At this time all the schools for girls, like the Ashfield Academy and Mr. Emerson's seminary at Byfield, were entirely dependent upon the enterprise and ideals of individuals. There were no colleges with buildings and equipment, such as furnished dormitories, libraries, and laboratories, belonging to the work and the future. In the case of the most successful schools there was no guarantee that they would endure beyond the lifetime of those whose interest had called them into being.
Miss Lyon taught happily for several years, often buying books of reference and material for practical illustration out of her salary of five or six dollars a week. The chance for personal influence seemed the one essential. "Never mind the brick and mortar!" she cried. "Only let us have the living minds to work upon!"
As experience came with the years, however, as she saw schools where a hundred young women were crowded into one room without black-boards, globes, maps, and other necessaries of instruction—she realized that something must be done to secure higher schools for girls, that would have the requisite material equipment for the present and security for the future. "We must provide a college for young women on the same conditions as those for men, with publicly owned buildings and fixed standards of work," she said.
This idea could appeal to most people of that day only as a strange, extravagant, and dangerous notion. Harvard and Yale existed to prepare men to be ministers, doctors, and lawyers. Did women expect to thrust themselves into the professions? Why should they want the learning of men? It could do nothing but make them unfit for their proper life in the home. Who had ever heard of a college for girls! What is unheard of is to most people manifestly absurd.
To Mary Lyon, however, difficulties were opportunities for truer effort and greater service. She had, besides, a faith in a higher power—in a Divine Builder of "houses not made with hands"—which led her to say with unshaken confidence, "'All that ought to be done can be done!'"
Mary Lyon chapel and administration hall
It was as if she were able to look into the future and see the way time would sift the works of the present. Those who looked into her earnest blue eyes, bright with courage, deep with understanding, could not but feel that she had the prophet's vision. It was as if she had power to divine the difference between the difficult and the impossible, and, knowing that, her faith in the happy outcome of her work was founded on a rock.
It took this faith and hope, together with an unfailing charity for the lack of vision in others and an ever-present sense of humor, to carry Mary Lyon through the task to which she now set herself. She was determined to open people's eyes to the need of giving girls a chance for a training that would fit them for more useful living by making them better teachers, wiser home-makers, and, in their own right, happier human beings. She must not only convince the conservative men and women of her day that education could do these things, but she must make that conviction so strong that they would be willing to give of their hard-earned substance to help along the good work.
Those were not the days of large fortunes. Miss Lyon could not depend upon winning the interest of a few powerful benefactors. She must enlist the support of the many who would be willing to share their little. She must perforce have the hardihood of the pioneer, no less than the vision of the seer, to enable her to meet the problems, trials, and rebuffs of the next few years.