Lockwood-0068_02

DG MY EFFORTS TO BECOME A LAWYER.

accomplish the performance of my second miracle. The raising of the
dead, ag delineated in Scripture, is undoubtedly intended to be received
as literal and real. True, the raising of the dead was performed only
by our Saviour, except when the witch of Endor raised Samuel for
King Saul, but from the teachings one is led to suppose that the
prophets might have wrought the same miracles under favorable cir-
cumstances and with a faith sufficiently enlarged and strong. But the
grave did not open, the dead did not come forth, as in the case of
Lazarus; and my self-esteem received another severe shock.

I attributed these failures to a want of either sufficient undersiand-
ing or sufficient concentration, and still supposed that I should some day
be able to accomplish these miracles. I dwelt earnestly on the promise,
“Tf ye have faith even as a grain of musiard-sced, ye shall say unto
that mountain, Remove hence, and it shall be removed.” I therefore
coneluded that if an ordinary mortal could remove by his will-power a
mountain, then, child as I was, I certainly could move a bill, and so
wrought my mind up to attempt the performance of the third miracle.
Determined this time to succeed, I selected a small hill and concentrated
all my will-power upon it; but the hill did not move. By this time I
had lost some confidence in myself, but none in the efficacy of the
Scripture, and for a time I abandoned my efforts to accomplish feats so
much beyond my ability. Since that time I have learned how to re-
move a mountain, and have removed several. It has been accomplished
by will-power and mental effort, combined with indefatigable labor.

T have not raised the dead, but I have awakened the living ; and if
I have not been able to walk on water the progressive spirit of this age
may soon accomplish this feat. The general effect of attempting things
beyond us, even though we fail, is to enlarge and liberalize the mind.
With work and school I soon abandoned the miracles, but few under-
takings were so great that I did not aspire to them. Graduating in the
district school, I was soon a teacher of those who so recently had been
my associates. Here again came up the odious distinction of sex. The
male teachers in the free schools of the State of New York received
more than double the salary paid to the women teachers at that time,
simply because they were men, and for precisely the same work. It
was an indignity not to be tamely borne by one with so little discrim-
ination of the merits and demerits of sex, and of course, impolitic as it
might seem, I at once began to agitate this question, arguing that pay
should be for work, and commensurate to it, and not be based on sex.
To-day this custom is changed. ‘

An ardent. student of history, I soon discovered that most of the
great men of the country had received a collegiat education. I also
discovered that the colleges of the country were closed to women.
What could a simple country-gir! do against the prejudices of centuries?
There was only one avenue open to her, and that the one for which the
American girl had been educated all of the years of the past century,—
marriage. The daughter of a poor farmer, I followed the same well-
trodden road, and was soon united in marriage to a promising young
farmer of my neighborhood. Marriage to the ordinary woman is
the end of her personality, or of her individuality of thought and