Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/256

Rh UCY STONE was born August 13, 1818, on a rocky farm on Coy's Hill, about three miles from West Brookfield, Mass. She was the daughter of Francis Stone and his wife, Hannah Matthews, and was the eighth of nine children. She came of good New England stock. Her great-grandfather, Francis Stone, first, fought in the French and Indian War. Her grandfather, Francis Stone, second, was an officer in the war of the Revolution and afterward Captain of four hundred men in Shays's Rebellion. Her father, the third Francis Stone, was a man of uncommon force and ability, as well as of much natural wit and brightness. He had been a successful teacher and afterward an exceptionally skilful tanner in North Brookfield. But the moral surroundings of the tan-yard were so bad for the children that his wife, a beautiful, pious, and submissive woman, rose in rebellion against them, and insisted that, for the children's sake, the family must move away. Her husband yielded to her appeal. He moved to Coy's Hill, and took up farming with his usual energy. It is said that, as he called the cows in the early morning, his fine, sonorous voice used to be heard by the other farmers for a mile around, and .served as a sort 'of rising bell to the whole neighborhood. Mr. Stone was kind to -the poor, and was much respected in the community; but he was fully imbued with the idea of the right of husbands to rule over their wives, as were most men of his gen(>ration. His wife obeyed him implicitly, as a religious duty. Lucy was born about a year after her mother had made, in behalf of her children, almost the only determined stand in all her gentle life; and it has been suggested that this fact, through heredity, may have had something to do with Lucy's remarkable character. Every one on the farm worked. The mother milked eight cows the night before Lucy was born, a sudden thunder-shower having called all the men into the hay-field. She said regretfully, when informed of the sex of the new baby, "Oh, dear! I am sorry it is a girl. A woman's life is so hard!"

Little Lucy grew up a healthy, vigorous child, noted for fearlessness and truthfulness, a good scholar, and a hard worker in the house and on the farm, sometimes driving the cows by starlight, before the sun was up, when the dew on the grass was so cold that she would stop on a flat stone and curl one small bare foot i) against the other leg to warm it. There was no task about the house or farm so hard but she would grapple with it with cheerful resolution, if it needed to be done.

In the same resolute way she set herself to subtlue the faults of her own character. She had a fiery temper. One day when she was about twelve years old her younger sister Sarah had angered her, and Lucy chased her through the house to inflict condign punishment. Hajjpening to catch sight of her own face in a looking-glass, she was .shocked by its whiteness and wrath. She said to herself, "That is the face of a murderer!" She went out and sat on a rock behind the barn, holding one bare foot in her hand and rocking to and fro, thinking what she could do to get the better of such a temper. She sat there till it was after dark, and her mother came to the door and called her in. From that time on she made a determined fight for self-control, and in her later life the serene gentleness of her face and of her whole aspect made it hard for people to realize that she had ever had such a temper. The little girl early became indignant at the way she saw her mother aad other women treated by their husbands and by the laws, and she made up her childish mind that those laws must be changed. Reading the Bible one day, while still a child, she came upon the text, "Thy tlesire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." At first she wanted to die. Then she resolved to go to college, study Greek and Hebrew, read the Bible in the original, ami satisfy herself whether such texts were correctly translated.

Her father saw nothing strange about it when his sons decided to go to college, but, when his daughter wanted to go, he said to his wife, "Is the child crazy?" He would not help her. The young girl had to earn the money herself. She picked berries and chestnuts, and sold them to buy hooks. For years she taught district schools, studying and teaching alternately. At first she was paid a dollar a week, and "boarded around." She soon be-