Lockwood-0068_05

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MY BFFORTS TO BECOME A LAWYER. 919

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and advocated her employment in shoe-shops, dry-goods stores, and
printing-offices, all of which seemed startling heresy to the public of
that time. To-day, with shoc-shops, dry-goods stores, and printing-
offices filled with women, and hardly an office complete without them,
we wonder why this state of affairs did not always exist, and some of
my readers doubtless think that it always did. Susan was at this time
young and handsome, with only a slight departure in dress from the
Quaker costume in which she had been reared,—not yet soured by the
rebuffs and inequalities of life, though even at this time evincing a little
bitterness in her tone, and some sarcasm in her remarks on the “tyrant
man.” . :
I met her repeatedly after this at the mectings of the School Asso-
ciation, her spirit of aggressiveness always carrying her so far ahead of
any of her competitors as to make her a marked figure, She insisted
upon the appointment of women on all committees, and urged them
to speak and to vote upon all the questions that came before the asso-
ciation,
Following out Susan’s suggestion, she and I were placed on a com-
mittee together, to determine whether it was expedient and would be
beneficial for the girls in the public schools of New York to be taught
to declaim like the boys. ‘The report was to be made at the end of the
next school quarter. With my usual practicality, I at once required
all the young women then under my charge to prepare themselves with

a declamation to be delivered in public on the Saturday of the coming

week ; and this order was continued through the quarter. The im-
provement was so marked, and the success so great, that declamation
for the girls became the standing order for the school forever after ; and
of course the report of the committee was favorable. T had lacked

this training in my early life, which as a Jawyer would have been of .

great assistance to me.

"The last year of the four of my sojourn in this school witnessed the
outbreak of the war of the rebellion. It was a severe shock to my
views of the duties and obligations of a civilized and Christian people ;
but I soon entered into the spirit of it, and, when the necessity for help
came, not only organized the young women of the school into classes
for the purpose of making clothing, bandages, and lint, but assisted
the ladies of the city to organize for work, and continned to act as
President of the Aid Society so long as I remained in Lockport.

I resigned from the Lockport Union in the summer of 1861 to take
charge of the Gainesville Female Seminary, where I remained for only
one year, the seminary building having burned in the mean time. In
the Lockport school, during the four years of my stay, T had regularly
exercised the young ladies in the gymmasium, and many of them be-
came quite expert gymnasts; but in the Gainesville school, which was
exclusively for young ludies, we had no gymnasium, and I resorted to
the use @f the Caroline Beecher calisthenics instead, I believe that to
this exercise, at least in part, I owe my robust health and a certain sup-
pleness of limb that T have never since lost. I quite shocked the lady
proprietor who was associated with me in the school by recommending,
as the cold weather came on, skating as a proper exercise for the young

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