Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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I had no sense of the appropriate in clothes. Often I had an ardent desire for something fitted only for grown-ups, and I always had a keen ambition to fit myself out for occasions. Some time in the early seventies Clara Louise Kellogg came to town. My father and mother were in the West, but they had arranged that I was to hear her. It seemed as if some kind of regalia was necessary, so I charged a wide pink sash and a pair of yellow kid gloves.

Out of the agitation for rights as it came to me, two rights that were worth going after quite definitely segregated themselves: the right to an education, and the right to earn my living—education and economic independence.

The older I grew, the more determined I became to be independent. I saw only one way—teach; but if I was to teach I must fit myself, go to college. My father and mother agreed. I had a clear notion of what I wanted to teach—natural science, particularly the microscope, for I was to be a biologist. I made my choice—Cornell, first opened to women in 1872; but at the moment when the steps to enter Cornell were to be taken, there appeared in the household as an over-Sunday guest the president of a small college in our neighborhood, only thirty miles away, Allegheny. Among the patrons of that college was the Methodist organization known as the Erie Conference, to which the Titusville church belonged. I had heard of it annually when a representative appeared in our pulpit, told its story and asked for support. The president, Dr. Lucius Bugbee, was a delightful and entertaining guest and, learning that I was headed Cornellward, adroitly painted the advantages of Allegheny. It was near home; it was a ward of our church. It had responded to the cry of women for educational opportunity and had opened its doors before the institution I had chosen.