should be my wife, those ornaments would be mine; I could take them and
lock them up, and you could never wear them except with my permission. I
could even exchange them for a box of cigars, and you could watch them
evaporate in smoke."

With this constant bantering from students and the sad complaints of the
women, my mind was sorely perplexed. So when, from time to time, my
attention was called to these odious laws, I would mark them with a
pencil, and becoming more and more convinced of the necessity of taking
some active measures against these unjust provisions, I resolved to
seize the first opportunity, when alone in the office, to cut every one
of them out of the books; supposing my father and his library were the
beginning and the end of the law. However, this mutilation of his
volumes was never accomplished, for dear old Flora Campbell, to whom I
confided my plan for the amelioration of the wrongs of my unhappy sex,
warned my father of what I proposed to do. Without letting me know that
he had discovered my secret, he explained to me one evening how laws
were made, the large number of lawyers and libraries there were all over
the State, and that if his library should burn up it would make no
difference in woman's condition. "When you are grown up, and able to
prepare a speech," said he, "you must go down to Albany and talk to the
legislators; tell them all you have seen in this office--the sufferings
of these Scotchwomen, robbed of their inheritance and left dependent on
their unworthy sons, and, if you can persuade them to pass new laws, the
old ones will be a dead letter." Thus was the future object of my life
foreshadowed and my duty plainly outlined by him who was most opposed
to my public career when, in due time, I entered upon it.

Until I was sixteen years old, I was a faithful student in the Johnstown
Academy with a class of boys. Though I was the only girl in the higher