Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[131]

XXVI. finer forces.

Any one whom the railway bears rapidly through one American village after another, between eight and nine o'clock on some stormy winter morning, is sure to see occasionally through the windows a figure so typical that it seems to recur in every hamlet or suburb. It is that of a woman, usually young and slender, clad in water-proof cloak and India-rubber boots, and pressing on with rapid steps through the storm. She may or may not be fresh and fair, but she seldom fails to have a firm and resolute expression, as of one whose business admits of no delay. She is one of the great omnipresent army of teachers, or, in other words, a single shuttle in that vast weaving-machine out of which is being woven the Young America of the future. There is perhaps no figure, not even the mail — carrier, so ubiquitous, or on the whole so uniform. Local organizations may vary; a State may be divided into townships or into counties, into boroughs or into “hundreds;” the little communities may be governed by mayors or by selectmen — it makes no difference;