One of my hymns ended with the lines,--
"With books, and work, and healthful play,
May my first years be passed,
That I may give, for every day,
Some good account at last."
I knew all about the books and the play; but the work,--how
should I ever learn to do it?
My father had always strongly emphasized his wish that all his
children, girls as well as boys, should have some independent
means of self-support by the labor of their hands; that every one
should, as was the general custom, "learn a trade." Tailor's
work--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the "trade
learned most frequently by women in those days, and one or more
of my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been at
home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a
small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for
mankind.
This thought came over me with a sudden dread one Sabbath morning
when I was a toddling thing, led along by my sister, behind my
father and mother.
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