Occasionally a young girl was attracted to the Lowell mills
through her own idealization of the life there, as it had been
reported to her. Margaret Foley, who afterwards became
distinguished as a sculptor, was one of these. She did not remain
many months at her occupation,--which I think was weaving,--soon
changing it for that of teaching and studying art. Those who came
as she did were usually disappointed. Instead of an Arcadia, they
found a place of matter-of-fact toil, filled with a company of
industrious, wide-awake girls, who were faithfully improving
their opportunities, while looking through them into avenues
Toward profit and usefulness, more desirable yet. It has always
been the way of the steady-minded New Englander to accept the
present situation--but to accept it without boundaries, taking in
also the larger prospects--all the heavens above and the earth
beneath--towards which it opens.
The movement of New England girls toward Lowell was only an
impulse of a larger movement which about that time sent so many
people from the Eastern States into the West.
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