_Takes highest prizes at school--Helpful friendship with one of
her men teachers--Begins to understand relation of public opinion to
personal conduct--School life ends. (Eleven to fourteen years of age:
1840-1843.)_
To explain better how my mind was prepared for such teaching, I must
go back to my position in school. In both schools that I attended I
was praised for my punctuality, industry and quick perception. Beloved
I was in neither. On the contrary, I was made the target for all the
impudent jokes of my fellow pupils, ample material for which was
furnished in the carelessness with which my hair and dress were usually
arranged, these being left to the charge of a servant who troubled
herself very little about how I looked, provided I was whole and clean.
The truth was, I often presented a ridiculous appearance; and once I
could not help laughing heartily at myself on seeing my own face by
accident in a glass, with one braid of hair commencing over the right
eye and the other over the left ear. I quietly hung a map over the
glass to hide the ludicrous picture and continued my studies, and most
likely appeared in the same style the next day.
My face, besides, was neither handsome nor even prepossessing, a large
nose overshadowing the undeveloped features; and I was ridiculed for
my ugliness both in school and at home, where an aunt of mine who
disliked me exceedingly always said in describing plain people, “Almost
as ugly as Marie.”
Another cause arose to render my position at school still more
intolerable. In consequence of the loss of his position in the army, my
father could no longer afford to pay my school bills, and was about to
remove me from school, when the principal offered to retain me without
pay. She disliked me and did not hesitate to show it, nor to tell me
whenever I offended her that she would never keep so ugly and naughty a
child _without being paid for it_, were it not for the sake of so
noble a father.
These conditions and harsh judgments made me a philosopher. I heard
myself called obstinate and willful, only because I believed myself
in the right and persisted in it. I felt that I was not maliciously
disposed towards any one but wished well to all, and I offered my
services not only willingly, but cheerfully wherever they could be of
the least use, and saw them accepted, and even demanded, by those who
could not dispense with them, though they shunned and ridiculed me the
same as before. I felt that they sought me only when they needed me;
this made me shrink still more from their companionship, and, when my
sister did not walk home from school with me, I invariably went alone.
The idea that I might not wish to attach myself to playmates of this
sort never occurred to any one, but I was constantly reproached with
having no friends among my schoolfellows, and was told that no one
could love so disagreeable and repelling a child. This was a severe
blow to my affectionate nature, but I bore it calmly, consoling myself
with the thought that they were wrong, that they did not understand me,
and that the time would come when they would learn that a great, warm
heart was concealed beneath the so-called repulsive exterior.
But, however soothing all this was for the time, a feeling of
bitterness grew up within me. I began to be provoked at my ugliness,
which I believed to be excessive. I speculated why parents so kind
and good as mine should be deprived of their means of support merely
because my father would not consent to endure wrong and imposition.
I was indignant at being told that it was only for my father’s sake
that I was retained in a school where I tried to do my best and where
I always won the highest prizes; and I could not see why, at home,
I should be forced to do housework when I wanted to read, while my
brother who wished to work was compelled to study. When I complained of
this last grievance, I was told that I was a girl and never could learn
much, but was only fit to become a housekeeper.
All these things threw me upon my own resources and taught me to
make the most of every opportunity, custom and habit to the contrary
notwithstanding.
It was at this juncture that I found, on my return to school, the
psychologic instructor of whom I have spoken, in a newly engaged
teacher of history, geography and arithmetic, all of which were my
favorite studies.
With this man I formed a most peculiar friendship, he being twenty
years older than myself, and in every respect highly educated; I,
a child of twelve, neglected in everything except my common-school
education.
He began by calling my attention to the carelessness of my dress and
the rudeness of my manners, and was the first one who ever spoke kindly
to me on the subject.
I told him all my thoughts; that I did not mean to be disagreeable,
but that every one thought that I could not be otherwise; that I was
convinced I was good enough at heart; and that I had at last resigned
myself to my position as something that could not be helped.
My new friend lectured me on the necessity of attracting others by an
agreeable exterior and courteous manners, and proved to me that I had
unconsciously repelled them by my carelessness, even when trying the
most to please. His words made a deep impression on me. I thanked him
for every reproach, and strove to do my best to gain his approbation.
Henceforth, my hair was always carefully combed, my dress nicely
arranged, and my collar in its place; and as I always won the first
prizes in the school, two of the other teachers soon grew friendly
towards me and began to manifest their preference quite strongly.
In a few months, I became a different being. The bitterness that had
been growing up within me gradually disappeared, and I began to have
confidence in myself and to try to win the companionship of the other
children.
But a sudden change took place in my schoolmates, who grew envious of
the preference shown me by the teachers. Since they could no longer
ridicule me for the carelessness of my dress, they now began to
reproach me for my vanity and to call me a coquette who only thought of
pleasing through appearances.
This blow was altogether too hard for me to bear. I knew that they
were wrong, for with all the care I bestowed on my dress, it was not
half so fine as theirs, as I had but two calico dresses which I wore
alternately, a week at a time, through the summer. I was again repelled
from them; and at noon, when the rest of the scholars went home, I
remained with my teacher-friend in the schoolroom, assisting him in
correcting the exercises of the pupils.
I took the opportunity to tell him of the curious envy that had taken
possession of the girls, upon which he began to explain to me human
nature and its fallacies, drawing inferences therefrom for personal
application. He found a ready listener in me. My inclination to
abstract thought, combined with the unpleasant experience I had had
in life, made me an attentive pupil and fitted me to comprehend his
reasoning in the broadest sense.
For fifteen months, I thus spent the noon hour with him in the
schoolroom, receiving lessons in logic and reasoning upon concrete and
abstract matters that have since proved of far more psychologic value
to me than ten years of reading on the same subjects.
A strong attachment grew up between us: he became a necessity to me,
and I revered him like an oracle. But his health failed, and he left
the school at the end of these fifteen months in a consumption.
Shortly after, he sent to the school for me one morning to ask me to
visit him on his deathbed. I was not permitted to leave the class until
noon; when, just as I was preparing to go, a messenger came to inform
the principal that he had died at eleven.
This blow fell so heavily upon me that I wished to leave the school at
once. I was forced to stay three weeks longer, until the end of the
quarter, when I left the schoolroom on the first of April, 1843, at the
age of thirteen years and seven months, and never entered it again.