Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/22

6 For this reason I have given you this brief sketch of the early childhood of one who attained the very first ranks among the scientific investigators and benefactors of her age,—an age, be it remembered, eminent beyond all that have preceded it in scientific discoveries and advancement. There have been times when some were mental giants, simply because their compeers were pigmies. That was not the case in the times that produced the Herschels, James Watt, George Stephenson, Davy, Faraday, and a host of others.

The Musselburgh schooldays lasted, fortunately, only a year. At the age of eleven, the illness of Mrs. Fairfax called her young daughter home; and it pained the child's grateful heart that her progress at school was so slight, that when a letter came from a relative she could "neither compose an answer nor spell the words;" and she was reproached for having cost so much—the school terms had been high—and learned so little.

Naturally shy and retiring, no one knew what was passing in the poor little girl's mind; but she well remembered in after-life how she mourned over her ignorance, and how intently she desired to attain knowledge. This was a salutary state of feeling, especially when, as in her case, there was a strong spirit of perseverance; with her, indeed, it was so strong that, in her own very humble estimate of her powers, she always placed perseverance as her greatest characteristic. And, my dear young