rivers of the West, and to get a
taste of free, primitive life among pioneers.

Before the year 1845, several of my friends had emigrated as teachers
or missionaries. One of the editors of the "Operatives' Magazine" had
gone to Arkansas with a mill-girl who had worked beside her among the
looms. They were at an Indian mission--to the Cherokees and Choctaws. I
seemed to breathe the air of that far Southwest, in a spray of yellow
jessamine which one of those friends sent me, pressed in a letter.
People wrote very long letters then, in those days of twenty-five cent
postage.

Rachel, at whose house our German class had been accustomed to meet,
had also left her work, and had gone to western Virginia to take charge
of a school. She wrote alluring letters to us about the scenery there;
it was in the neighborhood of the Natural Bridge.

My friend Angeline, with whom I used to read "Paradise Lost," went to
Ohio as a teacher, and returned the following year, for a very brief
visit, however,--and with a husband. Another acquaintance was in
Wisconsin, teaching a pioneer school. Eliza, my intimate companion, was
about to be married to a clergyman. She, too, eventually settled at the
West.

The event which brought most change into my own life was the marriage
of my sister Emilie. It involved the breaking up of our own little
family, of which she had really been the "houseband," the return of my
mother to my sisters at Beverly, and my going to board among strangers,
as other girls did. I found excellent quarters and kind friends, but
the home-life was ended.

My sister's husband was a grammar school master in the city, and their
cottage, a mile or more out, among the open fields, was my frequent
refuge from homesickness and the general clatter. Our partial
separation showed me how much I had depended upon my sister. I had
really let her do most of my thinking for me. Henceforth I was to trust
to my own resources. I was no longer the "little sister" who could ask
what to do, and do as she was told. It often brought me a feeling of
dismay to find that I must make up my own mind about things small and
great. And yet I was naturally self-reliant. I am not sure but
self-reliance and dependence really belong together. They do seem to
meet in the same character, like other extremes.

The health of Emilie's husband failing, after a year or two, it was
evident that he must change his employment and his residence. He
decided to go wit