HEROINES OF SERVICE
[Illustration: Mary Lyon]
HEROINES OF SERVICE
MARY LYON -- ALICE FREEMAN PALMER -- CLARA
BARTON -- FRANCES WILLARD -- JULIA WARD
HOWE -- ANNA SHAW -- MARY ANTIN
ALICE C. FLETCHER -- MARY SLESSOR
OF CALABAR -- MADAME CURIE
JANE ADDAMS
BY
MARY R. PARKMAN
Author of "Heroes of Today," etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH
PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921
Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published September, 1917
Reprinted April, 1918;
Reprinted August, 1918._
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO
MY MOTHER
AND ALL WHO, LIKE HER, ARE
TRUE MOTHERS, AND SO, TRUE
"HEROINES OF SERVICE."
FOREWORD
From time immemorial women have been content to be as those who serve.
_Non ministrari sed ministrare_--not to be ministered unto but to
minister--is not alone the motto of those who stand under the Wellesley
banner, but of true women everywhere.
For centuries a woman's own home had not only first claim, but full
claim, on her fostering care. Her interests and sympathies--her mother
love--belonged only to those of her own household. In the days when much
of the labor of providing food and clothing was carried on under each
roof-tree, her service was necessarily circumscribed by the home walls.
Whether she was the lady of a baronial castle, or a hardy peasant who
looked upon her work within doors as a rest from her heavier toil in the
fields, the mother of the family was not only responsible for the care
of her children and the prudent management of her housekeeping, but she
had also entire charge of the manufacture of clothing, from the spinning
of the flax or wool to the fashioning of the woven cloth into suitable
garments.
Changed days have come, however, with changed ways. The development
of science and invention, which has led to industrial progress and
specialization, has radically changed the woman's world of the home.
The industries once carried on there are now more efficiently handled
in large factories and packing-houses. The care of the house itself is
undertaken by specialists in cleaning and repairing.
Many women, whose energies would have been, under former conditions,
inevitably monopolized by home-keeping duties, are to-day giving
their strength and special gifts to social service. They are the true
mothers--not only of their own little brood--but of the community and
the world.
The service of the true woman is always "womanly." She gives something
of the fostering care of the mother, whether it be as nurse, like Clara
Barton; as teacher, like Mary Lyon and Alice Freeman Palmer; or as
social helper, like Jane Addams. So it is that the service of these
"heroines" is that which only women could have given to the world.
Many women who have never held children of their own in their arms have
been mothers to many in their work. It was surely the mother heart of
Frances E. Willard that made our "maiden crusader" a helper and healer,
as well as a standard bearer. It was the mother heart of Alice C.
Fletcher, that made that student of the past a champion of the Indians
in their present-day problems and a true "campfire interpreter." It was
the woman's tenderness that made Mary Slessor, that torch-bearer to
Darkest Africa, the "white mother" of all the black people she taught
and served.
The Russian peasants have a proverb: "Labor is the house that Love lives
in." The women, who, as mothers of their own families, or of other
children whose needs cry out for their understanding care, are always
homemakers. And the work of each of these--her labor of love--is truly
"a house that love lives in."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I MARY LYON 3
II ALICE FREEMAN PALMER 31
III CLARA BARTON 61
IV FRANCES E. WILLARD 89
V JULIA WARD HOWE 119
VI ANNA HOWARD SHAW 151
VII MARY ANTIN 185
VIII ALICE C. FLETCHER 211
IX MARY SLESSOR 235
X MARIE SKLODOWSKA CURIE 267
XI JANE ADDAMS 297
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Mary Lyon _Frontispiece_
Mary Lyon Chapel and Administration Hall 17
Alice Freeman Palmer 36
College Hall, Destroyed by Fire in 1914 53
Tower Court, which Stands on the Site of College Hall 53
Clara Barton 79
Frances E. Willard 94
The Statue of Miss Willard in the Capitol at Washington 103
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe 133
Anna Howard Shaw 167
Mary Antin 201
Alice C. Fletcher 227
Mary Slessor 253
Marie Sklodowska Curie 280
Madame and Dr. Curie and Their Little Daughter Irene 289
Jane Addams 299
Polk Street Façade of Hull-House Buildings 309
A Corner of the Boys' Library at Hull House 309
PROPHET AND PIONEER: MARY LYON
Anything that ought to be done can be done.
IMMANUEL KANT.
HEROINES OF SERVICE
PROPHET AND PIONEER
"What is my little Mistress Mary trying to do?" The whir of the
spinning-wheel was stilled for a moment as Mrs. Lyon glanced in surprise
at the child who had climbed up on a chair to look more closely at the
hourglass on the chimneypiece.
"I am just trying to see if I can find the way to make more time,"
replied Mary.
"That's not the way, daughter," laughed the busy mother, as she started
her wheel again. "When you stop to watch time, you lose it. Let your
work slip from your fingers faster than the sand slips--that's the way
to make time!"
If busy hands can indeed make time, we know why the days were so full
of happy work in that little farm-house among the hills of western
Massachusetts. It takes courage and ceaseless toil to run a farm that
must provide food and clothing for seven growing children, but Mrs. Lyon
was never too busy or too tired to help a neighbor or to speak a word of
cheer.
"How is it that the widow can do more for me than any one else?" asked
a neighbor who had found her a friend in need. "She reminds me of what
the Bible says, 'having nothing yet possessing all things.' There she is
left without a husband to fend for her and the children, so that it's
work, work, work for them all from morning till night, and yet they're
always happy. You would think the children liked nothing better than
doing chores."
"How is it that the harder a thing is the more you seem to like it,
Mary?" asked her seat-mate in the district school, looking wonderingly
at the girl whose eyes always brightened and snapped when the arithmetic
problems were long and hard.
"Oh, it's lots more fun _climbing_ than just going along on the level,"
replied Mary. "You feel so much more alive. I'll tell you what to do
when a thing seems hard, like a steep, steep hill, you know. Say to
yourself: 'Some people may call you Difficulty, old hill; but I know
that your name is Opportunity. You're here just to prove that I can do
something worth while.' Then the climbing is the best fun--really!"
It is a happy thing to be born among the hills. Wherever one looks there
is something to whisper: "There is no joy like climbing. Besides, the
sun stays longer on the summit, and beyond the hill-tops is a larger,
brighter world." Perhaps it was the fresh breath of the hills that gave
Mary Lyon her glowing cheeks, as the joy of climbing brought the dancing
lights into her clear blue eyes.
The changing seasons march over the hills in a glorious pageant of
color, from the tender veiling green of young April to the purple mists
and red-and-gold splendor of Indian summer. Every day had the thrill of
new adventure to Mary Lyon, but perhaps she loved the mellow October
days best. "They have all the glowing memory of the past summer and the
promise of the spring to come," she used to say.
How could one who had, through the weeks of growing things, worked
together with rain and sunshine and generous earth for the harvest but
feel the happy possession of all the year at the time when she saw
bins overflowing with brown potatoes, yellow corn, and other gifts of
fields and orchard? She could never doubt that, given the waiting earth
and faithful labor, the harvest was sure. Duties and difficulties were
always opportunities for higher endeavor and happier achievement.
There was no play in Mary Lyon's childhood except the play that a
healthy, active child may find in varied, healthful work done with a
light heart. There was joy in rising before the sun was up, to pick
weeds in the dewy garden, to feed the patient creatures in the barn,
and to make butter in the cool spring-house. Sometimes one could meet
the sunrise on the hill-top, when it happened to be one's turn to bring
wood to the dwindling pile by the kitchen door. Then there was the
baking--golden-brown loaves of bread and tempting apple pies. When the
morning mists had quite disappeared from the face of the hills, the blue
smoke had ceased to rise from the chimney of the little farm-house.
Then was the time to sit beside Mother and knit or weave, sew or mend,
the garments that were homemade, beginning with the moment when the
wool, sheared from their own sheep, was carded and spun into thread.
For holidays, there were the exciting mornings when they made soap and
candles, or the afternoons when they gathered together in the barn for a
husking-bee.
Beauty walked with Toil, however, about that farm in the hills. Mary had
time to lift up her eyes to the glory of the changing sky and to tend
the pinks and peonies that throve nowhere so happily as in her mother's
old-fashioned garden.
"May I plant this bush in the corner with your roses?" asked a neighbor
one day. "It is a rare plant of rare virtue, and I know that in your
garden it cannot die."
As the labor of her hands prospered, as her garden posies blossomed, so
the wings of Mary Lyon's spirit grew. No matter how shut in the present
seemed, no hope nor dream for the future died in her heart as the days
went by.
Her plans only took deeper and deeper root as she worked and waited
patiently for the time of flowers and fruit. There were few books to be
had, but these yielded her of their best. There was opportunity for but
few scattered terms in distant district schools, but she learned there
more than the teachers taught.
"Anything is interesting when you realize that it is important," she
used to say. And to Mary everything was important that was real. She
learned not only from books, but from work, from people, from Nature,
and from every bit of stray circumstance that came her way. It is said
that when the first brick house was built in the village she made a
point of learning how to make bricks, turning them up, piling them on
the wheelbarrow, and putting them in the kiln. She was always hungry to
know and to do, and the harder a thing was the more she seemed to like
it. Climbing was ever more fun than trudging along on the level.
The years brought changes to the home farm. The older sisters married
and went to homes of their own. When Mary was thirteen her mother
married again and went away with the younger children, leaving her to
keep house for the only brother, who had from early childhood been her
best comrade. The dollar a week given her for her work was saved to pay
for a term in the neighboring academy. She also taught in a district
school for a while, receiving seventy-five cents a week and board.
The nineteen-year-old girl who appeared one day at the Ashfield
Academy somehow drew all eyes to her. Her blue homespun dress, with
running-strings at neck and waist, was queer and shapeless, even judged
by village standards in the New England of 1817. Her movements were
impulsive and ungainly and her gait awkward. But it was not the crudity,
but the power, of the new-comer that impressed people. Squire White's
gentle daughter, the slender, graceful Amanda, gave the loyalty of her
best friendship to this interesting and enthusiastic schoolmate from the
hill farm.
"She is more alive than any one I know, Father," said the girl, in
explanation of her preference. "You never see her odd dress and sudden
ways when once you have looked into her face and talked to her. Her face
seems lighted from within--it isn't just her bright color and red-gold
curls; it isn't even her merry laugh. I can't explain what I mean,
but it seems as if her life touches mine--and it's such a big, warm,
beautiful life!"
The traditions of this New England village long kept the memory of
her first recitation. On Friday she had been given the first lesson
of Adams's Latin Grammar to commit to memory. When she was called up
early Monday afternoon, she began to recite fluently declensions and
conjugations without pause, until, as the daylight waned, the whole of
the Latin grammar passed in review before the speechless teacher and
dazzled, admiring pupils.
"How did you ever do it? How could your head hold it all?" demanded
Amanda, with a gasp, as they walked home together.
"Well, really, I'll have to own up," said Mary, with some reluctance, "I
studied all day Sunday! It wasn't so very hard, though. I soon saw where
the changes in the conjugations came in, and the rules of syntax are
very much like English grammar."
Studying was never hard work to Mary, because she could at a moment's
notice put all her attention on the thing at hand. Her busy childhood
had taught her to attack a task at once, while others were frequently
spending their time thinking and talking about doing it.
"No one could study like Mary Lyon, and no one could clean the
school-room with such despatch," said one of her classmates.
It seemed as if she never knew what it was to be tired. She appeared to
have a boundless store of strength and enthusiasm, as if, through all
her growing years, she had made over into the very fiber of her being
the energy of the life-giving sunshine and the patience of the enduring
hills. Time must be used wisely when all one's little hoard of savings
will only pay for the tuition of one precious term. Her board was paid
with two coverlets, spun, dyed, and woven by her own hands.
"They should prove satisfactory covers," she said merrily, "for they
have covered all my needs."
On the day when she thought she must bid farewell to Ashfield Academy
the trustees voted her free tuition, a gift which, as pupil-teacher,
she did her best to repay. The hospitable doors of Squire White's
dignified residence were thrown open to his daughter's chosen friend,
and in this second home she readily absorbed the ways of gracious
living--the niceties and refinements of dress and manners for which
there had been no time in the busy farm-house.
When the course at the academy was completed, the power of her eager
spirit and evident gifts led Squire White to offer her the means to go
with his daughter to Byfield Seminary near Boston, the school conducted
by Mr. Joseph Emerson, who believed that young women, no less than their
brothers, should have an opportunity for higher instruction. In those
days before colleges for women or normal schools, he dreamed of doing
something towards giving worthy preparation to future teachers. It was
through the teaching and inspiration of this cultured Harvard scholar
and large-hearted man that Mary Lyon learned to know the meaning of
life, and to understand aright the longings of her own soul. Years
afterward she said: "In my youth I had much vigor--was always aspiring
after something. I called it longing to study, but had few to direct me.
One teacher I shall always remember. He taught me that education was to
fit one to do good."
On leaving Byfield Seminary, Miss Lyon began her life-work of teaching.
But with all her preparation for doing and her intense desire to do, she
did not at first succeed. The matter of control was not easy to one who
would not stoop to rigid mechanical means and who said, "One has not
governed a child until she makes the child smile under her government."
Besides, her sense of humor--later one of her chief assets--seemed at
first to get in the way of her gaining a steady hold on the reins.
When she was tempted to give up in discouragement, she said to herself:
"I know that good teachers are needed, and that I ought to teach. 'All
that ought to be done can be done.'"
To one who worked earnestly in that spirit, success was sure. Five years
later, two towns were vying with each other to secure her as a teacher
in their academies for young ladies. For some time she taught at Derry,
New Hampshire, during the warm months, going to her beloved Ashfield for
the winter term. Wherever she was she drew pupils from the surrounding
towns and even from beyond the borders of the State. Teachers left their
schools to gather about her. She had the power to communicate something
of her own enthusiasm and vitality. Bright eyes and alert faces
testified to her power to quicken thought and to create an appetite for
knowledge.
"Her memory has been to me continually an inspiration to overcome
difficulties," said one of her pupils.
"You were the first friend who ever pointed out to me defects of
character with the expectation that they would be removed," another
pupil wrote in a letter of heartfelt gratitude.
At this time all the schools for girls, like the Ashfield Academy and
Mr. Emerson's seminary at Byfield, were entirely dependent upon the
enterprise and ideals of individuals. There were no colleges with
buildings and equipment, such as furnished dormitories, libraries, and
laboratories, belonging to the work and the future. In the case of the
most successful schools there was no guarantee that they would endure
beyond the lifetime of those whose interest had called them into being.
Miss Lyon taught happily for several years, often buying books of
reference and material for practical illustration out of her salary of
five or six dollars a week. The chance for personal influence seemed the
one essential. "Never mind the brick and mortar!" she cried. "Only let
us have the living minds to work upon!"
As experience came with the years, however, as she saw schools where a
hundred young women were crowded into one room without black-boards,
globes, maps, and other necessaries of instruction--she realized that
something must be done to secure higher schools for girls, that would
have the requisite material equipment for the present and security for
the future. "We must provide a college for young women on the same
conditions as those for men, with publicly owned buildings and fixed
standards of work," she said.
This idea could appeal to most people of that day only as a strange,
extravagant, and dangerous notion. Harvard and Yale existed to prepare
men to be ministers, doctors, and lawyers. Did women expect to thrust
themselves into the professions? Why should they want the learning of
men? It could do nothing but make them unfit for their proper life in
the home. Who had ever heard of a college for girls! What is unheard of
is to most people manifestly absurd.
To Mary Lyon, however, difficulties were opportunities for truer effort
and greater service. She had, besides, a faith in a higher power--in a
Divine Builder of "houses not made with hands"--which led her to say
with unshaken confidence, "'All that ought to be done can be done!'"
[Illustration: Mary Lyon chapel and administration hall]
It was as if she were able to look into the future and see the way time
would sift the works of the present. Those who looked into her earnest
blue eyes, bright with courage, deep with understanding, could not but
feel that she had the prophet's vision. It was as if she had power to
divine the difference between the difficult and the impossible, and,
knowing that, her faith in the happy outcome of her work was founded on
a rock.
It took this faith and hope, together with an unfailing charity for
the lack of vision in others and an ever-present sense of humor, to
carry Mary Lyon through the task to which she now set herself. She was
determined to open people's eyes to the need of giving girls a chance
for a training that would fit them for more useful living by making them
better teachers, wiser home-makers, and, in their own right, happier
human beings. She must not only convince the conservative men and women
of her day that education could do these things, but she must make
that conviction so strong that they would be willing to give of their
hard-earned substance to help along the good work.
Those were not the days of large fortunes. Miss Lyon could not depend
upon winning the interest of a few powerful benefactors. She must enlist
the support of the many who would be willing to share their little. She
must perforce have the hardihood of the pioneer, no less than the vision
of the seer, to enable her to meet the problems, trials, and rebuffs of
the next few years.
"I learned twenty years ago not to get out of patience," she once said
to some one who marveled at the unwearied good-humor with which she met
the most exasperating circumstances.
First enlisting the assistance of a few earnest men to serve as trustees
and promoters of the cause, she, herself, traveled from town to town,
from village to village, and from house to house, telling over and
over again the story of the Mount Holyoke to be, and what it was to
mean to the daughters of New England. For the site in South Hadley,
Massachusetts, had been early selected, and the name of the neighboring
height, overlooking the Connecticut River, chosen by the girl who was
born in the hills and who believed that it was good to climb.
"I wander about without a home," she wrote to her mother, "and scarcely
know one week where I shall be the next."
All of her journeying was by stage, for at that time the only railroad
in New England was the one, not yet completed, connecting Boston with
Worcester and Lowell. To those who feared that even her robust health
and radiant spirit could not long endure the strain of such a life, she
said: "Our personal comforts are delightful, but not essential. Mount
Holyoke means more than meat and sleep. Had I a thousand lives, I would
sacrifice them all in suffering and hardship for its sake."
During these years Miss Lyon abundantly proved that the pioneer does
not live by bread alone. Only by the vision of what his struggles will
mean to those who come after to profit by his labors is his zeal fed.
It seemed at the time when Mount Holyoke was only a dream of what might
be, and in the anxious days of breaking ground which followed, that
Miss Lyon's faith that difficulties are only opportunities in disguise
was tried to the utmost. Just when her enthusiasm was arousing in the
frugal, thrifty New Englanders a desire to give, out of their slender
savings, a great financial panic swept over the country.
Miss Lyon's friends shook their heads. "You will have to wait for better
times," they said. "It is impossible to go on with the undertaking now."
"When a thing ought to be done, it cannot be impossible," replied Miss
Lyon. "_Now_ is the only word that belongs to us; with the afterwhile we
have nothing to do."
In that spirit she went on, and in that spirit girls who had been her
pupils gave of their little stipends earned by teaching, and the mothers
of girls gave of the money earned by selling eggs and braiding palm-leaf
hats.
"Don't think any gift too small," said Miss Lyon. "I want the twenties
and the fifties, but the dollars and the half-dollars, with prayer, go a
long way."
So Mount Holyoke was built on faith and prayer and the gifts of the many
who believed that the time cried out for a means of educating girls who
longed for a better training. One hard-working farmer with five sons
to educate gave a hundred dollars. "I have no daughters of my own," he
said, "but I want to help give the daughters of America the chance they
should have along with the boys." Two delicate gentlewomen who had lost
their little property in the panic, earned with their own hands the
money they had pledged to the college.
Even Miss Lyon's splendid optimism had, however, some chill encounters
with smallmindedness in people who were not seldom those of large
opportunities. Once when she had journeyed a considerable distance to
lay her plans before a family of wealth and influence in the community,
she returned to her friends with a shade of thought on her cheerful
brow. "Yes, it is all true, just as I was told," she said as if to
herself. "They live in a costly house, it is full of costly things, they
wear costly clothes--but oh, they're _little bits of folks_!"
Miss Lyon, herself, gave to the work not only her entire capital of
physical strength and her gifts of heart and mind, but also her small
savings, which had been somewhat increased by Mr. White's prudent
investments. And for the future she offered her services on the same
conditions as those of the missionary--the means of simple livelihood
and the joy of the work.
"Mount Holyoke is designed to cultivate the missionary spirit among its
pupils," declared an early circular, "that they may live for God _and do
something_."
Always Miss Lyon emphasized the ideal of an education that should be
a training for service. To this end she decided upon the expedient
of coöperative housework to reduce running expenses, to develop
responsibility, and to provide healthful physical exercise. Long before
the day of gymnasiums and active sports, this educator recognized the
need of balanced development of physical as well as mental habits.
"We need to introduce wise and healthy ideals not only into our minds,
but into our muscles," she said. "Besides, there is no discipline so
valuable as that which comes from fitting our labors into the work of
others for a common good."
One difficulty after another was met and vanquished. When the digging
for the foundation of the first building was actually under way,
quicksand was discovered and another location had to be chosen. Then
it appeared that the bricks were faulty, which led to another delay.
After the work was resumed and all was apparently going well, the walls
suddenly collapsed. "Then," said the man in charge, "I did dread to see
Miss Lyon. Now, thought I, she will be discouraged."
As he hurried towards the ruins, however, whom should he meet but Miss
Lyon herself, smiling radiantly! "How fortunate it is that it happened
while the men were at breakfast!" she exclaimed. "I understand that no
one has been injured!"
The corner-stone was laid on a bright October day that seemed to have
turned all the gray chill of the dying year into a golden promise of
budding life after the time of frost.
"The stones and brick and mortar speak a language which vibrates through
my soul," said Miss Lyon. "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 women! Surely the Lord hath remembered our low estate. The work will
not stop with this foundation. Our enterprise may have to struggle
through embarrassments for years, but its influence will be felt."
How lovingly she watched the work go on! When the interior was under
way, how carefully she considered each detail of closets, shelves, and
general arrangements for comfort and convenience! When the question
of equipment became urgent, how she worked to create an interest that
should express itself in gifts of bedroom furnishings, curtains,
crockery, and kitchen-ware, as well as books, desks, chairs, and
laboratory material! All sorts and conditions of contributions and
donations were welcomed. One was reminded of the way pioneer Harvard was
at first supported by gifts of "a cow or a sheep, corn or salt, a piece
of cloth or of silver plate." Four months before the day set for the
opening, not a third of the necessary furnishing had come in.
"Everything that is done for us now," cried Miss Lyon, "seems like
giving bread to the hungry and cold water to the thirsty!"
On the eighth of November, 1837, the day that Mount Holyoke opened
its door, all was excitement in South Hadley. Stages and private
carriages had for two days been arriving with road-weary, but eager,
young women. The sound of hammers greeted their ears. It appeared that
all the men, young and old, of the countryside had been pressed into
service. Some were tacking down carpet or matting, others were carrying
trunks, unloading furniture, and putting up beds. Miss Lyon seemed to
be everywhere, greeting each new-comer with a word that showed that she
already knew her as an individual, putting the shy and homesick girls to
work, taking a cup of tea to one who was overtired from her journey, and
directing the placing of furniture and the unpacking of supplies.
It might well have seemed to those first arrivals that they must
live through a period of preparation before a reluctant beginning of
regular work could be achieved, but in the midst of all the noise of
house-settling and the fever of uncompleted entrance examinations
the opening bell sounded on schedule time and classes began at once.
What seemed, at first glance, hopeless confusion became ordered and
stimulating activity through the generalship and inspiration of one
woman whose watchword was: "Do the best you can _now_. Do not lose one
golden opportunity for doing by merely getting ready to do something.
Always remember that what ought to be done can be done."
This spirit of assured power--the will to do--became the spirit of those
who worked with her, and was in time recognized as "the Mount Holyoke
spirit."
"I can see Miss Lyon now as vividly as if it were only yesterday that I
arrived, tired, hungry, and fearful, into the strange new world of the
seminary," said a white-haired grandmother, her spectacles growing misty
as she looked back across the sixty-odd years that separated her from
the experiences that she was recalling.
"Tell me what you remember most about her," urged her vivacious
granddaughter, a Mount Holyoke freshman, home for her Christmas
vacation. "Was she really such a wonder as they all say?"
"Many pictures come to me of Miss Lyon that are much more vivid than
those of people I saw yesterday," pondered the grandmother. "But it
was, I think, in morning exercises in seminary hall that she impressed
us most. Those who listened to her earnest words and looked into her
face alight with feeling could not but remember. Her large blue eyes
looked down upon us as if she held us all in her heart. What was the
secret of her power! My dear, she _was power_. All that she taught, she
was. And so while her words awakened, her example--the life-giving touch
of her life--gave power to do and to endure."
The young girl's bright face was turned thoughtfully towards the fire,
but the light that shone in her eyes was more than the reflected glow
from the cheerful logs. "It is good to think that a woman can live like
that in her work," she ventured softly.
The grandmother's face showed an answering glow. "There are some things
that cannot grow old and die," she said. "One of them is a spirit like
Mary Lyon's. When they told us that she had died, we knew that only her
bodily presence had been removed. She still lived in our midst--we heard
the ring of her voice in the words we read, in the words our hearts
told us she would say; we even heard the ring of her laugh! And to-day
you may be sure that the woman-pioneer who had the faith to plant the
first college for women in America, lives by that faith, not only in her
own Mount Holyoke, but in the larger lives of all the women who have
profited by her labors."
"THE PRINCESS" OF WELLESLEY: ALICE FREEMAN PALMER
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever.
TENNYSON.
"THE PRINCESS" OF WELLESLEY
This is the story of a princess of our own time and our own America--a
princess who, while little more than a girl herself, was chosen to
rule a kingdom of girls. It is a little like the story of Tennyson's
"Princess," with her woman's kingdom, and very much like the happy,
old-fashioned fairy-tale.
We have come to think it is only in fairy-tales that a golden destiny
finds out the true, golden heart, and, even though she masquerades as
a goose-girl, discovers the "kingly child" and brings her to a waiting
throne. We are tempted to believe that the chance of birth and the gifts
of wealth are the things that spell opportunity and success. But this
princess was born in a little farm-house, to a daily round of hard work
and plain living. That it was also a life of high thinking and rich
enjoyment of what each day brought, proved her indeed a "kingly child."
"Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors
ridiculous!" said the sage of Concord. So it was with little Alice
Freeman. As she picked wild strawberries on the hills, and climbed the
apple-tree to lie for a blissful minute in a nest of swaying blossoms
under the blue sky, she was, as she said, "happy all over." The
trappings of royalty can add nothing to one who knows how to be royally
happy in gingham.
But Alice was not always following the pasture path to her friendly
brook, or running across the fields with the calling wind, or dancing
with her shadow in the barn-yard, where even the prosy hens stopped
pecking corn for a minute to watch. She had work to do for Mother.
When she was only four, she could dry the dishes without dropping one;
and when she was six, she could be trusted to keep the three toddlers
younger than herself out of mischief.
"My little daughter is learning to be a real little mother," said Mrs.
Freeman, as she went about her work of churning and baking without an
anxious thought.
[Illustration: Alice Freeman Palmer]
It was Sister Alice who pointed out the robin's nest, and found funny
turtles and baby toads to play with. She took the little brood with her
to hunt eggs in the barn and to see the ducks sail around like a fleet
of boats on the pond. When Ella and Fred were wakened by a fearsome
noise at night, they crept up close to their little mother, who told
them a story about the funny screech-owl in its hollow-tree home.
"It is the ogre of mice and bats, but not of little boys and girls," she
said.
"It sounds funny now, Alice," they whispered. "It's all right when we
can touch you."
When Alice was seven a change came in the home. The father and mother
had some serious talks, and then it was decided that Father should go
away for a time, for two years, to study to be a doctor.
"It is hard to be chained to one kind of life when all the time you are
sure that you have powers and possibilities that have never had a chance
to come out in the open," she heard her father say one evening. "I have
always wanted to be a doctor; I can never be more than a half-hearted
farmer."
"You must go to Albany now, James," said the dauntless wife. "I can
manage the farm until you get through your course at the medical
college; and then, when you are doing work into which you can put your
whole heart, a better time must come for all of us."
"How can you possibly get along?" he asked in amazement. "How can I
leave you for two years to be a farmer, and father and mother, too?"
"There is a little bank here," she said, taking down a jar from a high
shelf in the cupboard and jingling its contents merrily. "I have been
saving bit by bit for just this sort of thing. And Alice will help me,"
she added, smiling at the child who had been standing near looking from
father to mother in wide-eyed wonder. "You will be the little mother
while I take father's place for a time, won't you, Alice?"
"It will be cruelly hard on you all," said the father, soberly. "I
cannot make it seem right."
"Think how much good you can do afterward," urged his wife. "The time
will go very quickly when we are all thinking of that. It is not hard
to endure for a little for the sake of 'a gude time coming'--a better
time not only for us, but for many besides. For I know you will be the
true sort of doctor, James."
Alice never quite knew how they did manage during those two years, but
she was quite sure that work done for the sake of a good to come is all
joy.
"I owe much of what I am to my milkmaid days," she said.
She was always sorry for children who do not grow up with the sights and
sounds of the country. "One is very near to all the simple, real things
of life on a farm," she used to say. "There is a dewy freshness about
the early out-of-door experiences, and a warm wholesomeness about tasks
that are a part of the common lot. A country child develops, too, a
responsibility--a power to do and to contrive--that the city child, who
sees everything come ready to hand from a near-by store, cannot possibly
gain. However much some of my friends may deplore my own early struggle
with poverty and hard work, I can heartily echo George Eliot's boast:
"But were another childhood-world my share,
I would be born a little sister there."
When Alice was ten years old, the family moved from the farm to the
village of Windsor, where Dr. Freeman entered upon his life as a doctor,
and where Alice's real education began. From the time she was four she
had, for varying periods, sat on a bench in the district school, but for
the most part she had taught herself. At Windsor Academy she had the
advantage of a school of more than average efficiency.
"Words do not tell what this old school and place meant to me as a
girl," she said years afterward. "Here we gathered abundant Greek,
Latin, French, and mathematics; here we were taught truthfulness, to be
upright and honorable; here we had our first loves, our first ambitions,
our first dreams, and some of our first disappointments. We owe a large
debt to Windsor Academy for the solid groundwork of education that it
laid."
More important than the excellent curriculum and wholesome associations,
however, was the influence of a friendship with one of the teachers, a
young Harvard graduate who was supporting himself while preparing for
the ministry. He recognized the rare nature and latent powers of the
girl of fourteen, and taught her the delights of friendship with Nature
and with books, and the joy of a mind trained to see and appreciate. He
gave her an understanding of herself, and aroused the ambition, which
grew into a fixed resolve, to go to college. But more than all, he
taught her the value of personal influence.
"It is people that count," she used to say. "The truth and beauty that
are locked up in books and in nature, to which only a few have the key,
begin really to live when they are made over into human character.
Disembodied ideas may mean little or nothing; it is when they are 'made
flesh' that they can speak to our hearts and minds."
As Alice drove about with her father when he went to see his patients
and saw how this true "doctor of the old school" was a physician to the
mind as well as the body of those who turned to him for help, she came
to a further realization of the truth: It is people that count.
"It must be very depressing to have to associate with bodies and their
ills all the time," she ventured one day when her father seemed more
than usually preoccupied. She never forgot the light that shone in his
eyes as he turned and looked at her.
"We can't begin to minister to the body until we understand that spirit
is all," he said. "What we are pleased to call _body_ is but one
expression--and a most marvelous expression--of the hidden life
"that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things."
It seemed to Alice that this might be a favorable time to broach the
subject of college. He looked at her in utter amazement; few girls
thought of wanting more than a secondary education in those days, and
there were still fewer opportunities for them.
"Why, daughter," he exclaimed, "a little more Latin and mathematics
won't make you a better home-maker! Why should you set your heart on
this thing?"
"I must go, Father," she answered steadily. "It is not a sudden notion;
I have realized for a long time that I cannot live my life--the life
that I feel I have it within me to live--without this training. I want
to be a teacher--the best kind of a teacher--just as you wanted to be a
doctor."
"But, my dear child," he protested, much troubled, "it will be as much
as we can manage to see one of you through college, and that one should
be Fred, who will have a family to look out for one of these days."
"If you let me have this chance, Father," said Alice, earnestly, "I'll
promise that you will never regret it. I'll help to give Fred his
chance, and see that the girls have the thing they want as well."
In the end Alice had her way. It seemed as if the strength of her
single-hearted longing had power to compel a reluctant fate. In June,
1872, when but a little over seventeen, she went to Ann Arbor to take
the entrance examinations for the University of Michigan, a careful
study of catalogues having convinced her that the standard of work was
higher there than in any college then open to women.
A disappointment met her at the outset. Her training at Windsor,
good as it was, did not prepare her for the university requirements.
"Conditions" loomed mountain high, and the examiners recommended that
she spend another year in preparation. Her intelligence and character
had won the interest of President Angell, however, and he asked that she
be granted a six-weeks' trial. His confidence in her was justified; for
she not only proved her ability to keep up with her class, but steadily
persevered in her double task until all conditions were removed.
The college years were "a glory instead of a grind," in spite of the
ever-pressing necessity for strict economy in the use of time and
money. Her sense of values--"the ability to see large things large
and small things small," which has been called the best measure of
education,--showed a wonderful harmony of powers. While the mind was
being stored with knowledge and the intellect trained to clear, orderly
thinking, there was never a "too-muchness" in this direction that
meant a "not-enoughness" in the realm of human relationships. Always
she realized that it is people that count, and her supreme test of
education as of life was its "consecrated serviceableness." President
Angell in writing of her said:
One of her most striking characteristics in college was her
warm and demonstrative sympathy with her circle of friends.
Her soul seemed bubbling over with joy, which she wished to
share with the other girls. While she was therefore in the most
friendly relations with all those girls then in college, she
was the radiant center of a considerable group whose tastes
were congenial with her own. Without assuming or striving for
leadership, she could not but be to a certain degree a leader
among these, some of whom have attained positions only less
conspicuous for usefulness than her own. Wherever she went, her
genial, outgoing spirit seemed to carry with her an atmosphere
of cheerfulness and joy.
In the middle of her junior year, news came from her father of a more
than usual financial stress, owing to a flood along the Susquehanna,
which had swept away his hope of present gain from a promising stretch
of woodland. It seemed clear to Alice that the time had come when she
must make her way alone. Through the recommendation of President Angell
she secured a position as teacher of Latin and Greek in the High School
at Ottawa, Illinois, where she taught for five months, receiving enough
money to carry her through the remainder of her college course. The
omitted junior work was made up partly during the summer vacation and
partly in connection with the studies of the senior year. An extract
from a letter home will tell how the busy days went:
This is the first day of vacation. I have been so busy this
year that it seems good to get a change, even though I do keep
right on here at work. For some time I have been giving a young
man lessons in Greek every Saturday. I have had two junior
speeches already, and there are still more. Several girls from
Flint tried to have me go home with them for the vacation, but I
made up my mind to stay and do what I could for myself and the
other people here. A young Mr. M. is going to recite to me every
day in Virgil; so with teaching and all the rest I sha'n't have
time to be homesick, though it will seem rather lonely when the
other girls are gone and I don't hear the college bell for two
weeks.
Miss Freeman's early teaching showed the vitalizing spirit that marked
all of her relations with people.
"She had a way of making you feel 'all dipped in sunshine,'" one of her
girls said.
"Everything she taught seemed a part of herself," another explained. "It
wasn't just something in a book that she had to teach and you had to
learn. She made every page of our history seem a part of present life
and interests. We saw and felt the things we talked about."
The fame of this young teacher's influence traveled all the way from
Michigan, where she was principal of the Saginaw High School, to
Massachusetts. Mr. Henry Durant, the founder of Wellesley, asked her
to come to the new college as teacher of mathematics. She declined the
call, however, and, a year later, a second and more urgent invitation.
Her family had removed to Saginaw, where Dr. Freeman was slowly building
up a practice, and it would mean leaving a home that needed her. The
one brother was now in the university; Ella was soon to be married; and
Stella, the youngest, who was most like Alice in temperament and tastes,
was looking forward hopefully to college.
But at the time when Dr. Freeman was becoming established and the
financial outlook began to brighten, the darkest days that the family
had ever known were upon them. Stella, the chief joy and hope of them
all, fell seriously ill. The "little mother" loved this "starlike girl"
as her own child, and looked up to her as one who would reach heights
her feet could never climb. When she died it seemed to Alice that she
had lost the one chance for a perfectly understanding and inspiring
comradeship that life offered. At this time a third call came to
Wellesley,--as head of the department of history,--and hoping that a new
place with new problems would give her a fresh hold on joy, she accepted.
Into her college work the young woman of twenty-four put all the power
and richness of her radiant personality. She found peace and happiness
in untiring effort, and her girls found in her the most inspiring
teacher they had ever known. She went to the heart of the history she
taught, and she went to the hearts of her pupils.
"She seemed to care for each of us--to find each as interesting and
worth while as if there were no other person in the world," one of her
students said.
Mr. Durant had longed to find just such a person to build on the
foundation he had laid. It was in her first year that he pointed her out
to one of the trustees.
"Do you see that little dark-eyed girl? She will be the next president
of Wellesley," he said.
"Surely she is much too young and inexperienced for such a
responsibility," protested the other, looking at him in amazement.
"As for the first, it is a fault we easily outgrow," said Mr. Durant,
dryly, "and as for her inexperience--well, I invite you to visit one of
her classes."
The next year, on the death of Mr. Durant, she was made acting president
of the college, and the year following she inherited the title and
honors, as well as the responsibilities and opportunities, of the
office. The Princess had come into her kingdom.
The election caused a great stir among the students, particularly the
irrepressible seniors. It was wonderful and most inspiring that their
splendid Miss Freeman, who was the youngest member of the faculty,
should have won this honor. "Why, she was only a girl like themselves!
The time of strict observances and tiresome regulations of every sort
was at an end. Miss Freeman seemed to sense the prevailing mood, and,
without waiting for a formal assembly, asked the seniors to meet her
in her rooms. In they poured, overflowing chairs, tables, and ranging
themselves about on the floor in animated, expectant groups. The new
head of the college looked at them quietly for a minute before she began
to speak.
"I have sent for you seniors," she said at last seriously, "to ask your
advice. You may have heard that I have been called to the position
of acting president of your college. I am, of course, too young; and
the duties are, as you know, too heavy for the strongest to carry
alone. If I must manage alone, there is only one course--to decline.
It has, however, occurred to me that my seniors might be willing to
help by looking after the order of the college and leaving me free for
administration. Shall I accept? Shall we work things out together?"