ater on when their
new brick house was finished, he set aside a large room for the
school, and here for the first time in that district the pupils had
separate seats, stools without backs, instead of the usual benches
around the schoolroom walls. He engaged as teachers young women who
had studied a year or two in a female seminary; and because female
seminaries were rare in those days, women teachers with up-to-date
training were hard to find. Only a few visionaries believed in the
education of women. Nearby Emma Willard's recently established Troy
Female Seminary was being watched with interest and suspicion. Mary
Lyon, who had not yet founded her own seminary at Mt. Holyoke, was
teaching at Zilpha Grant's school in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and one
of her pupils, Mary Perkins, came to Battenville to teach the Anthony
children. Mary Perkins brought new methods and new studies to the
little school. She introduced a primer with small black illustrations
which fascinated Susan. She taught the children to recite poetry,
drilled them regularly in calisthenics, and longed to add music as
well, but Daniel Anthony forbade this, for Quakers believed that music
might seduce the thoughts of the young. So Susan, although she often
had a song in her heart, had to repress it and never knew the joy of
singing the songs of childhood.

Her father, looking upon the millworkers as part of his family,
started an evening school for them, often teaching it himself or
calling in the family teacher. He organized a temperance society among
the workers, and all signed a pledge never to drink distilled liquor.
When he opened a store in the new brick building, he refused to sell
liquor, although Judge McLean warned him it would ruin his trade.
Daniel Anthony went even further. He resolved not to serve liquor when
the millworkers' houses were built and the neighbors came to the
"raising." Again Judge McLean protested, feeling certain that the men
and boys would demand their gin and their rum, but Susan and her
sisters helped their mother serve lemonade, tea, coffee, doughnuts,
and gingerbread in abundance. The men joked a bit about the lack of
strong drink which they expected with every meal, but they did not
turn away from the good substitutes which were offered and they were
on hand for the next "raising." Hearing all of this discussed at home,
Susan, again proud of her father, ardently advocated the cause of
temperance.

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