If busy hands can indeed make time, we know why the days were so full of happy work in that little farm-house among the hills of western Massachusetts. It takes courage and ceaseless toil to run a farm that must provide food and clothing for seven growing children, but Mrs. Lyon was never too busy or too tired to help a neighbor or to speak a word of cheer.
"How is it that the widow can do more for me than any one else?" asked a neighbor who had found her a friend in need. "She reminds me of what the Bible says, 'having nothing yet possessing all things.' There she is left without a husband to fend for her and the children, so that it's work, work, work for them all from morning till night, and yet they're always happy. You would think the children liked nothing better than doing chores."
"How is it that the harder a thing is the more you seem to like it, Mary?" asked her seat-mate in the district school, looking wonderingly at the girl whose eyes always brightened and snapped when the arithmetic problems were long and hard.
"Oh, it's lots more fun climbing than just going along on the level," replied Mary. "You feel so much more alive. I'll tell you what to do when a thing seems hard, like a steep, steep hill, you know. Say to yourself: 'Some people may call you Difficulty, old hill; but I know that your name is Opportunity. You're here just to prove that I can do something worth while.' Then the climbing is the best fun—really!"
It is a happy thing to be born among the hills. Wherever one looks there is something to whisper: "There is no joy like climbing. Besides, the sun stays longer on the summit, and beyond the hill-tops is a larger, brighter world." Perhaps it was the fresh breath of the hills that gave Mary Lyon her glowing cheeks, as the joy of climbing brought the dancing lights into her clear blue eyes.
The changing seasons march over the hills in a glorious pageant of color, from the tender veiling green of young April to the purple mists and red-and-gold splendor of Indian summer. Every day had the thrill of new adventure to Mary Lyon, but perhaps she loved the mellow October days best. "They have all the glowing memory of the past summer and the promise of the spring to come," she used to say.
How could one who had, through the weeks of growing things, worked together with rain and sunshine and generous earth for the harvest but feel the happy possession of all the year at the time when she saw bins overflowing with brown potatoes, yellow corn, and other gifts of fields and orchard? She could never doubt that, given the waiting earth and faithful labor, the harvest was sure. Duties and difficulties were always opportunities for higher endeavor and happier achievement.
There was no play in Mary Lyon's childhood except the play that a healthy, active child may find in varied, healthful work done with a light heart. There was joy in rising before the sun was up, to pick weeds in the dewy garden, to feed the patient creatures in the barn, and to make butter in the cool spring-house. Sometimes one could meet the sunrise on the hill-top, when it happened to be one's turn to bring wood to the dwindling pile by the kitchen door. Then there was the baking—golden-brown loaves of bread and tempting apple pies. When the morning mists had quite disappeared from the face of the hills, the blue smoke had ceased to rise from the chimney of the little farm-house. Then was the time to sit beside Mother and knit or weave, sew or mend, the garments that were homemade, beginning with the moment when the wool, sheared from their own sheep, was carded and spun into thread. For holidays, there were the exciting mornings when they made soap and candles, or the afternoons when they gathered together in the barn for a husking-bee.
Beauty walked with Toil, however, about that farm in the hills. Mary had time to lift up her eyes to the glory of the changing sky and to tend the pinks and peonies that throve nowhere so happily as in her mother's old-fashioned garden.
"May I plant this bush in the corner with your roses?" asked a neighbor one day. "It is a rare plant of rare virtue, and I know that in your garden it cannot die."