Away o’er the glistening prairies with me;
The last glance of day lights a blush on the snow,
While away through the twilight our merry steeds go.”
She also felt the awe inspired by the silence and immensity of the land, with the blue heavens arching over.
“But in its solemn silence,
Father, we feel thou art
Filling alike this boundless sea,
And every humble heart.”
When Lucy had been teaching district school for two years, she was conscious of her deficiencies, and longed for a chance to acquire a more thorough education. She wished to fit herself for promotion in her calling, and ambitions to become a writer were not absent from her thoughts. An opportunity for study presented itself in Monticello Female Seminary, Alton, Illinois, which was about twenty miles away from her home. This institution, founded by Captain B. Godfrey, was one of the first established in the country for the higher education of women. The prospectus of 1845, adorned with a stiff engraving of the grounds and large stone building, offered in its antiquated language, attractions which seemed to suit her needs: “The design of the Institution, is to furnish Young Ladies with an education, substantial, extensive and practical,—that shall at the same time develop harmoniously their physical, intellectual, and moral powers, and prepare them for the sober realities and duties of life.” All this was to be had for a sum less than one hundred dollars, in a situation so healthful that there “had never been a death in the institution.”
TO MRS. I. W. BAKER.
Woodburn, November 23, 1848.
... I have a new notion in my head, and I suppose I may as well broach it at once. There is a certain Seminary in the neighborhood at which I am very anxious to pass a year or so. It is one of the best of its kind. I want a better education than I have. Now I am only a tolerable sort of a “schoolma’am” for children; but if I could teach higher branches, I could make it more profitable, with less labor. I suppose I must call teaching my trade; and though I don’t like it the “very best kind,” I want to understand it as well as possible. And then if I don’t always keep school I may be able to depend on my pen for a living....