CHAPTER II. KANKAKEE ACADEMY. (1860). After a few months at home I engaged to go to Kankakee, an Illinois county-seat about sixty miles from Chicago, as assistant teacher in an academy started by Prof. Charles B. Woodruff (the former principal of the "Blind Institute" at Janesville, Wis., and my father's friend). Here I remained one term, but owing to the urgent wishes of my parents did not return after the Christmas holidays. My cousin, Miss Sarah F. Gilman, of Churchville, N. Y., took my place and made a decided success of the venture, in more ways than one, as she here made the acquaintance of Harry Dusinbury, whom she married within the year. The story of this second effort as a pedagogue is best given in journal language: September 26, 1860.-Very busy getting ready to go. Letter from Professor Woodruff in answer to my telegraphic dispatch, giving me further particulars and saying that he will secure my boarding-place and meet me at the night train. As nearly as I can find out, I am to teach philosophy, history, drawing, grammar, and all the reading classes, how many soever there may be. I received from Clara Thatcher one of her warm-hearted, impetuous epistles. What a heroine that girl has proved herself to be! Right on through summer's heat she has carried, all alone, the Sundayschool we founded in the little red school-house so forlorn. She says Oliver is to have their school, and he is glad and so are we, for the wages are excellent. What an unromantic consideration! But he will not have half so hard a time as I had, for he will be in the nice, large, brick building instead of my wretched little wooden house, Yet when think of spending all the winter there, I can but murmur, "Poor fellow," to myself, for Evanston is a town that makes almost any other seem half barbarous. The fact that the University charter forever forbids saloons tells a whole dictionary full about our moral status. And so I am to go from home before our dear relatives come from the East, and I have not seen them in many years, not since I was a young girl. Tell Your Age. 147 They are all very dear to me and I was especially anxious to see my Aunt Elizabeth who is loved with more than the love of near relationship by me, and for whom I am named. In the lonely days that will follow my going I shall think of those whom I have left behind and the other loved ones who are coming, as they enjoy themselves together in our home, while I am lonesome, tired and heart-sick. In the evening Mary and I sang for hours to father, who is not particular about the quality and cultivation of our voices, it being sufficient for him that, as in the olden days, his daughters sing together "Bonnie Doon," Come this way, my father,' Star-spangled Banner," and the rest; when we closed with Longfellow's "Rainy Day," mother sat with her hand shading her eyes and a sad expression on the dearest face in all the world to me. I knew she was thinking about my birthday so near at hand, about my going off again, about her birds that are making longer flights at every trial and need no more to have her bear them up upon her wings. I knew that she was being sorry for me as only one can be, that one my mother. Oliver and Beth Vincent were upstairs making the library catalogue for the Sunday-school. Aunt Sarah sat with us, listening quietly to everything. Father threw in a remark now and then, sometimes lively, sometimes sad, but always quaint and curious. And thus endeth the last home-picture I shall draw for many a day. I have been trying to think why I go away to this new work so soon. I can not tell. I only know that I have some dim sense that it is right and best. Certainly it is not the happiest. But I have come to believe that it is well for us, well for our characters, those beautiful fabrics we are weaving every day, to do those things that do not make us happy, but only make us strong. I have never felt reluctant to tell my age. It early came to me that nothing was less dignified than to make a secret of one's personal chronology. Marketable values in many instances depend on freshness, and if a girl has no broader view of her relations to the world than the relation she may hold to some man who will prize her more if she is younger, then she does well to hide her age. But if she is a dignified human being, who has started out, "heart within and God o'erhead," upon an endless voyage wherein she sails by the stars rather than by the clock, she will never hesitate either to know or to announce just where she is on that long voyage; how many days out from childhoodland. The first mention I find in my journal of this way of looking at the subject is the following: September 27, 1860.-I have often wondered why it is that people generally, and ladies especially, are so unwilling to have their ages known. We are immortal, and, for aught we know, eternal. We never regard Gabriel as old, though the prophet Daniel first introduced him to us. Our baby brothers and sisters who have died are babies still to us, lambs in the flock that the gentle Shepherd leads. If we do not think of age when we think about eternity, why should we in time, which is only eternity cut off at both ends? And yet we do regard it very much. This was accounted for to me recently, in the case of ladies, on the ground that their attractions diminish as their years increase, after a certain point, and that consequently the number of years is made a mystery. Ah, I have it! If "one" is beautiful, there is some reason in one's keeping one's age a secret, but if one is not, one has little or nothing to lose by the flight of years in this respect, while one is constantly adding to one's attractions in other ways, that is, in knowledge of the world, intelligence, culture, conversational ability, etc.; therefore, if one is not beautiful, it is foolish to make a secret of one's age. Corollary: My course is plain, because I myself am plain! It shall always be in order for any one to propound to me the usually much-dreaded question, "How old are you-if I may be so bold?" Why should men universally tell their ages? Because a man is an individual and not dependent upon others for his support. I early resolved that I would not be dependent, either, and later that I would try to help all other women to the same vantage-ground of self-help and self-respect. I determined, also, that I would set them a good example by always freely speaking of my age, which I have not shunned to declare, my mother facetiously contending that I keep it, and hers, too, for that matter, just one year ahead of the current calendar. I have not done much in these years, yet God knows I will try to make up if He will spare me, and somehow I believe He will. September 29.-Going away to Kankakee to-morrow to begin my work. Packed my trunk so as to have it out of the way. Oliver kindly lent me Nolte's "Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres," D'Aubigné's "History of the Reformation,' ," Scott's "Bride of Lammermoor," and the first volume of Bohn's edition of "Plato," to take with me. Kankakee, Ill., October 2, 1860.-Another book to begin and a new, strange life to tell of. What a world this is, to be sure, and how we struggle about in it, straying off from those whom we love and those who love us, to strange, unfriendly regions, resolutely turning away from books and quiet to take in their stead pain, weariness and toil; yet in it all there is the comforting reflection that we are right, that in our nature there still exists, notwithstanding all our sins and ignorance, a spark of Godhood, a shimmering ray from the stars that shine serenely in the zenith of the angels, a breath of divinity which stirs within every human soul. Father left me yesterday evening, and I prayed quite trustfully and went to sleep with a broad grin on my face, put on through sheer strength of will. Well, this morning, I went to the Kankakee Academy, where I am second teacher, and on the whole have had a tolerable day. I am going to try not to cry once while I am here, for I am twenty-one, I would have you understand. It is not so very bad, and I won't care. I wish I were a better woman. I shall always call myself that now. A Sense of Right and Justice. 149 I now feel competent to work, and work I will. I can accomplish a great deal between now and the holidays, so good-by to home and friends until then. You can well do without me, and I have proved that I can live without you, as well. Each of us is sent into the world by himself, to fight and conquer for himself, and when all is said an infinite remoteness from every being, save God, encompasses each one of us from the cradle to the grave. A little poem in Harper's for this month struck me unusually. I will copy from it as a text to a short sermon. It closes thus: "In this poor life we may not cross I believe the doctrine of this poem divested of its imagery. I believe no woman ever knows the depth and richness of her nature until she has loved a man, some man good and noble, better than her own life. I believe that unless she does this, much of pain and want must be endured by her, and with all that I have admitted, my journal bears me witness that I say little or nothing upon the subject. Once only I will give the reason here, and then I shall not revert to it again. In truth, it is not one of which I often think. I have never been in love, I have never shed a tear or dreamed a dream, or sighed, or had a sleepless hour for love. I never treasured any man in my heart until he became sacred to me, until his words were as oracles, his smiles as sunshine, his voice like music. I never hung upon any man's words or took any man's name into my prayer because I loved him, but I might have done all this had I so willed it. I was too cautious, loved my own peace too well, valued myself too highly, remembered too frequently that I was made for something far more worthy than to spend a disconsolate life, wasting my heart, the richest gift I could bestow, upon a man who did not care for it, and who never thought of me save in friendly, common fashion. I was too proud for that, I had too keen a sense of right and justice; too strong a desire to work out from the seclusion in which I live, and try to become wiser and better and more helpful to the world each day. I have known several men for whom I might have cared. I have seen enough nobility in their natures, enough culture of intellect, enough purity of mind and heart and life, to inspire the choice emotion. I have looked after them as they passed me on the street, as I saw them in church or met them in society, and have tranquilly thought to myself, "You might care for him, but remember you must not do so," and I have gone on my way calmly and in great peace. It is not that I am hard-hearted or insensible, but because I know perfectly well these men think nothing about me except as an acquaintance, and therefore I am determined to be even with them and have shut the door upon them and said, "Get hence," and that is the end of it. I am sure it is right for me to do so. I have not known as yet what it is to lean on any being except God. In all my friendships I am the one relied on, the one who fights the battles, or would if there were any 150 Socrates on Immortality. to fight. Yet every night I say to God in prayer, "Sometime, if it pleases Thee, give me the love of a manly heart, of one that I can trust and care for next to Thee. But if this can not be, make it up to me in some other way. Thou knowest what is right. And in it all may I be very quiet and restful, remembering that the fashion of this world perisheth and ere very long T shall be gone beyond the light of sun or stars, beyond the need of this blessing for which I have asked." I am quiet. The present situation does not trouble, nor turn the song of my life into the minor key, and for this I thank God fervently. Burke says that the traits most admired in women are dependence, softness, trust, timidity, and I am quite deficient in them all. October 11.-As an indication of the literary standard of the family in which I am to stay for the next ten weeks, I might mention that the Mercury, the Ledger and Godey's Ladies' Book adorn (?) the parlor table, and I find twenty or thirty copies of Littell's Living Age stuffed away in a closet under an old chair. October 13.-"To know, to esteem, to love and then to part, Make up life's tale to many a feeling heart." In the afternoon I went to Sunday-school; they have given me a class of boys to teach; then went to class-meeting. My class-leader I like very much. He looks to me like a Christian, he is rather old, has silvery hair, dark eyes, sweet, calm mouth, finely-cut features. I told them that Christ, their friend, was also mine. After all this I am going home peaceful and content, if not happy. What a thing it is to be a Christian minister! How glad and proud I am that Oliver is one! My landlady gave me those Living Ages to which I referred a few pages back. Took Plato to school and finished “Phædo." It requires close thought to follow the arguments, particularly the last one. The reasoning is like Butler's in the "Analogy" as to one or two of the points, and I think reason could not more clearly prove the immortality of the soul. I do not like to affect such contempt for the body as Socrates seems to have felt. It looks to me to have a certain dignity of its own besides that reflected upon it by its kindly occupant, and it is so fearfully and wonderfully made. The following words partake of a universal spirit in man that looks and longs for a divine revelation: "For we ought with respect to these things" (concerning the immortality of the soul), "either to learn from others how they stand, or to discover them for one's self, or if both these are impossible, then taking the best of hunan reasonings and that which is the most difficult to be confuted, and embarking on this, as one who risks himself on a raft, so to sail through life unless one could be carried more safely and with less risk on a surer conveyance, or some divine reason." The tears came into my eyes when I wrote the lines I underscore, they seem so mournful, have such longing in them for the revelation of which Socrates lived and died in ignorance. One of the speculations in these dialogues pleased me particularly, that is the one where the philosopher inquires what will become of the souls of those who have not loved wisdom, after this life. He thinks that some may be changed into wolves, or hawks, or kites, while those of a milder type may become wasps, or ants, or even change again into the human species. I can never rid myself of the |