CHAPTER III.

GIRLHOOD.

Mrs. Willard's Seminary at Troy was the fashionable school in my

girlhood, and in the winter of 1830, with upward of a hundred other

girls, I found myself an active participant in all the joys and sorrows

of that institution. When in family council it was decided to send me to

that intellectual Mecca, I did not receive the announcement with unmixed

satisfaction, as I had fixed my mind on Union College. The thought of a

school without boys, who had been to me such a stimulus both in study

and play, seemed to my imagination dreary and profitless.

The one remarkable feature of my journey to Troy was the railroad from

Schenectady to Albany, the first ever laid in this country. The manner

of ascending a high hill going out of the city would now strike

engineers as stupid to the last degree. The passenger cars were pulled

up by a train, loaded with stones, descending the hill. The more

rational way of tunneling through the hill or going around it had not

yet dawned on our Dutch ancestors. At every step of my journey to Troy I

felt that I was treading on my pride, and thus in a hopeless frame of

mind I began my boarding-school career. I had already studied everything

that was taught there except French, music, and dancing, so I devoted

myself to these accomplishments. As I had a good voice I enjoyed

singing, with a guitar accompaniment, and, having a good ear for time, I

appreciated the harmony in music and motion and took great delight in

dancing. The large house, the society of so many girls, the walks about

the city, the novelty of everything made the new life more enjoyable

than I had anticipated. To be sure I missed the boys, with whom I had

grown up, played with for years, and later measured my intellectual

powers with, but, as they became a novelty, there was new zest in

occasionally seeing them. After I had been there a short time, I heard a

call one day: "Heads out!" I ran with the rest and exclaimed, "What is

it?" expecting to see a giraffe or some other wonder from Barnum's

Museum. "Why, don't you see those boys?" said one. "Oh," I replied, "is

that all? I have seen boys all my life." When visiting family friends in

the city, we were in the way of making the acquaintance of their sons,

and as all social relations were strictly forbidden, there was a new

interest in seeing them. As they were not allowed to call upon us or

write notes, unless they were brothers or cousins, we had, in time, a

large number of kinsmen.

There was an intense interest to me now in writing notes, receiving

calls, and joining the young men in the streets for a walk, such as I

had never known when in constant association with them at school and in

our daily amusements. Shut up with girls, most of them older than

myself, I heard many subjects discussed of which I had never thought

before, and in a manner it were better I had never heard. The healthful

restraint always existing between boys and girls in conversation is apt

to be relaxed with either sex alone. In all my intimate association with

boys up to that period, I cannot recall one word or act for criticism,

but I cannot say the same of the girls during the three years I passed

at the seminary in Troy. My own experience proves to me that it is a

grave mistake to send boys and girls to separate institutions of

learning, especially at the most impressible age. The stimulus of sex

promotes alike a healthy condition of the intellectual and the moral

faculties and gives to both a development they never can acquire alone.

Mrs. Willard, having spent several months in Europe, did not return

until I had been at the seminary some time. I well remember her arrival,

and the joy with which she was greeted by the teachers and pupils who

had known her before. She was a splendid-looking woman, then in her

prime, and fully realized my idea of a queen. I doubt whether any royal

personage in the Old World could have received her worshipers with more

grace and dignity than did this far-famed daughter of the Republic. She

was one of the remarkable women of that period, and did a great

educational work for her sex. She gave free scholarships to a large

number of promising girls, fitting them for teachers, with a proviso

that, when the opportunity arose, they should, in turn, educate others.

I shall never forget one incident that occasioned me much unhappiness. I

had written a very amusing composition, describing my room. A friend

came in to see me just as I had finished it, and, as she asked me to

read it to her, I did so. She enjoyed it very much and proposed an

exchange. She said the rooms were all so nearly alike that, with a

little alteration, she could use it. Being very susceptible to flattery,

her praise of my production won a ready assent; but when I read her

platitudes I was sorry I had changed, and still more so in the

_denouement_.

Those selected to prepare compositions read them before the whole

school. My friend's was received with great laughter and applause. The

one I read not only fell flat, but nearly prostrated me also. As soon as

I had finished, one of the young ladies left the room and, returning in

a few moments with her composition book, laid it before the teacher who

presided that day, showing her the same composition I had just read. I

was called up at once to explain, but was so amazed and confounded that

I could not speak, and I looked the personification of guilt. I saw at a

glance the contemptible position I occupied and felt as if the last day

had come, that I stood before the judgment seat and had heard the awful

sentence pronounced, "Depart ye wicked into everlasting punishment." How

I escaped from that scene to my own room I do not know. I was too

wretched for tears. I sat alone for a long time when a gentle tap

announced my betrayer. She put her arms around me affectionately and

kissed me again and again.

"Oh!" she said, "you are a hero. You went through that trying ordeal

like a soldier. I was so afraid, when you were pressed with questions,

that the whole truth would come out and I be forced to stand in your

place. I am not so brave as you; I could not endure it. Now that you are

through it and know how bitter a trial it is, promise that you will save

me from the same experience. You are so good and noble I know you will

not betray me."

In this supreme moment of misery and disgrace, her loving words and warm

embrace were like balm to my bruised soul and I readily promised all

she asked. The girl had penetrated the weak point in my character. I

loved flattery. Through that means she got my composition in the first

place, pledged me to silence in the second place, and so confused my

moral perceptions that I really thought it praiseworthy to shelter her

from what I had suffered. However, without betrayal on my part, the

trick came to light through the very means she took to make concealment

sure. After compositions were read they were handed over to a certain

teacher for criticism. Miss ---- had copied mine, and returned to me the

original. I had not copied hers, so the two were in the same

handwriting--one with my name outside and one with Miss ----'s.

As I stood well in school, both for scholarship and behavior, my sudden

fall from grace occasioned no end of discussion. So, as soon as the

teacher discovered the two compositions in Miss ----'s writing, she came

to me to inquire how I got one of Miss ----'s compositions. She said,

"Where is yours that you wrote for that day?"

Taking it from my portfolio, I replied, "Here it is."

She then asked, "Did you copy it from her book?"

I replied, "No; I wrote it myself."

"Then why did you not read your own?"

"We agreed to change," said I.

"Did you know that Miss ---- had copied that from the book of another

young lady?"

"No, not until I was accused of doing it myself before the whole

school."

"Why did you not defend yourself on the spot?"

"I could not speak, neither did I know what to say."

"Why have you allowed yourself to remain in such a false position for a

whole week?"

"I do not know."

"Suppose I had not found this out, did you intend to keep silent?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Did Miss ---- ask you to do so?"

"Yes."

I had been a great favorite with this teacher, but she was so disgusted

with my stupidity, as she called my timidity, that she said:

"Really, my child, you have not acted in this matter as if you had

ordinary common sense."

So little do grown people, in familiar surroundings, appreciate the

confusion of a child's faculties, under new and trying experiences. When

poor Miss ----'s turn came to stand up before the whole school and take

the burden on her own shoulders she had so cunningly laid on mine, I

readily shed the tears for her I could not summon for myself. This was

my first sad lesson in human duplicity.

This episode, unfortunately, destroyed in a measure my confidence in my

companions and made me suspicious even of those who came to me with

appreciative words. Up to this time I had accepted all things as they

seemed on the surface. Now I began to wonder what lay behind the visible

conditions about me. Perhaps the experience was beneficial, as it is

quite necessary for a young girl, thrown wholly on herself for the first

time among strangers, to learn caution in all she says and does. The

atmosphere of home life, where all disguises and pretensions are thrown

off, is quite different from a large school of girls, with the petty

jealousies and antagonisms that arise in daily competition in their

dress, studies, accomplishments, and amusements.

The next happening in Troy that seriously influenced my character was

the advent of the Rev. Charles G. Finney, a pulpit orator, who, as a

terrifier of human souls, proved himself the equal of Savonarola. He

held a protracted meeting in the Rev. Dr. Beaman's church, which many of

my schoolmates attended. The result of six weeks of untiring effort on

the part of Mr. Finney and his confreres was one of those intense

revival seasons that swept over the city and through the seminary like

an epidemic, attacking in its worst form the most susceptible. Owing to

my gloomy Calvinistic training in the old Scotch Presbyterian church,

and my vivid imagination, I was one of the first victims. We attended

all the public services, beside the daily prayer and experience meetings

held in the seminary. Our studies, for the time, held a subordinate

place to the more important duty of saving our souls.

To state the idea of conversion and salvation as then understood, one

can readily see from our present standpoint that nothing could be more

puzzling and harrowing to the young mind. The revival fairly started,

the most excitable were soon on the anxious seat. There we learned the

total depravity of human nature and the sinner's awful danger of

everlasting punishment. This was enlarged upon until the most innocent

girl believed herself a monster of iniquity and felt certain of eternal

damnation. Then God's hatred of sin was emphasized and his

irreconcilable position toward the sinner so justified that one felt

like a miserable, helpless, forsaken worm of the dust in trying to

approach him, even in prayer.

Having brought you into a condition of profound humility, the only

cardinal virtue for one under conviction, in the depths of your despair

you were told that it required no herculean effort on your part to be

transformed into an angel, to be reconciled to God, to escape endless

perdition. The way to salvation was short and simple. We had naught to

do but to repent and believe and give our hearts to Jesus, who was ever

ready to receive them. How to do all this was the puzzling question.

Talking with Dr. Finney one day, I said:

"I cannot understand what I am to do. If you should tell me to go to the

top of the church steeple and jump off, I would readily do it, if

thereby I could save my soul; but I do not know how to go to Jesus."

"Repent and believe," said he, "that is all you have to do to be happy

here and hereafter."

"I am very sorry," I replied, "for all the evil I have done, and I

believe all you tell me, and the more sincerely I believe, the more

unhappy I am."

With the natural reaction from despair to hope many of us imagined

ourselves converted, prayed and gave our experiences in the meetings,

and at times rejoiced in the thought that we were Christians--chosen

children of God--rather than sinners and outcasts.

But Dr. Finney's terrible anathemas on the depravity and deceitfulness

of the human heart soon shortened our newborn hopes. His appearance in

the pulpit on these memorable occasions is indelibly impressed on my

mind. I can see him now, his great eyes rolling around the congregation

and his arms flying about in the air like those of a windmill. One

evening he described hell and the devil and the long procession of

sinners being swept down the rapids, about to make the awful plunge

into the burning depths of liquid fire below, and the rejoicing hosts in

the inferno coming up to meet them with the shouts of the devils echoing

through the vaulted arches. He suddenly halted, and, pointing his index

finger at the supposed procession, he exclaimed:

"There, do you not see them!"

I was wrought up to such a pitch that I actually jumped up and gazed in

the direction to which he pointed, while the picture glowed before my

eyes and remained with me for months afterward. I cannot forbear saying

that, although high respect is due to the intellectual, moral, and

spiritual gifts of the venerable ex-president of Oberlin College, such

preaching worked incalculable harm to the very souls he sought to save.

Fear of the judgment seized my soul. Visions of the lost haunted my

dreams. Mental anguish prostrated my health. Dethronement of my reason

was apprehended by friends. But he was sincere, so peace to his ashes!

Returning home, I often at night roused my father from his slumbers to

pray for me, lest I should be cast into the bottomless pit before

morning.

To change the current of my thoughts, a trip was planned to Niagara, and

it was decided that the subject of religion was to be tabooed

altogether. Accordingly our party, consisting of my sister, her husband,

my father and myself, started in our private carriage, and for six weeks

I heard nothing on the subject. About this time Gall and Spurzheim

published their works on phrenology, followed by Combe's "Constitution

of Man," his "Moral Philosophy," and many other liberal works, all so

rational and opposed to the old theologies that they produced a profound

impression on my brother-in-law's mind. As we had these books with us,

reading and discussing by the way, we all became deeply interested in

the new ideas. Thus, after many months of weary wandering in the

intellectual labyrinth of "The Fall of Man," "Original Sin," "Total

Depravity," "God's Wrath," "Satan's Triumph," "The Crucifixion," "The

Atonement," and "Salvation by Faith," I found my way out of the darkness

into the clear sunlight of Truth. My religious superstitions gave place

to rational ideas based on scientific facts, and in proportion, as I

looked at everything from a new standpoint, I grew more and more happy,

day by day. Thus, with a delightful journey in the month of June, an

entire change in my course of reading and the current of my thoughts, my

mind was restored to its normal condition. I view it as one of the

greatest crimes to shadow the minds of the young with these gloomy

superstitions; and with fears of the unknown and the unknowable to

poison all their joy in life.

After the restraints of childhood at home and in school, what a period

of irrepressible joy and freedom comes to us in girlhood with the first

taste of liberty. Then is our individuality in a measure recognized and

our feelings and opinions consulted; then we decide where and when we

will come and go, what we will eat, drink, wear, and do. To suit one's

own fancy in clothes, to buy what one likes, and wear what one chooses

is a great privilege to most young people. To go out at pleasure, to

walk, to ride, to drive, with no one to say us nay or question our right

to liberty, this is indeed like a birth into a new world of happiness

and freedom. This is the period, too, when the emotions rule us, and we

idealize everything in life; when love and hope make the present an

ecstasy and the future bright with anticipation.

Then comes that dream of bliss that for weeks and months throws a halo

of glory round the most ordinary characters in every-day life, holding

the strongest and most common-sense young men and women in a thraldom

from which few mortals escape. The period when love, in soft silver

tones, whispers his first words of adoration, painting our graces and

virtues day by day in living colors in poetry and prose, stealthily

punctuated ever and anon with a kiss or fond embrace. What dignity it

adds to a young girl's estimate of herself when some strong man makes

her feel that in her hands rest his future peace and happiness! Though

these seasons of intoxication may come once to all, yet they are seldom

repeated. How often in after life we long for one more such rapturous

dream of bliss, one more season of supreme human love and passion!

After leaving school, until my marriage, I had the most pleasant years

of my girlhood. With frequent visits to a large circle of friends and

relatives in various towns and cities, the monotony of home life was

sufficiently broken to make our simple country pleasures always

delightful and enjoyable. An entirely new life now opened to me. The old

bondage of fear of the visible and the invisible was broken and, no

longer subject to absolute authority, I rejoiced in the dawn of a new

day of freedom in thought and action.

My brother-in-law, Edward Bayard, ten years my senior, was an

inestimable blessing to me at this time, especially as my mind was just

then opening to the consideration of all the varied problems of life. To

me and my sisters he was a companion in all our amusements, a teacher

in the higher departments of knowledge, and a counselor in all our

youthful trials and disappointments. He was of a metaphysical turn of

mind, and in the pursuit of truth was in no way trammeled by popular

superstitions. He took nothing for granted and, like Socrates, went

about asking questions. Nothing pleased him more than to get a bevy of

bright young girls about him and teach them how to think clearly and

reason logically.

One great advantage of the years my sisters and myself spent at the Troy

Seminary was the large number of pleasant acquaintances we made there,

many of which ripened into lifelong friendships. From time to time many

of our classmates visited us, and all alike enjoyed the intellectual

fencing in which my brother-in-law drilled them. He discoursed with us

on law, philosophy, political economy, history, and poetry, and together

we read novels without number. The long winter evenings thus passed

pleasantly, Mr. Bayard alternately talking and reading aloud Scott,

Bulwer, James, Cooper, and Dickens, whose works were just then coming

out in numbers from week to week, always leaving us in suspense at the

most critical point of the story. Our readings were varied with

recitations, music, dancing, and games.

As we all enjoyed brisk exercise, even with the thermometer below zero,

we took long walks and sleighrides during the day, and thus the winter

months glided quickly by, while the glorious summer on those blue hills

was a period of unmixed enjoyment. At this season we arose at five in

the morning for a long ride on horseback through the beautiful Mohawk

Valley and over the surrounding hills. Every road and lane in that

region was as familiar to us and our ponies, as were the trees to the

squirrels we frightened as we cantered by their favorite resorts.

Part of the time Margaret Christie, a young girl of Scotch descent, was

a member of our family circle. She taught us French, music, and dancing.

Our days were too short for all we had to do, for our time was not

wholly given to pleasure. We were required to keep our rooms in order,

mend and make our clothes, and do our own ironing. The latter was one of

my mother's politic requirements, to make our laundry lists as short as

possible.

Ironing on hot days in summer was a sore trial to all of us; but Miss

Christie, being of an inventive turn of mind, soon taught us a short way

out of it. She folded and smoothed her undergarments with her hands and

then sat on them for a specified time. We all followed her example and

thus utilized the hours devoted to our French lessons and, while reading

"Corinne" and "Télémaque," in this primitive style we ironed our

clothes. But for dresses, collars and cuffs, and pocket handkerchiefs,

we were compelled to wield the hot iron, hence with these articles we

used all due economy, and my mother's object was thus accomplished.

As I had become sufficiently philosophical to talk over my religious

experiences calmly with my classmates who had been with me through the

Finney revival meetings, we all came to the same conclusion--that we had

passed through no remarkable change and that we had not been born again,

as they say, for we found our tastes and enjoyments the same as ever. My

brother-in-law explained to us the nature of the delusion we had all

experienced, the physical conditions, the mental processes, the church

machinery by which such excitements are worked up, and the impositions

to which credulous minds are necessarily subjected. As we had all been

through that period of depression and humiliation, and had been

oppressed at times with the feeling that all our professions were arrant

hypocrisy and that our last state was worse than our first, he helped us

to understand these workings of the human mind and reconciled us to the

more rational condition in which we now found ourselves. He never grew

weary of expounding principles to us and dissipating the fogs and mists

that gather over young minds educated in an atmosphere of superstition.

We had a constant source of amusement and vexation in the students in my

father's office. A succession of them was always coming fresh from

college and full of conceit. Aching to try their powers of debate on

graduates from the Troy Seminary, they politely questioned all our

theories and assertions. However, with my brother-in-law's training in

analysis and logic, we were a match for any of them. Nothing pleased me

better than a long argument with them on woman's equality, which I tried

to prove by a diligent study of the books they read and the games they

played. I confess that I did not study so much for a love of the truth

or my own development, in these days, as to make those young men

recognize my equality. I soon noticed that, after losing a few games of

chess, my opponent talked less of masculine superiority. Sister Madge

would occasionally rush to the defense with an emphatic "Fudge for these

laws, all made by men! I'll never obey one of them. And as to the

students with their impertinent talk of superiority, all they need is

such a shaking up as I gave the most disagreeable one yesterday. I

invited him to take a ride on horseback. He accepted promptly, and said

he would be most happy to go. Accordingly I told Peter to saddle the

toughest-mouthed, hardest-trotting carriage horse in the stable. Mounted

on my swift pony, I took a ten-mile canter as fast as I could go, with

that superior being at my heels calling, as he found breath, for me to

stop, which I did at last and left him in the hands of Peter, half dead

at his hotel, where he will be laid out, with all his marvelous

masculine virtues, for a week at least. Now do not waste your arguments

on these prigs from Union College. Take each, in turn, the ten-miles'

circuit on 'Old Boney' and they'll have no breath left to prate of

woman's inferiority. You might argue with them all day, and you could

not make them feel so small as I made that popinjay feel in one hour. I

knew 'Old Boney' would keep up with me, if he died for it, and that my

escort could neither stop nor dismount, except by throwing himself from

the saddle."

"Oh, Madge!" I exclaimed; "what will you say when he meets you again?"

"If he complains, I will say 'the next time you ride see that you have a

curb bit before starting.' Surely, a man ought to know what is necessary

to manage a horse, and not expect a woman to tell him."

Our lives were still further varied and intensified by the usual number

of flirtations, so called, more or less lasting or evanescent, from all

of which I emerged, as from my religious experiences, in a more rational

frame of mind. We had been too much in the society of boys and young

gentlemen, and knew too well their real character, to idealize the sex

in general. In addition to our own observations, we had the advantage

of our brother-in-law's wisdom. Wishing to save us as long as possible

from all matrimonial entanglements, he was continually unveiling those

with whom he associated, and so critically portraying their intellectual

and moral condition that it was quite impossible, in our most worshipful

moods, to make gods of any of the sons of Adam.

However, in spite of all our own experiences and of all the warning

words of wisdom from those who had seen life in its many phases, we

entered the charmed circle at last, all but one marrying into the legal

profession, with its odious statute laws and infamous decisions. And

this, after reading Blackstone, Kent, and Story, and thoroughly

understanding the status of the wife under the old common law of

England, which was in force at that time in most of the States of the

Union.