When she was tempted to give up in discouragement, she said to herself: "I know that good teachers are needed, and that I ought to teach. 'All that ought to be done can be done.'" To one who worked earnestly in that spirit, success was sure. Five years later, two towns were vying with each other to secure her as a teacher in their academies for young ladies. For some time she taught at Derry, New Hampshire, during the warm months, going to her beloved Ashfield for the winter term. Wherever she was she drew pupils from the surrounding towns and even from beyond the borders of the State. Teachers left their schools to gather about her. She had the power to communicate something of her own enthusiasm and vitality. Bright eyes and alert faces testified to her power to quicken thought and to create an appetite for knowledge. "Her memory has been to me continually an inspiration to overcome difficulties," said one of her pupils. "You were the first friend who ever pointed out to me defects of character with the expectation that they would be removed," another pupil wrote in a letter of heartfelt gratitude. At this time all the schools for girls, like the Ashfield Academy and Mr. Emerson's seminary at Byfield, were entirely dependent upon the enterprise and ideals of individuals. There were no colleges with buildings and equipment, such as furnished dormitories, libraries, and laboratories, belonging to the work and the future. In the case of the most successful schools there was no guarantee that they would endure beyond the lifetime of those whose interest had called them into being. Miss Lyon taught happily for several years, often buying books of reference and material for practical illustration out of her salary of five or six dollars a week. The chance for personal influence seemed the one essential. "Never mind the brick and mortar!" she cried. "Only let us have the living minds to work upon!" As experience came with the years, however, as she saw schools where a hundred young women were crowded into one room without black-boards, globes, maps, and other necessaries of instruction--she realized that something must be done to secure higher schools for girls, that would have the requisite material equipment for the present and security for the future. "We must provide a college for young women on the same conditions as those for men, with publicly owned buildings and fixed standards of work," she said. This idea could appeal to most people of that day only as a strange, extravagant, and dangerous notion. Harvard and Yale existed to prepare men to be ministers, doctors, and lawyers. Did women expect to thrust themselves into the professions? Why should they want the learning of men? It could do nothing but make them unfit for their proper life in the home. Who had ever heard of a college for girls! What is unheard of is to most people manifestly absurd.