lessed it is to give than to receive. Certainly, in later life,
she believed and practiced this doctrine like a devotee.

Mrs. Child began to climb the hill of knowledge under the instruction
of a maiden lady known as "Ma'am Betty," who kept school in her
bedroom which was never in order, drank from the nose of her
tea-kettle, chewed tobacco and much of it, and was shy to a degree
said to have been "supernatural," but she knew the way to the hearts
of children, who were very fond of her and regularly carried her a
Sunday dinner. After "Ma'am Betty," Mrs. Child attended the public
schools in Medford and had a year at a Medford private seminary.

These opportunities for education were cut off at the age of twelve
apparently by some change in the family fortunes which compelled the
removal of Maria to Norridgewock, Maine, on the borders of the great
northern wilderness, where a married sister was living. An influence
to which she gave chief credit for her intellectual development and
which was not wholly cut off by this removal was that of Convers
Francis, her favorite brother, next older than herself, afterward
minister in Watertown, and professor in the Divinity School of Harvard
University. In later life, Dr. Francis was an encyclopedia of
information and scholarship, very liberal in his views for the time.
Theodore Parker used to head pages in his journal with, "Questions to
ask Dr. Francis."

Dr. Francis began to prepare for college when Mrs. Child was nine
years old. Naturally the little girl wanted to read the books which
her brother read, and sometimes he seems to have instructed her and
sometimes he tantalized her, but always he stimulated her. Years
afterward she wrote him gratefully, "To your early influence, by
conversation, letters, and example I owe it that my busy energies
took a literary direction at all."

Norridgewock, her home from her twelfth to her eighteenth year, was
and is a very pretty country village, at that era the residence of
some very cultivated families, but hardly an educational center. As we
hear nothing of schools either there or elsewhere we are led to
suppose that this twelve year old girl had finished her education. If
she lacked opportunities for culture, she carried with her a desire
for it, which is half the battle, and she had the intellectual
stimulus of letters from her brother then in college, who seems to
have presided over her reading. What we know of her life at this
per