Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/253

Rh evils of society which she saw everywhere around her, she began early to ponder over, and to endeavor to study out, the why and Wherefore of this disparity: a great and yet unsolved problem. She began also to devise what to her seemed feasible and effective means of counterbalancing or abolishing many of the evils that go to make the poor man's lot so hard.

In her earnest enthusiasm, her deep-felt concern, in these things, she could not long forbear speaking of them to others, and urging upon them some sort of action, to help themselves into a better mode of life, and to keep their descendants from sinking still deeper into degradation and poverty. She talked a great deal of what was uppermost in her mind to her father's customers and to his workmen, and thus in individual cases did already arouse attention and interest.

At first her girlish enthusiasm and eagerness on these subjects, generally considered so foreign to her sex, awakened only