On one occasion a fellow-teacher laughingly came to me with a dead cockchafer, which had been smothered between her pocket-handkerchiefs, and offered it to me as a first subject for dissection. I accepted the offer, placed the insect in a shell, held it with a hair-pin, and then tried with my mother-of-pearl-handled penknife to cut it open. But the effort to do this was so repugnant that it was some time before I could compel myself to make the necessary incision, which revealed only a little yellowish dust inside. The battle then fought, however, was a useful one. In my later anatomical studies I never had so serious a repugnance to contend with.
The winter passed pleasantly away in beautiful Asheville. I was in friendly relations with all around me. In my leisure time I studied in the pleasant grove which connected the school with the church, rejoicing in the ever-changing mountain outline visible through the trees. The ‘Harbinger,’ with its bright visions of associated life, came regularly to me, and nurtured that faith in co-operation as the necessary future of society which has become one of my articles of faith, my chief regret at this time being the stoppage of my attempt to teach coloured children to read, as this was forbidden by the laws of North Carolina!
The following letters describe the life in North Carolina:—
Asheville: June 29, 1845.
Dear M.,—My first impressions of Asheville are decidedly pleasant. I find the Rev. Mr. D. a well-educated, intelligent man, beloved by all, and regarded quite as a father by all his pupils. He reminds me continually of Mr. L. in the shortness of his legs and the activity of mind and body, in superficiality of thought, and obliging social disposition. Mrs. D. is decidedly lovable, quite a little lady, ever cheerful, kind, and intelligent, performing her numerous duties like a small, true Christian....
Asheville: 1845.
Dear H.,—I am very glad to find that you have the feelings of a gentleman, that though you would not promise to write to me, you perform, which is decidedly the better of the two. Now I have to call you and S. to account for your breach of promise. What is the reason you did not come to my window, as you agreed to do, the morning you left Asheville? I got up before four o’clock and waited and watched, at last grew angry, and wished in revenge that you might have fine weather and plenty of ripe blackberries the whole way! It was a very shabby trick, and if you do not render a satisfactory explanation I shall—scold you well when next we meet.
Your domestic items all interest me. How do you like the change of teachers in the school, and who will superintend your room? Will Dr. Ray still teach? You must tell me also what day school begins, that I may think of you and Billy sitting with grave faces behind the little wooden desks, rivalling one another in intense application.
Did you take home any stones for our cabinets? Does the collecting fit continue, or has it vanished with the departure of Mr. Hildreth? I have not obtained many specimens as yet; little Sarah Dickson takes great interest in bringing me what she considers pretty rocks, and putting them on a newspaper on my window seat. I was really surprised the other day to see how pretty they looked, though, of course, not of much value—little bits of quartz, white, grey, brown, pink; a stone full of mica, which looks like a piece of lead ore; a conglomerate of gneiss quartz tinged with some metallic substances, and with garnets embedded in some of the stones; and flints of various colours; nothing to a professed mineralogist, but pleasing to me.
Last week I went to a party at Mrs. P.’s. She has a separate establishment from the hotel, with which she does not choose to have anything to do. I was invited to meet some Charleston ladies who had called on me, and made themselves very agreeable. I suppose you would have been most pleased with the eatables (the ice-cream, whips, jelly, and cakes were delicious), but what delighted me was a little Channing glorification (M. will understand what I mean) that Mrs. Carr (the lady who so resembles Ellen Channing) and I held in the garden. She has never seen our Mr. Channing, but the Doctor used to visit at their house, and she described with enthusiasm a splendid sermon that she heard him deliver in Philadelphia. I replied by describing the eloquence of our Mr. C. Then she expatiated on the kindness and loveliness of the Doctor’s character, to which I added a description of the goodness, purity, and the angelicalness of his nephew; whereupon she expressed a great desire to see him, and I said that I should consider it one of the greatest of blessings to have enjoyed the social intercourse of the good Doctor. The conversation was quite a treat to me—a sort of safety-valve to heterodox steam that I lacked so deplorably at Henderson.