Part 6

Not only did she _not_ fail in her studies, but she also supported herself. She did tutoring, took charge of an office for a friend, and temporarily ran the boarding house where she lived.

It was feared about this time that the water near many towns and cities in Massachusetts was becoming unfit for drinking. The newly organized State Board of Health decided to have samples of the water examined to see whether it contained impurities.

Miss Swallow had proved herself to be so accurate and dependable that the chemist chosen to analyze the water handed over most of the work to her. Often she had to work far into the night when many samples came in at a time. She analyzed forty thousand samples of water. This careful work meant the prevention of much disease. For ten years she was assistant chemist for the State Board of Health, and then chemist for ten years.

When Ellen Swallow was married to Professor Robert Hallowell Richards, head of the department of mining engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she did not give up her public work. Yet she maintained a real home in which she carried out her ideas about building and furnishing, cleanliness and fresh air, and labor-saving devices. Many guests were welcomed to this busy woman’s home and all found it a place of restfulness and peace.

Mrs. Richards’ great desire was that girls should have the same opportunity to receive a scientific training as had boys. Largely through her efforts a Woman’s Laboratory was opened in connection with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This Laboratory was established for the purpose of giving scientific training to women.

Mrs. Richards gave generously to the Laboratory, teaching without salary, and contributing to its support as well. Soon after women were admitted to the Institute on the same footing as men, Mrs. Richards was made Instructor in Sanitary Chemistry in the Institute, a position which she held for the rest of her life.

Mrs. Richards might have spent her time in scientific research. However, she preferred instead to put her knowledge of science to practical use. She tested wall papers and fabrics to see if they contained arsenic, and staple groceries to detect impurities. She studied oils to discover how the danger from explosives could be lessened.

Mrs. Richards wrote many helpful books about home-making. She organized a society of people interested in promoting right living in the home, the school, and the community. The name of this organization is American Home Economics Association. Because of her influence home economics is now taught in schools throughout the land.

To Ellen H. Richards, sanitary chemist, the facts of science were never just facts, but the means of making people healthier and happier.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton—

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

“What a pity it is she’s a girl!”

Four-year-old Elizabeth heard this remark over and over again from the visitors who had come to see her baby sister. She thought that she ought to feel sorry for the baby, too. When she was a little older, Elizabeth Cady realized what a pity it was that girls and women could not have the same privileges and advantages as had boys and men.

Elizabeth Cady was born at Johnstown, New York, November 12, 1815. When this little girl grew up, she called the first Woman’s Rights Convention and worked all her life to gain more privileges for women. As a child she felt the disadvantages of being a girl in the early days of the 1800’s.

When her only brother, a fine promising college graduate, died, eleven-year-old Elizabeth realized that her father loved his son far more than all of his five daughters. Longing to comfort him Elizabeth climbed on his knee.

“Oh, my daughter, would that you were a boy!” was all that he could say.

From that moment Elizabeth resolved to equal boys. To be learned and courageous she decided was the way to accomplish her purpose. Before breakfast the next morning she went to her dear friend and pastor and asked him to teach her Greek. She insisted on beginning that very minute. To prove herself courageous she learned to drive a horse, and to leap a fence and ditch on horseback.

Within a short time she began to study Greek, Latin, and mathematics with a class of boys at the village academy. She did so well that she won the second prize, a Greek testament. Joyfully Elizabeth rushed home expecting to hear her father say, “Now, you are equal to a boy.” However, his kisses and praise failed to take away the sting of his remark, “Ah, you should have been a boy!” Elizabeth’s father was a distinguished lawyer and judge. His office adjoined the house, and there his little daughter spent much of her time talking with his students and listening to his clients.

Often his clients were widows who wept and complained that the property which they had brought into the family had been willed to their sons. Elizabeth could not understand why her father, who was wise and kind, could not help these poor women. Then Judge Cady would take down from the shelves a big volume and show her the law.

The students, seeing how interested she was in the laws about women, amused themselves by reading to her the most unfair laws that they could find. They often teased her, too, in order to hear her bright remarks.

Little Elizabeth was so distressed by the unfairness of the law in regard to women that she made up her mind to cut them all out of her father’s law books. She refrained from doing this upon learning that it would not help the situation.

Much to her disgust Elizabeth Cady could not go to college, as did her boy classmates, for at that time girls were not admitted. However, she entered the Willard Seminary for girls in Troy, New York, where she studied for some time. Later she went on with her studies at home, never losing her interest in laws for women.

In her twenty-fifth year Elizabeth Cady married Henry B. Stanton, a lecturer on antislavery, who later became a lawyer. After several happy years in Johnstown and Boston, the young couple settled in Seneca Falls, New York. By this time the champion of woman’s rights began to know by experience something of a woman’s home problems. She had a big house to manage with very little help, and her lively girls and boys needed constant care.

In her round of everyday duties, however, Mrs. Stanton did not forget the wrongs to women. She, together with Lucretia Mott and some others, called a big meeting, the first Woman’s Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls in 1848, to talk over this question.

At this meeting Mrs. Stanton and her coworkers presented a Declaration of Sentiments based upon the Declaration of Independence. They also presented eleven resolutions, one of which demanded the vote for women. Mrs. Stanton was entirely responsible for this resolution and placed great emphasis upon it. She believed that through the ballot for women all other rights for women could be secured.

The newspapers made a great deal of fun of all the reforms discussed at the convention, particularly the proposal that women should vote. In those days most people were quite ready to admit that a woman could manage her home capably and be bright and entertaining in company. However, they thought it very unwomanly that she should dream of helping to make laws to secure better schools or cleaner streets.

Mrs. Stanton was surprised and distressed to have her very serious purpose treated so lightly, but ridicule did not prevent her from upholding woman’s rights whenever she had an opportunity.

Three years after this she met Susan B. Anthony, the woman who was to be her lifelong friend and fellow-worker. Except for their lectures in the cause of temperance and antislavery, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony gave their whole lives to gaining more freedom for their fellow-women.

The two friends were very different in characteristics, but they were of one mind on the question of woman’s rights. Miss Anthony had not at first thought it necessary for women to have the vote, but she was soon won over to her friend’s opinion. Year after year these two earnest workers endeavored to arouse the country to do something for women. Never a jealous thought as to which one should have the glory for anything accomplished marred this fifty years of friendship.

Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony lectured in big cities and all sorts of little out-of-the way places. Together with their friend Mrs. Gage, they wrote a very complete history of what had been done to gain the vote for women.

Of Mrs. Stanton’s children, a daughter, Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch, has followed directly in her mother’s footsteps as a public speaker for the cause of women. She has also written several books about woman’s place in the work of the world. Theodore Stanton, one of the sons, also writes in behalf of women.

Throughout a long lifetime Elizabeth Cady Stanton courageously and steadfastly pleaded the cause of women. She lived to see them enjoying better property rights and educational privileges, and in four states helping to make the laws. Eighteen years after her death the Nineteenth Amendment gave the vote to women throughout the United States.

Harriet Beecher Stowe—

The Girl Whose Story of Slavery Aroused the Whole World

It was the night of the annual exhibition of the Litchfield Academy. Twelve-year-old Harriet Beecher waited eagerly for a certain part of the program. Presently she heard read before all the learned people assembled the familiar words of her own composition, one of the three chosen for this great occasion.

As Harriet listened to the sentences that she had composed with so much care, she watched the face of her father who sat on the platform. It brightened. She knew that he was interested.

At the close of the entertainment she heard him ask, “Who wrote that composition?”

Her teacher replied, “Your daughter, sir.”

It was the proudest moment of Harriet’s life. When this little academy student became a woman she wrote a book which set the whole world to thinking of the evil of slavery. It was _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_.

Harriet Beecher was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June 14, 1811. Her father had only a country parson’s meagre salary to provide for the wants of eleven children. What a father he was—grave and serious enough in the pulpit, but full of fun and enthusiasm at home. It was mere play for Harriet and the boys to pile wood, when their father superintended.

Harriet was very rich in sisters and brothers. She loved them all dearly, especially the merry, energetic big sister, Catherine, and the chubby little boy two years younger than she, Henry Ward Beecher, who grew up to be a famous minister.

Little Harriet had only a sweet memory of her mother who had died when she was a small child. Wherever she went, she was told of her mother’s beautiful life. It made her very happy to know that she had a mother whom everyone loved.

There were no expensive toys in the Beecher family, but Harriet was well content without them. She played with her glass-eyed wooden doll and a set of cups and saucers made by her own hands out of codfish bones. In the woodpile she found treasures in the moss and lichens on the logs. From them she fashioned little pictures using the moss for green fields, sprigs of spruce for the trees, and bits of glass for lakes and rivers.

Some of Harriet’s happiest hours were spent curled up in a corner of her father’s study, surrounded by her favorite books. It was a peaceful, restful place, she thought. She liked to glance up at her dear father as he was writing or thinking over his sermons. She enjoyed looking at the friendly faces of the books on the shelves. Very few of them, however, were books that she could understand.

One day while rummaging in a barrel of old sermons in the attic, Harriet came upon a copy of the _Arabian Nights_. How she and her brothers pored over its pages! Another precious treasure discovered in a barrel was Shakespeare’s play, _The Tempest_.

Harriet’s delight in stories was satisfied in another way. Every fall it was the custom to make enough apple sauce to last for the winter. It took a whole barrelful for the big Beecher family. All the little fingers were pressed into service to peel or quarter apples. Mr. Beecher would then ask who could tell the best story. As the apples bubbled and hissed in the big brass kettle, story after story went around. Mr. Beecher, himself, recited scenes from Sir Walter Scott’s novels, which were then new.

In the unheated, barnlike meetinghouse where Mr. Beecher preached, Harriet also spent many happy hours, although she was cold and cramped from sitting through the long sermons. Usually she did not understand her father’s big words, but one day he spoke so earnestly and simply about God’s love that Harriet never forgot it.

When Harriet grew up, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe. He was a professor in the Lane Theological Seminary, in Cincinnati, Ohio, of which her father had become the president.

In Ohio, adjacent to the slave state of Kentucky, everybody was thinking and talking about slavery. The Fugitive Slave Law, whereby runaway slaves must be returned to their masters, was causing heated discussions. Mrs. Stowe and her husband believed this to be a very unjust law and they helped a colored girl, the “Eliza” of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, to escape from her pursuers. Mrs. Stowe opened a school for colored children in her house, and raised money to buy the freedom of a slave boy.

Ever since the days of her school compositions Mrs. Stowe had enjoyed writing, and some of her stories had found their way into the papers. When Professor Stowe went to Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, to teach, his wife tried to do a little writing to add to his small salary. However, the work of looking after a large house and her family of small children left her little time for writing stories. Sometimes with her paper on the corner of the kitchen table and her ink on the teakettle, she managed to write a story, superintend the making of pastry, and watch the baby at the same time.

One day Mrs. Stowe received a letter from a relative urging her to write something that would stir the country against the evil of slavery. She earnestly declared that she would.

Soon thereafter the plot for her story, _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, flashed across her mind. She wrote a chapter as quickly as possible and sent it to the _National Era_, an antislavery paper. Chapter after chapter followed, written rapidly as the scenes of the story presented themselves to her. When it was completed it was published as a book. In a few days ten thousand copies were sold; in a year, three hundred thousand copies.

Mrs. Stowe wrote many other books, though none of them attained the prominence of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_. This book is considered to have been one of the most influential and widely read novels in literature.

From distinguished people all over the world came letters of congratulation to Mrs. Stowe. What she had written just because she felt that she must, with no thought of money or fame, brought her both. Harriet Beecher Stowe was further honored by being elected to the Hall of Fame in 1910.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s gift of expression, which she had been cultivating for many years under all sorts of difficulties, made it possible for her to draw a picture of slavery that aroused the whole world.

Kate Douglas Wiggin—

Who Put the Joy of Living Into Her Books

Although Katie Smith loved all the books on the black walnut bookshelves, the ones that she took down most often were some fat volumes by Charles Dickens. So much did she enjoy these stories that she named her yellow dog “Pip” after a character in one of them; and across her sled in big scarlet letters were painted the words “The Artful Dodger.”

One day Katie’s mother read in the paper that Mr. Charles Dickens had come to America. When Katie heard that he was going to give a reading from his books in Portland, Maine, only sixteen miles away, she was very much excited. How she longed to see and hear the wonderful man who had created so many delightful characters!

Katie and her mother had planned to go to Charlestown, Massachusetts, for a visit, stopping overnight in Portland. Now Katie’s mother decided that they would leave home so as to be in Portland on the night of the reading. But alas! a grown-up cousin, instead of little Katie, was taken to hear Mr. Dickens.

Katie bore her disappointment as best she could, and the next day after the reading she received her reward. Who should be riding on the very same train with Katie and her mother, but the great Charles Dickens himself! While Katie’s mother was talking with an acquaintance, the little girl slipped into the empty seat beside her favorite author.

“Where did you come from?” inquired Mr. Dickens in a surprised tone of voice.

“I came from Hollis, Maine,” stammered Katie Smith.

Presently the little girl and the famous author were chatting away like old friends. Mr. Dickens chuckled when he heard about the naming of Katie’s dog and her sled, and his eyes grew moist when she spoke of the characters that made her cry.

This nine-year-old admirer of Dickens had not the slightest idea that one day she would be an author herself. Years later, however, when she was known as Kate Douglas Wiggin, she wrote a delightful story about another little State-of-Maine girl, entitled _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_. She also wrote many other enjoyable books.

Kate Douglas Smith was not a State-of-Maine girl by birth. She was born in Philadelphia, September 28, 1859. When she was six years old her family moved to the village of Hollis, Maine.

Little Katie Smith loved the world in which she lived and especially her own little corner of it on the banks of the Saco River. What fun she had with her little sister Nora and her playmate Annie. Nora is better known to us as Nora Archibald Smith, the author of many charming stories for children. These little girls gathered velvety pussy willows, hunted for arbutus in the early spring, and picked wild strawberries and raspberries in the summer.

How amusing Katie found the froggery, a nice quiet pool where lived her favorite frogs! She knew them all by name and twice a week she arranged them very gently in a row on a strip of board for a singing lesson. In the winter she enjoyed coasting and snowballing. She also liked to be in the house where she could play with her orphanage of paper dolls and read her beloved books.

To little Katie Smith, work was almost as amusing as play. It was fun, she thought, to cut up rhubarb for sauce, to make milk toast for supper, to water the plants, to iron the handkerchiefs, and to go for the milk. Just to be alive, to run along the river bank, to help about the house, was enough for this joyous child. No dreams of authorship had come to her, though she was filling her mind with the pictures which she was later to give to the world in her books.

Katie Smith was taught at home and also attended a district school. Later she went to a boarding school in Maine, after which she attended Abbot Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, from which she was graduated.

When Kate Smith was seventeen years old she followed her family to Santa Barbara, California, where they had gone several years before. As there was very little money in the family treasury, the elder daughter of the house felt that she must begin to help at once. A girl’s story which she had written merely to amuse herself she decided to send to a magazine editor. What was Kate’s delight to receive in payment for the story a check for one hundred and fifty dollars, which came just in time to pay some taxes!

The proud young author, however, did not think of writing for a living. She decided that she did not yet know enough to write. She realized that she must live a little longer and learn more. In the meantime she decided to find some useful work to do. Years later, after she had become a successful author, she said that this decision was the most sensible act of her life.

Kate Smith soon found the work that she sought. Kindergartens were still very new in America. Miss Smith studied the system and organized a free kindergarten in San Francisco, the first one to be established west of the Rockies. This young woman was very successful in bringing happiness into the lives of the little children who flocked to her kindergarten.

It was for the purpose of raising money for kindergartens that the young teacher wrote two stories, _The Story of Patsy_, and _The Birds’ Christmas Carol_. She had them printed and sold at twenty-five cents a copy. Miss Smith thought that the only reason they sold well was because so many friends were anxious to help the good cause of free kindergartens. Little did she realize that these books would later bring her fame.

In 1880 Kate Douglas Smith married Samuel Bradley Wiggin, who was a California lawyer. It was not until several years later that Mrs. Wiggin thought of sending a paper-covered copy of _The Birds’ Christmas Carol_ to a publisher. This charming story of the Ruggles family was accepted at once and more stories requested. From that time on Mrs. Wiggin devoted herself to writing.

Girls and boys of to-day all over the world love her Rebecca, Carol, Patsy, and Timothy just as the little girl of Hollis, Maine, loved the children in Dickens’ stories. Kate Douglas Wiggin wrote often for children because she loved them and never forgot what it is like to be a child. She has also written many very entertaining books for older people.

“Rebecca” is not, as some people have thought, small Katie Smith herself. However, the district school where Rebecca wrote her famous composition was the one that the author attended.

In Kate Douglas Wiggin’s books are many pictures of the life that she lived as a child. She put herself into her books, but not as a character. In her stories you will find something of her own quick wit, her cheerfulness, her satisfaction in doing and helping, and her joy of living.

Frances E. Willard—

The Girl Who Fought The Dragon, Drink

Frances called her brother Oliver’s attention to the new law that she had written the previous night for “Fort City.” It read: “We will have no saloons or billiard halls, and then we will not need any jails.”

This little girl’s favorite game was to plan a play city, a place where everyone could live happily. She took a special delight in making laws for the health and pleasure of the citizens of her city.

Planning the city was only play, but in this game as well as in all others Frances Willard showed her remarkable ability as an organizer. Little did she realize that years later this ability would make her a valuable leader of the Temperance Cause.

Frances Elizabeth Willard was born at Churchville, New York, September 28, 1839. When she was but a tiny child, her parents moved to Oberlin, Ohio, in order that they might study at the university. After a few years of happy student life, Mr. Willard was obliged to give up his books and his dream of becoming a minister for a life outdoors in the West.

What an adventure the journey was for the three little Willards! There were no fine Pullman trains in which they could travel, for there were no railroads in that section of the country in those days. Three clumsy prairie schooners carried them to their new home. Frances and her little sister Mary rode in the third, perched comfortably enough among the cushions on the top of their father’s old-fashioned desk. For three weeks they traveled over the prairies, stopping only to cook their meals, gypsy-fashion, and to rest on Sundays.