Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/24

8 justice to herself. Meanwhile, she learned to write a good hand, and made some, not great, progress in arithmetic. The little French she had been taught at school she added to by puzzling out and translating from French books, by herself, and so almost insensibly acquired a reading knowledge of the language.

One day, at the house of a friend, as she was looking in a magazine of a fashionable kind for a pattern of ladies' work, she came upon some letters oddly arranged—an algebraic problem. Asking the meaning, she heard the word Algebra for the first time. She thought about the word and took every opportunity that her great diffidence permitted to get further explanation. She was told of the need of arithmetic in the higher branches and mathematics. She thought that some books in the home library might help her, and so she pored over some books of navigation; and though she made very little progress in what she wanted to know, she learned enough to open her mind to the value of solid studies and to interest her in them. Meanwhile, from some elementary books, probably her brother's, she began to teach herself Latin, and with no help of regular instruction learned enough to enable her to read Caesar's Commentaries, and to feel an interest in her reading.

Her habit of early rising was her great help, and enabled her to pursue her studies unmolested. She was very diligent in performing all that she was