nses grew wider, and the price of the
bare necessities of exisence{sic} climbed up and up. The largest amount
I could earn at teaching was six dollars a week, and our school year
included only two terms of thirteen weeks each. It was an incessant
struggle to keep our land, to pay our taxes, and to live. Calico was
selling at fifty cents a yard. Coffee was one dollar a pound. There were
no men left to grind our corn, to get in our crops, or to care for our
live stock; and all around us we saw our struggle reflected in the lives
of our neighbors.

At long intervals word came to us of battles in which my father's
regiment--the Tenth Michigan Cavalry Volunteers--or those of my brothers
were engaged, and then longer intervals followed in which we heard no
news. After Eleanor's death my brother Tom was wounded, and for months
we lived in terror of worse tidings, but he finally recovered. I was
walking seven and eight miles a day, and doing extra work before and
after school hours, and my health began to fail. Those were years I do
not like to look back upon--years in which life had degenerated into a
treadmill whose monotony was broken only by the grim messages from the
front. My sister Mary married and went to Big Rapids to live. I had no
time to dream my dream, but the star of my one purpose still glowed in
my dark horizon. It seemed that nothing short of a miracle could lift my
feet from their plodding way and set them on the wider path toward which
my eyes were turned, but I never lost faith that in some manner the
miracle would come to pass. As certainly as I have ever known anything,
I KNEW that I was going to college!

III. HIGH-SCHOOL AND COLLEGE DAYS

The end of the Civil War brought freedom to me, too. When peace was
declared my father and brothers returned to the claim in the wilderness
which we women of the family had labored so desperately to hold while
they were gone. To us, as to others, the final years of the war had
brought many changes. My sister Eleanor's place was empty. Mary, as I
have said, had married and gone to live in Big Rapids, and my mother
and I were alone with my brother Harry, now a boy of fourteen. After the
return of our men it was no longer necessary to devote every penny of
my earnings to the maintenance of our home. For the first time I could
begin to save a portion of my income toward the fulfilment of my college
dream, but even yet there was a long, arid stretch ahead of me befor