Part 1

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WHEN THEY WERE GIRLS

by

REBECCA DEMING MOORE

Illustrated by Mabel Betsy Hill

Edited by Helen Mildred Owen

F. A. Owen Publishing Company Dansville, New York

Copyright, 1923 F. A. Owen Publishing Company

Contents

Jane Addams The Girl Who Became a Neighbor to the Needy

Louisa M. Alcott Whose Stories of Real Life Are a Delight to Girls and Boys

Susan B. Anthony Who Worked for Sixty Years to Secure Rights for Women

Clara Barton The Girl Who Unfurled the First American Red Cross Flag

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach The Girl Who Made Melodies

Cecilia Beaux Whose Paint Brush Has Brought Her Fame

Evangeline Booth The Girl Who Lived the Meaning of Her Name

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Girl Who Loved Stories and Wrote Them

Katharine Bement Davis The Girl Who Has Helped to Straighten Twisted Lives

Grace Hoadley Dodge The Girl Who Worked for Working Girls

Alice Cunningham Fletcher The Girl Who Befriended the Red Man

Louise Homer Who Believes that Hard Work Is the Secret of Her Success as a Singer

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer The Girl Who Loved Art More Than Ease

Julia Ward Howe Whose Battle Hymn Sang Itself into the Hearts of a Nation

Helen Keller The Deaf and Blind Girl Who Found Light and Happiness Through Knowledge

Maria Mitchell The Girl Who Studied the Stars

Alice Freeman Palmer The Girl Who Guided College Girls

Maud Powell The Girl Whose Violin Spread Afar the Message of Music

Ellen H. Richards A Scientist Who Helped Home-Makers

Elizabeth Cady Stanton The Girl Who Helped to Draft Woman’s Declaration of Independence

Harriet Beecher Stowe The Girl Whose Story of Slavery Aroused The Whole World

Kate Douglas Wiggin Who Put the Joy of Living into Her Books

Frances E. Willard The Girl Who Fought the Dragon, Drink

Ella Flagg Young Whose Slogan Was “Better Schools for Girls and Boys”

Editor’s Introduction

_When They Were Girls_ contains the stories of a group of American women, each one of whom occupies a very important place in her particular field. The stories of these women have been written many times before. We feel, however, that in this book you possibly may find that their stories have been written in a little different way. Our desire has been to bring very closely to the attention of our many readers some of the outstanding characteristics in the girlhoods of these women, and to show the relationship between these qualities in girlhood and the achievements of adult life.

To many people, doubtless to almost everyone, comes the desire to produce results, to achieve, and to add one’s bit to the welfare of the world. Sometimes one is apt to become impatient, and to feel that he is not arriving at his goal. Under such circumstances it is helpful for us to acquaint ourselves with the life story of someone whom we feel has reached the goal for which we are striving. We may then learn that success does not come overnight, but that years of careful, painstaking work are often spent before the contribution that one has for the world is completed.

It is so easy to admire someone who has attained success, and to wish for that same success and recognition oneself. Often, however, we are not willing to pay the price that he or she paid. To very few people does success come easily. The small minority to whom it does seem to come in that way can only remain successful through careful, painstaking work.

The women whose stories are within this book have not obtained the praise of the world easily. As girls, some of them were wealthy, some of them were very poor; but they _all_ had obstacles to overcome. Each one had her own way to make. No amount of money, nor an especially fine environment, could ever be the means of making anyone successful. Success comes not from without, but from within.

It is, of course, desirable to have every opportunity that will help to develop one’s particular ability. The greater a person’s opportunity to receive help from all available good sources, the better it is for him. However, success depends upon oneself. No amount of encouragement, no effort put forth by loving parents, no amount of money expended for advantageous purposes, will ever accomplish great things unless the person himself really desires to achieve.

No matter how small our part in the world may seem, it is possible for us each to do our work in such a way that it will prove to be a forerunner of greater things to come. We can take but one step at a time, and by taking that step as best we know how we shall be led to something higher. In reading the stories in this book you will see at once that when these women were girls they had no idea of what they would ultimately achieve. Nevertheless, they each took the steps that seemed necessary to their progress, as each step presented itself. This careful preparation, this conscientious work, has enabled these women to give to the world their best, and has made it possible for us to profit not only by their gifts but by their example, as well.

Helen Mildred Owen. Rochester, New York,

November 28, 1923.

WHEN THEY WERE GIRLS

Jane Addams—

The Girl Who Became a Neighbor To the Needy

“Why do people live in such horrid little houses so close together, Father?” asked seven-year-old Jane on a trip to the city.

At home in the village, when she was tired of playing in the big roomy house, she could run across the green to the stream by her father’s mill. Here, in the city, instead of wide green slopes and the low hum of the sawmill were narrow, dirty alleys and the clatter of carts and street cars.

When Mr. Addams explained that some people do not have money enough to choose pleasant places for their homes, Jane declared: “When I grow up, I shall have a large house, of course, but I shall not have it among other fine houses, but right in the midst of horrid little houses like these.”

Now, strangely enough, when she grew up, she did that very thing. She went to live in a big house situated in the midst of poor Chicago tenements. Later, this little girl, who was Jane Addams, became known all over the world as the friend of the poor.

Jane Addams was born at Cedarville, Illinois, September 6, 1860. Little Jane could not remember her mother, who died when she was a baby, but she thought that no little girl ever had a father like hers. She was proud of his imposing figure, and she loved him dearly. Though he was a very busy man he always had time to answer her questions. She had a great many to ask, too, for even as a small child she did a good deal of thinking.

Jane’s father had been a state senator for sixteen years and could tell her interesting stories about the history of the country. He talked to her so often about Abraham Lincoln, who had been his friend, that Jane felt almost as if she herself had known the great-hearted man.

One Sunday Jane appeared before her father dressed for Sunday school in a beautiful new coat. It was a finer coat than any other little girl in the village had. For this reason, Mr. Addams suggested that Jane wear her old coat to save the feelings of the other little girls. Jane consented to do so, although she was very much disappointed.

As they walked to Sunday school, Jane wondered how the good things of life could be more evenly divided. Ever since she had first seen the “horrid little houses” about a year before, her young mind had been busy with this problem. Jane turned to her father and asked him how it could be solved. He explained that even though everything cannot be divided evenly, people should act and dress in such a way that those who are less fortunate will not be made to feel so. He told her that in school and church, at least, people should be able to feel that they belong to one family.

Jane Addams attended the village school, and later, at seventeen years of age, entered Rockford Seminary, at Rockford, Illinois. Soon after she was graduated from this school it was declared a college, and she received the degree of B. A.

She had intended after her graduation to study medicine and to help the poor, but she was urged to go abroad because she was in poor health. While in London and elsewhere, she was greatly distressed by the wretched condition of the poor. Now she was more determined than ever to go about the work of helping others.

Miss Addams believed that it is better to show people how to help themselves than to give them gifts of money. “It is hard to help people one does not know,” she reasoned, “and how can one really know people without seeing them very often?” True to the decision she had made as a child, she resolved to live among the poor and be a real neighbor to them.

With the help of some friends, Miss Addams opened Hull-House, which is located in a tenement section of Chicago. Here, she established a day nursery where mothers who had to go out to work could leave their babies in good care. A kindergarten was organized for the young children in the neighborhood.

There are clubs for girls and boys, and also for men and women. Classes in sewing, cooking, and millinery are conducted for the girls. “The Young Heroes,” a boy’s club, to-day has for its own use a five-story building equipped with recreation and study rooms. Printing, photography, and many other trades can be learned there. Hull-House, originally occupying one building, is now using thirteen buildings, each fitted for some special service.

For more than thirty years Miss Addams and her fellow-workers have stood ready to do any neighborly act, from bathing little babies to teaching and entertaining lonely old women. At Hull-House a cordial welcome always awaits everyone.

Besides her friendly aid to those who flock to Hull-House, Jane Addams has been a good neighbor to people whom she has never seen. She helped to have a law passed in Illinois to prevent children who are under fourteen years of age from working in factories. Through her efforts public baths have been provided in Chicago. Remembering the merry games she played as a child on the river banks near her home, she has made many a plea for more playgrounds for city girls and boys.

Miss Addams has been a member, often the chairman, of many important committees that have been organized to plan ways for making the world a better place in which to live. She has also found time to write books on this subject.

Jane Addams might have given money to the poor and spent her time in travel and amusement, but she preferred to give herself. Because she loves people enough to learn what they really need and works _with_ them as well as _for_ them, thousands bless her as a true friend and neighbor.

Louisa M. Alcott—

Whose Stories of Real Life Are A Delight to Girls and Boys

When Louisa Alcott peeped into her journal on the morning of her tenth birthday, she found a little note from her mother filled with loving messages. It read: “I give you the pencil-case I promised, for I have observed that you are fond of writing, and wish to encourage the habit.” Louisa’s mother often wrote little messages in her daughter’s journal, urging her to keep on trying to be good. Very often the notes encouraged Louisa to go on writing. On both her fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays her mother’s gift was a pen, with a poem and a loving letter.

As Louisa, at eight years of age, had written a little verse about a robin, Mrs. Alcott hoped that her daughter would some day be a great writer. It was a hope that was realized, for Louisa M. Alcott’s books have become famous, delighting each succeeding generation.

_Little Women_, her first great success, is the story of the Alcott family. It tells of their jolly times and their hard times at the Orchard House at Concord, Massachusetts. The lively outspoken “Jo” of the story, writing in the attic, is Louisa herself; the other “March” girls are her own dear sisters, Anna, Elizabeth, and Abba May. “Marmee,” of course, is the beloved mother, and Mr. March, the father.

Louisa May Alcott was born at Germantown, Pennsylvania, November 29, 1832, but most of her girlhood was spent in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts. It was a happy life that she led even though the food was plain and her clothes were generally “made over.” There was never enough money to go around in the Alcott family, but there was no lack of love, kindness, good conversation, and good reading.

Louisa and her sisters received their education chiefly from their father, a man of rare intellect. Mr. Alcott was devoted to his children and he took great pleasure in teaching them. In addition to these daily lessons there often were long, hard tasks of sewing and ironing, but there was plenty of time for play, too.

What fun they had! In the old barn at Concord with their playmates, the children of Ralph Waldo Emerson and of Nathaniel Hawthorne, they acted out their favorite fairy tales and also _The Pilgrim’s Progress_. Their giant tumbled off the loft when Jack cut down the bean stalk, and there was a real pumpkin for Cinderella’s coach.

Their mother’s birthday was always a great event. When that day arrived Louisa would say to herself as soon as she awoke, “It’s Mother’s birthday: I must be very good.” After breakfast the children always gave their mother her presents. One year Louisa’s gift was a cross made of moss with a bit of poetry attached. That day there were no lessons, and everybody was very jolly and happy.

Two great joys of Louisa’s life were books and the outdoors. She enjoyed a quiet corner with a good book. She also loved to run in the woods in the early morning before the dew was off the grass. She liked to feel the velvety moss under her feet and to look up into the green branches overhead. Once, when she was a child, she paused in her running and stood still listening to the rustle of the pines.

“It seemed as if I _felt_ God,” she wrote in her journal, “and I prayed in my heart that I might keep that happy sense of nearness all my life.”

Louisa had a quick temper and found difficulty in managing it. At fourteen years of age she wrote a poem about her struggles entitled, “My Little Kingdom.” It began:

“A little kingdom I possess, Where thoughts and feelings dwell. And very hard I find the task Of governing it well; For passion tempts and troubles me, A wayward will misleads, And selfishness its shadow casts On all my words and deeds.”

She kept on trying, however, and never let her little kingdom control her.

As Louisa Alcott grew older she began to realize very keenly all the cares that burdened the dear “Marmee” because of their lack of money. None of Mr. Alcott’s ventures in teaching or lecturing had added much to the family treasury.

Louisa was determined to help and she willingly did any kind of work that would enable her to earn a little money for her dear ones. Sometimes she taught school, sometimes she helped a relative with the housework, and sometimes she took care of an invalid child. Often she did fine needlework.

While her hands were busy with her daily tasks, her brain was active planning stories. She wrote them late at night, and soon publishers began to accept them and pay her small sums of money. For her first story, written when she was sixteen years old, she was paid five dollars.

Writing was a joy to Louisa Alcott and sewing a tiresome task. However, she continued her sewing because at first the needle paid better than the pen. It was a pleasure to her to earn enough money to buy a new shawl for “Marmee,” a crimson ribbon for May’s bonnet, or a new carpet for the whole family. Cheerfully she wore her old bonnet and her shabby shoes.

During her spare moments, the young author continued to write happily in her attic. To her delight the mail often brought her the news that her stories had been accepted. This greatly encouraged her.

Then came the Civil War. Louisa realized that no matter how greatly she desired to write, her first duty was to her country. Therefore, she went to the Union Hotel Hospital at Georgetown, D. C., as a nurse. The letters that she wrote home telling of her experiences were later published as a book called _Hospital Sketches_.

By this time Miss Alcott’s work had become so well known that she was asked to write a book for girls. She began to write _Little Women_ to prove to the publisher that she could not write for girls. What she did prove everybody knows. Young people and their elders as well, not only in this country but also abroad, were soon laughing and crying over the doings of the “March” girls. Miss Alcott had become famous.

_Little Men_ and other books followed rapidly and proved so popular that Miss Alcott received many thousands of dollars from her writings. She was happy because now she could fulfill her dream of giving her dear mother some of the comforts that she had never had. It was but small return, she felt, for all the help and encouragement that her mother had given her.

Miss Alcott’s books have lived because they show people as they really are. They tell, too, how jolly and happy life can be if people think less about money and more about living unselfishly and enjoying the outdoors and the simple and beautiful things of life. Louisa M. Alcott could not help writing in this way, for it was the way in which she herself lived.

Susan B. Anthony—

Who Worked for Sixty Years to Secure Rights for Women

Young Susan vigorously attacked, with her broom, the cobweb in the corner of the schoolroom ceiling. It was a stubborn cobweb and Susan had to step upon the teacher’s desk to reach it. No girl trained by so good a housekeeper as Susan’s mother could be happy in the same room with a cobweb.

“Deborah will be pleased to have the room clean,” thought Susan. However, Deborah, her Quaker teacher, was not pleased. Susan’s heavy shoes had broken the desk hinges, and the girl who had tried to do well was severely scolded.

It was often very much like this in Susan B. Anthony’s later life. When she tried her hardest to brush away the cobwebs that kept the world from seeing that women did not have the same rights as men, she was jeered and scorned. Nevertheless, she kept on wielding her broom, the broom she used being her clever tongue. This little Quaker girl grew up to be an interesting and eloquent lecturer, who never lost an opportunity to speak a good word for her fellow-women.

Susan Brownell Anthony was born February 15, 1820, in Adams, Massachusetts, in the midst of the Berkshire Hills. She was the second of eight children. Every night, as a little girl, she used to watch the sun go down behind “Old Greylock.” She came to love the great mountain, and all her life she liked to think of its rugged strength.

Mrs. Anthony was a very busy woman. In addition to caring for her lively little children she also cooked and washed for a number of factory hands. However, she found time to read good books and to be interested in all her children’s doings. Susan’s father was a Quaker, a man much liked and respected.

At an early age little Susan learned to be a good cook and housekeeper, like her mother. Once, when Mrs. Anthony was ill, twelve-year-old Susan with the help of her two sisters, ten and fourteen years of age, did all the household tasks, including packing the lunch boxes for the factory hands. Susan was so anxious that everything should be done exactly right that she and her sisters carried samples of the food to their mother for her approval.

At three years of age Susan, who was very bright and quick, learned her letters and also some words, while on a visit at her grandmother’s. When she was a little older she attended a district school, and then a private school conducted in the Anthony home. Later, she joined her sister at a boarding school near Philadelphia, where she studied for a year.

Susan began to teach in a district school when she was seventeen years old. She was boarded in turn at the homes of her pupils, being paid in addition only one dollar and a half a week. Susan was a very successful teacher, and often she grew indignant to see that men who did not do their work so well as she received four times as much pay. Equal pay for equal work was one of the rights that she began to demand for her fellow-women from that time on.

When Susan’s father failed in business, she saw his creditors take all of her mother’s personal things. Susan was enraged with the injustice of it and declared that there should be a law to make a wife’s belongings her own.

In 1851 Miss Anthony made a trip to Seneca Falls, New York, to urge the admission of girls to the People’s College then being founded. There she met Miss Lucy Stone and had an opportunity to become well acquainted with her and also with Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom she had met a few months before.

Mrs. Stanton and Miss Stone believed that women should have a share in making the laws of the land, and Miss Anthony soon became their most ardent co-worker. Twenty-five years later, Miss Anthony drafted the federal suffrage amendment. However, it was forty-five years from the time that the amendment was drafted until it became a part of our Constitution.

Susan B. Anthony was one of the greatest friends that women have ever had. When she was born there were only three things that a girl who wanted to earn her living could do: be a millhand, a servant, or a teacher. Before the close of Miss Anthony’s life, a girl might fit herself to be a doctor, a lawyer, a business woman, or, in fact, almost anything that she chose.

When Miss Anthony was a young girl, the doors of nearly all colleges were closed to women. The girl who dared to ask for as much education as was given to her brother was considered a great oddity. However, Miss Anthony lived to see girls admitted to college quite as a matter of course.

Susan B. Anthony found a world where a married woman could not do what she liked with the property that she owned. Neither could she do as she wished with the money that she had earned or received as a gift. She could not even take charge of her own children if anyone objected. Miss Anthony left a world where women’s rights in all these matters were considered and where in four states women could help to make the laws. The Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote, came later.

Miss Anthony devoted all of her time to public speaking. She traveled from coast to coast, always making the most of every opportunity to speak in behalf of the various reforms to which she devoted over sixty years of her life. Sometimes she pleaded for the freedom of the slaves, sometimes for temperance, but _always_ for her favorite cause—rights for women.

Susan B. Anthony kept on pleading for women, no matter how much people laughed at her. Gradually, the world began to see some reason in what she said. To-day, all women who cast their vote, control their property, and send their daughters to college, can thank the determined Quaker girl who had such a large share in giving women their rights.

Clara Barton—

The Girl Who Unfurled The First American Red Cross Flag.