ave been
looked upon as a rather select industrial school for young people. The
girls there were just such girls as are knocking at the doors of young
women's colleges to-day. They had come to work with their hands, but
they could not hinder the working of their minds also. Their mental
activity was overflowing at every possible outlet.

Many of them were supporting themselves at schools like Bradford
Academy or Ipswich Seminary half the year, by working in the mills the
other half. Mount Holyoke Seminary broke upon the thoughts of many of
them as a vision of hope,--I remember being dazzled by it myself for a
while,--and Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the
Lowell mill-girls. Meanwhile they were improving themselves and
preparing for their future in every possible way, by purchasing and
reading standard books, by attending lectures, and evening classes of
their own getting up, and by meeting each other for reading and
conversation.

That they should write was no more strange than that they should study,
or read, or think. And yet there were those to whom it seemed
incredible that a girl could, in the pauses of her work, put together
words with her pen that it would do to print; and after a while the
assertion was circulated, through some distant newspaper, that our
magazine was not written by ourselves at all, but by "Lowell lawyers."
This seemed almost too foolish a suggestion to contradict, but the
editor of the "Offering" thought it best to give the name and
occupation of some of the writers by way of refutation. It was for this
reason (much against my own wish) that my real name was first attached
to anything I wrote. I was then book-keeper in the cloth-room of the
Lawrence Mills. We had all used any fanciful signature we chose,
varying it as we pleased. After I began to read and love Wordsworth, my
favorite nom de plume was "Rotha." In the later numbers of the
magazine, the editor more frequently made us of my initials. One day I
was surprised by seeing my name in full in Griswold's "Female
Poet's;"--no great distinction, however, since there were a hundred
names or so, besides.

It seemed necessary to give these gossip items about myself; but the
real interest of every separate life-story is involved in the larger
life-history which is going on around it. We do not know ourselves
without our companions and surroundings. I cannot narrate my workmates'
separate experiences, but I know that be