NEW YORK, JUNE 5, 1886 
PRICE FIVE CENTS, 
$2.00 PER YEAR. 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by the Rural New-Yorker in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, 
MARY WAGER-FISHER. From a Photograph, by Taber, of San Francisco. Fig. 238 
in his fifties. I remember that my mother had 
quite a local fame for her excellent spelling. 
She taught me to sew and knit, and I have a 
bed-quilt of which I eut and sowed the pieces 
when I was five years old. I hated to knit. 
My father’s house was quite a rendezvous for 
Methodist preachers, and 1 hoard a great many 
discussions as to foreordinatiou, answer to 
prayer, etc. Being in despair one day as to 
my detested kuittiug, it, occurred to me that 
it would be quite as easy for my stocking to 
bo finished by faith as for a mouutaiu to be 
removed. So, rolling it up carefully ill a cloth, 
and putting it in a box in a spare bed-room, I 
knelt down and prayed God to fiuish my stork¬ 
ing, and I allowed t wo hours for the perform¬ 
ance of the task. My subsequent chagriu upon 
finding that my prayer had not been heeded 
fully converted me to a belief in the uselessness 
of that kind of prayer, and convinced me tliat 
thereafter if I wanted anything accomplished, 
the only way to get it done was to do it , and I 
have never yet learned any better way. 
As a child I hud a furious temper, and often, 
wheu my dear mother was on her dying bed, 
she would call me to her, aud beg mo to govern 
my temper—not to give way to such ivild out¬ 
bursts of impatience. I was barely 11 years 
old when she died, and with my "fiery" dis¬ 
position and willful tcaq>er, it is easy to imag¬ 
ine that my young career from that time on 
was by no means along a path of roses. 
I can’t remember wheu my dreams of the 
future did not fax' outrun any probable out¬ 
come of fact. I would not only be great, but I 
would be useful! I wished to work for the refor¬ 
mation of the world; for the happiness of the 
wretched, and I had many a skirmish with my 
father aud two elder brothers in regard to 
"woman's sphere." The boys laughed, and 
the father said I would fill my "sphere,” if I 
learned to make butter aud bread! As l think 
of it all now, I can feel all those days and 
years over again—and I blaze anew with 
wrath! However, I learned to make butter 
aud bread—in a small way, to be sure—aud 
turned my hand at the multifarious tasks of 
farm-house life—aud I may as well make a 
note of it here—1 never learned anything that 
did not at some time afterward serve me a 
"good turn.” I first begau to go to school at 
the mature ago of three years, having first 
learned the alphabet aud small words, aud as 
my parents both felt the great importance of 
education, their children were kept continuous¬ 
ly iu school, aud their progress in study was 
carefully watched. We were trained in Pur¬ 
itan fashion, and while my father was keenly 
alive to our best welfare, he was not given to 
frequent expressions of affection, 
Filled as I was with a spirit of impetuosity, 
there had to be an outlet for it somehow, aud 
I took to "scribbling” wheu about 13 years of 
age, and it was not long afterwards that my 
first effusion appeared in print in the county 
paper. It was an essay on "Death." I still 
have a copy of it, along with the succeeding 
“effusions" of the two or three years that fol¬ 
lowed, w hen I poured out the morbid feelings 
and vexations of that unhappy period. Mean¬ 
time, I graduated from the public school into 
an academy, and I think I was about 15 or 10 
years of age when I sent my first contribution 
to Moore's Rural Ne w-Yorker. Of course, 
as with most young writers, I wrote "poetry,” 
and all my work was very crude. Most of my 
offerings were published, bat further than that 
I never received any recognition of them from 
the Rochester office, until one day a note 
came to me from Charles D. Bragdon, the As¬ 
sociate Editor, giving me some suggestions 
as to “style.” 
In due time I went to college, my father 
yielding very reluctantly to what he 
considered my "high-headed” notions; but 
as I look back upon that time now, it was the 
cheapest disposition to make of me, for had I 
been foiled in that, he might as well have had 
a young whirlwind iu the house. I believe I 
had a fair record as a pupil, was heedless of 
rules, wrote all the time for the R. N.-Y., had 
typhoid fever during the last year—nearly 
died—recovered rapidly and by dint of over¬ 
study passed my examinations, got my diplo¬ 
ma and returned home, broken in health. It 
was about this time that 1 sent an article, 
aneut some recent novel, to a New York paper, 
aud the editor seut me in payment for it a $5 
greenback. It was the first money I had re¬ 
ceived for a literary production and it marked 
an event in my life. It was a proud moment 
for me, as L hold it up for my father to see, 
and in the pleased surprise it gave him, he ex¬ 
claimed. "Well, who knows but the girl will 
amount to something after all!” This success 
with a New York paper emboldened me to 
further effort, and I contributed to various 
journals, but without pecuniary success. 
MARY WAGER-FISHEll, 
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 
~/^7\ T our repeated request, 
our esteemed contributor 
1121(1 fri ” n ' 1 ' Mrs. Mary 
W Y j Wager-Fisher, has con- 
(?) "/x S01llxxJ to favor us and our 
f readers with the following 
characteristicautobiogra- 
i \ phlol sketch. As it was 
written while she was 
^ away off iu California, 
) while "the records of her 
life” were at her homo in 
(c'tOTryh Pennsylvania, she was, as 
s ^ e writes us, "quite at 
sea as to dates and events”; 
but her breezy sketch of her own career will 
convey a better idea of the woman as she is 
than could be imparted by auy formal bio¬ 
graphy. She writes: 
To the best of my knowledge and belief, I 
was born In Tompkins County, New York 
State—that county made immortal by its glo¬ 
rious "King Apple”—and I grew up on a farm 
that overlooked Cayuga Lake. My father was 
of English aud Scotch blood; my mother was 
of Hollaud descent. Both my parents were 
persons of "faculty" aud energetic to quite an 
unusual degree—to a destructive degree, for 
my mother died iu her thirties aud my father 
