Truly the cackling hen brought no such thoughts to simple Esther and her brother John. To them it merely announced that another egg was laid, and thereby another cent gained toward the purchase of a new book. They talked the stories over by the light of the moon, or recited to each other favorite passages from Burns and Bloomfield. When the field-labourers took their noon-day rest, you would be sure to find John hidden away in the shade of a haystack, devouring a book. His zeal attracted the minister’s attention, and he often stopped to talk with him. One day, he said to the mother, “This boy will make something extraordinary. He must get an education. He must go to college, ma’am.”
“Bless my heart, I might as well think of sending him to the moon!” she replied.
But Esther heard it with a quick blush of pleasure and pride; and henceforth the one absorbing thought of her life was how to assist in sending John to college. Busily she calculated how much could be earned in two years by knitting, and binding shoes, and braiding straw. John listened with rapture to her plans, but his triumph was checked midway by the recollection that his sister could not go to college with him. “Why, Esther, you have always been my teacher,” he said. “You learn faster than I do, and you remember better. Why don’t women go to college?”
“They couldn’t be lawyers, and ministers, and judges, if they did,” answered Esther.
“Why not?” said John.
Esther’s knowledge and reflection on the subject stopped there, and she simply replied that women never had done such things.
“Why, yes, they have,” said John. “The Bible says that Deborah was a judge; and Queen Elizabeth was more than a judge; and we read the other day that Isabella of Spain knew how to direct an army, and govern the state, better than her husband, King Ferdinand. I am sure I don’t see why women shouldn’t go to college.”
The boy, in the eagerness of brotherly love, had started ideas which he was too ignorant to follow. But in his simple question lies the germ of thoughts that will revolutionize the world. For as surely as there is a God of harmony in the universe, so surely will woman one day become the acknowledged equal and co-worker of man, in every department of life; and yet be more truly gentle and affectionate than she now is.
But Esther was too young to reflect on such matters. She loved her brother, and she wanted him to go to college; and with unquestioning diligence she applied her faculties to the purpose, in every way that was left open for her. She scarcely allowed herself time to eat and sleep, and grudged herself every article of apparel, so zealous was her sisterly love. Poor girl! there was no one to teach her the physical laws, and she knew not that toiling thus perpetually, without exercise for the body, or recreation for the mind, was slow suicide. Month after month she laboured, and seldom spoke of pains in her side, and confused feelings in her head. Even her favourite luxury of reading was almost entirely relinquished; and John had little leisure to read to her such books as were entertaining. The minister had offered to hear him recite Latin and Greek once a week, and he was too busy with the classics, to have time for Voyages and Travels. He often repeated his lessons to his sister, and from his bald translations she here and there gleaned a few ideas; but this kind of mental effort was little profitable, and less enlivening. Blessed Nature stood ever ready to refresh and strengthen her. The golden dandelion blossoms smiled brightly in her face, and the trees stretched their friendly arms over her in blessing; but she had no time to listen to their kind voices. It would have been difficult to lure her aside from her arduous path, even if she had known that it would lead to an open tomb.
When an object is pursued with such concentrated aim and persevering effort, it is almost always attained. John taught school in the winters, and worked at whatever his hand could find to do in the summers. Esther hoarded all her earnings, to add to the Education Fund, as they called it: and their good friend the minister borrowed a hundred dollars for them, to be repaid according to their own convenience. At last, the darling hope of many years was realized. John went to college, and soon ranked among the best scholars of his class. His sister still toiled, that he might have a sufficiency of books and clothing. He studied hard, and taught school during college vacations, and returned home at the end of four years, attenuated almost to a skeleton.