With physical enlargement came more ease of life. The comfort of her girls was a matter not beyond Miss Lyon's thought. "There is a best way to do everything," she used to say; MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 289 and unwearyingly she sought it, testing, chang- ing, simplifying. It took eleven years and re- modeling of the kitchen regions to bring the domestic system to a point where she is re- ported to have confessed herself nearly satis- fied with it. This indefatigability sometimes wore on less active spirits. She was always ex- perimenting, said Mr. Hawks, president of the trustees ; adding by way of illustration that he used to tiptoe past the door of her parlor lest, hearing his step, she call him in and propose something new. To the retrospective eye in no department does her alertness appear more forcibly than in the purely academic. The young Mount Hol- yoke was a laboratory wherein a tireless chem- ist sought to demonstrate a new principle in women's education: a "thorough, systematic, and uninterrupted course of study." "Its de- sign is to promote the best interests of the pub- lic, rather than to secure the greatest amount of patronage. Efforts are made to furnish the best possible school, and not to secure the greatest number of scholars. It has adopted a regular system to which it strictly adheres. It 290 THE LIFE OF IMARY LYON is open for the reception of all who can meet its requisitions." Many people had thought that on these terms learning would not prove attractive to girls. "The result shows," wrote Miss Lyon, " that it is still safer to seek wisdom rather than riches." Her method of founding accounts largely for the closeness with which she was able to ap- proximate her own standards. Instead of offer- ing people an institution ready made, she had enlisted their help to make one. The venture, so inaugurated, was also fortunate in the kind of students which it drew. Many of them were young persons of well-defined intellectual back- grounds. " There is a great amount of educated parentage here," remarked Miss Lyon, "chil- dren of professional men, ministers, etc. not so much wealth." Her emphasis, strong at first on the full measure of preliminary acquire- ment, stiffened, and by 1840 she was able to write all candidates: "As the plans and prin- ciples of the institution are now so well un- derstood, probably any indulgence hereafter relative to preparation will be unnecessary and inexpedient." MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 291 Students who failed in entrance examinations went home or sought opportunity elsewhere to make up their work. We learn of a small school opened by one of the first Holyoke graduates, to which Miss Lyon used to send girls deficient in preparation, going herself now and then to investigate their progress. The seminary 's sud- den leap into popularity had tended to bring down the average undergraduate age, and after a few years she returned to the first method of accepting candidates, not in order pf applica- tion, but by careful sifting so as to get the best. The circular prepared to give notice of the change remarks: "Some parents wish to send their daughters here because the expenses are less than at other institutions. But this is no valid argument for their being received. Many whose money has been expended in the build- ing up of this institution have less pecuniary ability than the parents of our scholars. But they had a higher object in view than pecuniary relief." In kindly fashion she often advised students to stay out a year that they might not bring to their studies, especially to the se- nior philosophical work, too great immaturity. 292 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "Knowledge and reflection," she thought, should " balance." " There is a defect in educa- tion," says a student note-book. "Knowledge of books increases faster than knowledge of character. ... I don't know how this defect is to be remedied unless by invisible pictures. There is no such thing as teaching the power of reflection. We can make [students] commit to memory, but all we can do in this matter is to stand about the outer court and say, Won't you reflect?'' Just as distinctly she tried to make it under- stood that Mount Holyoke was designed only for the strong of body and mind, those old enough to think and act wisely for themselves and others. There were girls whom such a life might blight, and she counseled parents to look thoughtfully into this. The curriculum, plain and substantial, fol- lowed the lines of an educational taste already beginning to break away from a diet of the hu- manities. Mathematics, English, science, and philosophy, with a pinch of political economy and history, made up the diploma course in the beginning ; but the initial catalogue lays down MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 293 a programme of growth. More will be added to the senior branches, and certain senior studies are to find place in earlier years. From the first Miss Lyon encouraged students to go outside the prescribed bounds ; work was always done that did not for years creep into print. " The study of the languages has ever been designed to be embraced in the regular course," says an- other catalogue, referring to the restraint im- posed by current notions of women's education. So Latin was taught the first year; in 1840 all candidates for reception a year from that fall were advised to spend as much of the interven- ing time as possible in its study ; by 1847 it held a place in the regular course and was required for admission. I find these jottings among the notes : " Her opinion upon education she gave us to-day thorough discipline of the mind gained by Latin and mathematics, as in the training of young men, before the higher English branches. Have the roots grow and expand before we expect to gather fruit." "Miss Lyon . . . dwelt at length on the discipline of mind she wished us to ac- quire, and that she expected us to know by ex- 294 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON perience what hard study is. It was her desire that we should all have one diflScult and one easier study : the first, mathematics or Latin, and probably confine ourselves to it the whole year. She required a note expressing our choice." A dash of modern languages and music spiced the whole, though they did not count toward graduation. There were no "extras." We find some mention of equivalents, and oc- casionally a very slender chance for choice in the diploma course. Outside its bounds the opportunity was wider ; a young woman with barely enough time at her disposal to graduate, would. Miss Lyon believed, often gain from a broader range of studies more than she would lose in missing a diploma ; and she encouraged students to spend double time in the middle class. But the public mind accustomed itself slowly to the notion of several consecutive years of study for girls, and the early class rosters are full of non-graduates. At the close of the thirties, and again near the middle of the forties, she tried to lengthen the regular course to four years, a change MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 295 which the catalogues had for some time been gently heralding. But here even Miss Lyon met defeat. Student notes yield a mangled echo of the explanation that she gave her girls. " The only reason why we do not put four years in, is the narrowness of means and views of those who would feel it too much. Young men are required to prepare much longer, but young ladies are admitted without excuse. The trus- tees object to adding another year. We design to make the three years' course more rigid. We would take a leap, but cannot, and expect to ad- vance gradually." Again we turn to the notes for interpretation of her phrase "to advance gradually." "I have much faith in learning in imparting solidity to character. . . . When young ladies are thor- oughly educated, as men are, frivolity will be banished from their minds. Men will not turn and talk with them as they never talk among themselves. We make the rules for admission to the classes very rigid in order to raise the standard of education and hope in fifty years from this the influence will be felt far and wide." " We do not require much of the senior class. 296 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON We shall look on the studies required, fifty years hence, as we do on the studies of Cambridge in the first year.'* Glowingly she talked those afternoons in hall, the seer's eye glancing down the years while she pictured, as one who listened has recorded, the Mount Holyoke "of the future, its course of study extended in all departments, with all the aids and appliances for illustration that could be furnished." Greek, Hebrew, more music; she denied no learning that might inform or discipline the mind. "She often said she thought the time would come when Bible-class teachers would feel that they must study the scriptures in the original languages in which they were written." Together they stood at a beginning, she told her hearers, small as had been the beginning of Yale, but mighty in its potentiality. Girls' hearts burned under her words. So by her speech she emphasized her acts, planting at the heart of her undertaking the principle of progression. And because the garment of her work was change, it won sta- bility. Against the coming day she raised a standard MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 297 of scholarship famous for thoroughness, sincer- ity, and disinterestedness. Her girls breathed an intellectual atmosphere remarkably free from contaminating particles. As at Ipswich, there were no prizes ; even when compositions were publicly read, none read her own. In the joy of mental activity they found their re- ward, as she had found hers. Three classes of women, she told them, ought to consider well the thought of striving for a higher edu- cation: the few who had studied enough to love study, such as had the rudiments of this love in them but had been denied its develop- ment, and those who could learn if they tried long and hard. " But ladies are turned aside by a thousand things which never interrupt gen- tlemen, and if they would build high they must not be satisfied with laying the foundation." Present achievement she focused against the background of a future, and her students car- ried away a sense of the greatness of what they did not know, so stimulating to the appetite as to have made some of them eager scholars long after their three-score years and ten. Lecturers from Amherst and Williams sup- 298 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON plemented the work of the regular classes, and one year we hear of a Frenchman coming over from Northampton several times a week. For the others, a name or two must sufl&ce. "Pro- fessor Snell has consented to render us a lit- tle aid about our philosophical department," * writes Miss Lyon to a niece, ten years after Mount Holyoke opened. " He has been twice to look over the apparatus. He is to meet me in Boston this week ... and we hope to make considerable additions. When that is done we hope he will come over once or twice a week and give experiments." In the third year of the seminary he delivered a course of lectures on architecture previously given at Amherst. Here came Professor Hitchcock, lecturing with a manikin on physiology, and bringing to the geology classes stimulating contact with the mind of an original searcher after truth. One should guard against reading back into this science-study modern scope and method. Yet, elementary as much of the work must have been, it marked an abrupt divergence from the point of view represented by the head of a girls' * "Natural philosophy." MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 299 school in Virginia, a woman esteemed for her "rank and intelligence," who at the end of the thirties commented on physiology as "a useless study which young ladies cannot understand." The teachers, four at first, with three assist- ant pupils, increased with the number of stu- dents, averaging about one to sixteen. No evi- dence shows any attempt at organization of the faculty. In practice, department lines were sometimes broken over in men's colleges. Miss Lyon chose women " whose spirit would be con- genial to the genius of the seminary," and so welded them to solidarity that President Hitch- cock declared she always seemed surrounded by "just the right sort of persons." They were eager to do good work, and among them were women of strong mentality. That all proved equally illuminating instructors is hardly sup- posable, and a few were over young. Now and then a note of adverse criticism sounds in the paean of praise that has come down to us. The tradition of text-book supremacy bound some of them. It remains true that they were picked women ; weaklings do not test new ways. Though Miss Lyon herself, after the first 300 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON years, gave practically all teaching into other hands, now and then later students passed through the door of a class-room into her invig- orating presence. "I used to think of her as having been in the past a good teacher," said one of them recently, " but when she took the class in Butler's 'Analogy' for a little while, I saw of what stuff she was. She loved logic, the order of arguments, and her class felt the full force of her intellect." It is in connection with a public examination that Mr. Hitchcock re- lates a bit of conversation between two college presidents in the audience. When Miss Lyon had finished with her class in "Analogy," one president turned to the other : " How is it that these young ladies recite in Butler so much bet- ter than our senior classes ?*' " I do not know," was the answer, " unless it be that they have a better teacher." The impulse of her unquenchable curiosity could not fail in less direct ways to leave its impress on the intellectual temper of Mount Holyoke. The keen edge of her appetite never dulled. One of the last summer vacations of her life found her joining President Hitchcock, MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 301 then state geologist, in a field excursion into Vermont. They pushed as far north as Bur- lington, young Edward Hitchcock driving Miss Lyon and one of her associates, "A few years since," writes Professor Charles Hitch- cock of Dartmouth, " I stopped for dinner at a house in North Chittenden, and was told that my father and Miss Lyon had once done the same thing some forty years earlier. It was evidently a red-letter day for that family." Out of all these varied activities she evoked a "Holyoke spirit" in which alertness, democ- racy, sincerity, and an unobtrusive helpfulness came to be a widely recognized blend. Her girls, like herself, did not live for applause, and people learned to count on them to succor needy good with quiet, effective deeds. In conquering distrust of the new education, the "Holyoke spirit" played no minor role ; by the output of a plant men judge it. "Such a young lady from the city was a mere cipher in her father's fam- ily before attending the Mount Holyoke Semi- nary," remarked an influential Boston woman. "Now her aid, kindness, solace, and counsel are invaluable." 302 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Requests for teachers came from all over the country to supply all grades of schools. Men wrote from Alabama for the plan of the build- ing, and from Illinois and Wisconsin to inquire into the theory and practice of Mount Holyoke as a guide in founding Rockford Seminary conjointly with Beloit College. Women who never came into Miss Lyon's presence knew all about her, and under their knowledge life quickened into new meanings. Lucy Larcom wrote of that rare colony of young women, teachers in summer, tenders of looms in winter, poets and novelists, earning by hand and brain the money to send brothers to college or to gain more education for themselves ; *' Mount Hol- yoke Seminary broke upon the thoughts of many of them as a vision of hope . . . and Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the Lowell mill-girls." From Amherst Emily Dickinson jubilantly informed a friend : " I am fitting to go to South Hadley seminary, and expect, if my health is good, to enter that institution a year from next fall. Are you not astonished to hear such news ? You cannot imagine how much I am antici- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 303 pating in entering there. It has been in my thought by day, and my dreams by night, ever since I heard of South Hadley seminary." So widely did the seminary become known, that in many quarters of the globe the word still slips easily from older tongues, a persistent tri- bute to Mount Holyoke's early fame. But Miss Lyon met triumph as equably as she had looked into the face of ridicule. " We are on the top wave of popularity just now," she would say with cheerful coolness as she went about her work. Amusing records exist of swift conversions. Dr. D. K. Pearsons has sketched one of them. The indefatigable donor to colleges, himself among the pioneers in the art who, when a young doctor in Chicopee, caught, as he claims, his own interest in education from watching Miss Lyon drove a "skeptical minister" to a commencement in South Hadley. WTiile the doctor " talked Mary Lyon ' ' the minister looked the other way. "Going home after the exer- cises, I had all I could do to hold that man in the wagon, he was so interested in Mary Lyon and the girls she graduated that day." 304 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON The objections raised to the higher educa- tion of women in the first half of the nineteenth century have a curiously familiar sound in the twentieth. Fears were entertained for health, manners, charm. The account of another com- mencement, printed originally in the Boston Recorder under "Notes of a Traveller," is so deliciously flavored with the vintage of 1840 as to forbid omission from these pages. It bears date of August fourteenth. MOUNT HOLYOKE FEMALE SEMINARY It is a noble affair. I have not long thought so. I imagined it the Sine Dulci a sort of New England Female Oberlin, with rude buildings, and untasteful arrangements, and a studious avoidance of all that makes woman lovely, so far as they can be separated from what makes her respectable and in some re- spects, useful. It is no slander to say this, for hundreds have thought it and do still ; and be- sides, I have recanted ; and do fully, with one slight exception, retract all I have spoken in derogation of the once named Pangynaskean school. Yesterday was the time of their An- MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 305 niversary. And I am sure that not one, of the crowds which filled the beautiful edifice and listened to the performances, has any remaining doubts that it is one of the finest schools in our land. The location is charming. The scenery varied. The building in good taste; well fin- ished; handsomely furnished; surrounded by neat fences and elegant grounds. The menage is excellent. So good a dinner and so well served I have never before seen on a common table, or on any similar public occasion. The school room was decorated with plants. The teachers and pupils seemed good-humored and happy. And though some of the lighter accomplish- ments, as drawing, music, and embroidery, were either not exhibited, or evidently not made very prominent in the course of instruction, yet there was no evidence that precision, awk- wardness, and coarseness of taste are promoted by the principles and habits of the institution, plain and domestic as they are. Of President Hopkins' address and Mr. Condit's farewell address, I can only say that they were worthy of the occasion. I mentioned an exception to my approval. I hardly know whether to erase 306 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON that line, or to explain it by objecting to the pub- lic conferring of degrees. I think, however, it is an evil, slight in itself, but leading to others, and endangering that beautiful seclusion in which female loveliness should live and move, and have both its being and its rewards. Twelve young ladies, without parents, rising in a crowded church to receive a broad diploma with its collegiate seal, presented to my view the least attractive spectacle of a most interest- ing day ought I to point out a spot upon the sun ? Perhaps so, if there is any hope of re- moving it. But it is a noble school, and will cer- tainly flourish. So much for my confession and recantation. I have not liked it, and should not have advised any young lady to attend it who could well attend a different school. Now, I know of none which I would sooner recom- mend even to a wealthy parent, who desired that his daughter should be well educated, without show on the one hand, or pedantry and awkwardness on the other. It was in the address to which the " Travel- ler" refers that President Hopkins said : "This, MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 307 I understand, is the only female seminary in the Union where the buildings and grounds, the library and apparatus, are pledged as perma- nent contributions to the cause of female edu- cation. All other seminaries are sustained by individual enterprise, in some cases by a single person, in others by associations who receive an income from the investment of their money. It is on this ground especially that the trustees of this seminary present their claims upon the liberality of the public, and as it seems to me with good reason. It is an attempt to do for the daughters of the State what the State itself and beneficent individuals have from the first done for its sons." Had the speaker made his first statement a year earlier, he would not have been in error. The "exception of recent origin," recorded by footnote in the printed address, probably refers to Monticello Seminary, which, after nearly two years of private ownership, had shortly be- fore been deeded to trustees and the following year received a charter. Or may it point to Georgia Female College ? Incorporated some months after Mount Holyoke, with the right to 308 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON grant degrees, it opened in 1839, with a pre- paratory department only recently shuffled off and leaving a trace of its existence in what are referred to in the latest catalogue ^ as " sub- collegiate pupils." The incubus of a mortgage led in five years to its sale and subsequent trans- fer from the Georgia conference of the Meth- odist-Episcopal Church to the whole Church South, and a new charter, incorporating Wes- leyan Female College. Having leased the plant for years, always to a minister of the Methodist church, in 1896 the trustees again took over its operation. The "college" at Macon seems to have been the first of women's institutions to claim the name ; English, mathematics, natural science, Latin or Greek, and a modern language led to a degree. It offered no philosophy and the scope of its learning is a point which the loss of early records leaves in doubt. The eye lingers among these yellowing com- mencement papers. How quaint is their blend- ing of things new and old, how coeval are they with the timeless ways of men ! Take the ques- tion with which Professor Hitchcock begins " 1908-1909. MOUNT IIOLYOKE FOUNDED 309 his talk at Mount Holyoke's fifth anniversary: ** Why is it necessary that these addresses should be confined to the subject of female education ? Why should not the speaker be allowed the same wide field in which to choose his subject as is given to those who address young men in our colleges at their annual commencements ?" A twentieth-century auditor at a woman's col- lege often feels like echoing, Why, indeed ? Or note the guarded manner of a still earlier speaker : ** Whether the progress of experience will establish, by universal consent, a three or four years' course of study in the higher depart- ments of knowledge as the proper one for those females who are able to obtain a liberal edu- cation, is not yet known. Nor can we yet de- termine whether it will be found expedient to congregate them generally in seminaries for this purpose. This much, however, is certain. There are interesting and important experi- ments in progress and this Seminary is one of the most interesting and important of them which must exert great influence on the pub- lic mind. Should it be proved that one or two hundred females can be retained in a seminary 310 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON during a three years' course of study without, on the one hand, restricting the well-disposed too much by regulations made for the unruly and the wayward, and, on the other, without those corrupting influences to which large semi- naries are supposed to be peculiarly liable, the founding of this institution will form an epoch in the history of the female mind in -this land." Features of the life which was fashioned under so wise and tender a hand take color from the age. The daily schedule with its early hours, the fast days, the grave and heart- searching Sabbaths, the whale-oil lamps, the open Franklin stoves, the individual wood- bins, betoken a time that has quite vanished from the thought of men. In the loftiness of its purpose, in its simplicity, sincerity, and ear- nestness, in its very rigor and restriction, the young Mount Holyoke shows clearly the col- lege pattern of its time. And while one might have bespoken for it something more of light- someness, it had its relaxations. Choir-practice gave outlet to overflowing spirits, and then as now the lovely rolling country invited adven- turous feet. Decorous Thanksgiving gayeties MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 311 peep through the years, with Miss Lyon " in fine spirits." It was her thrifty way often to further several ends at once : witness those excursions into the woods after blueberries which she or- ganized, with the young men of South Hadley for drivers. There were more ambitious outings, too, occasions such as that in which Amherst and Mount Holyoke joined for the christening of Mount Norwottock. From one of these pic- nics, which Williston Seminary also shared, has been preserved an agile bit of Miss Lyon's repartee. Francis A. March, the philologist, then a college student, proposed the health of " Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke Seminary a jewel set in fine gold." " Mr. March may the mind of March keep pace with the march of mind!" she flashed, as he named the toast. Despite its limitations, there was nothing negative about the training Mount Holyoke offered in these earliest years. Perhaps at no period has the higher education yielded a more eflScient output of women. The explanation is not far to seek. There is a department of per- sonal dynamics without which the most com- 312 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON plete equipment in other lines fails somewhat of its purpose, and here the young venture was amply endowed. To know Mary Lyon was an education in itself. Her spirit challenged all a girl's dormant faculties to see and seek the best. Life, physical, intellectual, spiritual, quickened at the touch of her vital presence. Let her come once or twice before a class whose interest a teacher had acknowledged herself unable to arouse, and immediately such an en- thusiasm awoke as to make the study, we are told, a subject of conversation with those girls at all times and in nearly all places. But whether or no in the class-room a student caught the "full force of her intellect," they shared alike her weekly afternoon lectures and what would now be called her chapel talks. For the latter a few notes sufficed, jotted on a slip of paper which was generally thrown away when the occasion for its use had passed. It was not her way to prepare in advance for the others. " I look around to get the inspiration of your countenances," she said once. And again, "I do not mature my thoughts much. I do not give you anything very choice or rare." MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 313 For us to-day, perhaps there is* no nearer path to the Mary Lyon of the seminary-hall platform than through the notes, and still we follow afar off. The best that these jottings can do is to suggest to the imaginative reader a few of her thoughts, detached drops of the swift sparkling current of speech that so mar- velously swayed her hearers' mood to hers. "After perhaps a diffuse talk to us," reports a listener, " she would condense so completely that, as one said, she gave the text after the sermon." The same qualities appear as at Ipswich, mellowed by years into deeper in- sight. She "leads us not in the beaten track of thought," writes a teacher. Time had not sobered her. "Playful," "vivacious," "very animated and interesting," run comments on her informal afternoon talks. "Do be particular about your dress," she begs whimsically. "Anything peculiar about the hair or dress affects me as I look at you. My mind runs like lightning. A mind of this char- acter has many faults connected with it. But in reading character, where I am disappointed once for the worse I am ten times for the better. 314 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON [I] find [people] worth more than I expected. I feel as if I should go down to the grave mourning for this [misapprehension]. It is contrary to my principles to think of unfavor- able things." "Taste should be made a sub- ject of practical education," is a remark that takes its departure from Gothic cottages and brings up again at clothes. By her definition it consists in "the combination of things which do not strike the eye. ... I don't like to wear anything that attracts attention. If anything is in good taste the change in the fashion is slight for several years. . . . All ladies can't be independent enough to be singular, can't have dignity of mind enough. If your minds are likely to be corroded and feel ashamed, then be imitators. Never be singular so as to be noticed ; but select and combine so as to be in fashion." "The body and mind each strives to see which will rule. The body is like the brute, the mind ranges in eternity. . . . The master should have the place of the master. The mind should not sit down and wash the body's feet, but the body should obey the mind. Example : MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 315 we wake in the morning. The mind says, * Get up!' Body says, *It is cold!' . . . The mind says, 'Walk!' The body says, 'Go and get excused.'" "Let not external familiarity be too strong. Let not the roots spread on the surface. . . . liCt friendships grow forty weeks before they become ripened. You need not put your arms about each other to show your love. The best friendships are not the soonest manifest. They ripen slowly. You are here from all parts of the United States. There are many subjects of common interest to you. Go in and visit each other and go out with ceremony." " We are not aware how much happiness con- sists in remembering. ... In what you say, think, look, you are weaving the web of eter- nity. . . . Avoid things and do things to make remembrances pleasant. . . . In whatever situ- ation do not ask for ease ; ask for such as will make up a desirable picture." " In pursuing an education have a right idea of what an education is. Don't judge what you have a taste for. Some of the best mathemati- cians are dull scholars at first." 316 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "This institution is a great intellectual and moral machine, and if you will jump in you may ride very fast. Do something teach have a plan live for some purpose. Nothing is more pleasant than a cultivated, refined, well-organized family." ; " What kind of a mind have you got ? Learn to carry everything through without breaking it off. Bring the mind to a perfect abstraction and let thought after thought pass through it. No great man thinks he can do anything without the power of abstraction. ... If your mathe- matics are all broken and shattered, get the connection as in grammar. There is intellectual delight in this. No pleasure is like the pleasure of active effort." As the eye slips over the pages, what pic- turesquely suggestive sentences flash to meet it! "When you write a letter, write what stands out in bold relief let it be warm like the living daughter." "There are those who travel all their lives in a nutshell." "Eternity is more like time, except in degree, than we think." "Avoid trying the patience or irri- tating the feelings of others." " You have not MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 317 governed a child until you make the child smile under your government ; your self-control is not perfect until you cease to be irritated by your own government." " We can't begin a moon and go out with the same sleeves." "Never put anything in the fire that a bird will open its bill to get." "Nothing so weakens our faith in others as our own failures." Pestalozzi said of his grandfather: "The best way for a child to learn to fear God is to see and hear a real Christian." So across the span of years her students have seen Mary Lyon standing at the heart of a type of devout life which was of an exquisite and convincing purity. With child-like eagerness she reached out for spiritual bounties, and few could re- sist her gentle touch. The difference between what she was and what she seemed never dis- turbed a girl's hesitant devoutness. And she was wise, adding to a subtle feeling for the right moment a keen sense of the privacies of person- ality ; it is not decent for any but God to see a naked soul. After an unfortunate experience with one of those blunderers who would force entrance behind closed doors, a girl whom Miss 318 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Lyon loved came to the seminary, steeling her- self against Miss Lyon's power. " She shall not make me a Christian," was her thought. All her life after she gave thanks for Miss Lyon's reticence. On her morning talks before the whole student body, and on group meetings, she relied largely for results. Most of all she relied on prayer. "Say little pray much.'* Yet so delicate was her recognition of the ne- cessity for personal initiative that she some- times hesitated to ask others in the seminary to pray with her. "I would not speak to you things that would rouse your feelings merely, but I would awaken your consciences." And always normally and steadily the academic work went on. President Hitchcock has said that during these periods of inner awakening, " a person might live for weeks in the seminary . . . and yet see nothing unusual save a deep solemnity and tenderness during religious ex- ercises. . . . Those exercises would not be much multiplied . . . nor would the subject of religion be obtruded upon the visitor, or introduced, unless he manifested an unusual interest in the state of the school." MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 319 To her who was their priest and prophet the women who had been her girls looked back with tender and ever-growing reverence. She spoke " like the voice of God in our midst," one writes. "Her face was a benediction." An- other, referring to a talk before those who were not Christians, has said: "She touched my heart. Before that she had reached my intellect and I respected her. Ever after I loved her." "Through all her lectures she preserved the friendly, sincere tones of conversation," re- corded an associate. "When she read such a passage as 'He that is holy, let him be holy still ' ; or, ' If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,' the very words seemed to the hearer to have a soul in them." " Gentle," " win- ning," "persuasive," sweetly her listeners lift the words across the dusty years. But she could be inexorable, too. Her message bore no undertone of sad labors or anchorite denials ; it blew persistently a joyous call to service. To her thought the supremacy of the universe lies with the souls who give themselves. Looking over a note- taker's shoulder, we catch the echo of her words. " Those obtain the greatest hap- 320 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON piness who seek it indirectly by promoting that of others. 'Let love through all our ac- tions run,' in every deed, look, word, or thought.'* " How much happier you would be to live in a thousand lives beside yourself rather than to live in yourself alone ! This throwing out the whole soul in powerful, vigorous, disinterested action for others, no matter how self-denying, will make you receive a hundredfold in return. First, you must give yourself to Christ, and then go about like Him. He was never striving for a place where to live." She called to no dreamy other-worldliness. "Religion is fitted to make us better in every situation in life" ; and she summoned students to note the effect which a faithful performance of duty had on their feelings and health. The girl who asked Miss Lyon for an excuse from calisthenics class so that she might have more time to read her Bible, received answer that it was just as much a religious duty to learn her lessons and take exercise as it was to read her Bible or to pray. Aristotle's doctrine that the intellect is perfected through activity, found in her nature a rarely unified interpretation. She MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 321 never roused feeling without at the same time providing opportunity for the action that pre- serves healthy poise. To counteract the temptation to self-centred narrowness which, she felt, assails student-life, her girls were bred to a habit of generosity by linking their efforts with the fresh and eager liberalities stirring in the world outside their campus. Where to-day a thousand lines of fra- ternity bind men to men, in those loosely knit times few cables carried the rising currents of good- will, and for devout hearts the strongest of these was missions. The figures of Mount Holyoke's annual subscriptions to home and foreign missions throughout Miss Lyon's ad- ministration rise, with its growth, above the thousand-dollar line, a large sum in view of those small student-purses. To this purpose Miss Lyon herself always devoted from a third to a half of her tiny salary. Beyond their money she bade them give themselves. "Do what nobody else wants to do, go where nobody else wants to go." "Be willing to do anything anywhere ; be not hasty to decide' that you have no physical or mental 322 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON strength, no faith or hope." Her words, sped by the power of her life, winged a compelling invitation straight to the heroic heart of youth. It is small wonder that they answered her, stu- dents and teachers going out to girdle the earth with quiet, steadfast service. They pressed into new paths with earnest morning faces, and they carried into old ways fresh vigor. The most salient impress of their training appears in a certain fine adequacy to life, however and wherever they might touch hands with it. Ad- aptable, resourceful, independent, they knew how to use themselves, and, what is quite as much to the point, they possessed the will to do it. Wherever they went. Miss Lyon's wise fore- sight preceded them and her love followed, into their homes, their schools, their mission-sta- tions. Here is her recipe for a woman mission- ary : " piety, a sound constitution, and a merry heart." It is still noteworthy that her enthusi- asm never ran away with her sagacity. "Do not expect to make over this world," she coun- seled. In reply to a letter from Miss Beecher proposing the establishment in Cincinnati of a MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 323 clearing-house for the distribution of teachers through the middle West, occurs this passage : "There is a difficulty as to my immediate suc- cess in furnishing teachers for your enterprise. For young ladies must not only be willing to go, but must also gain the approbation of father, mother, or, perhaps, brother or sister or sister's husband. As the enterprise now is, it will be difficult to satisfy very careful friends. Just write to me of a particular place by name, and that a teacher can have proper assurance of her paying expenses and a salary of, say, only a hundred dollars, and I have little doubt that I can send you a good teacher with full consent of friends as soon as I can find a safe escort. But if I can only say I wish to send a teacher to Miss Beecher, to spend a few weeks at Cin- cinnati in preparing for an unknown field with an unknown salary, and to be under obligation to an unknown donor, the case is different. . . . You will excuse me if my suggestions are bor- rowed from my own experience the last ten years. Having had many obstacles thrown in my own way, I anticipate them for others ; and having been blessed with more success than I 324 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ever hoped, I am prepared to expect success for others as I do for you." A very close and tender bond held its daugh- ters to that early Mount Holyoke. The brother of one girl wrote Miss Lyon, " Sometimes I accuse her of having left at least two thirds of her heart at Mount Holyoke Seminary." " Your Holyoke home " the phrase slipped from Miss Lyon's pen to be warmly echoed under many stars. As she had set the fashion of loving it, so she sought to foster the relation in an intimacy that distance might not destroy. She would keep it always to them a friendly spot. It was she who invited the first class reunions, and devised the plan of the journals that traveled from Mount Holyoke to lonely stations in China, India, Persia, Africa, and the wide American West, holding far-away women in touch with their Alma Mater and drawing in return letters that kept it in touch with them. Their names were often on her lips, and suc- ceeding generations of undergraduates came to think of them as honored sisters who had gone before. Where now was but "a little one," she saw m o H ^ rr. t < -3 H -a ^ I a :: ^ 2, o MOUNT HOLYOKE FOUNDED 325 in coming years a mighty mother, and against the day of reminiscence that she knew would dawn, her capacious brain made ready with a forethought that recalls the student's exclama- tion: "It is remarkable how she takes every- thing into view!" Perhaps no act of her life revealed more prescience and practicality than the founding in 1839 of the Memorandum So- ciety, forerunner of the later alumnae associa- tion, with the double aim of recording informa- tion about its members and of preserving the records of Mount Holyoke. The words that explained it to her girls words of which the note-taker's quill has kept for us a fragmentary glimpse may well close this study of her grasp, hinting as they do at the limitless reach of her spirit. She had been talking about sym- pathetic associations with the past, speaking of Greece, and suddenly she turned to flash upon her hearers the insight that they, too, were makers of history. "This institution is destined to exist thousands of years. It is founded on a strong basis, destined to be of a higher order than any seminary in the country." Catching at the illustration nearest to her lis- 326 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON teners' thought, " It is as likely that it will con- tinue as that Amherst College will [continue]. [The] design of [the] Memorandum Society is to preserve a knowledge of facts connected with the school. It is of vast importance, and could we look back upon fifty years of its exist- ence, we should see its utility." CHAPTER VIII THE COST OF PIONEERING A PERSON may not whole-heartedly throw six- teen of her richest years into the vindication of an unpopular idea, without paying the price. Those years yielded Mary Lyon a strong, sweet, satisfying sense of life, and life on less heroic terms, one feels instinctively, could never have contented her. She preferred quality to quan- tity. Better twenty years with an education than forty without, she had said at Ipswich. When she cried to her girls, " Do not ask for a life of ease, you are asking a curse ! ' ' the words voiced in negative form her own fundamental attitude toward existence. And she did not be- grudge the cost. As freely as she had spent herself to finance Mount Holyoke, she poured her energies into its upbuilding. The Boston "Daily Mail," in its issue of August 15, 1846, after touching on the anniversary of the "distinguished institu- 328 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON tion at South Hadley for the training of female minds," the " eloquent address," the " forty-two graduates," the excess of demand over accom- modation, continues in the expansive phrases of sixty years ago : " The stranger who looks at this institution, its splendid edifice, unsurpassed by any college building in the land, containing nearly one hundred neatly furnished rooms, with a large chapel, dining-hall, and library, surrounded by extended gardens, could hardly believe that it had all resulted from the persevering efforts of one Female, enlisting the benevolent energies of others. Yet such is the fact, and it affords a striking illustration of the power of mind, stimulated by motives of philanthropy. The object of its originator was to furnish the means of a thorough education to promising daughters of the poor, as well as of the rich ; and this object has been entirely real- ized." The "Female" thus delicately glimpsed be- tween the lines of the "Daily Mail's" modest verbiage put more than mind into the work. Il had called for blood and tissue and she had built it out of her own life. Under the most THE COST OF PIONEERING 329 favorable conditions an educational concern generally overworks its organizers ; and Mount Holyoke, ill supplied with money and ham- pered by adverse currents of public opinion, had little with which to ease the way of Mary Lyon. Two courses lie open to one who would do a thing for which he lacks seeming neces- sities: either to give it up entirely or to add himself to slender material resources and by expenditure of energy and invention eke out that of purse. Miss Lyon was an adept in this combination, but it is a mastery that drains vitality, and from the merging point of the thirties and forties, when the enlargement of the building threw upon her added burdens, a consciousness of her body forced itself now and again more or less insistently on her atten- tion. It could hardly have been otherwise. The incessant and exposing rigors of the three years' campaign for funds had led directly into the no less incessant toil of organization. An old lady, who as a student entered Mount Holyoke in the fall of 1837, remarks with a twinkle in her eye, "Going near Miss Lyon that first year 330 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON was like getting in front of an automobile"; adding, " But she always had time for a cordial word." She had not planned to be so busy. Loads dropped unexpectedly from weaker shoulders and she picked them up. When the health of the person who had been engaged as domestic superintendent proved unequal to the demands made upon it, Miss Lyon, sympa- thizing with the woman's open disappointment, sent her away with a parting gift out of her own purse nearly equal to the salary she had re- ceived, and took her work upon herself. In the spring Miss Caldwell's strength gave out, and for several weeks Miss Lyon added most of her associate's duties to the formidable assortment already her own. Her hitherto invincible mem- ory began to show signs of overstrain. *' To tell the truth," she wrote, "during the last year, much of the time, amidst all my cares about school, family, domestic concerns, obtaining furniture, setting up housekeeping, economiz- ing our means, and contriving how to do with- out what we cannot have, it has seemed as if I should forget everything, unless it was on my memorandum." THE COST OF PIONEERING 331 Miss Caldwell has given insight into a sin- gle phase of the principal's activity that first year which would seem to have been enough to absorb one woman's whole attention. " Be- sides giving systematic religious instruction, she matured a course of study, watched the re- citations, directed individual students in the selection of studies, criticised compositions, instructed the middle class in chemistry, performing with them a course of experiments, and taught several other branches. For the first time in her life she taught Whately's Logic, and entered into it with as much eagerness and relish as she had plunged into Virgil in the days of her youth." Even when Mount Holyoke had surprised people by turning out well, its founder must be always ready to meet sudden drafts on her reserves. Marriage and the mission field, some- times twin calls, sometimes drawing separately, lured from her teaching force trusty helpers; and though she let them go cheerfully, it cost a struggle. The parting with her two brilliant nieces, Lucy Lyon and Abigail Moore, who near the middle of the forties sailed with their 332 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON husbands, the one for China, the other for India, cut cords of intimate association on which she may well have built rich promise. What hopes sailed away from her over the Indian Ocean with Abigail Moore Burgess, so lately her own assistant, we may not know. She was not given to talking about what might have been. We do know that these agitations packed into her already over full years much extra work to which a cautious generation did not hesitate to add. Every gain in the growth that reads so easily to-day was purchased at an outlay of persuasion. People who confessed gladness that she had cajoled them into found- ing Mount Holyoke feared much further to dare the future, and there were always many who distrusted permanence. It would not long outlive Miss Lyon, they said. Men objected even to enlarging the building, and only her unflagging urgency spurred the trustees to ac- tion. How her spirit must have chafed at re- straint, compelled to "advance slowly" when she would have leaped ! " The wear and tear of what I cannot do is a great deal more than the wear and tear of what I can do," she used to THE COST OF PIONEERING 333 quote. And though she bore it buoyantly, there was ever present with her a sense of account- ability to that wide circle of men and women who had made Mount Holyoke possible. Such drains as these sap life. Nor were many of the duties that contributed to draw the pattern of those arduous days what she would have chosen as the most congenial ways of spending time. There often fell to her oversight matters as far from ordinary admin- istrative detail as those which pass through matron's hands, superintendent's office, and bookstore. She had to remember to have the ink made ; to engage men to carry baggage ; to keep furniture and linen in repair ; to order sup- plies for the table ; to think of menus for the three daily meals, and sometimes, when she went away, to leave them written out for the time of her absence ; to study recipes ; to har- monize academic and domestic schedules in itself no slight triumph of her rapid brain. After commencement she must linger to oversee the closing of the house, and before the fall term, arrive early to open it. Now and then she asked a young teacher to help her, and one 334 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON of them has left a pleasant picture of the " priv- ilege," as she calls it, of staying a week with Miss Lyon, feeling the "warm social side of her heart" expressed in her " light-hearted man- ner. . . . How she enjoyed the simple meal at the small table ! But the small talk was worth remembering." Another summed the situation in a pregnant sentence : " All things which be- long to no one else are hers ; and this amount is no small fraction of the whole." That such use of her strength was in one sense a waste, she knew quite well. " The time I have devoted [to domestic duties]," she said once to her girls, "has been stolen from liter- ary and moral pursuits." But those who blaze new trails may not pick and choose, and the compulsion that was always upon her to finish what she had begun drove relentlessly. She must so fit together the machinery of her enter- prise that persons less unique than she could run it successfully. "Uncommon talents are very convenient," she had once scribbled, "but they are of so rare occurrence that any estab- lishment, so organized that it be sustained and prosper only by such talents, would ever THE COST OF PIONEERING 335 be in danger of falling by its own weight, and of being crushed by its own ruins." On the success of her experiment turned is- sues too big for caution or regret. In her last year she wrote Mrs. Burgess : " My life is made up, as you know, of an endless number of duties of nameless littleness, interwoven if not confused together. But still my work is a good work." This mastery of detail, coupled with imagi- nation and broad grasp, a blend that marks the administrative mind, wherever applied, made her twelve years' leadership a marvel of management. Judged merely from a business standpoint, Miss Lyon's administration was a notable achievement. Its high power of effi- ciency, secured at astonishingly small cost, caused Mount Holyoke to become the wonder of visitors; and to-day the inquisitor into old figures, while allowing largely for depreciation in the purchasing power of money, finds in her skill at making ends meet, and sometimes over- lap, a hint of wizardry. Sixty dollars a year covered board and tuition, exclusive of charges for fuel and lights. It had been advertised that 336 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON expense would be put at cost, and the first year's experimental charge was sixty-four dollars. The closeness of her estimate conveys an il- luminating notion of her practical acumen. During her management the plant freed itself from the debt incurred in building. In all, she succeeded in raising nearly seventy thou- sand dollars out of a generation largely indiffer- ent to the higher education of women and com- ~v^ paratively lean-pursed, a sum probably not ^^to be paralleled to-day under millions in the expenditure of personal power that it repre- sented. It is difficult to see where she found time to do all that she did, for her habitual accessibility to need laid her open to demands of the most varied character. The Wheatons wrote asking advice in the purchase of chemical apparatus. A missionary society was started at the semi- nary, and on her election to the presidency she gave thought and time to making the meetings "extremely interesting." The incident sends memory flitting back to a mission band num- bering sixty children which she had formed at Buckland twenty-five years earlier, climbing THE COST OF PIONEERING 337 stone walls and letting down pasture- bars in the furtherance of her invitations. Ever con- siderate of her girls' happiness, during a spring vacation she invited those students who could not go home to join with her in a reading circle; while the rest sewed, one read aloud from Prescott's "Conquest of Peru." To the multitude of applications for teachers she brought solicitous care to provide in every case the right woman and, as in undergraduate affairs, an inspiriting insight into individual ability that in itself went far to make one fit. Sometimes a shake-up was required to set free the candidate she wanted ; but always she had another in mind to supply the vacant place, if release were granted. Her insistence on scru- pulous honesty of contract was seconded by her sense of the courtesies due in an educational situation. While she sought to remove "that false mantle of charity, which has been thrown over a great many little schools and great ones, too," bad faith or rivalry between promoters of education won her fearless disapproval ; she had no use for a person who would try to steal the territory of any self-respecting school. 338 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON " Love thy neighbor as thyself, and, As ye would that others should do to you, etc., are to me broad commands, and have a peculiar power and sacredness in all public efforts to do good." Yet with all her necessity to use the minutes, she never pressed them into the too obvious service that forms some people's notion of im- proving time, and against this infelicity she warned her students. The explanation of the surprising volume of her accomplishment probably lies in two facts already noted the rapidity and the com- pleteness with which she turned her attention from one thing to another. She could mobilize her mental forces at a moment's notice, though her absorption might be so profound that a touch was needed to rouse her from her work. Lucy Lyon told of breaking in on her aunt's settlement of some vexed kitchen problem with a question about a certain baffling point in But- ler's "Analogy." The explanation came as in- stantaneously as though she had concerned her- self only with abstruse matters all her life. It must not be thought that she spent her strength recklessly. So far as the conditions THE COST OF PIONEERING 339 incident to pioneering permitted, she was pru- dent. " It is a great thing to know how to rest rightly." Now and then she liked to run away from South Hadley,*' partly for my own benefit," as she wrote Mrs. Banister before one of these excursions, "and partly to sustain my credit for taking proper care of my unworthy self." Though on most of these rest-trips she car- ried letters which her student secretaries and the teachers could not answer for her, and ac- complished much business, she came back with a fresh grip on her work. Mr. Porter's Monson home was a favorite retreat, and Mr. Safford's Beacon Street house always welcomed her gladly. Once in a while we learn of an outing of unalloyed recreation; such as the month when, traveling in company with Mr. and Mrs. Safford, she revisited Niagara and stopped at her brother's in Ohio. It was on this journey that she arrived at a relative's in western New York just in time to save his homestead from passing under the hammer. Here is a suggestive bit from a letter written at Somers, Connecticut, to her most intimate niece : 340 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON " You know how exhausted I am at the close of the anniversary, and how difficult I find it to sleep the last two or three weeks. So just be- fore Mary left, it occurred to us that it would be a good plan for me to go home with Mary to rest and make up my sleep. Without waiting to see whether I could or not, I put the thought into requisition. This is the best place I could have had for rest. It is so quiet, so peaceful, the air so pure and fresh, you are so surrounded with kind faces and kind hearts. It is so good to rest the first thing. I shall want to do just so next year." In simple pleasures she renewed herself, in friendly faces and in lovely scenes. She made a delightful guest, and people were always beg- ging her to visit them. With thoughtful re- source she could solve a threatening dilemma and leave a hostess in serene ignorance of how she did it. Her gift at finding people worth while ignored the lines of size and outward cir- cumstance, and servants and children adored her. Mrs. Porter, writing of her "help," re- marked: "Adeline sends respects and joins with me in an invitation to have you come and THE COST OF PIONEERING 341 visit us. She says she would rather have Miss Lyon come than any one who visits here. . . . I wish she was as happy in having all my friends come as you . It woul d be much t o my comfort. ' ' An amusing story tells how Miss I^yon's un- expected arrival was announced one evening at the Safford home. A German maid, not fully wonted to her duties or to the speech of her new country, answered the bell, and leaving the guest standing on the door- step beside her trunk, rushed through the house, shouting joy- fully, " The Lyon she be come ! The Lyon she be come! " Mr. Hitchcock's little girls laboriously wrote her letters: "I have made considerable pro- gress in my Latin. ... I think the verbs are very interesting as you said they would be." And in the heart of the ferryman's small daugh- ter, for whom Miss Lyon always had a pleas- ant greeting, dwelt a deep and wordless ad- miration ; she confessed long afterwards that in church she liked just to sit and look at Miss Lyon's bonnet! Nor were they girls alone whom she num- bered in her train. More than one "little lad" 342 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON she "borrowed" of an afternoon. "I was her errand boy for more than a year and I never saw a cross look out of her eyes," said one of them long after. A citizen of South Hadley who, as boy and young man, served her in many ways, ends his stories with the words : " I would have done anything she asked me to. Everybody would." "Almost the only time I ever met Miss Lyon," runs another's recollection, "was when, a young lad, I was employed to drive her to Belchertown. She had a text-book on moral science with her, in which she studied most of the way, but she paused long enough to inquire into my boyish plans, and gave me words of en- couragement that have been help and stimulus to me ever since." The part of hostess fitted her as happily as that of guest, and she played it as impartially. She delighted to welcome people to Mount Holyoke, strangers, new acquaintances, old friends whom she might not have seen for years, persons of note and of obscurity, and to share them with her girls. A lecturer passing through the region, and pausing for a call, would THE COST OF PIONEERING 343 find himself eagerly pressed into service; and more than one student carried away remem- brance of the joy in Miss Lyon's face when she could say, " My dear friend Mrs. Banister is in the parlor, and I want to arrange to have you all meet her." While her vivacity was never more evident than in the large evening gatherings that her invitations drew from time to time to "sem- inary hall," her simplicity and thoughtfulness everywhere opened a quick road to hearts. Not long ago an old lady said to me : " I remem- ber distinctly the time when I, not quite five years old, went to the seminary to see my sister. My father, another sister, and I, stopped there after a visit elsewhere. I, a child, did not ex- pect to have any attention paid me, but Miss Lyon, busy entertaining my elders, took pains to make me happy, too. She saw me admiring a vase on the mantel and lifted it down to a table where I could see it better. Then she talked pleasantly with me." But of all the visitors she loved to entertain, none came by more urgent invitation than the babies. The busiest Holyoke days yield 344 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON glimpses of chubby little people asleep on her couch and bed, or awake, with Miss Lyon " run- ning to get them this and that." It is said that one year she used often to borrow a certain three-year-old for his nap. To a person of such social temper, the tasks that so filled her days as to debar her from many of the common offices of friendship must sometimes have proved irksome. "How I should love, if I ever did such a thing, to write you a long letter!" she cries. Another passage interprets the words. " When I have a business letter to write and know that I need not add a single line to business in hand, I can catch a few moments and sit right down and write it. But when I think of writing a letter of friend- ship, I dislike to give the odds and ends of a tired-out mind." This personal correspond- ence reveals a depth of tenderness that does not always accompany widespread aflBliations. While the capacity for friendship that Amanda White had noted in her youth led her at each new turn of life into fresh and ardent associa- tions, sundering circumstance never put out the old fires. Years of absence might bank in- THE COST OF PIONEERING 345 timacy ; no friend, returning, found the hearth- stone cold. The relations between Miss I^yon and her nieces and nephews which the letters discover are particularly charming. On their familiar, newsy pages a reader catches unpremeditated glimpses of her boundless generosities of heart and purse. How she managed with her tiny salary, she refused to accept more than two hundred dollars a year in addition to living ex- penses, and with all her public gifts and nameless private bounties, to ease the educa- tional way of so many of her ambitious young kindred remains a mystery. For though she always planned her loans to help them to a place where they might help themselves, know- ing that good is dearly bought at the price of independence, her love was continually prompt- ing some thoughtful gift. Niece after niece en- tered Mount Holyoke and went out to a posi- tion that her aunt had secured her; even the college nephews asked help in getting vacation schools. She delighted to gather them about her. The boy whose acquaintance she first made on the western trip writes to say that he 346 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON is "pretty much settled in Old Yale" ; and in the spring she has him up from New Haven and a second nephew over from Williams, to meet another cousin who is studying at East- hampton. This Williston Seminary student is a brother of the niece who has been to her aunt " a daughter indeed and even more than a daughter." " He tells me all about his affairs," she writes Abigail in India, "which I encour- age him to do. ... I shall continue to help him along a little. I enjoy watching over him a little very much. I love to do it for his own sake, I love to do it for his mother's sake, and I love to do it for his far-off sister's sake." Nephews- in-law succumbed to her spell, and the daily letters from Lucy Lyon Lord and her husband that brightened the lonely interval between the good-bye at Mount Holyoke and their sailing for China deepen the stress of feel- ing in the niece's words, "You do not know how like a mother you seem to us both." In 1840 her own mother had died, but a few weeks after the youngest sister. The following year we find her writing of a great desire to go up into the hills and " spend a little while with THE COST OF PIONEERING 347 my dear aunt and enjoy her sweet simple hos- pitality. She is the nearest resemblance left to my very dear mother, and as the spring opens, when I used to watch the traveling and plan my business to go and see my mother, I have a strong desire to visit my aunt." From a word dropped now and then in the free intercourse of friendship, it would appear that for years the feeling had sometimes visited Miss Lyon that she was not destined to long life. There is an unsentimental note in these simple sentences ; the thought did not color her daily temper or claim from her any particular attention. She never doubted immortality, she had made life too well worth living for that; and with every year the other world that was so vital a reality to her faith grew a more friendly place. "I have asked God to keep me alive just so long as I can do something for Him which no one else can do," she remarked once. On her fiftieth birthday, " the most sol- emn day of her life," she turned, as she said, her face toward sunset. " I felt that I could no longer do as I had done," runs a fragment of remembered conversation. "The disposition 348 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON was not wanting, but waning health forbade the expectation. ... It is evening with me now. ... I gather up the odds and ends and keep the machine in motion. I need rest and repose is grateful. I have laid aside my armor and ... it has become natural for me to think and speak more of the results of duties discharged, of actions performed, than it once was. I have for it more time, and a setting sun, you know, always invites to different thoughts and inspires far other emotions than when shining upon us with his morning beams or throwing down upon us his meridian splendors." We must not take the words too literally, or carry their import too far into her life. Mary Lyon fell in harness. For two years after that birthday she worked with scarcely a vacation, much of the time "maturing changes" in the academic and domestic organization of Mount Holyoke ; and death surprised her in a resur- gence of health that had seemed to both herself and her friends a promise of longer service. " My health has been unusually good this year," she wrote in midwinter of the twelfth year of her administration, dating the letter at Monson THE COST OF PIONEERING 349 from out "an old-fashioned vacation of real rest in this sweetest of all resting places." After her return to South Hadley a case of erysipelas appeared among the seniors. At first it occasioned no uneasiness in the minds of doctor or authorities ; but without warning t} ; malignant symptoms developed which a f; w years before had accompanied fatal epide^ ics in many parts of the country. Word of th dis- ease, escaping through the student body,.[ treat- ened to spread panic. At once Miss L/on or- dered disinfectants distributed and called her girls together. Work would continue, she said, but those who were afraid might go home. Few, if any, went. Her quiet courage calmed them. " No pen can describe the wonderful sweetness and beauty of her chapel talks during the last week she was with us," writes one of her stu- dents. Tenderly, heroically, she talked, her words lifted on a tide of strong emotion. " Shall we fear what God is about to do .? There is nothing in the universe that I fear, but that I shall not know-all my duty or shall fail to do it." The senior died with her father and Miss Lyon beside her, and following immediately 350 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON on the strain of those sad, exacting days and nights news came to Miss Lyon that one of her nephews had terminated an attack of insanity by committing suicide. She was already suffer- ing from a cold and headache, and the mental d-nguish produced by the shock led to serious illness. Her physician pronounced the case erysipelas of mild and non-malignant type, but from the first he was fearful of a fatal outcome. The disease left her with congestion of the brain. "I sl^ould love to come back to watch over the seminary," those who were with her heard her say in a moment of consciousness, "but God will take care of it." On the fifth of March, 1849, after a short sharp illness, measuring little more than a week, she died. Her death came to that student community, in the journal's phrase, " like the blotting of the sun out of the heavens at midday." News of it traveled through the world, and to people widely different in condition and nationality brought a sense of loneliness and loss. Some- thing vivid had gone from earth and left it duller. ]Men and women who had worked with her gathered again in South Hadley, now to THE COST OF PIONEERING 351 honor in heartfelt sorrow the greatness and lovableness of the woman whom ex-president Humphrey of Amherst College called, in her funeral sermon, one of the happiest persons he had ever knowTi. They buried her near an oak south of the orchard, and there through the growth of years Mount Holyoke has held her in its heart, close as she ever liked to be to human ways. Women full of days and honor, once her students, bring flowers to that quiet grove-encircled place ; col- lege presidents come to stand for a moment be- fore they go about their business; the warm, busy, joyous life of the campus flows around it, and ever pass the feet of girls such as she loved. Death tested the work of her life and found it good. Despite foreboding prophecy Mount Holyoke endured and the higher education of women on permanent foundations became an established fact. Yet she died not without sac- rifice. The famous Mrs. Sigourney wrote Mrs. Porter: "I often think of the deep interest I felt at the examinations of her wonderful insti- tution. ... It then appeared to me that her 352 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON system could never be perfectly carried out by any person but herself. The peculiar features might, indeed, be preserved and illustrated, but the mind that was to give energy and per- vade and quicken every one within the sphere of its influence would, I feared, have no coun- terpart." Many people have wondered what changes would have come to Mount Holyoke had Miss Lyon lived the ten years that her friends be- lieved stretched before her from that winter of 1849, and some have seen South Hadley the seat of a college in name as well as in purpose and function. What her persuasive speech would indubitably have secured sooner came late. Public opinion, crystallizing about the visible expression of her work, sought to im- mortalize its form at the cost of its spirit, for- getting that in her hands form had always been a plastic thing. Against this barrier her successors continued long to fling themselves, gaining an inch where they had sought an ell. Yet through the grudging years ceaselessly Mount Holyoke developed, and faster than aliens ever knew. Cramping timidities and THE COST OF PIONEERING 353 misapprehensions could not turn it from its goal, for the woman who gave it life had so built herself into its constitution that it could not choose but change. Its growth is the final triumph of her conquering vitality. CHAPTER IX AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER This is a chapter of memories. There is no mustiness about them, they were not laid away remote years ago with rosemary between their leaves. People have lived with them, and recol- lections keep best in use. It was nearly half a century after her student days were done that a woman wrote, " [I have] never passed a sin- gle week since leaving the seminary without recalling Miss Lyon and her teachings." The pity is that of such recollections com- paratively few have been preserved. Her stu- dents, like their teacher, were too busy living to have recourse often to words of commemora- tion. And maiiy who might have told much have slipped away unquestioned. Yet still we meet old ladies who through seventy years have never ceased to be her lovers. There is no surer way to make one of them happy than to ask her of Mary Lyon. They delight to talk AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 355 about her, sitting a little straighter in their chairs, questioning the past with glad remem- bering eyes. They themselves are notable women. Though on some shoulders old age has laid re- straining fingers, others carry their more than four-score years with the agility of girls, and they are all alert at heart. One nearly ninety helps her high-school granddaughter through knotty passages in Virgil; another, who has but recently joined their greater company, be- gan the study of Italian after her seventieth birthday and grew proficient in it ; a third has laid down an active college presidency within the year. D istinction resides in their thought and speech, and about them clings a fine aroma distilled from many decades of brave unselfish living. Such are the women who call Miss Lyon "wonderful." How they love her! Yet with what reverence they speak her name! "No memoir or history can do her justice." Across scores of years they look to her as to an event in their lives, the biggest thing that ever happened to them. Not that they saw her then as they have 356 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON learned to see her since. "We were too small and near to take in her greatness." Apprecia- tion grew upon them. "A perfect character" is the tribute of one who has classed herself at Mount Holyoke as among the gayest of thoughtless girls. And character her students came, with Miss Lyon, to rank as the worthiest of human possessions. Time taught them as well to understand what she had given them. Another says of her Holyoke training, "It helped me to take an active place in the world's work, whenever opportunity offered, giving me confidence, hope, and zeal," I cull sentences at random from letters bear- ing various dates within the last thirty-five years. "What I should have been if I had never seen Miss Lyon passes my imagina- tion." "A strength seemed imparted to me." "Through all the more than forty years of an extremely busy life since my graduation I have been sensible of Miss Lyon's personal influ- ence abiding with me." "Her memory has been to me continually an inspiration to over- come difficulties." "I find myself even now quoting her pithy sayings . . . few words, but AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 357 containing the essence of wisdom." "From year to year, ever since it was my privilege to know Miss Lyon, my admiration, love, and reverence for her have increased, and I cannot think there has been a woman since her time who was her equal." How strikingly her person persists in visual remembrance ! Nearly every old lady who talks or writes confesses to having a very vivid mental picture of Miss Lyon. " If I could only make you see her, as I do!" she says. Little more than a decade ago a woman who as a girl had known her only a few months wrote, "I remember her face and figure as well as though I had seen her within five years." It would seem as though, once known, she could not be forgotten, so little power have the mists of more than half a century to dim the clear-cut impress that her living presence made. Translated into words, these memories differ as widely as do all descriptions by many people of the same person. She was of medium height, they say, muscular and well-rounded, with a large, finely formed head and beautifully mod- eled hands, the clear ruddy skin that accom- 358 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON panics auburn hair, eyes brightly blue and very expressive, a prominent nose, a wide mouth, a friendly smile, and a rapid, energetic, often awkward walk. Her hair had " a natural wavy toss and curl hard to manage in the prim smooth style then in vogue, so little strands of it would fly out" and flutter with the cap- strings, which were never tied. Beautiful hair she had and beautiful eyes, but recollection sighs over the caps. It was then the fashion for women past youth to wear something on their heads indoors. She put on the turban after a fever at Ipsw^ich, and from force of habit con- tinued to wear it until the first Holyoke year, when her girls, knowing that turbans had gone out and caps come in, clubbed together and commissioned Mrs. Safford to shop for them in Boston. " We wanted her to be in the fash- ion," one remarks in telling this episode and describing the "pretty and becoming puffs of smooth dark chestnut hair" on which the turban rested. Miss Lyon said, "I thought I should always arrange my hair this way and always wear a turban, but I will do almost any- thing to please my daughters." She was not AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 359 particular about her clothes beyond securing serviceableness and good taste in cut and make, and she liked to think so intensely while dress- ing that she always wanted some one to look her over afterwards and see that all was right. Departing from the path of specific descrip- tion, some call her plain ; others remember her as "decidedly attractive, not beautiful, but good to look upon" ; still others agree with the one who says that at anniversary, " her auburn hair done high on her head, with a scarf of lace and blue ribbons, the natural excitement of the occasion brought the pink color to her cheeks, making her the most beautiful woman we ever saw." Perhaps the truth lurks in the sentence, "She fascinated from my first acquaintance, and I saw no fault in her." Her charm per- tained probably more to look than line ; she had a "wonderfully expressive face." When she talked or listened, it grew "radiantly beauti- ful"; when she was buried in oblivious thought, it became non-committal, at times almost like a mask of vacancy. "Her face to me was al- ways like sunshine," one writes. And some recollect meeting her on the stairs of a morn- 360 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON ing just before service, as she was coming from her preparation, with such a light upon it that they could think only of the face of Moses who wist not that it shone. Her pictures satisfy none of them. They miss this mobility. "Not one but is a painful caricature," they say. "All lack expression." "A good picture of her could never have been taken, for it would have been impossible to catch the vivacity of her face." "There is no true portrait of her and I fear there never can be one. It would be difficult for an artist to paint that speaking, glowing, tender, wonder- ful face with the living subject before him; how can it be done by description or imagina- tion ? " She was not to be induced to take time enough to sit for her portrait during the Holyoke years, and the only pictures that remain of her at this period are a dim daguerreotype or two and certain large paintings and crayons which were made after her death. The source of the turban pictures is a bit of ivory painted at Ipswich, when she and Miss Grant exchanged minia- tures. The other picture shown in this book is MARY LYOX AT FORTY-EIGHT (From a daguerreotype) AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 361 reproduced from a daguerreotype for which she sat in Boston four years before her death, as a final gift to a young missionary whom she was seeing off to Ceylon, and which that mis- sionary's daughter recently brought back to this country. At the time, we are told, she was excessively weary and not well, and the pain of parting threw its shadow on her face. A delicate bit of interpretation penned three years ago in a private letter finds its way to these pages. " Perhaps I idealize her more and more as the years go on, but I like the picture of her in her turban though I never saw her wear a turban best of all the pictures I have seen. ... It seems to me such a sweet, re- fined, earnest, innocent soul looking out of that quiet thoughtful face. The later pictures, or the other pictures, look as though she had bat- tled with the world more determined to over- come, more defiant of obstacles. I can hardly explain what I mean. You know I was there only two years, and I did not often get very near her. I never felt pejsonally acquainted with her and I saw her only once after I gradu- ated. But I think of her as a beautiful soul, and 362 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON perhaps that is the reason why I like the most spiritual, innocent face better than those which express the conflict and stress of her great un- dertaking." She was '* full of affectionate ways." " Your precious letter and sweet little present came to me " ; so begins a letter to a young alumna, the invitation to whose wedding she accepted with the words, " I have a strong desire to afford my- self the pleasure of attending that important event." But she did not get away, after all : she was too busy. Another remembers that in con- nection with something Miss Lyon was saying in one of her talks, " her eyes rested on me with a beaming look that went through my heart. I thought then that, were I in Heaven and she should look at me so, I could ask for nothing more, which perhaps shows how very youthful I was. It is so I love to remember her, with that look, she often had it, a look of all-embrac- ing love. I see it now, though I did not under- stand it then. Others may speak of her reli- gious nature : that is too sacred for me, though I felt the power of it as much as any. Hers was a great human heart, many-sided. I remember AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 363 after one of her visits to Boston, perhaps to see a missionary off, she spoke of having been to see a great picture there and how she sat before it, feeling its beauty and power." Motherly is the adjective used most fre- quently in these personal recollections. *' I feel that I am again an orphan," at her death wrote a student who had married in Northampton. " Since we have been here and seen Miss Lyon so often, I have loved her more and more, and have called her mother, and she has treated me with all the affectionate tenderness of a mother." Simple, unaffected genuineness pertained to everything she said or did. "I remember my father accompanied me to the seminary as I had never been any great distance from home. As we sat waiting in the parlor we heard a quick step in the hall, the door opened, and Miss Lyon came forward with such hearty cordiality and genuine welcome that my father felt per- fectly safe to entrust me to her care." "It made a deep impression on me that such a busy wo- man as Miss Lyon should stop to comfort a lonely homesick girl." "Miss Lyon's personal- ity was much to me. I shall never lose the im- 364 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON pression, nay I almost feel even now the imprint, of the kiss with which Miss Lyon received meat the seminary ... I thought then the kiss was lovely. I seem now to feel it, a holy thing." Another adds, "I always felt 1 could go to her as I would to my mother, and though I had a great reverence for her, I never had the hesita- tion in approaching her which some girls had." Those who did thus go found her of a sweet reasonableness and always open to suggestions. She herself was frank and she liked others to be. They all learned to trust her justice as fully as her love, and both were argus-eyed. " It was characteristic of Miss Lyon to treat her schol- ars as ladies who were worthy of deference and whose opinions she respected. This char- acteristic of looking at the good in her girls did much to cultivate it. A misdemeanor took her by surprise." "Those summoned to her presence for reproof left her with niew impulse of affection." Another put away "those words of reproof" among her " dearest memories." *' In one unfortunate case of theft ... I re- member how much I was impressed with her love and sympathy, and yet the justice she AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 365 manifested towards the unfortunate one. How thoroughly she impressed it upon us that we should care for our money and valuables so as to place no temptation in the way of others, and never speak unnecessarily of the incident. Her whole method in the treatment of the case has influenced me all my life." It was her sense of fairness that caused the semiannual shake-up in rooms, and the plan of cooperative housework offered wide chance for its discovery. Students doing the heavier kinds of work were scheduled for fewer min- utes. A girl, uncomplainingly finishing a task that her circle had left undone when their time was up, welcomed the gentle peremptoriness w ith which Miss Lyon sent her away : " Don't do them all, I will send some one else down. This is more than your share." Typical of her care for their health is the story another tells. She was not a robust girl, and she looked still more delicate. Miss Lyon found her one day ironing table-cloths. For a minute or two she watched, and then said in her quick decisive fashion, *' You are not strong enough for that work, you must have something lighter." 366 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON It is a magic way with girls to which these letters testify. "Her methods were the most perfect exemplification of * Decrees and Free Moral Agency' of anything this earth affords. She moulded the strongest will without any friction." " Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Miss Lyon was a certain power she pos- sessed of bringing her scholars to believe, to feel, and to do as she desired. I could never quite analyze this power. She was a graceful and eloquent speaker, but she made no attempt at oratory, and we were not conscious of any magnetic spell. It did not seem to be argument or logic, though, beginning afar off on the out- ward periphery of her subject, she obtained the assent of the intellect before she made any ap- peal to the heart." She knew them as they never dreamed she could. One relates how Miss Lyon spoke to her about a fault of which, though conscious her- self, she had supposed all others ignorant. She had a mysterious gift of divining aptitudes for special household tasks, and she could make the hardest work popular with the senior class, "my cherished young ladies," as she called AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 367 them. " A fourth story back room (in the room- arranging time) looking out upon the clothes- lines, became after a few words from her the very one that you wanted to take." With her adroitness at changing the current of personal wishes went also an inspiriting stimulus to self- confidence. " She makes a girl feel assured of her ability to do whatever is laid upon her," a woman wrote, looking back upon those distant years. Her speech was the more effective because she never used words when an action would do instead. Deeds in her hands served the same meaning purpose as stories in the mouth of Lincoln, and like him she never broke their force by making the application. Entertaining anecdotes are told to show the masterly skill with which Miss Lyon wielded this kind of sug- gestion. One deals with incipient graft. A clever pie-circle conceived the satisfying idea of les- sening the amount put into each pie an unno- ticeable degree so as to provide an extra one for their own eating. Nobody, so far as they knew, was aware of the expedient, until one day each girl on the circle received an invitation to come 368 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON to Miss Lyon's room. Presenting themselves in her parlor at the appointed hour, they found on the table a thick luscious pumpkin pie, which their hostess cordially served to her enlight- ened and shame-faced guests. These are simple artless records of homely doings and they are necessarily detached and fragmentary. They make no new points and adduce no unfamiliar qualities. We know Miss Lyon as a very busy woman, but can anything convey that impression so concretely as this sentence ? "I remember seeing her once in the domestic hall whither she had fled at the sound of some need, trailing a long piece of dress- lining pinned to her back, having escaped from the hands of the dressmaker, who in her room was holding the scissors ready for another clip at the next chance." Her hardihood speaks in the rumored answer made to Mr. Hawks one cold evening, when he was trying to persuade her not to go out with him on Mount Holyoke's business: "If you can drive, I can ride." Her wit retorts in the anecdote, possibly apocry- phal, which tells how Miss Lyon and Mr. Hawks disagreed on a certain matter. "I am AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 369 the head of this institution," said the presi- dent of the trustees. "Then I am the neck," she rejoined. Nor can the deep satisfaction of her pre- sence and the persistence and delight of her memory be more graphically pictured than by two passages from the pen of a member of the class of 1838, who returned the following year as a teacher. Between them lies an inter- val of fifty-seven years. " I am reminded more than ever as the year comes round, how much time I spent in her room last spring and sum- mer, how kindly she listened to all my diffi- culties, how patiently she would help me out of them and how light she would make every- thing seem. . . . How many times of late when the way has looked dark . . . have I wished that I could go to Miss Lyon, that I could make her my confessor, as I used to do." At the end of the century a new picture of the first building revived so clearly memories of old rooms and associations that she wrote the donor: "I have hardly had them out of my waking or dreaming thoughts since your letter came. I have even wakened in the morning 370 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON with the feeling that I had been with dear Miss Lyon all night." Of the women who write the rest of this chap- ter a few were teachers as well as students at Mount Holyoke. The paragraphs, representa- tive of a mass of similar material, are here and there drawn from earlier letters, but most of them must be dated within the new century. If the reader will but fancy himself in the company of a charming old lady, delicately silvery as a bit of thistledown; will watch the smile that lights her face to beauty more signi- ficant than that of youth ; will listen to the pride and love in her grave sweet voice, and will not fail to catch at times the twinkle in her eye, these fragments of talks and letters may yield him some freshness of insight that more con- nected chapters cannot give. I remember her with wonderful distinctness as who, indeed, that ever came in contact with her magnetic personality could fail to do ! I call to mind as vividly as if it were yesterday my first glimpse of her. A frightened, homesick girl, at the end of a thirty-six hours' journey AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 371 mostly by stage-coach, ended by a novel ferry experience in the dark of a September even- ing, I arrived at the seminary chilled and tired to the last degree. As the white pillars gleamed in the moonlight it seemed like a wonderful palace. Miss Whitman received us, tall and cold and benign, and took us across echoing floors to the little south reception room, con- taining the least possible amount of furniture. Miss Lyon presently came bustling in, gathered me in her motherly arms and kissed my tear- wet face, saying, " As soon as you have some- thing to eat and a good night's sleep you will feel better, my dear." The next morning she was smiling in her place at the breakfast table and spoke cheery words to the solemn little group of homesick girls as- sembled there. Knowing what a boon employ- ment would be, and truth to say we were sorely needed as an advance-guard to help settle things for the fast-coming students, we were all allotted certain tasks. Mine was to sweep the big floors in what was then called "the wooden building," at that time connect- ing the south wing of the large brick structure 372 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON with the "wood rooms," each of the students' rooms having a numbered compartment for storing wood. Miss Lyon was ubiquitous and seemed to overlook everything. It was simply marvelous, the way in which she kept every de- tail in mind, and planned and arranged for a family of nearly three hundred. But it was in morning exercises in the semi- nary hall that she impressed us most. Those who listened to her earnest words and saw her dear face all alight with feeling can never for- get it, and no one can reproduce the one or the other. Her large blue eyes looked down upon us as if she held us all in her heart. Sometimes her voice was solemn, sometimes caressing, at others almost playful. There was a vein of humor in her make-up that, notwithstanding she habitually dealt with the serious questions of life, was simply irrepressible, and it was de- lightful to see and hear her when that came up- permost, as it would do sometimes in the most unexpected manner. But she always resumed her dignity in the most graceful way imaginable, with a half-apologetic look that was altogether charming. AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 373 While loving and tender when we were ill or in trouble, how stern and yet how merciful was she in dealing with our shortcomings ! It was my good and bad fortune to be summoned sev- eral times to her room to answer for unusual misdemeanors in the first months of my stay at the seminary. My faults were the more hei- nous as I had "entered in advance," and was expecting to complete the course in two years ; and what she termed the "immaturity" of my character was a great trial to her. The tears I shed in her little parlor were of genuine contri- tion and humiliation. She was so lovely and kind, and at the same time so inexorable, that I felt I just had to do as she wished me to ! It was hard to conform to the very strait rules, for I was young and full of all manner of irrepres- sible frolic. She was sagacious enough to recog- nize that she could not change temperament, but she could and did so win and control my affection and impulses that the effort to do right became a pleasure. Dear Miss Lyon ! I said good-bye to her in the little spaceway back of the seminary hall near the door of the reading-room. How vividly 374 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON I recall it after fifty years ! " On the whole," was a favorite expression of hers in summing up a line of argument. I said, " Good-bye, dear Miss Lyon. Have n't I been *on the whole' a pretty good girl these two years ? " "Yes, yes, my dear, as good as you could be perhaps, but you must grow better and better every year of your life." Then she kissed me good-bye, and I saw her no more. I was not so much impressed by her dignity as by her warm loving heart, and I was very fond of her. I remember her sitting by me and holding my hand when I was very homesick, and saying to me, "I'm sorry you are so home- sick. Don't you remember how anxious you were to come, and that I took you in when there really was not room for one more ? " " I know it, Miss Lyon," I said, " and I never shall forgive you for doing it." I have forgotten just how she answered the impertinent speech, but I remember it was any- thing but severe. As I passed out of her room one day after a AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 375 nice little talk with her, my section teacher also being in the room, I overheard the latter say, " You are spoiling that girl, you indulge her so much. If I or the other teachers refuse her any- thing, she goes to you and she gets it." "Well," said Miss Lyon, "she is young and far from her mother, and I am sorry for her, and I don't believe it will hurt her." I have always rejoiced that Mount Holyoke was chosen as the home of my school life, and this was owing to Miss Lyon's own attractive personality. An uncle, who was the guardian of myself and two older sisters, met her when she was using every possible means to gain the money for a beginning of her life-work, and he was so impressed with her manner, her earnest- ness, and her sure prophecy of success, that he immediately made application for admittance for his three small nieces to the seminary, as soon as each should reach the required age. Miss Lyon had a remarkable mind. There were no little things about her. Great things were always before her. That was why she ac- 376 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON complished so much for the girls of New Eng- land, why her influence is so world-wide, why so many "around the throne of God in Hea- ven" will say, "It is through Mary Lyon's in- fluence that I have come from Africa, from India, from the islands of the sea." She looked forward to the time when the courses of study for young women and young men should coincide. She used to say she re- gretted very much that the state of public opinion would not allow her to make Latin and Greek a required part of the course * ; that with mathematics only, the seminary had but one foot to stand upon.^ She was greatly delighted ^ The writer graduated in 1845. ^ The allusion seems to be to the contemporary college practice of laying chief stress on mathematics and the classics. When Mount Holyoke opened the requirements for entrance to the principal American colleges were " a good knowledge of English grammar, arithmetic, some acquaintance with geography, an ability to read the easier Latin authors, and some progress in the study of Greek. . . . The course of instruction . . . embraces a further study of the Latin and Greek languages, mathematics, natural philosophy, rhetoric, and practice in English composition, moral and intellectual philosophy, and some treatise of natural law and the law of nations." Encyclopcsdia Americana, vol. iii, p. 318 (1836). AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 377 when a student came who had already studied one or both of the dead languages. I have often attempted to analyze the secret of Miss Lyon's influence over her scholars. She had great mental resources. No one could resist the impression that these were deeper and richer than we had yet fathomed. But the sense of her reserved power was not the key. One ele- ment was her deep interest in her pupils. She was not particularly demonstrative in her man- ifestation of affection ; but as her beaming face looked down upon us, as those speaking eyes met ours, every one of us felt that she sought our best, our highest good, and more than this, that she loved us after the manner of our mothers. . . . Another element was the hon- esty and intensity of her convictions. . . . Still another was her utter self-unconsciousness. She so spoke to us that her great thoughts stood foremost. She was in the background. Her scholars sat in those seats before her and were permanently changed in habits and character. She was a mighty moral architect. At one time she started off with a short talk 378 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON on comparative anatomy. The scientist in ex- huming animal remains may find but one bone or one tooth, but from that alone he forms the entire animal and tells us whether it ate grass or flesh, whether it was gentle or ferocious. So little things indicate character. Knowing one trait of a person, whether he does or fails to do some little thing, the whole individual is re- vealed. You need know no more. If Domi- tian would amuse himself by catching flies and piercing them through with a bodkin, it was to be expected that he would kill Christians. The great principle was developed in a masterly way. It was so far a magnificent lecture by it- self ; but the initiated knew there was " some- thing coming," that the argumentum ad homi- nem would soon be apparent. It came at length. The descent was easy, but by no means ridicu- lous, in fact it was solemn. It seemed that, much to Miss Lyon's satisfaction, the ironing- room had been nicely refitted. The coverings were white and dainty. But upon its inaugural day these were badly discolored, some showed the imprint of the iron, while a few had been burned through. We do not think Miss Lyon AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 379 cared so much for the spoiling of the goods. She took that joyfully. But it did pain her that any of her dear family should evince a care- lessness akin to recklessness. It was the moral tarnish she feared. It might be a straw, but it showed the way of the wind. Miss Lyon herself is the one figure which rises before me whenever I think of the semi- nary, a grand woman, far in advance of her time. The one study I had under her was But- ler's "Analogy." She proved herself a wonder- ful instructor. My only wish was that she could have taught us everything we attempted to learn. She used to say, " Commence your topic with a brief sentence. Let none of your periods be long. Avoid the use of the copulative conjunc- tion ' and. ' State your ideas and facts clearly and consecutively, not in the words of the book, but in your own best English. Aim to speak smoothly, not with hitches and jerks. Stop when you have done." 380 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON It was on one of the longest days of summer that E came to my room in trouble and tears. To my query, "What is it?" she gave me answer, *' They are going to send me home to-morrow, and I don't want to go. It is be- cause I have headaches. I suppose they are afraid I shall get sick, but it is the heat that af- fects me so. Ever so many teased me before I came, saying that I would soon be sent home in disgrace, and now they will say, *I told you so,' and / can't bear it." I condoled with her and declared that she should not go if I could do anything to prevent it. I knew it would be useJess to appeal to the teacher who had charge of the health of the young ladies, for her decisions were like the laws of the Medes and Persians. I went straight to Miss Lyon's room. "Miss Lyon," I said, " they are going to send E home, and she does not wish to go, and I do not wish to have her go. I came to ask you to say that she need not go till the end of the term." Miss Lyon replied, " She has had headache so much that we have thought it would be well for her to go home and recruit before the exam- AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 381 inations come on. She can come back in time for them." I argued further, with genuine altruism: " But, Miss Lyon, there is a reason why I ask it. We were told before we came, that you would not keep such wild girls long ; if she goes now it will be said that she has been suspended ; and / dorit want her to go.'' At this climax my tears began to flow. Miss Lyon laid her hand kindly on my shoulder and said, "Do not feel troubled. We will try to do what seems best. This is just what you want, is it not .^" The broad, genial smile and air of trust with which she asked the question would have disarmed the most willful. If she per- ceived an element of the ludicrous in what to us was so serious, she did not betray it. She dis- missed me without a definite answer, yet I was sure she comprehended and was sympathetic. Nothing more was said to E about going home. Perhaps she took an ounce of preven- tion, or a mind-cure was wrought, for her head- aches vanished. This is one of many instances of Miss Lyon's motherly instinct or inclination to gratify her 382 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON daughters so she liked to call us in any reasonable request. There were times, however, when some of these daughters were dissatisfied with her rul- ings. One morning the early birds discovered bills posted about town announcing a vocal concert by the Hutchinson Family, to be given that evening in the meeting-house. A number of the students wished to attend. Great was their surprise and indignation when permission was withheld. Miss Lyon told us that present arrangements would not admit of our sparing the time for an evening entertainment, and re- quested us to bear in mind the principle that one should not ask a favor for herself which could not be granted to all. Poor Jane W was the chief mourner and considered herself a martyr. The Hutchinsons were friends of her family, and on that account had sent her a com- plimentary ticket which she thought it very im- polite not to use. She found many sympathiz- ers. A few said it was inconsistent in Miss Lyon to urge us to cultivate vocal music and then not let us hear any but our own. The Hutchinsons showed their good-will by giving AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 383 us a serenade that night, yet the malcontents continued to grumble a little. Early the next morning, the young ladies on duty near the par- lor passed the word that Mr. Hutchinson was calling on Miss Lyon, and was probably giving her a piece of his mind for her disrespect to his family. Then even the murmurers took her part, for all knew that her judgments were right, and no one wished her to suffer reproach for our sakes. By the time she bade us good-morn- ing in the hall, ill-humor had subsided and every heart was loyal. After devotions. Miss Lyon told us of her pleasant interview with Mr. Hutchinson in which he had kindly offered to give us a con- cert. Upon this a door was opened, the singers filed in, took their places on the platform, and for an hour entertained us in their happiest manner. All agreed that this was better than an evening out, and no face expressed more pleasure than Miss Lyon's. A few months later, huge posters foretold the coming of a menagerie. " It is nothing to us," the young ladies said. But, lo and be- hold ! when the eventful day arrived. Miss Lyon 384 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON not only gave general permission, but advised us to improve this opportunity to see the elephant and the other rare specimens of animated na- ture. The manager had written to her weeks before to inquire whether the students would be allowed to attend, for if their patronage were withheld it would not pay to move the caravans to South Hadley. In replying, she informed him that she would be glad to give such a privi- lege, but as many of them were of limited means it might be as well for him to admit them at special rates. So it happened that, be- ing identified by teachers stationed near the entrance of the tent, we were admitted at half the regular price. In giving us permission. Miss Lyon made but one restriction. We were not to stay to w it- ness the performance, but when we should see any teacher moving toward the exit we were to follow her at once. After viewing the animals, we took seats while the elephants marched around the amphitheatre. One with a howdah on its back was halted near us, and the mana- ger called for ladies to mount and ride. Two or three misses started forward and then drew AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 385 back timidly, until a young lady of the senior class, with head erect and fearless mien, walked to the front, climbed the ladder, and seated her- self as if she were an eastern princess accus- tomed to take her airing in this manner. There was a whispering among the juniors : " What a bold, bad action for a missionary's daughter! How dares a senior set us such an example ?" Some said she would surely be suspended, per- haps expelled. Others thought she might be let off with a public reprimand, if duly peni- tent. It was believed that the sentiment of the seminary would certainly demand some heroic measure. The great beast went around with its bur- den, the senior descended safely and resumed her former seat, unabashed. Directly a tiger leaped from its cage and rolled over and over with its keeper, in frightful play. The perform- ance was well under way or ever we were aware, and we had seen no teachers moving. Bless their kind hearts ! Was it that they in their in- nocence did not know when it was time to start, or were our eyes turned away from our chap- erons and holden that we should not see them ? 386 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON When all was over and we went out with the crowd, we spied a teacher near the gate appar- ently watching for stragglers, but we passed by on the other side without a challenge. At sup- per-time all the lambs were secure in the fold, and not a wolf among them. We never heard that the audacious senior met with the slightest reproof, nor lost caste for her rash exploit. Miss Lyon, wise as Solomon, knew when to keep silence and when to speak. Miss Lyon had a wonderful faculty of study- ing character: she would sometimes look so intently into one's face, that she seemed to look beyond the features into the very soul. In one of her talks to the girls, at what was called the general exercise in the hall, she was trying to impress upon them the importance of forming good habits in little things ; she said that " char- acter, like embroidery, was made stitch by stitch" ; that after a while a few marked traits would determine the character, and that we had it largely in our power to make ourselves a force for good or bad. Miss Lyon arose from her seat on the platform, and stepping forward said : AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 387 *' Why ! young ladies, by the principle of com- parative anatomy I can tell by one or two char- acteristics what you are likely to make of your- selves." Pointing with her finger, she said : "I could walk down this aisle, and tell by the tie of your shoes who were good students in geom- etry." There was an audible drawing in of feet. (It was before the days of button shoes.) It was not strange that where so many had their home under one roof some case would occur every year that called for special disci- pline. Miss Lyon required the most convincing evidence before she would believe anything ill of her dear pupils ; but when once convinced of their unfitness to remain members of the family, they were quietly expelled. When fully in- formed of the particulars of the offence, Miss Lyon would inform us of it at the morning devo- tions, and tell us what was to be the punish- ment of the girl. Then she would say : " Young ladies, you know all about it, and there is no occasion to talk with each other or even to speak to your room-mate of the matter. Above all things do not say or think. How could she do such a thing? I could not." 388 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON Her lectures in the hall showed her mental grasp and power of thought and speech. Such prayers, brief, but comprehensive and wonder- fully tender! Such expositions of the Bible I have never heard since. Her intimacy with God gave her almost unerring judgment. Her spiritual vision was clear. During the great re- vival of 1847 she waited till she was sure that one and another, here and there, were moved by the spirit ; then she called a meeting in her parlor of those who wished to speak with her on the subject of religion. How I trembled as I turned the knob of the door, fearing I should be the only one present. To my astonishment the room was full ; many friends whom I met several times a day were there. Miss Lyon alone had read their secret hearts. She had great power to win us over to her way of think- ing. On going into her first missionary lecture, I was warned to steel my heart against her per- suasive eloquence. "She will make you feel just as she does about going on foreign mis- sions." Vain precaution. Her views of duty be- came ours as we listened to her impassioned but reasonable presentation of the subject. AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 389 She loved self-sacrifice and she inspired it in others. " Go where no one else is willing to go do what no one else is willing to do." The angel Gabriel sent to this world on a naission would not ask whether he was to sweep the streets or preach the gospel. This principle she applied to the domestic work. If there was any especially unpleasant work to do, she gave the senior class the privilege of volunteering to do it; volunteers were never wanting. She de- clared the domestic department was not in- tended to teach young ladies to do housework, that they should learn from their mothers at home. She did not even want them to love it. It seemed the best way to carry on the work of the family, and each was expected to do her part, cheerfully and without loss of dignity or self-respect; and this became a factor in the development of character. The great beautiful domestic hall was an eye-opener to me. Besides the setting of the large plan, the many contrivances for neatness, economy, and convenience appealed to me and in principle have helped me many times since in 390 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON domestic arrangements under very different cir- cumstances and with few resources. I have never gotten over the necessity of promptness. The circumstances which make not only prompt- ness but exactness, regularity, and thorough- ness so necessary would seem to cultivate those qualities, especially when the doing, or failing, was followed by such evident results, perhaps affecting many other individuals. Ability to work harmoniously with others was another thing that had a chance to grow on some of those domestic circles. From my present stand- point, the mind which set in motion the wheels in that domestic hall and kept them running was indeed a wonder remembering that all the material used belonged to, and was being fitted in, at the same time, to the great super- structure of which the domestic hall was a mere adjunct, subject to change and growing less as circumstances permitted. There was somewhat less of the hard work done by the students in 1848 than in 1846. Every household regulation had its reason drawn from the law of love. To enter rooms AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 391 during study hours was to steal the time of im- provement from others ; to neglect the comers in cleaning halls or stairs was to place upon others selfishly the work belonging to you ; to nick the dishes was to be unfaithful stewards of property bought with self-sacrifice, for every brick in that building and all its furniture was to her sacred, as purchased by the self- denial of many who gave cheerfully out of their means, for love of the great cause. She was wonderfully persuasive. We would go down to the hall sometimes, knowing that a vote was to be taken on some matter, and de- termined against voting a certain way. ** She will try to make us vote so-and-so, and I won't vote that way, if she does want us to I won't do it." And then Miss Lyon would talk to us and we would do as she desired. Her teachings roused the spirit of self-de- pendence in her pupils. For instance, a young lady in Heath, Massachusetts, once riding with a friend, found the road obstructed by a fallen tree. After looking at it she exclaimed. 392 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON '*I have not been to Mount Hoi yoke two years to be turned back by such an obstacle." She therefore alighted and with the help of her friend dragged the offending tree out of the way. Such a spirit was very general among the daughters of Mount Holyoke. Can any one who was present forget the day when, rising to her feet at table, Miss Lyon re- quested the silver circle to bring teaspoons for the dessert, saying, " To-day our dessert is like some young ladies whom you may have known, very soft and very sweet, but lacking in con- sistency." That word consistency was, from that day, one of our jewels. " Privilege and obligation, like sisters, go hand in hand." " Do not let any one, as she hears your voice in the little prayer-meeting, think of you, I suppose she is a real good person, but I wish she would pay me the two cents she borrowed. " " The whole is equal to the sum of all its parts. If you permit yourself to do less than you ought in study or [less than] the best you can in matters of right, your character is so far AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 393 deficient, and in failing, you lose your own self- respect, and the power to influence others." Greatly surprised was I, upon being invited by Miss Lyon to return the following year to be one of the teachers. Nothing could be so pleasing to me as thus to be associated with the dear one ; but from her instructions it seemed too selfish and not right. ... In her room one day she said : " You will see a paper on the WTiting-table. I wish you to read and sign your name to it." It was a pledge that I return as a teacher. While nothing would be so pleasing to me, I still doubted it being right and returned home without yielding. The trustees of a medical college in Wil- loughby, Ohio, applied to Miss Lyon to send them a teacher to establish a seminary for young ladies in Willoughby. The college faculty had disbanded and left a good building for that pur- pose. She recommended my humble self, and I commenced work in March, 1847, in a town of only forty families, with fourteen pupils. In twelve weeks there were about thirty. So I consented to return in September, to begin the 394 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON school for one year; which was duly adver- tised. The success of the matter was beyond expectations. It grew from year to year, so that the seventh year there were two hundred and thirty-five different pupils and fourteen graduates, having the same course of studies as used at Holyoke. . . . We had students from New York City, New Orleans, and almost every state in the Union. From overwork I was obliged to resign. Soon after I left, a fire de- stroyed the building, and five counties asked for the school; and the trustees decided that the county that would give most for it should be favored ; which proved to be Lake Erie County and the work was resumed at Painesville, bear- ing the name of Lake Erie Seminary, and after- wards Lake Erie College. I have written this to show the issue of my yielding to the impression made by Miss Lyon when she advised us not to consult our own wishes in taking a place for usefulness. With granite principles and a moral compass that never veered Miss Lyon had also power of adaptation. ... In our little parlor we AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 395 frequently welcomed my brother, who was in charge of the village academy, Miss C being like another older sister. One evening he was taken suddenly and violently ill in our parlor, too ill it seemed to be removed ; yet he must be. I sent a young lady to report our dilemma to Miss Lyon, who came at once in person. Greet- ing the sick young man in genuine motherly fashion, she bade him feel perfectly at home and be content to remain in the care of his sister until the physician should pronounce it safe for him to leave. She directed that a bed should be at once placed in our parlor, and that he should be cared for as faithfully as he could be in his father's house. Then a consultation in the hall (not above a whisper) comes back to me so vividly. Taking my hands in hers, she told me not to be troubled, that this was clearly Providential and all right, that my classes should be passed over to other teachers for the time being and part of Miss C 's also, that she might relieve me, if necessary. With a wonder- ful insight she had taken the diagnosis of the case at a glance and saw that a course of fever was on our hands and gave thoughtful direc- 396 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON tions for the patient and nurses. " Your brother is one of our family now take good care of him." This was a strange episode truly in a young ladies' seminary. But the great family was like a sisterhood, all getting a new peep into the great heart of our mother superior as the days of weakness and delirium drew forth daily manna of devices and alleviations. When my sister was to be married a second time, Miss Lyon had the wedding Thanksgiv- ing evening in the seminary hall. The ceremony was performed in the presence of all the young ladies who were spending the vacation there. Miss Lyon, the gracious and interested hostess, saluted the bride and saw that the refreshments she had so thoughtfully provided were served. She was not the teacher, she was the mother, the hostess, in her own home, giving her daughter in marriage. I fear those who did not know her in those early days will never under- stand how truly tender and loving, and how womanly she was. In the seminary hall during one of the long AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 397 vacations were many busy workers, making over carpets and repairing mattresses under Miss Lyon's direction, that all might be in readiness when her family returned. She had sent to Northampton and from her own scanty means purchased oranges, more rare and more highly prized than now, that she might have the pleasure of making others happy. One beauti- ful afternoon, when the sun was flooding the room with glory, she came in, her face all aglow with her own beautiful secret, and distributed the precious fruit. The next day, sitting by my mother in our own parlor, she put her hand into her capacious pocket and took out, one after another, the oranges she had brought as a special gift. Surely there were never such oranges before nor since. Her advice to teachers was : ** Never scold. If you cannot teach without scolding, lay aside your ofiice. Do not consider it beneath your dignity to instruct little children; one should know as much as a minister in order to teach a child how to read." 398 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON One word of hers I remember in regard to trials. *' You will all have them. When God sends you a trial it will be a trial for you. What he sends you may hot be a trial for another. He will give you sustaining grace." I hear her words : " In your service for the Master, do not desire or expect praise or reward. Do all out of sheer love for your Saviour. Live near Him, not afar off. Try to please Him, try to be like Him. A present trust in Him is the best preparation for every trial that may come to you, the best preparation for your closing hour." One day she sent for me. I went to her oflBce. Handing me a composition, she asked me to read three or four lines. I did so. " That will do," Miss Lyon said. The next day I heard that I was to read the composition at anni- versary. Miss Lyon wanted a good reader and had tried several. This incident is very char- acteristic of her. It shows her swift, direct, business-like way of despatching a matter. Miss Lyon would have liked to be very friendly and intimate with her students had AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 399 she had time. When she was dressed for an occasion, she looked very pretty. I recollect how, once when she was going out to a wedding in town, we gathered about the door to get a peep at her. She liked to have us approve her dress. She was very particular that in our manners and ways of living we should not be like college boys. She never said girls, always young ladies. Miss Lyon's personal appearance was de- cidedly attractive. She was not beautiful, but there was nothing in face or form to repel. Shfe did not excel in the graces of the drawing- room, and was not fastidiously nice in matters of etiquette, but was never lacking in winning dignity and cordiality, whether meeting the learned college president, the distinguished di- vine, the governor of the state, or the timid young girl who came to be taught by her. Her dress was simple, but always tidy, except when she put her head into the Rumford oven, and had to be sent to her room to change her cap. This Rumford oven was a new invention which none of us had seen till Deacon Saff ord donated 400 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON one to Holyoke. He explained to our lady of the house all its conveniences and how it was to be handled, and she taught others and was very fond of using it herself. She had great vivacity of expression, and enjoyed a good joke, even when she was the subject of it, and could laugh with the merriest. Next to the training I received from a godly father and mother I owe more to Mary Lyon than I can express. Not a day of my life passes that I do not put in practice something I learned of her. It was my mother's dying request that her six daughters should go to Mount Holyoke as pupils of Mary Lyon. In all, our family were there twenty-five years as scholars and teachers ! My father used to say, " We certainly know Mary Lyon and Mount Holyoke well." We did and loved it dearly. I roomed with Miss Lyon for a part of one term, and came to know her intimately. She was one of the most cheerful, sunny room- mates I ever had. Many, I believe, think of her as austere in face and manner nothing is farther from the truth. I never think of her with- AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 401 out seeing her radiant face, strong but lovely, her great blue eyes and clear complexion. More than once she said to me, " Miss T -, I shall not live to see this a college, but I be- lieve you will live to see the time when girls shall have just as good opportunities as their brothers." She sought to make the course of study such as should lead to a collegiate course, and was especially anxious her students should have Latin. I know that before the corner-stone was laid her plan was carried before the Congregational Association of Massachusetts. One of the cler- gymen, who was her friend, and thoroughly interested in the plan, laid it before the august body that were assembled and asked for their approval. This they declined, and her friend said in reporting it to her, " So you must take this as the indication of Providence." But Mary Lyon knew the Providence of God better than they all, and she said, "We will go on." Miss Lyon always believed in the best that was possible for the seminary. The parlors, for example, were furnished better than many of the home parlors, and some were inclined 402 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON to criticise because she had carpets on the floors and furniture better than the ordinary. I heard her say once, " I want our young ladies to see that which is suited to the best homes ; I want them ready to grace the finest and to beautify the lowest." She looked into all the details, and as she said more than once, " I pray as truly that the bread may be sweet for this great family as I do for the conversion of the world." The Christian power of Miss Lyon was in- describable. It permeated all our lives and made us feel that it was a solemn as well as a blessed thing to live. I cannot describe her power as a teacher of the Bible, but I know and believe that no one who came under her teach- ing failed to feel its influence all her life. I re- member one cold winter it was almost impossi- ble to keep any place but the dining-room (that was large enough for us all) warm. We had our Bible lesson together in the dining-room in the evening. We were going through the wil- derness with Moses and the tribes. How we enjoyed those lessons as taught by Miss Lyon ! The tables she had represent the twelve tribes AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 403 when encamped, and the room seemed all alight with the cloud of fire which they were to follow. The Bible became a wonderful book as she opened it up to us. She never talked doctrines except faith, hope, and charity. There was never anything dogmatical or metaphysical in her talks. The Bible w as made a living reality. So many passages I marked bring back to me the blessed lessons. She never talked in a way to criticise others. I did not know all the six years I was there that she was born a Baptist. I never heard her speak of denominations, but she made us feel that we w^ere to work for the Master wherever our lot was cast. Once a w^eek she had a "family meeting," as she called it, when she talked as a mother of a family to her children. She allowed us to bring in notes of criticism and questions that we penned on slips of paper, no one know^ing of course by whom they were written or who was intended to be criticised. I well remember one day when she had answered a criticism in a way that made us all laugh, she said : *' Oh, don't turn and look at each other, if the coat fits you, put it on, don't try to put it on your neigh- 404 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON bor." She had a faculty of making a careless thing look very careless, and a wasteful thing look very wasteful and sinful. Ours was a large class of fifty, and we asked if we could not have some special privilege. I remember how her luminous face turned upon us those big blue eyes, and she said : *' Oh, yes, young ladies, you shall have the privilege of being the best students and finest characters we have ever graduated." Another day, near the close of the term, she said: "Some of you will be disappointed, per- haps, when you get home. You will find humble work to do, washing dishes, darning stock- ings for your brothers and sisters, and you will say, * Was it for this that I studied higher math- ematics and Butler's "Analogy" ?' Did you ever stand by a little lake and drop in a pebble, and watch the circles as they widened and widened and were lost in the distance ? So lift your mo- ther's burdens, help with the little brother or sister. You may not know the result, but be sure that your influence will widen and widen into eternity." She was systematic in her habits, but not AS HER STUDENTS KNEW HER 405 rigidly so. She was most thoughtful of her stu- dents and all about her. I well remember the first faculty meeting that I attended. After a little season of prayer she spoke of the impor- tance of our knowing our students personally, and, as far as possible, putting ourselves in their places. If we rebuked, always to do it kindly, and in such a way that there could be no resentment. If we found a student dull and slow, never to let her realize that we knew it, but to help and encourage such most carefully. I never knew a student irritated by anything Miss Lyon said or did. If she had occasion to rebuke, it was done with such tenderness and sorrow that the student herself would be made tender. She had a keen sense of the ridiculous, and told me once that she had to be very watch- ful that she did not hurt any one's feelings by anything that was satirical or that would lead one to think that she wanted to ridicule. She had a remarkable memory as to pupils and their characteristics, and took great interest in individual students, knowing much of their history but never speaking of that which was unpleasant or undesirable. 406 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON "When I went to bid Miss Lyon good-by after my marriage, just before we sailed for India, she put her arms about me and kissing me said, "Dear child, I wanted to see you more before you left, but never mind, there will be time enough in heaven." She was in heaven before we reached Ceylon. CHAPTER X AN APPRECIATION There remains only to pass in review Miss Lyon's salient traits, and to indicate the cur- rents of her influence. Yet the work has been hitherto ill done, if this chapter appear in any real sense necessary. The reader's impressions of the woman are already formed, and he can trace the outline of her shadow on later decades. Whether he approve or distrust her methods and accomplishments, he but reproduces the judgments of her day. Lover of quiet though she was, her ideas evoked from her generation ardent praise and as vociferous censure. It is to be remembered as a somewhat notable fact that in spite of this she made no personal en- emies. Genius always holds an element of mystery; but in so far as her peculiar gift may be defined, it \yould seem to have consisted primarily in knowing the exact point at which to apply her- 408 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON self so as to secure the largest results. This incisive temper, qualifying her equally as stu- dent, teacher, and organizer, was furthered by a rare harmony of development. All her abili- ties pulled together with joyous energy, and no disuse or ill use sapped their united vigor. Both President Humphrey and President Hitchcock voiced appreciations of Miss Lyon, and to-day perhaps there is no fairer way of looking at her characteristics than through the eyes of these men who were her friends. Mr. Hitchcock spoke and wrote out of thirty years of intimate acquaintance. "It gives a just view of the character of her mind to say that it corresponded to that of her body; that is, there was a full development of all the powers, with no undue prominence to any one of them. . . . She did, however, exhibit some mental characteristics, either original or ac- quired, more or less peculiar. It was, for ex- ample, the great features of a subject which her mind always seized upon first. . . . The in- ventive faculties were also very fully developed. . . . Rarely did she attempt anything in which she did not succeed ; nor did she undertake it AN APPRECIATION 409 till her clear judgment told her that it would succeed. Then it mattered little who or what opposed. At first she hesitated, especially when any plan was under consideration that would not be generally approved; but when upon careful consideration she saw clearly its practi- cability and importance, she nailed the colors to the mast; and though the enemy's fire might be terrific, she stood calmly at her post and usually saw her opposers lower their flag. She possessed in an eminent degree that most striking of all the characteristics of a great mind, viz., perseverance under difficulties. When thoroughly convinced that she had truth on her side, she did not fear to stand alone and act alone, patiently waiting for the hour when others would see the subject as she did. This was firmness, not obstinacy; for no one was more open to conviction than she ; but her con- version must result from stronger arguments, not from fear or the authority of names. '* Miss Lyon possessed also the power of con- centrating the attention and enduring long- continued mental labor in an extraordinary degree. When once fairly engaged in any im- 410 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON portant subject . . . there seemed to be no irritated nerves or truant thoughts to intrude; nor could the external world break up her al- most mesmeric abstraction. "Another mental characteristic was her great power to control the minds of others. And it was done, too, without their suspecting it ; nay, in opposition often to strong prejudice. Before you were aware, her well-woven net of argument was over you, and so soft were its silken meshes that you did not feel them. One reason was that you soon learnt that the fingers of love and knowledge had unitedly formed the web and woof of that net. You saw that she knew more than you did about the subject; that she had thrown her whole soul into it ; that in urging it upon you she was actuated by be- nevolent motives and was anxious for your good ; and that it was hazardous for you to resist so much light and love. ... It was often amaz- ing to see how triumphantly she would carry through any measure in her school that seemed important. She knew how to form and set in motion a current which made individual oppo- sition as powerless as chaff before the whirl- AN APPRECIATION 411 wind. But this talent was not confined to her schools. Wherever it was necessary or desirable to influence individuals, or collections of men or women, she knew how to spin those silken cords that would lead them where she pleased. Yet she never pleased to lead them where rea- son and conscience and benevolence did not point the way. Generally, too, those who were thus influenced were not aware that the in- visible force by which they were gently urged along emanated from her. Like a practiced mesmerist, she had thrown them into a better than somnambulic state and it needed only her volitions afterwards to determine their move- ments. Sometimes, indeed, during their hallu- cination she contrived to get money out of their pockets ; but when they awoke from the dream of benevolence they were always thankful that they had been robbed and invited the robber to come again when the cause of education or religion demanded further help. "She had a marvelous power of executing whatever she had the means of doing. Her prac- tice trod close upon the heels of theory, and usually was nearly as perfect, like the molecu- 412 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON lar operations in chemistry and crystallography. Having great skill in estimating the diflBculties to be overcome and in devising adequate means, she also possessed a most unusual power of ac- complishing the most by those means. . . . The promptness, too, with which this execu- tive power was manifested deserves notice. The moment a thing was found to be desirable and practicable, she felt uneasy till it was in the course of execution. *' Great energy in accomplishing objects may not always be associated with much wisdom; but this is essential to the management of a large literary institution. Here are numerous and quite diverse elements to be controlled. As to pupils, it is one important qualification . . . to be able to adapt the means and motives to the peculiarities of character and opinion and pre- judices among them. And then a large corps of teachers must be selected and made to act in unison or a firebrand will be thrown into the school. Moreover, in most schools in this coun- try it is necessary that the principal exercise a rigid watchfulness over its pecuniary interests, being cognizant of every expenditure and of the AN APPRECIATION 413 smallest means of income ; the whole demand- ing no mean financial ability. Still further, in schools dependent on public patronage the principal is expected to see to it that the public are kept informed of its advantages, and their attention favorably drawn towards it. Now to meet successfully these various and compli- cated duties requires great versatility of powers and much wisdom founded on experience. . . . None acquainted with Miss Lyon will doubt that she was eminently successful in her ad- ministration of several admirable schools of which the Holyoke Seminary was the most ex- tensive; yet was it conducted with wonderful skill and success. My own conviction is that her talents for administration were decidedly superior to her skill as an instructor in science or literature. "It is in her religious character, and there alone, that we shall find the secret and power- ful spring of all the efforts of her life which she would wish to have remembered. But I ap- proach this part of her character with a kind of awe, as if I were on holy ground, and were attempting to lay open that which she would 414 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON never wish revealed. In her ordinary inter- course, so full was she of suggestions and plans on the subject of education and of her new seminary that you would not suspect how deep and pure was the fountain of piety in her heart ; nor that from thence the waters flowed in which all her plans and efforts were baptized and de- voted to God. But, as accidentally, for the last thirty years, the motives of her actions have been brought to light, I have been every year more deeply impressed with their Christian disinterestedness and with the entireness of her consecration to God.'* Ex-President Humphrey declared that he had never known a woman to combine so much physical, intellectual, and moral power as Miss Lyon. "Such labors as she performed would have broken down almost any other constitu- tion years and years ago. Such constitutional energy as she possessed, always in action, often intense, would have shattered any ordinary framework, long ere the meridian of life. Such tasks as she imposed upon her brain, espe- cially during the three years which she spent in planning the Seminary and enlisting the neces- AN APPRECIATION 415 sary agencies for getting it up, would have dis- organized almost any other. . . . Miss Lyon's mind was of a high order ; clear, strong, active, well balanced, inventive ; which no discourage- ment could depress, no obstacle daunt. It is very rare indeed to find such mental strength and such quenchless ardor controlled by the soundest discretion and the best 'round-about common sense.' One of the strong proofs of Miss Lyon's intellectual superiority, which must have struck all who knew her, was the power which she had to influence other minds. . . . But it was the moral and religious in Miss Lyon's character which eclipsed all her other endowments and in which her great strength lay. . . . To do the greatest possible good to the greatest number was her study and delight. ... In humble imitation of her Saviour she seemed, wherever she went and in all her rela- tions, to be the very embodiment of love and good-will to men ; and never to have thought of herself, of her own ease, advantage, or con- venience. It was enough for her that others were made wiser and better and happier, at whatever cost of toil or sacrifice to herself. She 416 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON seemed scarcely to know that she had any per- sonal interests to care for. ... I do not be- lieve that an instance can be recollected by any human being since she entered on her bright career of usefulness in which she appeared to be actuated in the slightest degree by selfishness.'* It is a woman of mighty stature that these men delineate. From their point of view she sometimes made mistakes "who does not ?'* but they could find in her no moral blemish. Though she never fulminated against the natu- ral instincts of men, neither wish for fame nor desire for earthly immortality drew her on. Her contemporary biographers acknowledge that they searched carefully for any trace of these motives, knowing "that in the lives of most persons eminent for benevolence the little imp, selfishness, is not infrequently seen peeping out from behind the cloak of benevolence." They looked in vain. Yet at any suggestion that she was perfect, Mr. Hitchcock exclaimed years later, "those large eyes of hers would have opened in unwonted amazement ! " She worked for the joy of doing, and she never saw her own spiritual beauty. AN APPRECIATION 417 Preeminently she was a builder. Whomever and whatever her constructive personality touched, it quickened. Probably no woman has laid a more persuasive hand on American so- ciety than she. Nor has her influence been the less compelling because its results have not al- ways been accredited to her. She came upon a democracy in the making, and she left it more democratic than she found it. For Mary Lyon was typically American ; the national strain of mingled idealism, pluck, persistence, and en- ergy rose in her to high power. Her roots struck deep into the new world's history; her life is eloquent of its opportunity ; her genius belongs to that practical order which has hitherto mo- nopolized the transcendent expressions of its creative force. An age makes no more response than does a person to one who is wholly out of sympathy with it. She embodied the deep indwelling spirit of her generation, its outreach, its stir of bourgeoning life, its promise. Others have articulated that spirit in other mediums. Emer- son became its voice, and between the message of Emerson and the practice of Mary Lyon, 418 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON wide as was often their divergence, runs a deep independent parallelism. Both interpreted life in terms of love and duty. Both taught sincer- ity, simplicity, and heroism; the value of a hu- man soul ; the dignity of work ; the indivisibil- ity of man and his need of an education that shall make him physically, intellectually, and morally responsive to the universe. Both found spiritual meaqing in common things. Emerson would walk, work, speak, inspired by the di- vine; Mary Lyon knew with years an ever deep- ening sense of God as an abiding Presence which glorified alike her holiest communions and the homeliest doings of her busy days. **I have a hundred little perplexities and troubles every day that I should be ashamed to mention even to my mother, but I can tell them all to Christ, and never do I carry one of them to Him but He sends me away refreshed and strengthened." "Religion does not seem to me to tend now to a cultus, as heretofore," said Emerson, "but to a heroic life." Mary Lyon lived it. One might trace the parallelism more minutely, setting sentence against sentence, but such analysis is not within the purpose of ^ AN APPRECIATION 419 this biography. Emerson wrote his words on paper and bound them into books. Mary Lyon gathered girls about her, and having filled their souls full of her thoughts, she sent them out to live, and by their living spread them. More than three thousand students trans- mitted her influence to the rising currents of the American enterprise, and the overwhelm- ing niajority became active centres for the dis- semination of her spirit. Wherever they went north, south, east, west ; into the farthest corners of the globe they lived by her, talked about her, quoted her, as is the wont of people who have experienced a great phenomenon of nature or humanity. Recollection of her held them steady when they were tempted in cow- ardice to shirk some untried issue of a later day. What they had gained from her they passed on in home and in school to newer generations. -''^ Girls went out from her presence to mother > leaders of American life, among them a presi- \y dent of the United States, and to stamp on thousands of sons and daughters the under- standing that citizenship requires service. Pop- ^ ular education in every grade of advancement 420 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON felt the quickening impulse of the teachers she had trained, women who believed nothing more strongly than that the fundamental prin- ciple of all useful living is to get right moral direction. People who spread themselves over too much ground seldom make lasting con- que^y' Mary Lyon focused her energy at one point, the higher education of w omen ; yet her wealthy life fed more streams than it is possible to trace. Many a later movement of national and world significance has been forwarded by men and women who bore more or less dis- tinctly the imprint of her personality. Had she done this alone, she would have held a place among the most notable of American educators. Mark Hopkins defined the differ- ence between a skillful professor and a true educator: The true educator's most necessary quality is not talent but influence; only when education seeks to make man what he ought to bcy does it cease to be a useful art and become a power which moulds human society. But Mary Lyon did more than react upon things as they were through the ennobling of individual char- acter. She dealt with a trend of social evolution. AN APPRECIATION 421 and she dealt knowingly. It is her distinction to have made clear and unmistakable application to women's education of principles long reg- nant over that of the other half of humanity. Since her day founders have furthered this >/^ application ; the fact remains that in Mount ^^ Holyoke she first formulated the proposition of the woman's college, a permanent plant for the higher education of a nation's daughters. What name it bore matters little; a name cannot conceal identity. In 1868 a committee from the Senate of Massachusetts, recommending a grant of forty thousand dollars to Mount Holyoke, reported upon Mary Lyon's aim: "Her ob- ject was to establish a female seminary which should be in every respect on a par with our best colleges." Four years earlier another Senate document declared: "This institution, as ap- pears in the foregoing, is organized and carried on upon the broad basis of a college, a col- lege for girls." And because she gave form to tendencies of what in the mass men call civiliza- tion, history will rank her in its final reckoning as a profound practical sociologist. A pioneer is seldom isolated. He is but the 422 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON audible exponent of the inarticulate gropings of many minds. Mary Lyon did not create the demand for the higher education of women; she was not even the first to voice it. But from her shaping hands that education took indi- vertible direction. With her ear pressed close to the age, she heard the marching feet of the fu- ture. Women were face to face with a new era, and she sought to prepare them nobly to meet it. In so doing, by the law of life she built on what had gone before. Yet she built so differ- ently as to mark a beginning and not a consum- mation. It is the way of genius to fashion the new out of the old. An investigator into the feminine educational history of the United States cannot fail to be struck by its evolutionary trend. The college movement began as an offshoot from a semi- nary movement, previously initiated, which is still active, each having defined itself more ac- curately with time. Despite a few outstanding exceptions, the seminary movement, whatever names it may employ, has continued essentially 'private, a business development. Mount Hol- yoke marked the initial appearance of the new AN APPRECIATION 423 species. While resembling the root-stock, it was yet as alien from the seminary in tendency as was the first man from his prehensile prototype ; a creature of higher potentialities another. Mary Lyon was right in prophesying that the second and third foundations would come eas- ier than the first. She was right in saying that Mount Holyoke might have to struggle under financial embarrassments for years. She was right, too, in her declaration that its influence would be felt. When a person has beliefs which he is willing to put into practice without hag- gling over the price, the effect is irresistible. Mount Holyoke became localized only be- cause it was first an idea in a woman's head, an idea that she wanted to have get to work in human society. As she had intended, the cam- paign for its founding stimulated thought on the subject of women's education which was far-reaching in effect, and its success helped to destroy skepticism in a region of commanding scholastic influence. The pioneer service which Mount Holyoke rendered during its first half- century of life President Seelye of Smith epit- omized in his semicentennial greeting. Un- 424 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON able to be present, he wrote : " I should like at least to testify to the obligation which our higher schools for women are under to Mary Lyon and to the institution which she founded. Most of them owe their very existence to Mount Holyoke Seminary ; all of them are un- speakably indebted to the work which it has accomplished in the past fifty years in provid- ing better and more abundant material for their work, in educating so many accomplished and self-sacrificing teachers, and in giving so clear and forcible expression to the truth that intelligence is as valuable in a woman's mind as it is in a man's and is as capable and as worthy of the highest cultivation." Elmira College was founded in 1855. But the full flowering of collegiate education for women awaited ampler fortunes. In 1861, when Matthew Vassar placed four hundred thousand dollars in the holding of trustees for the establishment of Vassar, he said : " It was also in evidence that for the last thirty years the standard of education for the sex has been constantly rising in the United States; and the great, felt, pressing want has been ample en- AN APPRECIATION 425 dowments to secure to female seminaries the elevated character, the stability and perma- nency of our best colleges. ... In pursuance of this design I have obtained from the legis- lature an act of incorporation conferring on the proposed seminary the corporate title of Vassar Female College." At its opening in 1865 the requisite age was placed at fifteen and a provisional course was instituted. Wide diversity in preparation divided students into " collegiates " and "preparatories." "Candi- dates for the first year of the regular course are examined to a certain extent in Latin, French, and Algebra," remarks the chronicler of those experimental, history-making years. Smith and Wellesley, commencing in the next decade, found themselves also in a posi- tion to set standards. Smith was the first of women's schools to start as a pure college, hav- ing at once a full collegiate curriculum and no preparatory department. "The requirements for admission will be substantially the same as at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Amherst, and other New-England Colleges," announced the pro- spectus, "inasmuch as the High Schools and 426 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON most of the Academies wisely furnish the same preparatory instruction to both sexes." Promi- nent among the trustees of Smith were men who, having known Mary Lyon or her work, looked to Mount Holyoke as to " the germ of all the women's colleges." In founding Welles- ley Mr. Durant, one of the Holyoke trustees, avowed an intent to duplicate Mount Holyoke in spirit and aim. Fashioning the details of his plan in accordance with such modifications of the pattern as were called for by the times, his thought inevitably turned from the word semi- nary to ''college," and he urged that Mount Holyoke also change its name. Nor did Holyoke-trained women fail in their teaching to cooperate with the future. liCt them cultivate that part of their nature which would make them love permanence. Miss Lyon used to urge upon her students, together with an injunction to adapt their schools, if they taught, to the real needs of the constituency served. Of the American educational concerns taking immediate departure from her influence. Lake Erie, Mills, and The Western have al- ready attained collegiate rank. But the impetus AN APPRECIATION 427 which the founding of Mount Holyoke gave to the education of women was also world-wide in its expression ; and the institutions of higher learning that look directly to Mary Lyon for their inspiration put a girdle round the earth, from America to Japan and from South Africa to Spain. There can be nothing rigid about the higher education, whether of women or of men. For so long as education would serve humanity, its forms must continue to be garments of an end- less growth, witnessing continual adjustment to the enlarging life and thought of the world. Her own share in securing this adjustment Mary Lyon characterized with instinctive ac- curacy when she said at Ipswich, that she should ask for nothing more than **to labor in the portico and spend her days in clearing the ground" for that which was to come. Yet there she did her work so well, enunci- ating so clearly the principles which have gov- erned the development of colleges for women, that later comment has been but amplified re- iteration. In her emphasis on student maturity, definition of entrance requirement, solidity of 428 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON curriculum, integrity of work, better equip- ment, and public ownership, she made sure provision for the expansion that has come with time. Most organizers have followed her lead in stressing the worth of community life, and in making dormitory accommodation for girls. Preparatory departments have slipped out of college catalogues. And to-day the latest thought is swinging back to her strong accent on the value of personal influence in the devel- opment of useful women. More than seventy years ago she summed in forecast what might be expected as the fruit of this phase of her life. Referring to the cha- otic state of women's education in the thirties, she said : " We cannot hope for a state of things essentially better, till the principle is admitted that female seminaries designed for the public benefit must be founded by the hand of public benevolence and be subject to the rules en- joined by such benevolence. Let this principle be fully admitted and let it have sufficient time to produce its natural effects, and it will be productive of more important results than can be easily estimated. Then our large seminaries AN APPRECIATION 429 may be permanent, with all the mutual respon- sibility and cooperation which the principle of permanency produces. Then, if *the teacher makes the school,' there will be a school which will find the teacher. Then each public semi- nary may be a central point around which several smaller and niore private schools may cluster, and to which they may look for influ- ence, for guidance, and for a supply of teachers. There will then be laid a broad and sure foun- dation for system, improvement, and elevation in female education. May we not hope that this state of things is not far distant ? . . . Per- haps the influence which this seminary exerts in this respect will be more important in its results than all its other influence." Thus she moved, an epic figure, through what Professer Tyler termed the heroic age of the higher education of women. For Mary Lyon's life is a heritage that Mount Holyoke cannot claim alone.. Her nature sounded a trumpet-call to her generation, and men and w^omen rallied to her faith in them. Out of their noblest selves, their hopes, toils, sacrifices, as- pirations, she built a new institution into the 430 THE LIFE OF MARY LYON forces of American democracy. It was at the point in history where she stood that, with Archimedean purpose, she applied her lever; so should men and women together lift the wide earth up to God. APPENDIX APPENDIX A. CHRONOLOGY OF MARY LYON'S LIFE 1797 February 28. Born in Buckland, Mass. 1802 December 21. Death of father, Aaron Lyon. 1810 Mother remarried and went to Hve in Ashfield. 1814 Taught in Shelburne Falls, first of seven cqn- secutive summers of district-school teaching in and about Buckland. 1817 Fall and winter, student at Ashfield Academy. 1818 Autumn term, student at Amherst Academy. Winter, taught district school. 1819 Brother moved to Western New York. Spring, " family school " in Buckland ; autumn, " select school" in Buckland; winter, district school. 1820 Fall or winter, student at Ashfield Academy. 1821 Summer, student at Byfield Seminary under Jo- seph Emerson. Winter, taught in Sanderson Academy, Ashfield. 1822 March. Joined Congregational Church of Buck- land. Spring, fall, and winter terms, assist- ant in Sanderson Academy. 1823 Summer, taught in Conway and studied science with Rev. Edward Hitchcock. Fall and winter terms, assistant in Sanderson Academy. 1824 Attended lectures at Amherst College. Taught in Adams Academy, Londonderry, N. H., the 434 APPENDIX jBrst of four summers. Winter, school for girls in Buckland. 1825 Spring, attended lectures at the Rensselaer School, Troy, New York. Winter, assistant in Sanderson Academy, preceptress of girls' school in Buckland.^ 1826 to 1828 Winters, preceptress of Sanderson Acad- emy, Ashfield, Mass. 1828 to 1830 Ipswich Seminary in summer; "select school" at Buckland in winter. 1830 to 1834 Assistant-principal of Ipswich Seminary. Efforts for endowment of the seminary. 1832 Death of sisters: Rosina, August 18; Lovina, September 18. 1833 Summer of travel through Middle Atlantic States and the West. 1834 to 1837 Founding of Mount Holyoke. 1834 Circular to friends and patrons of Ipswich Sem- inary. September 6, first meeting of men held at Ipswich. Raising of initial $1,000. Win- ter spent at Professor Hitchcock's " in the pro- secution of science." 1835 January 8, location chosen. April, name se- lected. Opening of Wheaton Seminary. 1836 February 11, Mount Holyoke chartered. Oc- tober 3, corner-stone laid. 1837 November 8, Mount Holyoke opened. 1837 to 1849 Principal of Mount Holyoke. 1839 February. Death of sister, Jemima. * See Historical Address of Sanderson Academy and Hitchcock Memoir. May we explain the apparent discrepancy by supposing that she taught a few weeks in Sanderson Academy before her Buck- land school b^an ? APPENDIX 435 1840 to 1841 Main building extended and south wing built. Death of youngest sister. Mother's death. Trip to Niagara and Ohio. 1843 Wrote "A Missionary Offering." 1849 March 5, died at South Hadley, Mass. B. FIRST CHARTER OF MOUNT HOLYOKE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS In the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Six An Act to incorporate Mouni-Holyoke Female Seminary. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa- tives in General Court assembled and by the authority of the same, that William Bowdoin, John Todd, Joseph D. Condit, David Choate, and Samuel Williston, their associates and successors be and are hereby incorporated by the name of the Trustees of Mount-Holyoke Female Seminary, to be established in South-Hadley in the County of Hampshire, with the powers and privileges and subject to the duties and liabilities provided in " Chapter forty-fourth of the Revised Statutes passed November fourth in the year one thousand eight hun- dred and thirty-five," and with power to hold real and personal estate not exceeding in value one hundred thou- sand dollars, to be devoted exclusively to the purposes of education. House of Reps. Feb: 10, 1836. Passed to be enacted. Julius Rockwell, Speaker. In Senate Feb : 10, 1836. Passed to be enacted. Horace Mann, President. Council-Chamber, 11th February 1836 Approved Edward Everett. C. COURSE OF STUDY (From the Catalogue of 1837-1838.) COURSE OF STUDY AND INSTRUCTION There is an extensive and systematic English course of study pursued in the Seminary in three regular classes, denominated Junior, Middle and Senior. The studies of each class are de- signed for one year, though the pupils will be advanced from class to class according to their progress, and not according to the time spent in the Institution. In some cases, individuals may devote a part of their time to branches not included in the regular course, (Latin for instance) and occupy a longer period in completing the studies of one class. PREPARATORY STUDIES The requisites for entering the Jimior class are, an acquaint- ance with the general principles of English Grammar, a good knowledge of Modem Geography, History of the United States, Watts on the Mind, Colburn's First Lessons, and the whole of Adams's New Arithmetic, or what would be equivalent in Writ- ten Arithmetic. These branches are to be required of candi- dates for admission to the Seminary. STUDIES OF THE JUNIOR CLASS English Grammar, Ancient Geography, Ancient and Modern History, Sullivan's Political Class Book, Botany, Newman's Rhetoric, Euclid, Human Physiology. 438 APPENDIX * STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS English Grammar continued, Algebra, Botany continued. Natural Philosophy, Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History, Intellectual Philosophy. STUDIES OF THE SENIOR CLASS Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, Ecclesiastical History, Evi- dences of Christianity, Whately's Logic, Whately's Rhetoric, Moral Philosophy, Natural Theology, Butler's Analogy. The above is the course, as pursued in the Seminary the pre- sent year. To the studies of the Senior class, there will probably be added, hereafter, two or three branches, and something will be taken from the present list, and added to those of the two pre- ceding classes. On this account, it will be more important, that the preparation to enter the Junior class should be full and thorough. CLASSIFICATION OF THE PUPILS None can be admitted to the Junior class without passing a good examination on all the preparatory studies, whatever may be their attainments in other branches. But individuals may be admitted to the Middle and Senior classes, by passing a good examination on the preparatory studies, and on such branches of the regular course as shall be equivalent to a full prepara- tion. {From the Catalogue of 1848-1849.) STUDIES REQUIRED FOR ADMISSION TO THE SEMINARY A good knowledge of Wells' English Grammar, with an abil- ity to apply the principles in analyzing and parsing, and of Mod- APPENDIX 439 ern Greography, and a readiness in Mental Arithmetic, (such as Colburn's First Lessons,) that is, an ability to give a correct answer to the questions as they are read by the teacher, and to give an account of all the steps of the mental process, also a good knowledge of common Arithmetic, including all the more difficult rules. In the examination of Arithmetic, a list of ques- tions taken from different authors is used. It is recommended that candidates for admission go through two or three diflFerent authors, so as thus to gain more mathematical discipline, and be better prepared for examination. Adams's New Arithmetic and Greenleafs are particularly recommended. A good know- ledge of Mitchell's Ancient Geography, of Andrews and Stod- dard's Latin Grammar, and Andrews's Latin Reader, of the History of the United States, and of Watts on the Mind, is also required. EXCEPTIONS [This entry appears in a few catalogues after the announcement of advanced entrance requirements.] In some special cases, Latin and Ancient Geography may be deferred till after admission to the Seminary, and two years be spent in the Junior Class to make up the deficiency. STUDIES, OF THE JUNIOR CLASS Review of English Grammar, Latin (Cornelius Nepos), History (Worcester's Elements, Goldsmith's Greece, Rome and England, and Grimshaw's France), Day's Algebra, Playfair's Euclid (old edition), and Wood's Botany commenced; also Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History,^ and Marsh's Eccle- siastical History.^ * Not strictly required of those who have a good knowledge of Latin. 440 APPENDIX STUDIES OF THE MIDDLE CLASS Latin, Cutter's Physiology, Silliman's Chemistry, Olmsted's Natural Philosophy, Olmsted's Astronomy, Wood's Botany continued, Newman's Rhetoric; also, Alexander's Evidences of Christianity/ STUDIES OF THE SENIOR CLASS Playfair's Euclid finished. Wood's Botany continued, Hitch- cock's Geology, Paley's Natural Theology, Upham's Mental Philosophy in two volumes, Whately's Logic, Wayland's Moral Philosophy, Butler's Analogy * and Milton's Paradise Lost.* All the members of the school attend regularly to composi- tion, reading and calisthenics. Instruction is given in vocal music, in linear and perspective drawing, and in French. Those who have attended to instrumental music, can have the use of a piano a few hours in each week. STUDIES TAEEN IN THEIR REGULAR ORDER It is expected as a general rule, that all who enter the Semi- nary will pursue the branches of the regular course in order, taking the required Latin in its place, whether they can go through the whole course or not. Still there may be exceptions to this rule in favor of those who can spend but one year in the Institution, who have not made great advance in the EngUsh branches, and who with this one year are to finish their school education. It is believed, however, that there is no occasion for extending this exception to the younger class of applicants, who expect thus to finish their education in one year. Such, ^ Not strictly required of those who have a good knowledge of Latin. APPENDIX 441 if they cannot defer this last year of their pupilage till they have more age, will gain as much or more benefit at some other school, where their studies will not be encumbered and re- stricted by a regular system. No pledge is required for a con- tinuance in the Seminary for more than a year. A commencing of the regular course in order, is all that is expected. All enter the Institution, only for one year at first. The question of returning the second is left for future decision. D. EARLIEST FORM OF DIPLOMA MOUNT HOLYOKE FEMALE SEMINARY This certifies that Miss has completed the prescribed course of study at this Seminary and by her proficiency and correct deportment merits this testimonial of approbation. In testimony whereof the trustees affix their seal at South Hadley, Massachusetts, this fourth day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-two. Maby Lyon, Principal By order of the Trustees, Secretary, Joseph D. Condit BIBLIOGRAPHY This list of the most important printed material upon which the biography is based, excludes all summaries in the form of books and magazine articles dealing with the progress of education, together with appreciations of Miss Lyon's life and work, which have not resulted from first-hand knowledge either of the events themselves or of documentary evidence. The only exception to the first ruling is to be found in the citation of publications issued by the United States Bureau of Education and by Columbia University, these volumes being under- stood as embodying authentic information furnished by the institutions described, or gained from careful study of original sources. Newspaper references are not cov- ered by this bibliography. Nor does it account for a mass of manuscript material in the Mount Holyoke College archives and elsewhere. I. MARY LYON A. Written by Mary Lyon. To the friends and patrons of Ipswich Female Seminary. [Spring, 1834.] Reprinted with report of meeting on Sept. 6. Joseph B. Felt, scribe, Ipswich, Mass., Sept. 8, 1834. Circular. 444 BIBLIOGRAPHY Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, South Hadley, 1835. Prospectus. [Circular letter.] South Hadley, n. d. General View of the principles and design of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. [South Hadley, Mass., May, 1837.] Female Education. Tendencies of the principles embraced and the system adopted in the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. [South Hadley, Mass., June, 1839.] Preparation for admission. [South Hadley, Sept., 1840.] Circular. [Circular to] Candidates for Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, n. d. A Missionary Offering. Boston, 1843. B. Written about Mary Lyon. FisK, Fidelia. Recollections of Mary Lyon. Boston, 1866. Hitchcock, Edward. A Chapter in the Book of Providence. Anniversary Address. Mount Holyoke, 1849. . Power of Christian benevolence illus- trated in the life and labors of Mary Lyon. North- ampton, 1851. . [The Same.] A new edition, abridged and in some parts enlarged, by Mrs. Eunice Cald- well Cowles. New York, 1858. BIBLIOGRAPHY 445 Humphrey, Heman. The Shining Path; A Ser- mon preached in South Hadleyat the funeral of Miss Mary Lyon, March 8, 1849. Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Memorial. Twenty-fifth Anniversary. 1862. Address by E. N. Kirk, and reminiscences by Rufus Anderson, David Choate, Joel Hawes, Edward Hitchcock, Thomas Laurie. Stow, Sarah D. Locke. History of Mount Holyoke Seminary during its first half-century. 1887. SouLE, Annah May. MS. notes on similarities in the teaching of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mary Lyon. II. EDUCATION Abbot Academy. McKeen, Philena and Phebe. History of Abbot Academy. Andover, Mass, 1880. Adams Academy. See Derry and Ipswich Schools. American Annals of Education and Instruction for the year 1836. William C. Woodbridge, editor. American Journal of Education (Barnard's). Baldwin, Theron. See Monticello Seminary. Banister, Mrs. [Z. P. Grant.] Hints on Edu- cation. Boston, 1856. . Use of a Life. A Memorial, by L. T. Guilford. New York, 1885. 446 BIBLIOGRAPHY Beecher, Catharine E. Suggestions respecting improvements in education, presented to the trustees of the Hartford Female Seminary, 1829. . Educational reminiscences and sug- gestions. New York, 1874. BucKLAND Female School. Catalogue of the teachers and pupils for the term ending March 2, 1830. Bush, G. G. History of higher education in Massachusetts. United States Bureau of Education : Circular of Information, No. 6, 1891. College Curriculum. See Snow, Louis Franklin. Dana, Daniel. Hints on reading. Address delivered in the Ipswich Female Seminary, Jan. 15, 1834. Derrt and Ipswich Schools. Catalogues of the oflBcers and members of the Adams Female Acad- emy. 1824, 1825, 1826. . Catalogues of the oflScers and mem- bers of the Ipswich Female Academy. 1828, 1829. . Catalogues of the oflBcers and mem- bers of the Ipswich Female Seminary. 1830-1836, . Catalogues of the oflBcers and mem- bers of the seminary for female teachers at Ipswich. Mass. 1837-1839. . Ipswich Female Seminary. Maxims for teachers, n. d. Pamphlet. BIBLIOGRAPHY 447 . The Passing of Ipswich Seminary. Monticello Seminary. Echo, No. 20. Dickinson, Emily, Letters: edited by Mabel Loomis Todd. Vol. I. Boston, 1894. DwiGHT, Timothy. Travels in New England and New York. New Haven, 4 vols. 1821-1822. Emerson, Joseph. Catalogue of the members of the female seminary under the care of Mr. Emerson, commenced at Byfield and continued at Saugus, near Boston. 1818-1822. . Prospectus of the female seminary at Wethersfield, Ct., comprising a general prospec- tus, course of instruction, maxims of education, and regulations of the seminary; with notes relating to books, branches of literature, methods of instruc- tion, etc., etc. 1826. . Recitation lectures upon the acquisi- tion and communication of thought. 1826. . Letter to a class of young ladies upon the study of the history of the United States. 1828. . Life of. Emerson, Ralph. Boston, 1834. Emma Willakd School. Catalogues of the officers and pupils of the Troy Female Seminary. 1843- 1864. . Annual catalogue of the Emma Willard School. 1895-1896. . [Circular sent to the citizens of Troy in 1871.] See also Willard, Emma. 448 BIBLIOGRAPHY Fairchild, Jambs H. See Obeklin College. Georgia, Education in. See Jones, Charles E. Guilford, L. T. See Banister, Mrs. Ipswich Seminary. See Derry and Ipswich Schools. Jones, Charles Edgeworth. Education in Georgia. United States Bureau of Education: Circular of Infor- mation, No. 4, 1888. Larcom, Lucy A. See Wheaton Seminaby. Litchfield School. E. N. Vanderpoel, com- piler. Chronicles of a pioneer school from 1792- 1833, being the history of Miss Sarah Pierce and of her Litchfield school. Edited by Elizabeth C. Barney Buel. Cambridge, 1903. Lord, John. See Willabd, Emma. LossiNG, Benson J. See Vassab College. Massachusetts, Education in. See Bush, G. G. Monticello Seminary. Theron Baldwin. His- torical address. Echo, No. 15. Mount Holyoke College. Address to the Christian public. Northampton, June 15, 1835. BIBLIOGRAPHY 449 Circular signed by John Todd, Joseph Penney, and RoswELL Hawks. . General view of the principles and design of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. In Religious Magazine and Family Miscellany; New Series, vol. i, pp. 184-189. 1837. . Prospectus of Mount Holyoke Fe- male Seminary, Boston. 1837. Signed by J. D. Condit, secretary, in behalf of the trustees. South Hadley, Mass., May 1, 1837. . Annual catalogues, 1837-8 The title of the 1837-8 catalogue reads : First annual catalogue of the officers and members of the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. . Anniversary addresses : 1839. Rufus Anderson, 1840. Mark Hopkins. 1841. Bela B. Edwards. 1842. Edward Hitchcock. 1844. Edward N. Kirk. 1845. Joel Hawes. 1846. J. D. Condit. 1849. Edward Hitchcock. . [Circular issued by the trustees. April 20, 1849.] . Massachusetts Senate [Document] No. 136, 1868. Report of committee on the petition of Mount Holyoke Seminary for a grant of $40,000. 450 BIBLIOGRAPHY . Semi-centennial celebration, 1837- 1887. 1888. See also Lyon, Mart. New York, Education in. See Sherwood, Sidney. Oberlin College. James H. Fairchild. Ober- lin : its origin, progress, and results. An address pre- pared for the alumni of Oberlin College, assembled Aug. 22, 1860. Oberlin, 1871. . James H. Fairchild. Oberlin: the Colony and the College. 1833-1883. Oberlin, 1883. Palmer, George Herbert. See Wellesley College. Porter, Deacon Andrew W. Sumner, C. B. Sermon, n. d. Potter, Alonzo, and Emerson, George B. The School and the Schoolmaster, Boston, 1843. Raymond, John Howard. Life and Letters. Edited by his eldest daughter. New York, 1881. See also Vassar College. Rensselaer School. [Announcement.] 1824. Safford, Daniel. A memoir ; by his wife. Bos- ton, 1861. Sanderson Academy. Historical Address. 1889. Sherwood, Sidney. History of higher education in the State of New York. United States Bureau of Education, Circular of Infor- mation, No. 3, 1900. SiGOURNEY, Mrs. L. H. Letters to my pupils, BIBLIOGRAPHY 451 with narrative and biographical sketches. New York, 1860. Smith College. [Prospectus.] Northampton, Mass., Sept. 10, 1872. . Tyler, W. S. Address before the cit- izens of Northampton, Dec. 9, 1872. . Addresses at the inauguration of Rev. J. Clark Seelye as President, July, 1875. . Official circulars. . Celebration of the Quarter-Cente- nary. Cambridge, 1900. Snow, Louis Franklin. The College Curricu- lum in the United States. New York, 1907. Columbia University Contributions to Education. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Life, by Charles Edward Stowe. Boston, 1891. Tyler, W. S. See Mount Holtoke College, Semi-centennial cele- bration, and Smith College. United States Bureau of Education. Reports of Commissioner. See also Bush, G. G., Jones, Charles E., and Sherwood, Sidney. Vassar College. Prospectus of the Vassar Female College. May, 1865. . Lossing, Benson J. Vassar College and its Founder. New York, 1867. . Vassar College: a sketch of its foundation, aims, and resources, and of the develop- 452 BIBLIOGRAPHY ment of its scheme of instruction to the present time New York, May, 1873. . Historical sketch of Vassar College. Prepared for the Commissioner of the Bureau of Education. New York, 1876. . Addresses at the celebration of the completion of the twenty-fifth academic year. 1890. See also Raymond. Wellesley College. [Prospectus.] Dec. 1874. . Circular for 1876. Nov. 20, 1875. . Circular for 1876. June 11, 1876. . Circular to parents. June 1, 1877. . Circular to parents and students. Aug. 1, 1879. . Calendar, 1878-1879. . Palmer, George Herbert. Life of Alice Freeman Palmer. Boston, 1908. Wheaton Seminary. Wheaton, Eliza Baylies. Life, by Harriet E. Paine. Cambridge, 1907. . Larcom, Lucy A. A Semicentennial Sketch. Cambridge, 1885. WiLLARD, Emma, Letter addressed as a circular to the members of the Willard Association for the improvement of female teachers. 1838. . Life of Emma Willard, by John Lord. New York, 1873. . Emma Willard and her pupils [Mrs. A. W. Fairbanks, editor]. New York, 1898. Published by Mrs. Russell Sage. BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 III. MISCELLANEOUS BucKLAND Centennial, Sept. 10, 1879. Pamphlet. BusHNELL, Horace. Work and Play. New York, 1866. Ellis, E. R. Biographical Sketches of Richard Ellis, the first settler of Ashfield, Mass., and his de- scendants. Detroit, 1888. Felt, Joseph B. History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton. Cambridge, 1834. JuDD, Sylvester. History of Hadley, including the early history of Hatfield, South Hadley, Am- herst, and Granby. Springfield, 1905. Larcom, Lucy. A New England Girlhood. Bos- ton, 1890. INDEX Abbot Academy, 218, 219. Adams Academy, 87, 170, 433; disagreement between principal and trustees, 93, 109, 110. See also Derry-Ipswich. Amherst Academy, 62. Amherst College, 63, 173, 283, 311, 326, 351, 425; Mary Lyon attends lectures at, 118, 433; professors from, lecture at Mount Holyoke, 297, 298. Ashfield Academy. See Sander- son Academy. Avery, Joseph, 244. Baldwin, Rev. Theron, 277. Banister, Mrs. Z. P. See Grant. Beecher, Catherine, 137, 183; principal of Hartford Seminary, 96, 102, 167-170; wishes to se- cure Mary Lyon as teacher, 135 ; correspondence with Mary Lyon about Mount Holyoke, 181, 206, 212, 213, 241 ; charac- terizes Mount Holyoke, 218; effort to supply Middle West with trained teachers, 322, 323. Beecher, Harriet, "composition" work at Hartford Seminary, 168. Beecher, Lyman, advocates Hart- ford-Ipswich merger, 169; story of machine that " would n't go," 257. Burgess, Mrs. See Moore, Abi- gail. Burritt, Elijah, 61. Byfield Seminary, 65-82, 98, 165, 433. Caldwell, Eunice (Mrs. John Cowles), 251; biographer of Mary Lyon, 1 ; principal of Wheaton Seminary, 191 ; quo- tations from, 254, 331; at Mount Holyoke, 330. Carlyle, Thomas, 198. Choate, David, describes begin- nings of Mount Holyoke, 185, 186. Choate, Rufus, 173. College curriculum in the United States in 1836, 376 n. Condit, Rev. Joseph, 254, 305, 442. Cowles, Mrs. Eunice Caldwell. See Caldwell. Dame schools, 41. Dana, Daniel, 186. Defoe, projected academy for women, 42. Derry-Ipswich Seminary, 95, 97- 112; its curriculum, 99-101 entrance requirements, 99 method of study, 102, 103, 198 the "series," 103, 104; govern ment, 105; "sections," 106 development of social sense. 456 INDEX 107, 108; religious influence, 108, 109; attention given to training of teachers. 111; public examinations, 136; proposed merger with Hartford Seminary 169; financial status, 170, 171; effect on public opinion, 238. Dickinson, Emily, 302. Diploma, 99, 284, 306, 442. Durant, Henry F., 426. Dwight, Timothy, Greenfield Hill School, 45. Eaton, Amos, Mary Lyon studies under, 118, 119. Edgeworth, Maria, testifies to scope of women's education, 42. Education of women, before 1800, 39-46; why thought unneces- sary, 40; nunneries, 40; dame schools, 41 ; of rich girls in eighteenth century, 41; of southern girls, 41 ; learned women rare, 41, 42; girl passes entrance examinations to Yale, 41, 42; stimulated by Revolu- tionary War and invention of machinery, 43 ; demand for wo- men as teachers, 44, 176-178; private ventures near the end of the eighteenth century, 44, 45; opening of public schools to girls, 45; coeducational acade- mies, 46 ; work of Joseph Emer- son, 70-75, 81, 82, 98; lack of system in, 95, 96, 159-162, 175, 266-269, 282, 309, 310; pioneers in higher education, 96; joint work of Zilpah Grant and Mary Lyon at Derry and Ipswich, 97-112; absence of permanent schools, 159, 160-162, 165, 167, 169, 170, 174, 175, 307. 428, 429; viewed as a business en- terprise, 160-162, 170, 174; "Plan" of Emma Willard pro- viding for state aid, 163; she disclaims the idea of a college, 163; her seminary a private school, 165-167; its academic character, 167; Joseph Emer- son predicts the foundation of higher schools, 164; work of Catherine Beecher at Hartford, 167-170; decline of Hartford Seminary for lack of funds, 169; attempt to endow Ipswich Seminary, 172-175; project for a New England seminary for women-teachers, 173; founding of Oberlin, 176; supply and de- mand in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, 175- 178; exi)ense of, 179, 202; the seminary movement in retro- spect, 422; rise and evolution of the college movement, 421-428; influence of Mount Holyoke beyond the United States, 427. See also Mary Lyon and Mount Uolyoke. Edwards, Jonathan, 21, 33, 133. 141 ; sisters study the classics, 42. Elmira College, 424. Emerson, Rev. Joseph, 66, 69, 70, 105; as a teacher, 70-75, 80-82, 98, 102; on Mary Lyon's com- positions, 78, 79; moves his seminary, 165; predicts higher schools for women, 164; advises INDEX 457 Zilpah Grant to establish a permanent school, 170; con- nection with Oberlin through his pupils, 176. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, related to Rev. Joseph Emerson, 69; compared with Mary Lyon, 211, 281, 417, 418. Emma Willard School, 167. See Troy Seminary. Entrance requirements, of Ameri- can colleges in 1836, 376 n.; at Ipswich Seminary, 98, 99; no mention of, at Troy, 167; at Mount Holyoke, 261, 265, 266, 269, 271, 290, 291, 293, 295, 437- 439; at Vassar, 425; at Smith, 425. Felt, Joseph, 186, 220. Fisk, Fidelia, recollections of Mary Lyon, 2. Foot, Lucinda, passed entrance examinations to Yale, 41, 42. Fuller, Thomas, on "she-col- leges," 39, 40. Georgia, An act to establish a public seat of learning for Fe- males, 164; Georgia Female College. See Wesleyan Female College. Gloucester, votes to educate girls, 45. Grant, Zilpah P. (Mrs. Banister), 80, 94-96, 170, 183; helps pre- pare memoir of Mary Lyon, 1 ; assistant to Joseph Emerson, 80 ; opens Adams Academy, 87 ; influence on Mary Lyon, 87, 88; moves her school to Ips- wich, 93, 109, 110; appearance and characteristics, 112, 113; as a teacher, 97-114; declines Miss Beecher's invitation to Hartford, 169; emphasis on need of permanent schools, 172; invited to Mount Holyoke, 182; opposes Miss Lyon's temporary policies, 206, 212; recipient of letters from Miss Lyon, 91, 92, 125, 143, 144, 158, 160, 175, 180, 223, 234, 245, 248, 256, 284, 339 ; connection with Vas- sar, 101. Hamilton, Gail, on Miss Grant, 113. Hartford Seminary, 95, 96, 168- 170, 197, 221. Harvard College, 40, 70, 141, 159, 228, 425 ; compared with Mount Holyoke in popular support, 253. Hawks, Roswell, 222-224, 231, 241, 252, 289, 368. Heard, George W., 186. Hitchcock, President, 63, 190, 241 ; biographer of Mary Lyon, 1 ; she studies with, 63, 190, 300, 301, 433, 434; connection with Mount Holyoke, 184, 186, 190. '218, 220, 235, 244, 298, 300, 308, 318; on Mary Lyon, 117, 118, 192, 408-414. Hitchcock, Charles, 301. Hitchcock, Dr. Edward, 190, 301. Hopkins, Mark, 270, 420; our girls' schools, 175, 179; on Mount Holyoke, 306, 307. Hopkins bequest, Hadley's share in, 22. 458 INDEX Howland, General, 186. Humphrey, Heman, 220; on Mary Lyon, 241, 351, 414- 416. Ipswich Seminary, 93, 197, 198, 221, 271, 297; efforts for en- dowment of, 172-175; sold, 171. See also Derry-Ipswich Seminary. Larcom, Lucy, 302. Lafayette, 136. Lake Erie College, 393, 394, 426. Litchfield, Miss Pierce's School, 45. Lord, Mrs. Edward. See Lyon, Lucy. Lyman, Hannah, 101. Lyon. Aaron, grandfather of Mary, 23. Lyon, Aaron, father of Mary, 23, 24, 433. Lyon, Aaron, brother of Mary, 20, 26, 48, 64, 139, 339, 433. Lyon, Electa, eldest sister, 85. Lyon, Freelove, youngest sister, 138, 346, 435. Lyon, Jemima (Mrs. Wing), 434. Lyon. Lovina (Mrs. Daniel Put- nam), sister, 138, 139, 434. Lyon, Lucy (Mrs. Edward Lord), niece, 331, 338, 346. Lyon, Mary, previous biographies of, 1, 2; demand for a new Life, 2-4; materials for a new Life, 4-9; letters, 6-8. 344. 345; birth, 13, 433; birthplace, 13- 18; ancestry, 19-24; father and mother, 23; brothers and sis- ters, 24 ; father's death, 24, 433 ; home life, 24-31; definition of economy, 29; tries to make time, 31, 32; early schooling, 32, 33; books, 33; learns to make brick, 35, 88; youthful characteristics, 18, 32, 34, 35. 47, 48, 82, 83, 122-124; keeps house for brother, 48 ; begins to teach, 48, 433; salary, 48, 170, 345 ; attends Ashfield Academy, 49-55, 60, 61, 65, 433; recites Latin Grammar, 50, 51; per- sonal appearance, 49, 50, 57, 58, 118, 121, 122, 225, 284, 357- 362, 372, 399, 401, 404, 416; character as a student, 47. 48, 52-54, 75-79; friendship with Amanda White, 53, 54, at the White home, 55, 56, 59, 60, 224, 225; social training. 56-59; more schooling, 61-63; attends Amherst Academy, 62, 63, 433; brother moves west, 64. 433; religious experience. 35, 64, 77. 129-131, 235, 317-322, 398, 402, 403, 413-416, 418; joins church, 433; of romantic love and marriage, 65, 140; attends Joseph Emerson's Byfield Sem- inary, 65-83, 433 ; journey from Ashfield to Byfield, 68; com- positions at Byfield, 78; mem- ory-book, 79, 80; friendship with Zilpah Grant, 80, 87, 88, 112-114, 343; opinions on teaching, 84, 86, 115-117, 120. 121, 146-151, 199, 397; early unsuccess as a teacher, 85, 86; appointed to Sanderson Aca- demy, 86, 433; decides not to move west, 139, 140; connec- INDEX 459 tion with Adams Academy, 87, 88, 433, 434; schools for girls at Buckland and Ashfield, 88-95, 434 ; characteristics as a teacher, 89-93, 102, 106, 107, 114-118, 125-133, 300, 312, 379; connec- tion with Ipswich Seminary, 94, 95, 434; opinions on education, 101, 116, 117, 131, 133, 195, 196, 198, 200-202, 266-270, 272-274, 282, 289, 293-295, 297, 337 ; interest in science, 63, 118, 119, 171. 190, 300, 301 434 ; talks to students, 126-128, 130, 131, 146-157, 312-317, 318-322, 327, 349, 372, 377- 379, 386, 387, 391, 392, 397, 398; influence on students, 128, 134, 317, 318, 322, 354-406, 419; wit and humor, 32, 123, 137, 234, 311, 368, 369, 400, 403, 405; concerning relatives, 138, 139, 144, 331, 332, 339, 845-347, 350, 433-435; travel, 140-145, 339, 434, 435; leaves Ipswich, 145, 146, 182; de- plores lack of "the vital prin- ciple" in women's schools, 159- 160; sees the need of public aid, 160; caricatures the way girls' schools are started, 160-162; truth of the caricature illus- trated, 169, 170; proposes to give an object lesson of a per- manent school 162; has not always emphasized perma- nence, 172; attempts to secure endowment of Ipswich Semi- nary, 172-175, 434; causes im- pelling her to act, 175-179; patriotism, 178; thoughts turn toward middle class of society, 180; site in Ohio suggested, 180; invited to become head of Monticello Seminary, 180; calls New England "the cradle of thought," 181; writes Miss Beecher of two ways of raising the money, 181, 182; need of diplomacy, 183, 184; addresses circular to friends of Ipswich Seminary, 184, 434; calls first meeting of men at Ipswich, 185, 186, 434; raises first thousand dollars from women, 187-189, 434; recuperative power, 189; spends winter at Amherst, 190, 434; calls meeting of leading men of western Massachusetts, 190; helps open Wheaton Sem- inary, 191, 192, 434; aim in founding Mount Holyoke, 192, 193, 204, 205, 428, 429; perma- nent policies defined, 193-204; temporary policies, 205-215; criticised by Miss Beecher and Miss Grant, 206, 212, 213 ; com- pared with Ralph Waldo Emer- son, 211, 281, 417-419; raises money for Mount Holyoke, 223-227, 231, 237-240, 250- 253, 336; personal expenditure for Mount Holyoke, 226. 250, 256 ; disregard of hardship, 223. 224, 227, 246, 247, 327-331; meets opposition and criticism, 227-236; protests against "gen- teel nothingness," 231, 232; calls for pioneers, 233; use of prayer, 235, 236, 242, 318, 418; speaks in school-houses, 237; discovers "little bits of folks," 460 INDEX 239, 240; ability to select and use workers, ,240-244; writes Miss Grant of "another dark cloud," 245; not discouraged, 234, 246, 247, 250, 251; writes Miss Grant after laying of cor- ner stone, 248, 249; writes of a point of etiquette, 251 ; oversees finishing of building, 254, 255; multiplication of activities be- fore opening, 253-257; opens Mount Holyoke, 258-263, 434; secures cooperation of students, 256, 260-263, 287, -288; handi- capped by public opinion and practice, 264-271, 293-296, 332 ; organizes Mount Holyoke, 271-281, 329-331 ; writes Rev. Theron Baldwin about the do- mestic system, 277-279 ; guides Mount Holyoke's development, 285-301, 348; channels of edu- cational influence, 302, 303, 337, 393, 394, 419, 421-430 (see also Mount Holyoke); writes Miss Beecher in regard to fur- nishing teachers for Middle West, 323; interest in alumnae, 322, 324 ; founds Memorandum Society, 325, 326; activities while at the head of Mount Holyoke, 329-338; character of administration, 335, 412, 413; rest trips, 338-340. 348, 349, 435; as guest, 340; with serv- ants, 340, 341 ; as hostess, 342- 344; with children, 340-344; premonitions of death, 347, 348; fiftieth birthday, 347 348; death, 349-351, 435; pictures of, 360-362; as seen by Presi- dent Hitchcock, 408-414; as seen by President Humphrey, 414-416; summary of position as pioneer of the college move- ment in women's education, 421-430. Lyon, Rosina, 139, 140, 144, 434. Mills College, 426. Milton, 72, 117. Missions, 11, 34, 60, 128; "A Mis- sionary Offering," 5 435 ; inter- est at Mount Holyoke, 321, 322, 324, 331, 332, 336, 376, 388, 389; recipe for a woman mis- sionary, 322. Monticello Seminary, 171, 180, 277, 307. Moore, Abigail (Mrs. Burgess), 331, 332, 335, 346. Moravian Seminary, 41. Mount Holyoke, semicentennial history, 2; inception of idea, 179, 180; projected, 184; first meeting to discuss, 185, 186, 434; first money raised, 187- 189, 434; second meeting to discuss 190; idea developed, 192;permanence, 193, 194,216, 264, 307, 325, 326, 429; age limit for students, 195, 269, 271, 273, 278, 291, 292, 375, 427; entrance requirements, 261, 265, 266, 271, 290, 291, 293, 295, 427, 437, 438, 439; curricu- lum, 197, 292-298, 376, 401, 428, 437-440; equipment, 195, 203, 210, 212, 285, 286, 328; fitted to public need, 196, 198, 199, 204, 273, 322; character of students, 195, 196, 203, 273, INDEX 461 278, 290-292; all-round devel- opment emphasized, 196, 220; stress on system, 272, 282, 289. 437, 440, 441; principle of growth, 196, 197, 285, 286, 289- 296, 325, 352, 353, 401, 376, 435, 438, 439; democratic spirit, 201-204, 273, 328; religious character, 197, 317-320, 388, 389, 402, 403; anticipated re- sult of founding, 204, 205, 233, 249, 263, 295, 296, 428, 429; cooperative housework, 205- 211, 275-282, 289, 330, 333, 338, 365, 366, 371, 389-391; salaries, 211-215, 345; tuition, 335, 336; main fund raised, 217, 222-227, 238-240, 244, 251, 286, 336; furniture, 251-253, 255, 256; opposition to, 218, 227-235, 332, 401 ; located, 218, 434; named, 220, 221, 434; chartered, 221, 434,436; friends of, 184, 185, 186, 190, 218, 222, 224, 225, 241-244, 258- 260; delays and mishaps in building, 244, 245, 247, 249- 251 ; corner stone laid, 248, 434 ; opens 255, 258-263, 434; diffi- culties of organization, 264- 270; teachers, 269, 270, 283, 298, 299; no preparatory de. partment, 271; "series," 271; "sections." 271, 272; com- mencement, 282-284, 327-328, 303-310; diploma, 284, 306, 442; government, 286, 287, 364, 367, 373, 387, 390, 391, 405; the " Holyoke spirit," 301 ; in- fluence on education, 302, 303, 309, 310. 423, 424, 426, 427; described in Boston Recorder, 304-306; described in Boston Daily Mail, 328; recreation at, 310, 311, 382-386; called a college by legislature of Massa- chusetts, 421; "germ of all the women's colleges," 228, 229, 421-429. Occupations open to women when Mount Holyoke was founded, 198. Oberlin College, 176, 304. Packard, Theophilus, 186. Pangynaskean Seminary, 220, 304. Pearsons, Dr. D. K., 303. Pestalozzi, 71, 91, 99, 317. Philadelphia, "female" academy, 45. Pierce, Miss Sarah, Litchfield School, 45. Porter, Andrew, 242, 243, 249, 250, 251, 254, 258, 339. Porter, Mrs., 242, 243, 250, 254, 257, 340, 351. Raymond, John Howard, 101. Religious Magazine, 235. Rensselaer School, 118, 119, 434 Rockford College, 302. Russell, Rev. John, 20. Safford, Daniel, 243, 251, 259, 339, 341, 399. Safford, Mrs., 243, 251, 259, 339, 358. Sanderson Academy, 49, 63; Mary Lyon's tribute to, 60; Mary Lyon attends, 49-55, 60, 462 INDEX 61, 65, 433; Mary Lyon teacher in, 86, 87, 433. Sanderson, Alvan, 49. "Sections," 106, 265, 271. Seminary, usage of word, 220. "Series," 103, 104, 271, 272. Shepard, Jemima, mother of Mary Lyon, 23, 25, 48, 235, 255, 433; pictured by her daughter, 26- 28; death, 346, 435. Sigourney, Mrs. L. H., writes of Mary Lyon and Mount Hol- yoke, 351. Smith, Chileab, 21, 22, 23. Smith, Rev. Henry, 20. Smith, Lieutenant Samuel, 20, 22. Smith College, 228, 425, 426. Snell, Ebenezer, 298. Somerville, Mary, 42. Southern girls, education of in eighteenth century, 41. Stiles, Ezra, 42. Stow, Mrs. Sarah Locke, 2. Troy Seminary, 95, 96, 104, 165- 167, 197, 221. Tyler, William Seymour, 193, 429; describes opposition to Mount Holyoke, 228-231. Vassar College, 101, 221, 424, 425. Vassar, Matthew, 424. Webster, Daniel, 33. Wellesley College, 425, 426. Wesleyan Female College, 307, 308. Western College, 426. Wheaton Seminary, 191, 192, 245, 246, 253, 271, 336. White, Amanda, 51, 53-59, 65-68, 76, 86, 344. White, Hannah, 86, 87, 209, 224. 234 ; biographer of Mary Lyon, 1. White, Thomas, 49, 55-60, 66-68, 86, 224, 225, 239, 240. Williams College, 297, 346. Willard, Emma, 96, 104, 142, 183; issues "Address to the Public," 163, 164; principal of Troy Seminary, 165-167. Willard, Mr. and Mrs. John, 166. Woodbridge, William, New Ha- ven school for girls, 45. Yale College, 45, 228, 346, 425; beginning compared with that of Mount Holyoke, 296. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A /* 6S University of Caiifomia SOUTHERN REGIONAL LiBRARY FACiLITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeies, CA 90024-1388 Return this materiai to ttte library from wtiich it was t>orrowed. jmnm Q10CT3 2080 REC'DYRl |I|AY15']0 3 1205 00525 8478 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACIU^^^^ A A 000 053 478 4 ill!!