emy now
became surety for her for forty dollars' worth of clothing, and the
earnest young woman started for Derry. The school there numbered
ninety pupils, and Mary Lyon was happy. She wrote her mother, "I do
not number it among the least of my blessings that I am permitted to
_do something_. Surely I ought to be thankful for an active life."

But the Derry school was held only in the summers, so Miss Lyon
came back to teach at Ashfield and Buckland, her birthplace, for the
winters. The first season she had twenty-five scholars; the last, one
hundred. The families in the neighborhood took the students into their
homes to board, charging them one dollar or one dollar and twenty-five
cents per week, while the tuition was twenty-five cents a week. No
one would grow very rich on such an income. So popular was Miss Lyon's
teaching that a suitable building was erected for her school, and the
Ministerial Association passed a resolution of praise, urging her to
remain permanently in the western part of Massachusetts.

However, Miss Grant had removed to Ipswich, and had urged Miss Lyon
to join her, which she did. For six years they taught a large and most
successful school. Miss Lyon was singularly happy in her intercourse
with the young ladies. She won them to her views, while they scarcely
knew that they were being controlled. She would say to them: "Now,
young ladies, you are here at great expense. Your board and tuition
cost a great deal, and your time ought to be worth more than both;
but, in order to get an equivalent for the money and time you are
spending, you must be systematic, and that is impossible, unless you
have a regular hour for rising.... Persons who run round all day after
the half-hour they lost in the morning never accomplish much. You
may know them by a rip in the glove, a string pinned to the bonnet, a
shawl left on the balustrade, which they had no time to hang up, they
were in such a hurry to catch their lost thirty minutes. You will see
them opening their books and trying to study at the time of general
exercises in school; but it is a fruitless race; they never will
overtake their lost half-hour. Good men, from Abraham to Washington,
have been early risers." Again, she would say, "Mind, wherever it is
found, will secure respect.... Educate the women, and the men will be
educated. Let the ladies understand the great doctrine of seeking
the greatest good, of loving their neighbors as themselves; let the