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of those parents who have wayward, wilful children, I would mention the fact that Anna, who was a greater trial to her mother than all her other children and cares put together, is now her pride, her comfort, and her support.
When about twelve years old she entered “Westown boarding-school of friends,” in Chester County, and remained there two years; from this she went to “Friends' select school” in Philadelphia, where she applied herself so diligently to her studies, that, although she pursued over a dozen branches at one time, she seldom failed in a recitation.
During all her school-days, she read with the greatest avidity every book that she could obtain.
Newspapers, speeches, tracts, history, biography, poetry, novels, and fairy tales were all alike read and relished.
For weeks and months together her average hours for sleep were not five in the twenty-four.
She would often read until one o'clock in the morning, and then seize her school-books and learn her lessons for the next day. She did not study her lessons, for, with her retentive memory, what she read once was hers forever.
The rhymes and compositions she wrote in her young days bear evident marks of genius.
When fourteen years old she published an article headed “Slavery” in the “Liberator.”
She early determined that she would be a public speaker.
One of her greatest pleasures was to get a troop of children about her and tell them stories; if she could fix their attention and alternately convulse them with laughter, and melt them to tears, she was perfectly happy.
She loved to wander all over the city alone, to think her own thoughts, and see what was going on in the outer world.
One of her favorite rendezvous was the Anti-slavery Office in Fifth Street; where she would stay for hours to hear people talk about the horrors of slavery, or to read papers, tracts, and books on that subject.
At seventeen she left school.
She was skilful in all kinds of housework, and orderly in
S. M. Betts and Company. Hartford, Conn. 1871.
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