rt-sore at the poverty and
disgrace that lay before her so early in her married life, was not a
woman to fold her hands and think sadly of what

"'--might have been.'

She wiped away her tears, and her busy fingers were soon preparing warm
hoods and dresses to protect her little ones from the bitter cold
during the journey that lay before us, for in the course of two or
three months father had by hard toil earned money sufficient to send
for us. I remember very well that journey over the mountains covered
with snow into the State of Vermont, and our establishment in what was
called the 'small house by the ledge' in the little neighborhood of
houses clustering on and about the old Minot estate.

"You children, accustomed as you have been from your infancy to the
attractive text-books of the present day, would quite scorn the system
of instruction at the school I attended in Westhaven. I went there
three winters, but although I soon rose to the first class in reading
and spelling, in which branches I was unusually precocious, my
education was confined entirely to those two departments of learning.
Few text-books were then used in the school, for the parents of the
children were generally too poor to pay for many, and the musty old
Grammar and Arithmetic were kept in reserve for the older scholars. On
account of my youth the teacher did not advance me, and I went again
and again through the old Spelling-book, and learnt by heart what was
called the 'fore part of the book'--some dry rules of orthography,
which never conveyed the slightest idea to my mind, although I repeated
them, parrot-like, without missing a word, and which the teacher never
thought of explaining to me. From the spelling-book I was in time
promoted to the New Testament (not as easy reading as might have been
selected, by the way). This was followed by the American Preceptor,
and subsequently by Murray's 'English Reader,' a work reserved for the
most advanced scholars.

"My brothers did not go to school during the summer months, for their
services were then required to assist father in his work; and I, too,
had to leave school every day at eleven o'clock to carry their dinner
to them at the place, a mile and a half distant, where they were
clearing a portion of the Minot estate.

"When brother Horace was thirteen years old he was taken out of school,
as the teacher could instruct him no longer. I was kept at home also,
and brother taught me,