Heroines of Service Mary Lyon, Alice Freeman Palmer, Clara Barton, Frances Willard, Julia Ward Howe, Anna Shaw, Mary Antin, Alice C. Fletcher, Mary Slessor of Calabar, Madame Curie, Jane Addams

"What is my little Mistress Mary trying to do?" The whir of the spinning-wheel was stilled for a moment as Mrs. Lyon glanced in surprise at the child who had climbed up on a chair to look more closely at the hourglass on the chimneypiece.

"I am just trying to see if I can find the way to make more time," replied Mary.

"That's not the way, daughter," laughed the busy mother, as she started her wheel again. "When you stop to watch time, you lose it. Let your work slip from your fingers faster than the sand slips--that's the way to make time!"

If busy hands can indeed make time, we know why the days were so full of happy work in that little farm-house among the hills of western Massachusetts. It takes courage and ceaseless toil to run a farm that must provide food and clothing for seven growing children, but Mrs. Lyon was never too busy or too tired to help a neighbor or to speak a word of cheer.

"How is it that the widow can do more for me than any one else?" asked a neighbor who had found her a friend in need. "She reminds me of what the Bible says, 'having nothing yet possessing all things.' There she is left without a husband to fend for her and the children, so that it's work, work, work for them all from morning till night, and yet they're always happy. You would think the children liked nothing better than doing chores."

"How is it that the harder a thing is the more you seem to like it, Mary?" asked her seat-mate in the district school, looking wonderingly at the girl whose eyes always brightened and snapped when the arithmetic problems were long and hard.

"Oh, it's lots more fun climbing than just going along on the level," replied Mary. "You feel so much more alive. I'll tell you what to do when a thing seems hard, like a steep, steep hill, you know. Say to yourself: 'Some people may call you Difficulty, old hill; but I know that your name is Opportunity. You're here just to prove that I can do something worth while.' Then the climbing is the best fun--really!"

It is a happy thing to be born among the hills. Wherever one looks there is something to whisper: "There is no joy like climbing. Besides, the sun stays longer on the summit, and beyond the hill-tops is a larger, brighter world." Perhaps it was the fresh breath of the hills that gave Mary Lyon her glowing cheeks, as the joy of climbing brought the dancing lights into her clear blue eyes.

The changing seasons march over the hills in a glorious pageant of color, from the tender veiling green of young April to the purple mists and red-and-gold splendor of Indian summer. Every day had the thrill of new adventure to Mary Lyon, but perhaps she loved the mellow October days best. "They have all the glowing memory of the past summer and the promise of the spring to come," she used to say.

How could one who had, through the weeks of growing things, worked together with rain and sunshine and generous earth for the harvest but feel the happy possession of all the year at the time when she saw bins overflowing with brown potatoes, yellow corn, and other gifts of fields and orchard? She could never doubt that, given the waiting earth and faithful labor, the harvest was sure. Duties and difficulties were always opportunities for higher endeavor and happier achievement.

There was no play in Mary Lyon's childhood except the play that a healthy, active child may find in varied, healthful work done with a light heart. There was joy in rising before the sun was up, to pick weeds in the dewy garden, to feed the patient creatures in the barn, and to make butter in the cool spring-house. Sometimes one could meet the sunrise on the hill-top, when it happened to be one's turn to bring wood to the dwindling pile by the kitchen door. Then there was the baking--golden-brown loaves of bread and tempting apple pies. When the morning mists had quite disappeared from the face of the hills, the blue smoke had ceased to rise from the chimney of the little farm-house. Then was the time to sit beside Mother and knit or weave, sew or mend, the garments that were homemade, beginning with the moment when the wool, sheared from their own sheep, was carded and spun into thread. For holidays, there were the exciting mornings when they made soap and candles, or the afternoons when they gathered together in the barn for a husking-bee.

Beauty walked with Toil, however, about that farm in the hills. Mary had time to lift up her eyes to the glory of the changing sky and to tend the pinks and peonies that throve nowhere so happily as in her mother's old-fashioned garden.

"May I plant this bush in the corner with your roses?" asked a neighbor one day. "It is a rare plant of rare virtue, and I know that in your garden it cannot die."

As the labor of her hands prospered, as her garden posies blossomed, so the wings of Mary Lyon's spirit grew. No matter how shut in the present seemed, no hope nor dream for the future died in her heart as the days went by.

Her plans only took deeper and deeper root as she worked and waited patiently for the time of flowers and fruit. There were few books to be had, but these yielded her of their best. There was opportunity for but few scattered terms in distant district schools, but she learned there more than the teachers taught.

"Anything is interesting when you realize that it is important," she used to say. And to Mary everything was important that was real. She learned not only from books, but from work, from people, from Nature, and from every bit of stray circumstance that came her way. It is said that when the first brick house was built in the village she made a point of learning how to make bricks, turning them up, piling them on the wheelbarrow, and putting them in the kiln. She was always hungry to know and to do, and the harder a thing was the more she seemed to like it. Climbing was ever more fun than trudging along on the level.

The years brought changes to the home farm. The older sisters married and went to homes of their own. When Mary was thirteen her mother married again and went away with the younger children, leaving her to keep house for the only brother, who had from early childhood been her best comrade. The dollar a week given her for her work was saved to pay for a term in the neighboring academy. She also taught in a district school for a while, receiving seventy-five cents a week and board.

The nineteen-year-old girl who appeared one day at the Ashfield Academy somehow drew all eyes to her. Her blue homespun dress, with running-strings at neck and waist, was queer and shapeless, even judged by village standards in the New England of 1817. Her movements were impulsive and ungainly and her gait awkward. But it was not the crudity, but the power, of the new-comer that impressed people. Squire White's gentle daughter, the slender, graceful Amanda, gave the loyalty of her best friendship to this interesting and enthusiastic schoolmate from the hill farm.

"She is more alive than any one I know, Father," said the girl, in explanation of her preference. "You never see her odd dress and sudden ways when once you have looked into her face and talked to her. Her face seems lighted from within--it isn't just her bright color and red-gold curls; it isn't even her merry laugh. I can't explain what I mean, but it seems as if her life touches mine--and it's such a big, warm, beautiful life!"

The traditions of this New England village long kept the memory of her first recitation. On Friday she had been given the first lesson of Adams's Latin Grammar to commit to memory. When she was called up early Monday afternoon, she began to recite fluently declensions and conjugations without pause, until, as the daylight waned, the whole of the Latin grammar passed in review before the speechless teacher and dazzled, admiring pupils.

"How did you ever do it? How could your head hold it all?" demanded Amanda, with a gasp, as they walked home together.

"Well, really, I'll have to own up," said Mary, with some reluctance, "I studied all day Sunday! It wasn't so very hard, though. I soon saw where the changes in the conjugations came in, and the rules of syntax are very much like English grammar."

Studying was never hard work to Mary, because she could at a moment's notice put all her attention on the thing at hand. Her busy childhood had taught her to attack a task at once, while others were frequently spending their time thinking and talking about doing it.

"No one could study like Mary Lyon, and no one could clean the school-room with such despatch," said one of her classmates.

It seemed as if she never knew what it was to be tired. She appeared to have a boundless store of strength and enthusiasm, as if, through all her growing years, she had made over into the very fiber of her being the energy of the life-giving sunshine and the patience of the enduring hills. Time must be used wisely when all one's little hoard of savings will only pay for the tuition of one precious term. Her board was paid with two coverlets, spun, dyed, and woven by her own hands.

"They should prove satisfactory covers," she said merrily, "for they have covered all my needs."

On the day when she thought she must bid farewell to Ashfield Academy the trustees voted her free tuition, a gift which, as pupil-teacher, she did her best to repay. The hospitable doors of Squire White's dignified residence were thrown open to his daughter's chosen friend, and in this second home she readily absorbed the ways of gracious living--the niceties and refinements of dress and manners for which there had been no time in the busy farm-house.

When the course at the academy was completed, the power of her eager spirit and evident gifts led Squire White to offer her the means to go with his daughter to Byfield Seminary near Boston, the school conducted by Mr. Joseph Emerson, who believed that young women, no less than their brothers, should have an opportunity for higher instruction. In those days before colleges for women or normal schools, he dreamed of doing something towards giving worthy preparation to future teachers. It was through the teaching and inspiration of this cultured Harvard scholar and large-hearted man that Mary Lyon learned to know the meaning of life, and to understand aright the longings of her own soul. Years afterward she said: "In my youth I had much vigor--was always aspiring after something. I called it longing to study, but had few to direct me. One teacher I shall always remember. He taught me that education was to fit one to do good."

On leaving Byfield Seminary, Miss Lyon began her life-work of teaching. But with all her preparation for doing and her intense desire to do, she did not at first succeed. The matter of control was not easy to one who would not stoop to rigid mechanical means and who said, "One has not governed a child until she makes the child smile under her government." Besides, her sense of humor--later one of her chief assets--seemed at first to get in the way of her gaining a steady hold on the reins.