daughter, Margaret
Read Caldwell.

She soon loved Margaret as a sister and was devoted to her children.
None of her new friends were Quakers and she enjoyed their social life
thoroughly, leaving behind her forever the somber clothing which she
had heretofore regarded as a mark of righteousness. She began her
school with twenty-five pupils and a yearly salary of approximately
$110. This was more than she had ever earned before, and for the first
time in her life she spent her money freely on herself.

Her first quarterly examination, held before the principal, the
trustees, and parents, established her reputation as a teacher, and in
addition everyone said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful."[25] She had
dressed up for the occasion, wearing a new plaid muslin, purple,
white, blue, and brown, with white collar and cuffs, and had hung a
gold watch and chain about her neck. She wound the four braids of her
smooth brown hair around her big shell comb and put on her new
prunella gaiters with patent-leather heels and tips. She looked so
pretty, so neat, and so capable that many of the parents feared some
young man would fall desperately in love with her and rob the academy
of a teacher. She did have more than her share of admirers. She soon
saw her first circus and went to her first ball, a real novelty for
the young woman who had sat demurely along the wall in the attic room
of her Center Falls home while her more worldly friends danced.

In spite of all her good times, she missed her family, but because of
the long trip to Rochester, she did not return to the farm for two
years. She spent her vacations with Guelma and Hannah, who lived only
a few hours away, or in Albany with her former teacher at Deborah
Moulson's seminary, Lydia Mott, a cousin by marriage of Lucretia Mott.
In anticipation of a vacation at home, she wrote her parents,
"Sometimes I can hardly wait for the day to come. They have talked of
building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My
room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not
pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at
least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school
of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty
compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is
wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest
and truest friends will give me new life and fresh cou