To which she steadily adhered: it was,
To send the younger fry to boarding-schools,
And keep one virgin only, at a time,
And she the oldest, on her hands to marry.
So they came forward in their order: Julia,
And Isabel, and Caroline; until
I was dragged forth from maps and lexicons,
Slate-pencils and arithmetics, and put
Candidate Number Four, upon the list.

"My elder sisters had been all 'well-married';
That is, to parties able to provide
Establishments that Fashion would not scorn;
What more could be desired by loving parents?
As for resistance to her will, when once
She set her heart upon a match, my mother
Would no more bear it than a general
Would bear demur from a subordinate
When ordered into action. If a daughter,
When her chance offered, and was checked as good,
Presumed, from any scruple of dislike,
To block the way for her successor, then
Woe to that daughter, and no peace for her
Did she not, with an utter selfishness,
Stand in her younger sister's light? imperil
The poor child's welfare? doom her possibly
To an old maid's forlorn and cheerless lot?

"And so, with an imperious will, my mother
Would sweep away all hindrances, all doubts.
She was, besides, the slave of system; having
Adopted once the plan of bringing forward
No daughter till the previous one was mated,
It was a sacred custom; 'twas her own!
It had worked well; must not be broken through.
So my poor sisters went; and some of them
With doubting hearts.

"In me, my zealous mother
Found metal not so malleable quite.
One of my teachers at the boarding-school,
A little woman who got scanty pay
For teaching us in French and German, fed
Her lonely heart with dreams of what, some day,
Shall lift her sex to nobler life. She took
A journal called 'The Good Time Coming,' filled
With pleadings for reform of many kinds,--
In education, physical and mental,
Marriage, the rights of women, modes of living.
Weekly I had the reading of it all;
Some of it crude enough, some apt and just,
Forcibly put, and charged with vital facts.
At last these had for me a fascination
That quite eclipsed the novels of the day.

"I learnt, that, bound up in the moral law,
Are laws of health and physical control,
Unheeded in the family and school;
How fashion, stupid pride, and love of show,
The greed of gain, or the pursuit of pleasure