How he received the respect thus manifested to him, you can judge from a passage in one of his letters, which I will quote to you:
I am proud of you, my daughter; yet you give me more grief than any other of my children. If you were a young man, I could not find words in which to express my satisfaction and pride in respect to your acts; for I know that all you accomplish you owe to yourself: but you are a woman, a weak woman; and all that I can do for you now is to grieve and to weep. O my daughter! return from this unhappy path. Believe me, the temptation of living for humanity en masse, magnificent as it may appear in its aim, will lead you only to learn that all is vanity; while the ingratitude of the mass for whom you choose to work will be your compensation.
Letters of this sort poured upon me; and when my father learned that neither his reasoning nor his prayers could turn me from a work which I had begun with such enthusiasm, he began to threaten; telling me that I must not expect any pecuniary assistance from him; that I would contract debts in Cleveland which I should never be able to pay, and which would certainly undermine my prospects; with more of this sort.
My good father did not know that I had vowed to myself, on my arrival in America, that I would never ask his aid; and besides, he never imagined that I could go for five months with a single cent in my pocket. Oh, how small all these difficulties appeared to me, especially at a time when I began to speak English! I felt so rich that I never thought money could not be had whenever I wanted it in good earnest.
But with the closing of the term, which occurred early in March, the financial assistance in paying for my board ceased, and further provision had to be made for my support.
Shortly before this period, a letter was received from my father denouncing my leaving my sisters, my despising the sphere of woman, and my entering upon a field which so entirely belonged to men; he demanded my return to New York or to Germany and he utterly refused me any financial aid. After reading this letter to Mrs. Severance and asking her counsel, I retired to my room almost in despair.
That same evening, I attended a meeting which had been announced from all the pulpits and which was being held for the purpose of discussing how to aid the Cherokee Indians. Representatives of this tribe were sojourning in Cleveland on the way to Washington in order to see the Great White Father and to implore his help in their troubles.
During this meeting, I resolved to follow my father’s advice and give up man’s sphere, and offer myself as one of the missionaries to the Indians for which the leader pleaded as so necessary to civilize the squaws. Thus would I carry the working out of woman’s sphere to the wilderness of the Indian Territory. The next morning I told my decision to Mrs. Shepard, to my fellow students and to Mr. Mayo; and in the evening I began a letter to my sisters who were now well established, my sister Anna having married a very estimable young man whose parents were friends and neighbors of ours in Berlin.
If I had not been visited in the morning of the next day by Dr. Seelye, a friend of my fellow student, Miss Greene, and an hour later by Mrs. Severance, my fate as an Indian missionary would have been decided by the arrival of the afternoon hour appointed for the meeting of all those interested in the Indian troubles. However, these two friends not only dissuaded me from any such change, but promised to provide in some way or other, means for my continuing my studies.
Dr. Seelye insisted on my first writing to Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, showing me that I was under special obligation to her. The Indians had to leave before I received her reply. She was indignant at my proposition and requested me to return to New York immediately after my graduation the middle of the next March.