to study, or any kind of intellectual taxation, except in practical employments, for which happily I had a decided taste.
The death of a wise and tender mother at sixteen, and the consequent responsibilities that came on the eldest of eight children, still further developed the intellectual powers which are cultivated in domestic employments. But school duties were never relished, except as opportunities of furnishing merriment and various amusing contrivances for escaping study. No discipline by book knowledge was gained, and no reading attempted except in works of imagination.
It was not till school-days were over, that the discipline of sorrow, and the consequent forces of religion, sobered an exuberant nature and led to preparation for the office of a teacher.
Then, for the first time, commenced a training in book knowledge under the care of a college-trained brother, and then a few months accomplished what, with most school-girls, demands as many years. And this speed and success were secured by aid of faculties developed and strengthened
chiefly by domestic training, together with the conversation and intellectual influence of the parents and family friends who were my educators.
The mental history of these family friends is an additional illustration of this principle. My father had a college education; my mother and an aunt, who was a member of our family, had only that of a country home, when reading, writing, and arithmetic were the only branches in children's schools. My mother had a natural taste for profound investigation, and, with no aid but a small encyclopedia, performed some remarkable mathematical calculations where my father was helpless. But apparently she had no talent for poetry or fine writing, though having a high appreciation of both. On the contrary, my aunt was a fine writer, and composed poetry of a high order. Both the ladies were extensive readers of the best English classics, much more so than my father.
And now in my recollections of home discussions, and of the admiration universally accorded to my mother's intellectual gifts, I should say that by
the common school, by domestic duties, by English literature, and by the sciences studied in one small encyclopedia and two or three other scientific books, my mother was, if not superior, fully equal to my father in mental power and culture. And in fine writing and most æsthetic developments my aunt was superior to both, though she was their inferior in several other directions.
Moreover, five of my father's sons were trained in the best colleges, while his daughters all knew little or nothing of the chief branches included in the college course. And yet the domestic training of the daughters and their more extensive reading, as I view it, made them fully equal to my brothers in intellectual development.
Similar observations met me in general society when comparing the mental development of sisters having only a common school education with that of college-trained brothers, and this at all periods and in every direction. And it is in view of such multiplied illustrations that I understand how it is that women, with much fewer advantages of classic