Tuition for a term of three months was only five dollars; and poor students were encouraged to come and earn their way through college. Ruth returned home after one term, and Angeline worked for her board at a Professor Kingley’s, getting victuals, washing dishes, and sweeping. Even so, after two terms her slender means were exhausted, and she went home to teach for a year. Returning to college in September, 1853, she completed the course in two years, breaking down at last for lack of recreation and nourishment. Ruth returned to McGrawville in 1854, and wrote home: “found Angie well and in good spirits. We are going to board ourselves at Mr. Smith’s.” And Angeline herself wrote: “My health has been quite good ever since I came here. It agrees with me to study.... We have a very pleasant boarding place, just far enough from the college for a pleasant walk.”
Angeline was not selfishly ambitious, but desired her sister’s education as well as her own. Before the bar of her Puritanical conscience she may have justified her own ambition by being ambitious for her sister. In the fall of 1853 she wrote to Ruth:
I hope you will make up your mind to come out here to school next spring. You can go through college as well as I. As soon as I get through I will help you. You can go through the scientific course, I should think, in two years after next spring term if you should come that term. Then we would be here a year together, and you would get a pretty good start. There seems to be a way opening for me to get into good business as soon as I get through college.
And again, in January, 1854:
Ruth, I believe I am more anxious to have you come to school than I ever was before. I see how much it will increase your influence, and suffering humanity calls for noble spirits to come to its aid. And I would like to have you fitted for an efficient laborer. I know you have intellect, and I would have it disciplined and polished. Come and join the little band of reformers here, will you not? I want your society. Sometimes I get very lonely here, and I never should, if you were only here. Tell me in your next letter that you will come. I will help you all I can in every thing.
But Ruth lacked her sister’s indomitable will. She loved her, and wished to be with her, whether at home or at college. Indeed, in a letter to Angeline she said she would tease very hard to have her come home, did she not realize how her heart was set upon getting an education. Ruth did return to McGrawville in 1854, but remained only two months, on account of poor health. The student fare did not agree with the vigorous Ruth, apparently; and she now gave up further thought of college, and generously sought to help her sister what she could financially.
Though a dime at McGrawville was equivalent to a dollar elsewhere, Angeline was much cramped for money, and to complete her course was obliged finally to borrow fifty dollars from her cousin Joseph Downs, giving her note payable in one year. When her breakdown came, six weeks before graduation, Ruth, like a good angel, came and took her home. It was a case of sheer exhaustion, aggravated by a tremendous dose of medicine administered by a well-meaning friend. Though she returned to McGrawville and graduated with her class, even producing a sorry sort of poem for the commencement exercises, it was two or three years before she regained her health. Such was a common experience among ambitious American students fifty years ago, before the advent of athletics and gymnasiums.
In closing this chapter, I will quote a character sketch written by one of Angeline’s classmates:
Slate Pencil Sketches—No. 2. L. A. C—and C. A. Stickney. Miss C— is Professor of Rhetoric, and Miss Stickney is a member of the Senior Class, in N.Y. Central College. A description of their personal appearance may not be allowable; besides it could not be attracting, since the element of Beauty would not enter largely into the sketch. Both are fortunately removed to a safe distance from Beauty of the Venus type; though the truth may not be quite apparent, because the adornments of mind by the force of association have thrown around them the Quakerish veil of good looks (to use moderate terms), which answers every desirable end of the most charming attractions, besides effectually saving both from the folly of Pride. Nevertheless, the writer of this sketch can have no earthly object in concealing his appreciation of the high brow, and Nymphean make of the one, and the lustrous eye of the other.
And these personal characteristics are happily suggestive of the marked mental traits of each. The intellect of the one is subtle, apprehensive, flexible, docile; with an imagination gay and discursive, loving the sentimental for the beauty of it. The intellect of the other is strong and comprehensive, with an imagination ardent and glowing, inclined perhaps to the sentimental, but ashamed to own it.