For indeed, what we all want to
find is not so much our place as our path. The path leads to the
place, and the place, when we have found it, is only a clearing
by the roadside, an opening into another path.
And no comrades are so dear as those who have broken with us a
pioneer road which it will be safe and good for others to follow;
which will furnish a plain clue for all bewildered travelers
hereafter. There is no more exhilarating human experience than
this, and perhaps it is the highest angelic one. It may be that
some such mutual work is to link us forever with one another in
the Infinite Life.
The girls who toiled together at Lowell were clearing away a few
weeds from the overgrown track of independent labor for other
women. They practically said, by numbering themselves among
factory girls, that in our country no real odium could be
attached to any honest toil that any self-respecting woman might
undertake.
I regard it as one of the privileges of my youth that I was
permitted to grow up among those active, interesting girls, whose
lives were not mere echoes of other lives, but had principle and
purpose distinctly their own.
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