w and then that we catch a glimpse of
this development, which was singularly mature and singularly free from
restriction.

"I have read many Tales," she says, "how true, in my small Experience, I
know not, of the aptitude of Women, particularly those young women whose
characters are in a state of most Imperfect Development, to yield in
matters essential to their best Happiness to the Opposing Wishes of
Parents and Guardians. I speak of those Matters, perhaps not the most
fitting for the Speculations of a but Partially-schooled Maiden--Love,
and the Choosing of a Husband. While in these matters, as in all others,
the Wishes of Wise and Fond Parents and Guardians are the only safe
Guides for a young and Untrained Spirit, there are other Cases where
Injustice and a Desire to Rule are but slender Grounds for the exercise
of Authority. I know that my Boldness in this Opinion cannot pass even
my own mind unchallenged, but when I read of Unwilling Maids forced to
the very Church Door or Languishing under unmerited sternness, and
Yielding up their own Happiness, and that of another (though he be a
Man) into the Hands of an unwise Judge through inability to resist such
unloving Pressure, my Nature rebels against it. It would seem to me
cause for a Glad and an Unfaltering Resistance. For a Husband is, after
all, a Matter for a Maid's own choosing."

"The beaten path," says the biographer, "had ever but little attraction
for Mary Twining. It had been well had she been less fain to seek
Opportunity for a Lawful Resistance to Bonds. It seemeth ever to the
Young that such opportunities are not long in coming."

It was not only from the consciences of the colonial fathers that the
stirrings of independence went forth. Apparently there was a spirit
abroad that breathed now and then from the lips of but partially-schooled
maidens. Still, it is not unruliness, this protest of a young and
independent spirit against the slavishness now and then upheld in
certain forms of literature. There is little revolutionary, after all,
in Mary's sentiment that "a Husband is a matter for a Maid's own
choosing."

But we must pass over the last few notes of her school life. At nineteen
she left school forever.

"I am about to leave this little Life of School," she writes, "for a
larger Life of Home, and mayhap a Taste of that Life which is called of
the World. And if I be not now, at the age of Nineteen years, equipped
for the change and able to co