ttled in an
unknown country, that they might enjoy the rights to which they had
been born. The largest liberty for the individual consistent with the
equal liberty of others was demanded and received, nor did it lessen
as time went on. Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing
one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that
dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of
these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of
living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which
retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine
"plain living and high thinking," until in course of time the family
remained no longer a colony in itself. Clothing and every necessary,
which was formerly of home manufacture, could now be obtained from
without, and women found outside the family practicable work to do.

The first factory established in New England, early in the present
century, ended the old order or rather was the beginning of the end.
But long before machinery had made the factory a necessity, there had
been the struggle to break the bonds which held all women save the few
who had wealth fast to the household. The same spirit that brought the
pilgrim over the sea stirred in his descendants. The kitchen had
proved itself a prison no less than now, and women and girls flocked
into this new haven and worked with an enthusiasm that nothing could
dampen.

"Oh, those blessed factories!" said to me one day, a woman, herself an
earnest worker for present factory reform, and who began her literary
life as contributor to the Lowell _Offering_. "You people will never
know the emancipation they brought. I loathed the kitchen, and life
went by in one. So many New England kitchens were built with no
outlook, and ours was one. I used to run round the house to see the
sunset over the mountain, and I can hear Aunt Nabby now: 'There goes
that child again! I'd lock her up if she were mine!' We were all
locked up! No chance for more than the commonest education; no money
for any other. And then came these blessed factories! You laugh, but
that was what they seemed then. We earned in them and saved, and in
the end got our education, or gave it to our brothers, who were almost
as shut in. They have altered--yes; but they were deliverance in the
beginning, I can tell you, and in spite of present knowledge, I never
see one of the tall chimneys without remem