As the labor of her hands prospered, as her garden posies blossomed, so the wings of Mary Lyon's spirit grew. No matter how shut in the present seemed, no hope nor dream for the future died in her heart as the days went by.
Her plans only took deeper and deeper root as she worked and waited patiently for the time of flowers and fruit. There were few books to be had, but these yielded her of their best. There was opportunity for but few scattered terms in distant district schools, but she learned there more than the teachers taught.
"Anything is interesting when you realize that it is important," she used to say. And to Mary everything was important that was real. She learned not only from books, but from work, from people, from Nature, and from every bit of stray circumstance that came her way. It is said that when the first brick house was built in the village she made a point of learning how to make bricks, turning them up, piling them on the wheelbarrow, and putting them in the kiln. She was always hungry to know and to do, and the harder a thing was the more she seemed to like it. Climbing was ever more fun than trudging along on the level.
The years brought changes to the home farm. The older sisters married and went to homes of their own. When Mary was thirteen her mother married again and went away with the younger children, leaving her to keep house for the only brother, who had from early childhood been her best comrade. The dollar a week given her for her work was saved to pay for a term in the neighboring academy. She also taught in a district school for a while, receiving seventy-five cents a week and board.
The nineteen-year-old girl who appeared one day at the Ashfield Academy somehow drew all eyes to her. Her blue homespun dress, with running-strings at neck and waist, was queer and shapeless, even judged by village standards in the New England of 1817. Her movements were impulsive and ungainly and her gait awkward. But it was not the crudity, but the power, of the new-comer that impressed people. Squire White's gentle daughter, the slender, graceful Amanda, gave the loyalty of her best friendship to this interesting and enthusiastic schoolmate from the hill farm.
"She is more alive than any one I know, Father," said the girl, in explanation of her preference. "You never see her odd dress and sudden ways when once you have looked into her face and talked to her. Her face seems lighted from within—it isn't just her bright color and red-gold curls; it isn't even her merry laugh. I can't explain what I mean, but it seems as if her life touches mine—and it's such a big, warm, beautiful life!"
The traditions of this New England village long kept the memory of her first recitation. On Friday she had been given the first lesson of Adams's Latin Grammar to commit to memory. When she was called up early Monday afternoon, she began to recite fluently declensions and conjugations without pause, until, as the daylight waned, the whole of the Latin grammar passed in review before the speechless teacher and dazzled, admiring pupils.
"How did you ever do it? How could your head hold it all?" demanded Amanda, with a gasp, as they walked home together.
"Well, really, I'll have to own up," said Mary, with some reluctance, "I studied all day Sunday! It wasn't so very hard, though. I soon saw where the changes in the conjugations came in, and the rules of syntax are very much like English grammar."
Studying was never hard work to Mary, because she could at a moment's notice put all her attention on the thing at hand. Her busy childhood had taught her to attack a task at once, while others were frequently spending their time thinking and talking about doing it.