Mr. Pillsbury was not rich, and his daughter had the prospect of being ultimately obliged to depend on her earnings for a subsistence. It was her desire to enter as soon as possible on the life whose hardships she expected to encounter and overcome. She wished to go beyond the mountains, into the beautiful world on the other side. To her imagination the soft and roseate tints reposing on those far-off summits were emblematic of the delights in store for her. But her parents opposed her wishes, and urged her to remain with them, for some years at least. She was about nineteen when, on a visit to Lynn, she saw a portrait painted by a lady, which seized her attention amid a collection of indifferent pictures. The longing to be a painter again possessed her so strongly that she felt it an irresistible passion. Her first plan was to accompany the lady to Washington and take lessons, but this scheme was abandoned. About a year after this she went to Boston. Passing a shop window, she saw a fine painting, that once more enkindled the flame of artist ambition in her soul. Her determination was formed. With the sanguine hopes of youth, she fancied that a year’s preparation would enable her to paint professionally. She accordingly devoted herself to the practice of her art with that view. Her friends ridiculed the idea of her becoming an artist for a livelihood, and predicted the failure of her scheme without powerful patronage. But this kind of opposition no longer discouraged her, though she was much hampered by the want of time. The winter was rapidly approaching, and she felt that it should not pass without some advance in her beloved studies. She now resolved to go to some place southward where she could see an artist work, and to paint cheap pictures for her own support, living plainly in the country till her lessons were completed. It seemed that she must either do this or die. Without consulting any one, with only twelve dollars in her possession, she left Boston in the early morning train, leaving her trunk behind, and taking only a basket with a few changes of clothes. The undertaking was not without prayers for a blessing from the Providence who watches over all human affairs. Her father needed all the aid she could give him; he had suffered much, and sickness in his family had crippled his narrow resources. The thought of all this, and what she might do were she permitted to work out her own ideas, had tortured Mary and rendered her desperate. In the ardor of her determination now, obstacles seemed nothing; she was resolved to succeed.