SEEKING AN EDUCATION
ried overseas to the James, the Charles and the Hudson. I found that the English language was generously compounded with Greek and Latin, which it was necessary to know if I was to understand my native tongue. I discovered that our ideas of democracy came from the agora of Greece, and our ideas of liberty came from the forum of Rome. Something of the sequence of history was revealed to me, so that I began to understand the significance of our own times and our own country.
In March of my senior year my sister Abbie died. She was three years my junior but so proficient in her studies that she was but two classes below me in school. She was ill scarcely a week. Several doctors were in attendance but could not save her. Thirty years later one of them told me he was convinced she had appendicitis, which was a disease not well understood in 1890. I went home when her condition became critical and staid beside her until she passed to join our mother. The memory of the charm of her presence and her dignified devotion to the right will always abide with me.
In the spring of 1890 came my graduation. The
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