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.
[Autograph:
Thy Father
Daniel Anthony]
In the winter of 1837, at the age of seventeen, Susan taught in the
family of Doris and Huldah Deliverge, at Easton, a few miles from
Battenville, for $1 a week and board. The next summer she taught a
district school at the neighboring village, Reid's Corners, for $1.50 a
week and "boarded round," and proud was she to earn what was then
considered excellent wages for a woman. In the fall she joined Guelma
at boarding-school. The little circular, yellow with age, reads:
DEBORAH MOULSON, having obtained an agreeable location in the
pleasant village of Hamilton, in the vicinity of Philadelphia,
intends, with the assistance of competent Teachers, to open
immediately a Seminary for Females....
Terms, $125 per annum, for boarding and tuition....
The inculcation of the principles of Humility, Morality and a love
of Virtue, will receive particular attention.
[Illustration:
THE BATTENVILLE HOME, BUILT IN 1833.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN 1897]
This was Susan's first long absence from home, and her letters and
journals give a good idea of the thoughts and feelings of a girl at
boarding-school in those days. She developed then the "letter-writing
habit," which has clung to her through life. The letters of that time
were laborious affairs, often consuming days in the writing, commencing
even to children, "Respected Daughter," or "Son," and rarely exceeding
one or two pages. They were written with a quill pen on foolscap paper,
and almost wholly devoted to the weather and the sickness in the
family. The amount of the latter would be appalling to modern
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