second
prediction. I was young enough to measure success by material results,
so I added, recklessly:

"And before I die I shall be worth ten thousand dollars!"

The amount staggered me even as it dropped from my lips. It was the
largest fortune my imagination could conceive, and in my heart I
believed that no woman ever had possessed or would possess so much. So
far as I knew, too, no woman had gone to college. But now that I had put
my secret hopes into words, I was desperately determined to make those
hopes come true. After I became a wage-earner I lost my desire to make
a fortune, but the college dream grew with the years; and though my
college career seemed as remote as the most distant star, I hitched my
little wagon to that star and never afterward wholly lost sight of its
friendly gleam.

When I was fifteen years old I was offered a situation as
school-teacher. By this time the community was growing around us with
the rapidity characteristic of these Western settlements, and we
had nearer neighbors whose children needed instruction. I passed
an examination before a schoolboard consisting of three nervous and
self-conscious men whose certificate I still hold, and I at once began
my professional career on the modest salary of two dollars a week and my
board. The school was four miles from my home, so I "boarded round" with
the families of my pupils, staying two weeks in each place, and
often walking from three to six miles a day to and from my little log
school-house in every kind of weather. During the first year I had about
fourteen pupils, of varying ages, sizes, and temperaments, and there was
hardly a book in the school-room except those I owned. One little girl,
I remember, read from an almanac, while a second used a hymn-book.

In winter the school-house was heated by a woodstove, to which the
teacher had to give close personal attention. I could not depend on
my pupils to make the fires or carry in the fuel; and it was often
necessary to fetch the wood myself, sometimes for long distances through
the forest. Again and again, after miles of walking through winter
storms, I reached the school-house with my clothing wet through, and
in these soaked garments I taught during the day. In "boarding round"
I often found myself in one-room cabins, with bunks at the end and the
sole partition a sheet or a blanket, behind which I slept with one or
two of the children. It was the custom on these occasions for the