“In addition to the discord that made our lives wretched my parents were victims of the desperate struggle for existence, in which the finer qualities were squeezed out. This so absorbed them that the true meaning of home and family escaped them, and the material side of the situation alone received attention. We were all wretched. It was a horrible experience. There we were, not of our own choice, wedged into an unwelcome place and unable to extricate ourselves. We were plainly told that whatever was done for us was to help make us able to take care of ourselves. We were urged to be industrious at school, because learning would enable us to be self-supporting. I never heard any other reason put forth in defence of education. This was dinned into our ears until life had but one meaning,—that of getting on in the world. The problem ended there. The result, I need hardly say, was to make us selfish. Instead of loving one another and sharing each others’ burdens, each thought only of his or her individual success, and the cherished dream of all was to get away—to go forth where there was opportunity.
“I was next to the youngest, a sister, an extraordinary little being, who had brought with her traces of a wisdom not of the earth, and a recollection of conditions and surroundings more to her taste than our jarring household. She talked much of a home that she had had somewhere, and often wept to go back to it, nor could she ever be persuaded to call the place in which she found herself home. God knows how alien and comfortless it must have seemed to her delicate spirit. When three years old she left us, such was her good fortune. At least it seemed good to me even then, and when they told me the usual fanciful tales of wings and a shining heaven, I envied her.
“One by one my sisters and brothers made haste to leave. So eager were they to get away that some took the first matrimonial boat on which they could secure passage, and thereby made sad shipwreck of their lives. How I longed to be loved. When I saw other children petted and caressed my heart swelled almost to bursting. The result of my unsatisfied longing was that I took refuge in my imagination and there lived a life as congenial and blissful as my outside life was distasteful and miserable. I surrounded myself with imaginary friends whom I loved and who loved me—charming, agreeable, superior people—men and women, not children. The misery that prevailed in our home had taken my childhood from me before I knew I possessed it. I early learned the solemn truth that ‘each soul in what is most itself, in what is deepest and nearest, lives alone, and that there is more loneliness in life than there is communion.’ I, too, like my little sister, suffered from a strange homesickness of the spirit, a longing for sympathetic association, for companionship, in short. I wanted congenial air, ‘that air which may be found everywhere, if we can find sympathetic souls to breathe it with us, and which is to be found nowhere without them,—the air of the land of our dreams, of the country of the ideal.’ Plotinus says ‘Our true country is that from whence we came.’ It has always seemed to me that far back in the past I lived somewhere and was happy. Now I am ever searching for the souls who are in sympathy with me, as in that far-off time. They are my own people, rather than those to whom I am related by consanguine ties. They or their counterparts exist somewhere on the earth, I believe, and the real business of my life is to find them.
“One’s own people! Think of what it would be to dwell among them, where sympathy met one in every glance, and love made itself felt in every tone of the voice.
“I was fond of study, was quick to learn, and when only seventeen was so far advanced that I felt ready to begin life on my own account. Like the others, I was restless to leave a home which had never been more than a shelter to me. I had no dreams of marrying, and walking in the same treadmill in which so many millions of women have worn out their souls as well as their bodies. I could never see why all women should spend their lives in cooking and nursing children any more than why all men should till the soil, which was civilized man’s primal occupation. I saw, too, very clearly, that women could never be more than half-fledged mentally, or have any real influence in the world of affairs so long as they were dependents financially. They must achieve pecuniary independence before they could hope for wider orbits, as it were. To get an opportunity to carve my own way in life was my unceasing wish. So unceasing and earnest was it that it created its own fulfilment. You may put it down as a great truth, that a desire held with earnestness, faith and persistence, will bring to the one who holds it its object. ‘Ask and ye shall receive’ is a law that is operative everywhere.
“I held myself ready to do whatever I could find that needed doing, but always in the day-dreams of my future I saw myself a successful painter and author, because hundreds of beautiful pictures danced before my mind and begged to be put on canvas, and thousands of thoughts and fancies flitted through my brain that I longed to share with all who would hear me.
“I had a gift for drawing, but had advanced as far as I could go without better instructors than were attainable where I lived. One thing, however, I had, which was a blessing to my artistic sense and a solace to my spirit. That was a beautiful landscape to look upon. As the mental atmosphere of home was always inharmonious I lived outdoors as much as possible, and from the fine view the location commanded I extracted much profound pleasure.
“One day I saw an advertisement in a newspaper to the effect that a lithographer in a little city fifty miles away wanted an assistant whom he could train to suit his needs. The next day found me face to face with the advertiser, talking myself up unblushingly. He was surprised, of course, that a girl whose frocks as yet came no lower than her ankles, should want to learn an art presumably sacred to men; but after some hesitation he engaged me, and I found myself launched in life as an independent, self-supporting factor. It was a proud day for me, I assure you. To the hardships of the situation I never gave a thought. The chance to work was the wedge that was to split up the tree of my future, so I set myself to hammering upon it with might and main. My pecuniary recompense was microscopical, but even that gave me no distress. Such as it was I managed to live within it, and look forward to something better.
“The lithographer’s establishment proved to be very interesting to me. Some excellent work was done there, and some odd jobs of various kinds—even the engraving of spoons sometimes—all of which I learned to do. In fact I learned to do anything and everything there as well as anybody, and before long received a larger salary, though never anything very imposing. I considered the time well spent, however, for I was perfecting myself in drawing, and when out of office studied languages and read much. I was happy—happier than I had ever been in my life, for I was out of the wretchedness that prevailed at home, and was treated with politeness and respect by everybody.
“Among the patrons of our establishment with whom I came in contact was Mr. Doring. He made no particular impression on me, until an epidemic came and his three children fell victims to it and died. Then as I heard considerable talk about his sorrow in the office, I tried to express my sympathy when next I saw him.