"Keep what she writes till she grows up, and perhaps she will get money
for it. I have heard of somebody who earned a thousand dollars by
writing poetry."
It sounded so absurd to me. Money for writing verses! One dollar would
be as ridiculous as a thousand. I should as soon have thought of being
paid for thinking! My mother, fortunately, was sensible enough never
to flatter me or let me be flattered about my scribbling. It never was
allowed to hinder any work I had to do. I crept away into a corner to
write what came into my head, just as I ran away to play; and I looked
upon it only as my most agreeable amusement, never thinking of
preserving anything which did not of itself stay in my memory. This too
was well, for the time did lot come when I could afford to look upon
verse-writing as an occupation. Through my life, it has only been
permitted to me as an aside from other more pressing employments.
Whether I should have written better verses had circumstances left me
free to do what I chose, it is impossible now to know.
All my thoughts about my future sent me back to Aunt Hannah and my
first infantile idea of being a teacher. I foresaw that I should be
that before I could be or do any thing else. It had been impressed upon
me that I must make myself useful in the world, and certainly one could
be useful who could "keep school" as Aunt Hannah did. I did not see
anything else for a girl to do who wanted to use her brains as well as
her hands. So the plan of preparing myself to be a teacher gradually
and almost unconsciously shaped itself in my mind as the only
practicable one. I could earn my living in that way,--all-important
consideration.
I liked the thought of self-support, but I would have chosen some
artistic or beautiful work if I could. I had no especial aptitude for
teaching, and no absorbing wish to be a teacher, but it seemed to me
that I might succeed if I tried. What I did like about it was that one
must know something first. I must acquire knowledge before I could
impart it, and that was just what I wanted. I could be a student,
wherever I was and whatever else I had to be or do, and I would!
I knew I should write; I could not help doing that, for my hand seemed
instinctively to move towards pen and paper in moments of leisure. But
to write anything worth while, I must have mental cultivation; so, in
preparing myself to teach, I could also be preparing myself to write.
This was the plan that indefinitely shaped itself in my mind as I
returned to my work in the spinning-room, and which I followed out, not
without many breaks and hindrances and neglects, during the next six or
seven years,--to learn all I could, so that I should be fit to teach or
to write, as the way opened. And it turned out that fifteen or twenty
of my best years were given to teaching.