rn knowledge of
the restraints which held me prisoner, the idle longings of an exile.
But would no strong effort of will, no energy of heart or mind, break
the bonds that held me down,--no steady perseverance of purpose win me a
way out of darkness into light? No, for I was a woman, an ugly woman,
whose girlhood had gone by without affection, and whose womanhood was
passing without love,--a woman, poor and dependent on others for daily
bread, and yet so bound by conventional duties to those around her that
to break from them into independence would be to outrage all the
prejudices of those who made her world.

I could plan such escape from my daily and yearly narrowing life, could
dream of myself walking steadfast and unshaken through labor to
independence, could picture a life where, if the heart were not fed, at
least the tastes might be satisfied, could strengthen myself through all
the imaginary details of my going-forth from the narrow surroundings
which made my prison-walls; but when the time came to take the first
step, my courage failed. I could not go out into that world which looked
to me so wide and lonely; the necessity for love was too strong for me,
I must dwell among mine own people. There, at least, was the bond of
custom, there was the affection which grows out of habit; but in the
world what hope had I to win love from strangers, with my repellent
looks, awkward movements, and want of personal attractions?

Few persons know that within one hundred and fifty miles of the Queen
City of the West, bounded on both sides by highly cultivated tracts of
country, looking out westwardly on the very garden of Kentucky, almost
in the range of railroad and telegraph, in the very geographical centre
of our most populous regions, there lie some thousand square miles of
superb woodland, rolling, hill above hill, in the beautiful undulations
which characterize the country bordering on the Ohio, watered by fair
streams which need only the clearing away of the few obstructions
incident to a new country to make them navigable, and yet a country
where the mail passes only once a week, where all communication is by
horse-paths or by the slow course of the flat-boat, where schools are
not known and churches are never seen, where the Methodist itinerant
preacher gives all the religious instruction, and a stray newspaper
furnishes all the political information. Does any one doubt my
statement? Then let him ask a passage up-st