Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/60

44 and mathematics, and yet train his hands to skill in mechanics. He was never idle, but always acquiring; indeed, idleness was unknown in the family, though some were more diligent and far more unselfish than others.

Thus some years passed on, until Caroline was twenty-two, when there came a letter from her brother William, proposing that she should join him at Bath. He remembered her voice and singing, and thought by his instruction he might make her useful for his winter concerts at Bath. She was to return to Hanover, if on trial she did not succeed. Her eldest brother Jacob, who, as she said, had never heard her voice except in speaking, turned the whole scheme into ridicule. But stimulated by the hope of doing something to aid her brother and gain a living for herself, she began to study, practise, and prepare herself. Meanwhile, in the expectation of going away, she knitted as many cotton stockings for her mother and youngest brother "as would last two years at least."

In the August of 1772, her brother William came to see his mother, and take Caroline to England. She says, "My mother had consented to my going with him, and the anguish of my leaving her was somewhat alleviated by my brother settling a small annuity on her, by which she would be able to keep an attendant to supply my place."

What a journey she had to England! In these days, the cheapest train and steamer take a