Eighty Years and More; Reminiscences 1815-1897
have often said that the three years he passed in Johnstown were the
most delightful of our girlhood.
Immediately after the death of my brother, a journey was planned to
visit our grandmother Cady, who lived in Canaan, Columbia County, about
twenty miles from Albany. My two younger sisters and myself had never
been outside of our own county before, and the very thought of a journey
roused our enthusiasm to the highest pitch. On a bright day in September
we started, packed in two carriages. We were wild with delight as we
drove down the Mohawk Valley, with its beautiful river and its many
bridges and ferryboats. When we reached Schenectady, the first city we
had ever seen, we stopped to dine at the old Given's Hotel, where we
broke loose from all the moorings of propriety on beholding the paper on
the dining-room wall, illustrating in brilliant colors the great events
in sacred history. There were the Patriarchs, with flowing beards and in
gorgeous attire; Abraham, offering up Isaac; Joseph, with his coat of
many colors, thrown into a pit by his brethren; Noah's ark on an ocean
of waters; Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea; Rebecca at the well, and
Moses in the bulrushes. All these distinguished personages were familiar
to us, and to see them here for the first time in living colors, made
silence and eating impossible. We dashed around the room, calling to
each other: "Oh, Kate, look here!" "Oh, Madge, look there!" "See little
Moses!" "See the angels on Jacob's ladder!" Our exclamations could not
be kept within bounds. The guests were amused beyond description, while
my mother and elder sisters were equally mortified; but Mr. Bayard, who
appreciated our childish surprise and delight, smiled and said: "I'll
take them around and show them the pictures, and then they will be able
to dine," which we finally did.
On our way to Albany we were forced to listen to no end of dissertations
on manners, and severe criticisms on our behavior at the hotel, but we
were too happy and astonished with all we saw to take a subjective view
of ourselves. Even Peter in his new livery, who had not seen much more
than we had, while looking out of the corners of his eyes, maintained a
quiet dignity and conjured us "not to act as if we had just come out of
the woods and had never seen anything before." However, there are
conditions in the child soul in which repression is impossible, when the
mind takes in nothing but its own enjoyment, and when even the sense of
hearing is lost in that of sight. The whole party awoke to that fact at
last. Children are not actors. We never had experienced anything like
this journey, and how could we help being surprised and delighted?
When we drove into Albany, the first large city we had ever visited, we
exclaimed, "Why, it's general training, here!" We had acquired our ideas
of crowds from our country militia reviews. Fortunately, there was no
pictorial wall paper in the old City Hotel. But the decree had gone
forth that, on the remainder of the journey, our meals would be served
in a private room, with Peter to wait on us. This seemed like going back
to the nursery days and was very humiliating. But eating, even there,
was difficult, as we could hear the band from the old museum, and, as
our windows opened on the street, the continual panorama of people and
carriages passing by was quite as enticing as the Bible scenes in
Schenectady. In the evening we walked around to see the city lighted, to
look into the shop windows, and to visit the museum. The next morning we
started for Canaan, our enthusiasm still unabated, though strong hopes
were expressed that we would be toned down with the fatigues of the
first day's journey.
The large farm with its cattle, sheep, hens, ducks, turkeys, and geese;
its creamery, looms, and spinning wheel; its fruits and vegetables; the
drives among the grand old hills; the blessed old grandmother, and the
many aunts, uncles, and cousins to kiss, all this kept us still in a
whirlpool of excitement. Our joy bubbled over of itself; it was beyond
our control. After spending a delightful week at Canaan, we departed,
with an addition to our party, much to Peter's disgust, of a bright,
coal-black boy of fifteen summers. Peter kept grumbling that he had
children enough to look after already, but, as the boy was handsome and
intelligent, could read, write, play on the jewsharp and banjo, sing,
dance, and stand on his head, we were charmed with this new-found
treasure, who proved later to be a great family blessing. We were less
vivacious on the return trip. Whether this was due to Peter's untiring
efforts to keep us within bounds, or whether the novelty of the journey
was in a measure gone, it is difficult to determine, but we evidently
were not so buoyant and were duly complimented on our good behavior.
When we reached home and told our village companions what we had seen in
our extensive travels (just seventy miles from home) they were filled
with wonder, and we became heroines in their estimation. After this we
took frequent journeys to Saratoga, the Northern Lakes, Utica, and
Peterboro, but were never again so entirely swept from our feet as with
the biblical illustrations in the dining room of the old Given's Hotel.
As my father's office joined the house, I spent there much of my time,
when out of school, listening to the clients stating their cases,
talking with the students, and reading the laws in regard to woman. In
our Scotch neighborhood many men still retained the old feudal ideas of
women and property. Fathers, at their death, would will the bulk of
their property to the eldest son, with the proviso that the mother was
to have a home with him. Hence it was not unusual for the mother, who
had brought all the property into the family, to be made an unhappy
dependent on the bounty of an uncongenial daughter-in-law and a
dissipated son. The tears and complaints of the women who came to my
father for legal advice touched my heart and early drew my attention to
the injustice and cruelty of the laws. As the practice of the law was my
father's business, I could not exactly understand why he could not
alleviate the sufferings of these women. So, in order to enlighten me,
he would take down his books and show me the inexorable statutes. The
students, observing my interest, would amuse themselves by reading to me
all the worst laws they could find, over which I would laugh and cry by
turns. One Christmas morning I went into the office to show them, among
other of my presents, a new coral necklace and bracelets. They all
admired the jewelry and then began to tease me with hypothetical cases
of future ownership. "Now," said Henry Bayard, "if in due time you
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
classes of mathematics and the languages, yet, in our plays, all the
girls and boys mingled freely together. In running races, sliding
downhill, and snowballing, we made no distinction of sex. True, the boys
would carry the school books and pull the sleighs up hill for their
favorite girls, but equality was the general basis of our school
relations. I dare say the boys did not make their snowballs quite so
hard when pelting the girls, nor wash their faces with the same
vehemence as they did each other's, but there was no public evidence of
partiality. However, if any boy was too rough or took advantage of a
girl smaller than himself, he was promptly thrashed by his fellows.
There was an unwritten law and public sentiment in that little Academy
world that enabled us to study and play together with the greatest
freedom and harmony.
From the academy the boys of my class went to Union College at
Schenectady. When those with whom I had studied and contended for prizes
for five years came to bid me good-by, and I learned of the barrier that
prevented me from following in their footsteps--"no girls admitted
here"--my vexation and mortification knew no bounds. I remember, now,
how proud and handsome the boys looked in their new clothes, as they
jumped into the old stage coach and drove off, and how lonely I felt
when they were gone and I had nothing to do, for the plans for my future
were yet undetermined. Again I felt more keenly than ever the
humiliation of the distinctions made on the ground of sex.
My time was now occupied with riding on horseback, studying the game of
chess, and continually squabbling with the law students over the rights
of women. Something was always coming up in the experiences of everyday
life, or in the books we were reading, to give us fresh topics for
argument. They would read passages from the British classics quite as
aggravating as the laws. They delighted in extracts from Shakespeare,
especially from "The Taming of the Shrew," an admirable satire in itself
on the old common law of England. I hated Petruchio as if he were a real
man. Young Bayard would recite with unction the famous reply of Milton's
ideal woman to Adam: "God thy law, thou mine." The Bible, too, was
brought into requisition. In fact it seemed to me that every book taught
the "divinely ordained" headship of man; but my mind never yielded to
this popular heresy.
CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD.
Mrs. Willard's Seminary at Troy was the fashionable school in my
girlhood, and in the winter of 1830, with upward of a hundred other
girls, I found myself an active participant in all the joys and sorrows
of that institution. When in family council it was decided to send me to
that intellectual Mecca, I did not receive the announcement with unmixed
satisfaction, as I had fixed my mind on Union College. The thought of a
school without boys, who had been to me such a stimulus both in study
and play, seemed to my imagination dreary and profitless.
The one remarkable feature of my journey to Troy was the railroad from
Schenectady to Albany, the first ever laid in this country. The manner