for a motherless girl of thirteen, and yet heavy burdens are sometimes great tutors and incentives that we in after-life appreciate more fully.
While earning her bread she chanced to be in a family that taught her some of the domestic arts and at the same time gave her a chance to satiate her great and growing thirst for books. She was notably never idle, and ere she had reached womanhood her first volume, "Forest Ivcaves," was written, consisting of both prose and poetry, which was afterwards published. So creditable were her early writings that some critics doubted that she was the author.
About 1851, desiring to be in a free State, she moved from Baltimore to Ohio, where she engaged in school-teaching for awhile, but soon found her way into Pennsylvania, where she again taught school at Little York.
Still, not satisfied because of profound love for her people who were in the cruel bonds of slavery, she often thought of the condition of affairs in Baltimore, and upon one occasion said, "Homeless in the land of our birth and worse off than strangers in the home of our nativity." While yet in doubt as to whether she might be more useful to her race as a school-teacher or otherwise she wrote as follows to a friend for advice: "What would you do if you were in my place? Would you give up and go back and work at your trade (dressmaking)? There are no people that need all the benefits resulting from a well-directed education more than we do. The condition of our people, the wants of our children and the welfare of our race demand the aid of
