Her first quarterly examination, held before the principal, the trustees, and parents, established her reputation as a teacher, and in addition everyone said, "The schoolmarm looks beautiful."[25] She had dressed up for the occasion, wearing a new plaid muslin, purple, white, blue, and brown, with white collar and cuffs, and had hung a gold watch and chain about her neck. She wound the four braids of her smooth brown hair around her big shell comb and put on her new prunella gaiters with patent-leather heels and tips. She looked so pretty, so neat, and so capable that many of the parents feared some young man would fall desperately in love with her and rob the academy of a teacher. She did have more than her share of admirers. She soon saw her first circus and went to her first ball, a real novelty for the young woman who had sat demurely along the wall in the attic room of her Center Falls home while her more worldly friends danced. In spite of all her good times, she missed her family, but because of the long trip to Rochester, she did not return to the farm for two years. She spent her vacations with Guelma and Hannah, who lived only a few hours away, or in Albany with her former teacher at Deborah Moulson's seminary, Lydia Mott, a cousin by marriage of Lucretia Mott. In anticipation of a vacation at home, she wrote her parents, "Sometimes I can hardly wait for the day to come. They have talked of building a new academy this summer, but I do not believe they will. My room is not fit to stay in and I have promised myself that I would not pass another winter in it. If I must forever teach, I will seek at least a comfortable house to do penance in. I have a pleasant school of twenty scholars, but I have to manufacture the interest duty compels me to exhibit.... Energy and something to stimulate is wanting! But I expect the busy summer vacation spent with my dearest and truest friends will give me new life and fresh courage to persevere in the arduous path of duty. Do not think me unhappy with my fate, no not so. I am only a little tired and a good deal lazy. That is all. Do write very soon. Tell about the strawberries and peaches, cherries and plums.... Tell me how the yard looks, what flowers are in bloom and all about the farming business."[26] * * * * * During her visits in Albany with Lydia Mott, who was now an active abolitionist, Susan heard a great deal about antislavery work. At this time, however, Canajoharie took little interest in this reform movement, but temperance was gaining a foothold. Throughout the country, Sons of Temperance were organizing and women wanted to help, but the men refused to admit them to their organizations, protesting that public reform was outside women's sphere. Unwilling to be put off when the need was so great, women formed their own secret temperance societies, and then, growing bolder, announced themselves as Daughters of Temperance.