6 THE WORLD'S WORKERS. 



of women, and yet she was a girl at a time when 

 women were not educated as they are now, but spent 

 nearly all their school time in acquiring useless 

 accomplishments. It was owing entirely to her own 

 energy and industry that she accomplished what she 

 did. Her teachers had nothing to do with her 

 success. 



Mrs. Somerville lived to be very old. She was 

 ninety-two when she died. During the last years of 

 her life she noted down some of her recollections from 

 early life to old age, and after her death portions of 

 these were published by her daughter. It is from 

 these recollections that we learn what we know of her 

 history. 



When speaking of her childhood, it is very 

 amusing to find how very clearly Mrs. Somerville 

 remembered her own feelings and doings as a child. 

 She remembered how terrified she was when she 

 had to go to bed alone in a dark room ; how 

 miserable she was at school, " perpetually in tears/' 

 and how her schoolfellows used to bathe her eyes in 

 order that the stern schoolmistress might not know 

 that she had been crying ; how she used to play at 

 ball and marbles, and was a good deal afraid of a 

 turkey-cock which belonged to a friend of her mother 

 whom she used to visit. In old age she could picture 

 to herself the home she lived in as a girl ; the delight- 

 ful old garden in which she used to wander ; the 

 primitive country folk who peopled her youthful 



