Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/200

Rh that she reads Greek and Latin, and understands mathematics, like any professor, and helps young students, who cannot pass their examination in these branches of knowledge, by her extraordinary talent as a teacher, and by her motherly influence. Many a youth blesses the work she has done in him. One of these related of her, “She examined me in Euclid whilst she shelled peas, and with one foot rocked the cradle of her little grandson.”

I spent, with the Emersons, an evening with Mrs. Ripley. Neither were there any servants kept in her house. These ladies of New England are clever ladies, true daughters of those pilgrim women who endured hardships so manfully and laboured equally with their husbands, and established with them that kingdom which now extends over a hemisphere.

An ancestor of Elizabeth H. was one of the first pilgrims which that little ship, the “Mayflower,” conveyed to the shore of Massachussetts. He related many times how, when these men were about to frame laws for the new colony, they liked to talk them over before their wives, their sisters, and daughters, and to hear their thoughts upon them. This was beautiful and sensible. Of a certainty that chivalric sentiment and love which generally prevail in America for the female sex had their origin in the dignity and the noble conduct of those early women; of a certainty, from that early equality, that equality in rule and in rights which prevails here in domestic and social life, although not as yet politically.

I liked to talk with Elizabeth H. There is something very profound and great in this young woman; and her words frequently are as brilliant as diamonds in sunshine.

Among the persons whom I saw at the Emersons, and who interested me, was Professor Sherbe, a Swiss, a man of a noble and grave exterior, with something also