"Ambition was the food she gave my young life; that she declared the one rope thrown by God's hand to the rescue of poor women. At last my soul took fire with hers; my heart awoke. "My struggles for opportunities tortured her. She sold her thimble once,--a pretty golden one, my father's gift--that I might have a book I needed. She did our household drudgery that the servant's wage might go for my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and I together, cheating night of many hours o'er books and study that were to repay us at the last with decent independence. "The school days ended, the neighbors urged again the _shops_. But 'no' again. She had not spent her strength to fit me for the yard-stick and the shop-girl's meagre living. She read the riddle of my being as only mothers can; saw the stamp upon my soul and fondly called it genius. Pinned her faith upon that slumbering curse, or blessing, as we choose each to interpret it. "I had a little school some sixty miles from home. She had agreed that I might teach; that was in the course in which she wished my life to go. The schoolhouse was a cabin in the wood, through which flowed a river. We cannot tell the route by which we run to fame, and mine lay through this cabin in the woods. I scribbled bits of rhyme and broken verse, constantly; and found it fame enough if in the hurried jingle my mother detected 'improvement,' 'promise.' "But one day when the river burst its banks, the cabin, deluged, lay under water for ten days, and I became a temporary prisoner in my miserable boarding-house, I wrote a story, a simple, earnest little story. It sold, and more, it won a prize. Two hundred and fifty dollars,--it would take ten months of the little school to make so much. When it came--Gertie, I cannot tell you how I felt!--I thought that somehow in the darkness I had reached my hands out and found them clasped in God's; held tight and fast, and strong and safe. I kneeled down in that cabin schoolroom, with the awe-struck children gathered round me, and choked with sobs and happy tears, thanked God who sent the blessed treasure.