rch and hard study, he decided to commence with the land as the
necessary basis of all progress; with the farm as the rational
progressive unit; with improved farm methods on co-operative lines, as
the lever by which to restore the control of the land to the farmers,
and to lift them and their sons and daughters from the class of ignorant
dependents, to a class of cultured independents, which should be well
worthy of serving as a model in the race of progress, for all the other
classes. In his efforts to modify, correct, and reform social and
business methods, he proposed to use the strong and kindly arms of
Co-operation in fighting the evils of Competition, or its
representative, the pitiless competitive system. He reasoned that all
forms of government are but the result of co-operative effort. Both
experience and observation had taught him that the measure of excellence
of any government is the measure of its perfection in co-operation.
Therefore it logically follows, that the more perfect the co-operation
achieved by the administration of any form of government, the greater
the degree of justice and equality attained in the distribution of
benefits to all of the governed."

CHAPTER X.

THE REAPING OF THE DEATH ANGEL.

"Towards the close of the summer of 1895, my father placed me in the
preparatory department of Vassar College, where I made rapid progress. I
began to appreciate the superior wisdom of the methods of teaching which
my parents had so systematically carried out for my improvement. Thanks
to their efforts, I held the key to all of the sciences, history and
literature, prose and poetry! All of their principal words or terms with
their definitions, were familiar friends to me; while all new facts
regarding their various subdivisions, auxiliaries, etc., and the
relations existing between them as such, were matters of absorbing
interest to me; so much so, that I soon became master of the subject I
was studying, very often proving a puzzling surprise to my teachers. At
the age of twelve I entered the regular course and graduated from
college just as I was entering my eighteenth year, being by four years
the youngest member of a graduating class of one hundred girls.

"Some months after my fourteenth birthday, my darling mother was taken
from me in the mortal form, very suddenly and most unexpectedly. My
father was away from home on a long trip to Alaska. I was at Vassar. My
mother was with a congeni