bill
for a Goddess of Liberty. Indeed, he wanted me to be educated for an
artist, and was far-seeing and generous enough to have been my permanent
patron, had an artistic education, or any other education, been possible
for a Western Pennsylvania girl in that dark age--the first half of the
nineteenth century.

Mother made a discovery in the art of coloring leghorn and straw
bonnets, which brought her plenty of work, so we never lacked comforts
of life, although grandfather's executors made us pay rent for the house
we occupied.

CHAPTER IV.

GO TO BOARDING-SCHOOL.--AGE, 12.

During my childhood there were no public schools in Pennsylvania. The
State was pretty well supplied with colleges for boys, while girls were
permitted to go to subscription schools. To these we were sent part of
the time, and in one of them Joseph Caldwell, afterwards a prominent
missionary to India, was a schoolmate. But we had Dr. Black's sermons,
full of grand morals, science and history.

In lieu of colleges for girls, there were boarding-schools, and
Edgeworth was esteemed one of the best in the State. It was at
Braddock's Field, and Mrs. Olever, an English woman of high culture, was
its founder and principal. To it my cousin, Mary Alexander, was sent,
but returned homesick, and refused to go back unless I went with her. It
was arranged that I should go for a few weeks, as I was greatly in need
of country air; and, highly delighted, I was at the rendezvous at the
hour, one o'clock, with my box, ready for this excursion into the world
of polite literature. Mary was also there, and a new scholar, but Father
Olever did not come for us until four o'clock. He was a small, nervous
gentleman, and lamps were already lighted in the smoky city when we
started to drive twelve miles through spring mud, on a cloudy, cheerless
afternoon. We knew he had no confidence in his power to manage those
horses, though we also knew he would do his best to save us from harm;
but as darkness closed around us, I think we felt like babes in the
woods, and shuddered with vague fear as much as with cold and damp. When
we reached the "Bullock Pens," half a mile west of Wilkinsburg, there
were many lights and much bustle in and around the old yellow tavern,
where teamsters were attending to their weary horses. Here we turned off
to the old mud road, and came to a place of which I had no previous
knowledge--a place of outer darkness and chattering teeth.

We m