wreath of strawberries all carefully wrought in crewels.  There is also a bedquilt, the pieces sewed together with the fine “over-and-over” stitch, and there are ruffles hemmed with stitches so tiny they scarcely can be distinguished.  An early teacher was a cousin, Nancy Howe,[4] who was followed by another cousin, Sarah Anthony, a graduate of Rensselaer Quaker boarding-school.  Among the teachers was Mary Perkins, just graduated from Miss Grant’s seminary at Ipswich, Mass., and a pupil of Mary Lyon, founder of Mt.  Holyoke.  She was their first fashionably educated teacher and taught them to recite poems in concert, introduced school books with pictures, little black illustrations of Old Dog Tray, Mary and Her Lamb, etc., and gave them their first idea of calisthenics.  She loved music, and wished to attend the village singing-school.  Lucy Anthony sympathized with this desire and interceded for her, but Daniel decided it would be setting a bad example to the children and they would be wanting to sing.[5]

Into this commodious home Lucy Anthony brought her aged father and mother, and carefully tended them until the death of both within the same year, aged eighty-four.  In May, 1834, came the first great sorrow, the death of little Eliza, aged two years, and the mother was heart-broken.  Her life was centered in her children, and she could not be reconciled to giving up even one.  After her own death, nearly fifty years later, in her box of most sacredly guarded keepsakes, was found a little faded pink dress of the dear child’s which many times had been moistened with the mother’s tears.

The children continued to attend this private school, and as Guelma and Susan reached the age of fifteen, each in turn was installed as teacher in summer when there were only young pupils.  The factory now was at the height of prosperity; there was only one larger in all that part of the country, and Daniel Anthony was looked upon as a wealthy man.  He was much criticised for allowing his daughters to teach, as in those days no woman worked for wages except from pressing necessity; but he was far enough in advance of his time to believe that every girl should be trained to self-support.  In 1837, writing to Guelma at boarding-school, he urges her to accept the offer of the principal to remain through the winter as an assistant: 

I am fully of the belief that shouldst thou never teach school a single day afterwards, thou wouldst ever feel to justify thy course....  Thou wouldst seem to me to be laying the foundation for thy far greater usefulness.  Thy remaining through the winter, must, however, be left solely to thyself, as it would be of little avail for thee to stay and not be contented.  Thy home, Guelma, is just the same as when thou left it, and shouldst thou decide to spend the winter months away, we will try to keep it the same until thy return in the spring.  Let me know if thou canst be content to remain away a few months longer from thy mother’s kitchen.

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