e
the college doors came even distantly into sight.

The largest salary I could earn by teaching in our Northern woods was
one hundred and fifty-six dollars a year, for two terms of thirteen
weeks each; and from this, of course, I had to deduct the cost of my
board and clothing--the sole expenditure I allowed myself. The dollars
for an education accumulated very, very slowly, until at last, in
desperation, weary of seeing the years of my youth rush past, bearing my
hopes with them, I took a sudden and radical step. I gave up teaching,
left our cabin in the woods, and went to Big Rapids to live with my
sister Mary, who had married a successful man and who generously offered
me a home. There, I had decided, I would learn a trade of some kind, of
any kind; it did not greatly matter what it was. The sole essential was
that it should be a money-making trade, offering wages which would make
it possible to add more rapidly to my savings. In those days, almost
fifty years ago, and in a small pioneer town, the fields open to women
were few and unfruitful. The needle at once presented itself, but at
first I turned with loathing from it. I would have preferred the digging
of ditches or the shoveling of coal; but the needle alone persistently
pointed out my way, and I was finally forced to take it.

Fate, however, as if weary at last of seeing me between her paws,
suddenly let me escape. Before I had been working a month at my
uncongenial trade Big Rapids was favored by a visit from a Universalist
woman minister, the Reverend Marianna Thompson, who came there to
preach. Her sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, and I was, I think,
almost the earliest arrival of the great congregation which filled the
church. It was a wonderful moment when I saw my first woman minister
enter her pulpit; and as I listened to her sermon, thrilled to the soul,
all my early aspirations to become a minister myself stirred in me with
cumulative force. After the services I hung for a time on the fringe of
the group that surrounded her, and at last, when she was alone and about
to leave, I found courage to introduce myself and pour forth the tale of
my ambition. Her advice was as prompt as if she had studied my problem
for years.

"My child," she said, "give up your foolish idea of learning a trade,
and go to school. You can't do anything until you have an education. Get
it, and get it NOW."

Her suggestion was much to my liking, and I paid her the co