Cornell,
Vassar and Wellesley, belonged to a golden age as yet undreamed of.

For two years she thought over it, and prayed over it, and when all
seemed hopeless, she would walk the floor, and say over and over
again, "Commit thy way unto the Lord. He will keep thee. Women _must_
be educated; they _must_ be." Finally a meeting was called in Boston
at the same time as one of the religious anniversaries. She wrote to
a friend, "Very few were present. The meeting was adjourned; and the
adjourned meeting utterly failed. There were not enough present to
organize, and there the business, in my view, has come to an end."

Still she carried the burden on her heart. She writes, in 1834,
"During the past year my heart has so yearned over the adult female
youth in the common walks of life, that it has sometimes seemed as
though a fire were shut up in my bones." She conceived the idea of
having the young women do the work of the house, partly to lessen
expenses, partly to teach them useful things, and also because she
says, "Might not this single feature do away much of the prejudice
against female education among common people?"

At last the purpose in her heart became so strong that she resigned
her position as a teacher, and went from house to house in Ipswich
collecting funds. She wrote to her mother, "I hope and trust that this
is of the Lord, and that He will prosper it. In this movement I have
thought much more constantly, and have felt much more deeply, about
doing that which shall be for the honor of Christ, and for the good
of souls, than I ever did in any step in my life." She determined
to raise her first thousand dollars from women. She talked in her
good-natured way with the father or the mother. She asked if they
wanted a new shawl or card-table or carpet, if they would not find a
way to procure it. Usually they gave five or ten dollars; some, only
a half-dollar. So interested did two ladies become that they gave one
hundred dollars apiece, and later, when their house was burned, and
the man who had their money in charge lost it, they worked with their
own hands and earned the two hundred, that their portion might not
fail in the great work.

In less than two months she had raised the thousand; but she
wrote Miss Grant, "I do not recollect being so fatigued, even to
prostration, as I have been for a few weeks past." She often quoted a
remark of Dr. Lyman Beecher's, "The wear and tear of what I cannot do
is a gre