Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/257

192 came known as a successful teacher, and gradually received a higher salary, but could never rise above sixteen dollars per month, which was considered "very good pay for a woman." Once she was engaged to teach a winter school which had been broken up, the big boys throw-ing the master head foremost out of the window into a deep snowdrift. As a rule, women were not thought competent to teach the winter term of school, because then the big boys were released from farm work and were able to attend. In a few days she had this difficult school in perfect order, and the big boys who had made the trouble became her most devoted lieutenants; yet she received only a fraction of the salary paid to her unsuccessful predecessor.

She studied for a time at the Monson, Quaboag, and Wilbraham Academies. Generally, she and her sister Sarah did not board at the academy, but for economy's sake took a room and cooked their own food, bringing most of their provisions from home.

An old schoolmate recalls the fact that she was already deeply interested in the abolition movement, and her compositions were always about slavery. About 1838 Lucy went to Mount Holyoke Seminary. Years before she had heard Mary Lyon make an appeal for funds for this effort in behalf of higher education for women. The sewing-circle with which Lucy was connected was at that time working to pay the expenses of a young man preparing for the ministry, and Lucy was making a shirt. She was much stirred by Mary Lyon's presentation of the need of better educational opportunities for women, and by the thought of how much easier it was for any young man to earn his education than for a young woman to do so at a woman's low pay: and she ceased sewing upon that shirt, and felt in her heart the hope that no one would ever finish it. She spent less than a year at Mount Holyoke, being called home by the death of an older sister; but she always retained an affection for the institution.

Instead of the mite-boxes for foreign missions that were the fashion among the Mount Holyoke students, Lucy kept in her room one of the little yellow collection boxes of the Anti-slavery Society, which bore the picture of a kneeling slave holding up manacled hands, with the motto, "Am I not a man and a brother?" Into this she put all the pennies she could spare. She also placed William Lloyd Garrison's paper, the Liberator, in the reading-room of the seminary. For some time they could not find out who did it; but they suspected Lucy, because of her anti-slavery principles, and, when they asked her, she acknowledged it at once. Even the saintly Mary Lyon was doubtful about the wisdom of allowing it. She said to Lucy, "You must remember that the slavery question is a very grave question, and a question upon which the best people are divided."

At about the age of nineteen Lucy joined the Orthodox Congregational church in West Brookfield. Soon after, Deacon Henshaw was brought to trial before the church for having entertained anti-slavery speakers at his house and otherwise aided and abetted the abolition movement. When the first vote was taken, Lucy, who did not know that women could not vote in church meetings, held up her hand with the rest. The minister, a tall, dark man, pointed over to her, and said to the man who was counting the votes. "Don't you count her." The man said, "Why, isn't she a member?" "Yes," answered the minister, "she is a member, but not a voting member." His accent of scorn stirred her indignation. "Six votes were taken at that meeting, and I held up my hand every time," she said to her daughter, raising her hand above her head, with a flash in her eye, as she recalled the incident, while lying on her death-bed. Deacon Henshaw, Lucy, and a number of other members were later dropped from the rolls of the church for their activity in the anti-slavery cause.

On June 27, 1837, the General Association of the Orthodox Congregational Churches of Massachusetts met at Brookfield. There had been a great outcry against the anti-slavery speaking of Abby Kelley and the Grimke sisters; and a pastoral letter from the Association to the churches under its charge had been prepared, to be read at this meeting. The object of the letter was to close the churches against anti-slavery lectures, and especially