Later she was sent to a Friends’ boarding-school at Nine Partners, New York, and stayed for two years, with no holidays and no vacation. A strict school it was, for though both boys and girls were the pupils, they were not allowed to speak to each other unless they were near relatives in which case they might talk on certain days over the fence that separated their playgrounds. Punishment Lucretia Coffin could bear herself far more easily than she could see some one else endure it; when for some trifling misdemeanor, a little boy, a cousin of James Mott, one of the teachers, was locked up in a dark closet and given only bread and water, Lucretia managed to slip into the forbidden side of the house and supply him with more substantial food. One of the instructors left the school, and fifteen-year-old Lucretia became an assistant teacher, working with her classes in the daytime, and with her books by the light of a solitary candle far into the night. A year later she was made a regular teacher, with a salary of a hundred dollars, her living and tuition for one of her little sisters. The two young pedagogues, James Mott and Lucretia Coffin, found that they had many ideas in common--ability, and a desire for knowledge and a wider culture--so they formed a French class and had lessons for six weeks. Such good friends they became that when she was eighteen and he a few years older, they became engaged and were married and settled in Philadelphia. He was quiet, reserved, serious; she bright, active, very pretty. And after they had worked together for a great cause, they loved each other more deeply than ever. As a very young girl Lucretia Mott had been interested in slavery. Her sympathy had first been enlisted from reading in her schoolbooks Clarkson’s vivid picture of the slave ships. Many years later she repeated word for word a description of the horrors of the “middle passage,” which she had memorized from a reader. In 1818 on a journey to Virginia, she had a first affecting glimpse of the slaves themselves. This trip to the South was for the purpose of holding religious meetings, for early that year Lucretia Mott discovered her great gift--public speaking. Among the Friends it was no uncommon thing for women to take part in meeting, and Mrs. Mott soon became one of their favorite preachers. She had a real power over her audiences--her slight figure, her delicate, charming face in the Quaker bonnet, at once strong and tender, her sweetness of voice added to the convincing earnestness of her manner.