ling, we made no distinction of sex. True, the boys
would carry the school books and pull the sleighs up hill for their
favorite girls, but equality was the general basis of our school
relations. I dare say the boys did not make their snowballs quite so
hard when pelting the girls, nor wash their faces with the same
vehemence as they did each other's, but there was no public evidence of
partiality. However, if any boy was too rough or took advantage of a
girl smaller than himself, he was promptly thrashed by his fellows.
There was an unwritten law and public sentiment in that little Academy
world that enabled us to study and play together with the greatest
freedom and harmony.

From the academy the boys of my class went to Union College at
Schenectady. When those with whom I had studied and contended for prizes
for five years came to bid me good-by, and I learned of the barrier that
prevented me from following in their footsteps--"no girls admitted
here"--my vexation and mortification knew no bounds. I remember, now,
how proud and handsome the boys looked in their new clothes, as they
jumped into the old stage coach and drove off, and how lonely I felt
when they were gone and I had nothing to do, for the plans for my future
were yet undetermined. Again I felt more keenly than ever the
humiliation of the distinctions made on the ground of sex.

My time was now occupied with riding on horseback, studying the game of
chess, and continually squabbling with the law students over the rights
of women. Something was always coming up in the experiences of everyday
life, or in the books we were reading, to give us fresh topics for
argument. They would read passages from the British classics quite as
aggravating as the laws. They delighted in extracts from Shakespeare,
especially from "The Taming of the Shrew," an admirable satire in itself
on the old common law of England. I hated Petruchio as if he were a real
man. Young Bayard would recite with unction the famous reply of Milton's
ideal woman to Adam: "God thy law, thou mine." The Bible, too, was
brought into requisition. In fact it seemed to me that every book taught
the "divinely ordained" headship of man; but my mind never yielded to
this popular heresy.

CHAPTER III.

GIRLHOOD.

Mrs. Willard's Seminary at Troy was the fashionable school in my
girlhood, and in the winter of 1830, with upward of a hundred other
girls, I found myself an active participant in all