Читать книгу Clara Barton, Professional Angel - Elizabeth Brown Pryor - Страница 11

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Clara stood by the large stone fireplace in her family's house and trained frightened and questioning eyes on the assembled Barton family. “But what am I to do with only two little old waifish dresses?” she asked. Her cousin Julia recognized at once that Clara was right—with her new occupation as teacher she needed an image that would inspire confidence and respect, especially since her appearance was so small and childlike. Convinced that clothes would indeed make the woman, the women of the house began lengthening skirts and putting up hair—a bustle of activity aimed at making the insecure schoolmarm look older and larger.¹ At least one new dress was forthcoming. It was a fashionable green outfit that Clara wore on her first day of teaching and sentimentally saved for the rest of her life.²

Barton was probably about eighteen when she first began teaching. In later years she often stated that she was fifteen at the start of this, her earliest career. A letter from a close friend, dated in the spring of 1838, however, indicates that if she taught before this date he knew nothing about it. Moreover, her mill work, which she admitted was finished before she began to teach school, took place in 1839 when she was seventeen. Elsewhere Clara mentions that she was sixteen when she undertook her first summer session, yet her earliest extant teaching certificate (won after “an examination of the learned committee of one clergyman, one lawyer and one justice of the peace”) is dated 1839.³ Whatever her age, she felt the handicap of being but slightly older than her pupils. She had been treated as a child at home and had had little experience with the responsibilities of the working world, save two weeks at the looms of her brother's mill. “We had all been children together,” Barton wrote of her first pupils.⁴

Barton taught her first classes in a barren stone building, “neither large nor new,” she recalled. An ungraded school, it was filled with rows of shabby desks into which were crammed forty curious pupils, ranging in age from toddlers to four young men in their late teens. In summer schools such as these, the pupils were apt to be girls and little boys who were not needed at home to help with the farm work. (School boards thought the sessions easier for that reason and paid the young women who taught them a salary substantially below the going rate for winter schools.) Facing her pupils from the teacher's platform the first day, Clara felt no optimism about the ease of her task. She found the pupils distracted by the sweet smell of meadow grass and the warm breezes, and knew the boys stood ready to test her. With a rush of panic, she realized she had no idea how to open a school. Lighting on the first object at hand, she opened a Bible. Too shy to address the pupils, she directed them to read from the text of the Sermon on the Mount. She was pleased to find them responsive and amusing, and to discover that the four larger boys could be checked with a stinging glance.⁵

Elvira Stone recalled that her cousin Clara “took to teaching as natural as could be.”⁶ Clara was, in fact, a gifted pedagogue who formed an immediate and strong rapport with her pupils. Her own interest in learning was infectious, and her agile mind kept the pupils continually challenged. Moreover, she knew instinctively that if she made her expectations known her pupils would rise to the mark and that this would be an effective disciplinary tool. She coupled this with an unerring ability to earn their respect. When Miss Barton found that the boys played too roughly at the noon recess she joined the game, winning them over with her admirable talent for throwing a ball. “My four lads soon perceived that I was no stranger to their sports or their tricks…. When they found…that if they won a game it was because I permitted it, their respect knew no bounds.” Their admiration was carried over into the schoolhouse, and she found little need for the harsh punishments that characterized many common schools.⁷ A girl who sat in Barton's school attested to this when she wrote to her former teacher with fond memories. “I remember you walking about with your ruler in your hand.…I don’t remember that you ever punished anyone, you used your ruler for other purposes.”⁸ At the end of the term Barton's school received the highest standing in North Oxford for discipline. The young teacher remonstrated, stating that there had been no disciplinary actions during the whole term. “Child that I was,” Barton later wrote, “I did not know that the surest test of discipline is its absence.”⁹

This ability to gain her pupils’ affections and discipline them gave her an unequaled reputation in the town, and she was soon in demand as a teacher. Initially Barton herself was uncertain about continuing to teach because she still felt that her own education was lacking. Her family, however, was far too pleased with her progress to allow her to decline. At the end of the next term, therefore, she reluctantly accepted a position with a school in Charlton, a village adjoining North Oxford. It was, again, a summer school, but one with a reputation for boisterous children and a need for discipline.¹⁰

Charlton was just far enough away that Barton could not continue to live at home during the school term. Outwardly she faced the move from her family with more serenity than she had felt on former separations. Yet when her father drove her to the school at the commencement of her term, she admitted that her “cheery good-bye” was only “typical of most of the things said and done in practical life, altogether unlike the thing felt or meant.” She believed that she had reached a turning point in her life, a branch of the road along which she would have to find her way alone. This thought sobered her and reinforced her already pensive turn of mind, but the confidence she had gained from her teaching success helped to allay the sting of terror she had felt before on such occasions. Fortunately, too, the ache of separation from home was eased by the cozy and genial residence in which she boarded.¹¹

The school in Charlton, like so many others Barton would see, had “a rather time worn edifice.” She taught fifty pupils, for which she received around two dollars a week. No advanced teaching was required. The schoolroom resounded only with the monotonous drone of ABCs, multiplication tables, and recitation of state capitals. Despite the easy curriculum, however, Barton worked hard for her salary, since the school was not only large but lived up to its rough reputation. She soon discovered that it was dominated by a group of unruly boys, whose leader was “contrary, sullen and half-insolent,” and that the members of this gang were not as easily managed as their counterparts in North Oxford. Attempts to win them over with smiles and respect brought only jeers and the exchange of knowing glances among the rowdies, who were certain that this schoolmarm would be broken as quickly as the rest.¹²

When they began to seriously disrupt the classes and an attempt to contact the ringleader's mother gave no satisfaction, Barton was left with little choice but to save her school by drastic means. One morning, when the most troublesome boy swaggered tardily into the classroom, annoying the pupils and mocking Barton by refusing to make even a pretext of correctly reciting his lessons, she took action. She requested him to come forward, and as he walked saucily up the aisle, she pulled a long riding whip from her desk, lashing out and tripping him while the other pupils watched with horror. Barton continued to wield the whip, jerking him to his knees until he apologized to the school for his actions. She then dismissed the shaken students for the day and suggested that they have a picnic in the meadow near the school. Barton herself was shocked by this episode, which was her only experience with corporal punishment. It made an impression so lasting that in 1908 she would write that “all these years have not been able to efface [it].” Needless to say, it put an end to trouble in the school for that term. “I had learnt what discipline meant, and it was for all time as far as that school was concerned; none ever needed more than a kindly smile.”¹³

The control Barton exercised over this school further enhanced her reputation. She was asked to teach it again the next year, and for nearly ten years her services were actively sought in both Oxford and the surrounding area. Rarely did she teach the same school twice. Though she allowed her older students a certain leeway in the subjects they studied, she was not an innovator in matters of curriculum; rather, she was challenged by the organization and discipline of the school. It intrigued her to ferret out the unique problems of each schoolhouse and to channel her pupils’ energies into study instead of mischief. But once the problems were conquered and the school settled down to a contented routine, Clara's active mind became distracted. For this reason she refused to teach again in Charlton, and after a short, unchallenging term at another neighboring town called West Millbury, she again sought a more demanding position. She was pleased, therefore, when the school board in Oxford requested that she teach the winter term of a particularly difficult school. When they offered her the salary usually paid women for the shorter and easier summer session, however, she declined. “I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing,” she told the board, “but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay.” It was a measure of Barton's growing confidence that she felt emboldened to make such a demand, and of her value as a teacher that the school board withdrew the original offer and paid what she requested.¹⁴

Clara's monetary rewards were matched by increasing satisfaction in her work during these early years. She viewed herself as a serious, professional teacher, and unlike many young men and women, who saw teaching as a temporary station between the end of their own schooling and the beginning of a profession or marriage, she seems to have embraced her work as a long-term career. Accordingly, she invested many hours expanding her own expertise with self-study. In addition, she actively sought advice on method and curriculum from Sally and Stephen, both of whom had been accomplished teachers, and from her father and brother David, who had seen the trials and successes of many schools from the vantage point of school board members.¹⁵ She further reinforced and rounded out her own fine instincts in a lengthy correspondence with her former tutor, Lucien Burleigh. He challenged her to treat both individual pupils and even the most routine aspects of the work with respect. “It is a responsible station, and one that demands much thought and meditation,” he cautioned her. To her query about personal bonds formed in the classroom, he replied unequivocally: “If the instructor succeeds in securing the affection of his pupils, he will be able by being judicious to forward them rapidly in their studies.”¹⁶

Whether directly heeding this advice or acting on her own strong impulses, Barton excelled in capturing not only the respect but the love of her pupils. She had a ready wit, and an absence of condescension which pleased them, and her sense of fairness destroyed the jealousies of favoritism. “She had such a happy way with her that she won everybody over to her side,” recalled one admirer.¹⁷ Poor children received the same care as the others, with a personalized attention that sometimes changed their lives. (One such boy was rescued from the drudgery of factory work to develop his exceptional mathematical skills, a favor he never forgot.¹⁸) She was, moreover, unabashedly loyal, even possessive of her pupils. “They were all mine,” she recalled in an autobiographical sketch, “second only to the claims and interests of the real mother…. And so they have remained.”¹⁹

Her pupils returned the favor. They fulfilled beyond Clara's wildest expectations her self-expressed need for “approval, encouragement, trust, confidence,” without which she felt her soul might “go awreck.”²⁰ In the shining faces of her students, the boys filled with regard for her fairness and sportsmanship, she felt the acceptance and admiration that had so long eluded her. One pupil liked to think of “the days we spent together at the old no 9 school at Oxford and how proud I was if I could take hold of your dress as you had but too [sic] hands, and walk a little ways with you, how we all loved you then.” For the rest of her life Barton received letters such as this, and the loyalty of her pupils was a continual source of pleasure. “Their life-long loyal allegiance to me is beyond my comprehension,” she wrote at the age of eighty. “Little as many of them were, trifling as the days must have seemed among a whole life of scholarship, which so many of them followed, it is a most remarkable thing that all have remembered those few months and cherished them with a loyalty that the most ambitious teacher could but prize.”²¹

Self-respect and a sense of place in the community increased Barton's social confidence. As L. N. Fowler had predicted, the experience diminished her chronic introspection; through successful interaction with people she lost some of her shyness, or at least learned to effectively hide it. The social growth was also at least partly due to a conscious effort on her part to face the world with poise, and to please her brother David.

Soon after Clara began teaching, David had become engaged to Julia Ann Porter, the same cousin who had lived with the Barton's during their mutual grandmother's illness. One day David gave his younger sister an invitation that, she later wrote, “took my breath away”: he wished her to join the wedding party by accompanying him to Maine to serve as bridesmaid. Fearful that she would appear awkward or embarrass her brother, she at first demurred but at his insistence was finally persuaded to go. The thought of standing beside the lovely Julia, whose charms could only serve as a contrast to her plain, dumpy figure, and of being called on to graciously introduce cousins and friends, filled her with dread. Yet once it was decided that she would go, she silently determined to act in the most obliging manner possible. Clara cared less what the citizens of Winsor, Maine, thought of her than that she might disappoint her brother and lose his love and support. “I was not distressed about what might be thought of me…,” she reminisced, “but how it might reflect upon my brother, and the mortification that my awkwardness could not fail to inflict on him.” Thus Clara's “tearful resolution” conquered her debilitating shyness. It was yet another turning point during the important years of her teaching career, and she was keenly aware of it at the time. The desire to take responsibility for her actions and to prevail over personal qualities that she herself found unacceptable, she noted, “seemed to throw the whole wide world open to me.”²²

For Clara, David Barton's wedding proved to be a memorable experience, not only because of the personal growth she experienced during the time but because it was her earliest adventure away from home. The party traveled up the New England coast by boat, and she felt the thrill of seeing the ocean in its vastness and mystery.²³ With wide eyes she encountered “a whole townful of uncles and cousins,” and came to know a place and part of her family that had heretofore been merely characters in stories or names penned on envelopes.²⁴ On the eve of her departure Vester Vassall, her brother-in-law, gave her a Morocco-covered autograph album. At socials and teas she asked her new friends to write a few lines, and they filled the book with their good wishes. Evidently she had conquered not only her own social malaise but the hearts of her relations in Maine. The little green album was carefully preserved with her treasures as a tangible piece of the pride she felt in overcoming her fears.²⁵

As the boundaries of her known world had expanded on the trip, so had her emotional horizons broadened. Barton continued to feel the disadvantage of her homely face and round figure. Yet her quick wit and adventurous and sporting manner were appealing, and several young men in the vicinity of Oxford came to call on her. One swain let her know that whenever he saw her he “made up my face for a really good time,” and another praised both her intelligence and her capacity for laughter.²⁶ Clara's romances remain elusive, however, for they were, to her, intensely private, and she rarely spoke or wrote about them. The few people in whom she confided were rewarded with conflicting or cryptic allusions to gentlemen who were impossible to identify.

According to family tradition Barton formed an early and strong attachment to Jerry Learned, the cousin with whom she had grown up. She was fond of his high spirits and merry ways and felt comfortable in his familiar company. The boyhood recklessness of the Learned cousins, however, was still in evidence in their maturity. Some dubious ventures, and their financial dealings seemed always to have a shadowy edge to them. Jerry in particular appeared wedded to the life of a speculator. A nephew close to Clara believed she realized with sad reluctance that Jerry Learned lacked the strength of character she thought necessary for a close relationship. A girlhood chum, however, had a different explanation. “Jerry Learned was real good-looking,” confided Fanny Childs Vassall, “and Clara once said to me that she shouldn’t want the man to have all the good looks in the family.”²⁷

While Clara was still in her teens she enjoyed the company of another young man, L. T. Bacon (his first name has unfortunately escaped record). He evidently did not live in Oxford, but he and Clara still managed to meet, ride horseback, crack hickory nuts, or roam the hills in search of blackberries. Mr. Bacon evidently took the romance seriously, since he noted that it pleased him to hear that she had been learning some household arts, “for it is not entirely impossible that such accomplishments may be some practical use.”²⁸ Close-mouthed Clara does not tell us what became of this relationship, but the tenor of their light-hearted romance has not been entirely lost. It shines through the semi-poetic ramblings Bacon sent to Clara soon after one of their meetings, in which he praises her as “much more a sister so dear as you are to me,” and remembers “a fine walk home which place we reached soon enough (being favored with a moon and thoug[h] near noon) for a nap which we enjoyed first rate and no mistake.”²⁹

Still another suitor during her teaching days was Oliver Williams. Barton had boarded with his family during one school term. After the session ended they corresponded, and diary entries for 1849 show that she spent considerable time in his company. During one week she visited every day with him, save one, and on that day' she noted in her journal that it was “a lonesome day.”³⁰ It is difficult to tell, however, whether Barton's interest in Williams was based on simple friendship or bespoke a deeper affection. Williams was the illegitimate son of a woman with whom Barton was familiar, and she had befriended and helped to educate him. He had responded to her teaching with a steadfast love that lasted over many years. But, although she enjoyed his company, Barton saw little chance of their friendship ripening into a permanent attachment. Fanny Childs again held the view that Williams was not a very interesting man and that Barton failed to see in him “the possibility of a husband such as she would have chosen.”³¹ Before Clara was thirty, Williams had left North Oxford to bury his sore heart in the gold fields of California.

It was indeed a time when most girls of her age and social status were considering marriage, both as romantic fulfillment and as their highest calling in life. There is every indication that Clara Barton also assumed that marriage would come to her in due course. She liked the company of men; as a girl she had preferred the companionship of her brothers, father, and male cousins. She was no political feminist—she admitted that in her youth she never heard of the work of Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton—but her entire background had encouraged her to view herself as the compatriot and match of any man. The men in her family had treated her—indeed trained her—as an equal, and her personality grew as strong and dominant as theirs.³² By comparison her beaus seem to be always in her shadow. A friend wrote that “more men were interested in her than she was ever interested in,” then added that Clara was so pronounced in her opinions that most men, used to more submissive women, “stood somewhat in awe of her.”³³ They admired her extravagantly, and Clara enjoyed their adulation, but she could not take any of them seriously as a life partner. Moreover, she came to disdain many men who she thought treated women in a patronizing way. The case of Sam Healy, a young man who for a time paid attentions to Elvira Stone, is indicative of Clara Barton's strong sense of the respect she felt was due women. Healy escorted her cousin for a time, but his intention was more to gain social acceptance than to have the pleasure of Elvira's company. Barton was outraged when she heard that Healy had stopped seeing Elvira after securing his social toehold and had spoken poorly of her in company.

“Ah Sam Healy,” Barton wrote, “that was the day ye died in my estimation and there was no Resurrection for Ye.”³⁴ Incidents such as these convinced her that it would be a rare man who could live up to her standards of intelligence and at the same time respect her for her own abilities and aspirations. Fanny Childs Vassall, who knew Clara intimately during her twenties, acknowledged this. “I do not think she ever had a love affair that stirred the depths of her being,” she wrote. “Clara Barton was herself so much stronger a character than any of the men who made love to her that I do not think she was ever seriously tempted to marry any of them.”³⁵

Yet a mystery hangs around the emotions involved in many of Barton's romantic relationships. In later life she often alluded to serious affairs, including one that was terminated not by her desire but by the gentleman's death in the Mexican War. She never mentioned the man's name, but she gave at least one person the impression that the two had been engaged.³⁶ Clara's diaries also show that she was capable of a strong emotional response to men.³⁷ Her disinclination to marry, at least during these early years, stemmed more from the unavailability of a suitable mate than from a strong prejudice against the subordinate role of women in marriage or a dislike of men.

Clara's social life during the years of teaching was not dominated by amorous adventures. Captain Barton, recognizing the emotional, burden that teaching often placed on her, bought her a spirited saddle horse.³⁸ She often rode alone, leaving her cares behind as she flew through the wooded country lanes, but she also occasionally shared her rides with the more adventurous of her acquaintances.³⁹ She played whist, apparently with some indifference, and tried her hand at making artificial flowers and painting.⁴⁰ Between school terms, when she had an unusual amount of spare time, she wrote copious letters—a habit of correspondence she was to keep all her life—and went chestnuting with her favorite nephew.⁴¹ Literary pursuits, too, occupied her time, and she wrote verses (generally more doggerel than poetry) for her friends and copied works by others in a scrapbook pasted together from her old school copybooks.⁴² Her days were filled with social calls, as a diary entry for February 24, 1849, shows: “Received a call from Mrs. Cummings, visited David in the afternoon. Went to Webster [a neighboring town] in the evening. E P. called and left in the evening.”⁴³

Clara could hardly be accused of being asocial now, yet she still preferred to spend her time in some productive occupation. Restless and impatient, she searched for ways to be useful. She often found an outlet in keeping the books for her brothers’ mills, and when the mills burned in 1839, she helped to straighten the financial records so that a new complex could be built. She was anxious, too, to be of help at home. During the final illness of her grandmother, Dorothy Barton, who died in 1838, she aided her mother as best she could, and when her sister Dolly finally succumbed in 1842 to the sad collapse of her mental powers, Clara was by her side.⁴⁴ In addition, she participated actively in the work of the Universalist church. When a new church was to be erected, around 1844, she pitched in to help raise money for the building. As always, it gratified her to work toward a goal. She noted with pride that “no body of church people ever worked harder than we. We held fairs, public and home, begged, and gave all but the clothes we wore, we cleaned windows, scrubbed [up] paint after workmen, bought and nailed down carpets.” Barton also helped to furnish the parsonage and was pleased when she was chosen to stay in the house to welcome the new minister and his young bride.⁴⁵

Yet her church work, dedicated as it was, was not an indication of deep religious feelings. Though aware of her father's devotion to Universalist principles, Clara did not share his strong religious convictions. From childhood on she remembered the town church as an austere place of “tall box pews and high narrow seats” in which there was ever an “incongruous winter atmosphere” that pinched her fingers and toes, and where faith was not easy but was “hammered out.”⁴⁶ Despite the efforts of friends such as Lucien Burleigh, who advised her to search her soul and give more attention to religious beliefs, Barton remained aloof from the doctrines of the church. She had trouble meshing the Universalist notion of ultimate joy with the poverty and unhappiness she saw around her, and if anything she became increasingly pessimistic during this period. After confiding to a friend about this trend in her personal feelings in 1843, he replied with a note of sadness: “You announce to me a change in your religious view from a hope in the final infinite happiness of all mankind you have become a believer in the endless misery of a part, that is truly a change.”⁴⁷ Barton never completely relinquished her faith but remained, as she pronounced it, a “well-disposed pagan.”⁴⁸ Still she enjoyed the tie to the church's organization, which provided a welcome outlet for her enormous energy and capability.

Barton's most ambitious project during the 1840s, however, was worked in tandem with her brother Stephen. For several years Clara had been aware of the need to redistrict the schools in the town of Oxford. Owing to the success of the various mills, the town had grown rapidly, and the centers of population had shifted so that the locations of the old schools were no longer suitable. Oxford had no large central schools. Instead it relied on several small, dilapidated buildings that were empty half of the year and served only a few pupils. Clara had seen similar problems in other areas. In the early 1840s, during the time she had taught in Millbury, she had persuaded the local school board to endorse a report that deplored the poor attendance, lack of uniform textbooks, inadequate facilities, and superficial community attention to school problems.⁴⁹ In 1844 she began in earnest to try to remedy similar problems in Oxford, and she found in Stephen, who was then a member of the town school board, a willing and able compatriot.

After several sessions, during which they consumed “more or less midnight oil,” Clara and Stephen set out to convince the town of the need for a new system of school organization. They met with strong opposition. Many Oxford citizens believed that such an effort would cost the town dearly and that sufficient funds were already spent on education. Others saw a problem in requiring their children to walk across town to school; they liked the system of neighborhood schools, which kept the boys and girls close to home where they could be called quickly if they were needed to help with farm or shop. Moreover, the Barton's’ original plan had grown to encompass a scheme for educating the millworkers and their children. As a mill owner, Stephen was well aware that low wages and long hours conspired to keep these people from obtaining an education, and that, furthermore, no district school existed in the area in which the millworkers lived. Although this situation outraged Clara, few of the citizens of Oxford were convinced that the town was obligated to educate those from the lower social ranks. Their objections were reinforced by similar opposition from two of the town's most powerful men, Deacon Peter Butler and Clara's own father, Captain Stephen Barton. So influential were they that it took Clara and Stephen junior over a year even to bring the matter before a town meeting.⁵⁰

In the spring of 1845 the issue was finally presented to the town. Clara had labored arduously over the major speech in favor of redistricting. The argument was read by a popular mill owner, “of course as his own,” for as a woman she had no voice in the meeting. Despite her long and respected years of teaching, in matters such as these she sadly recognized that “I was nobody.” The scene was tense as speakers from each side aired their views and emotions rose. Those in favor of redistricting watched anxiously to see if the moderator—Captain Barton—would show any favoritism. But Clara and her brother had canvassed well, and just as the vote was to be taken, eighty-two workers from the local factories marched in and packed the ballot box with a solid block of votes in favor of redistricting.⁵¹

That night Clara celebrated at a special dinner cooked by her mother. The whole family assembled to share their triumph and to reconcile the split family views. Captain Barton showed no animosity over defeat at the hands of his children. Wrote Clara, “my father's first hearty toast was to the ‘new fangled folly.’”⁵²

It had been a rewarding effort, the first of many crusades Clara was to fight for the distressed or underprivileged, and she found the habit of altruism addictive. Thus she continued the good work by advising and aiding the redistricting board and undertaking the design of one of the new enlarged district schools. “I had ample opportunity for original design for I had never seen a schoolhouse that in its construction was not nearly as well-adapted to any other ordinary use than a school,” she dryly noted. (Her design called for maps, blackboards, and a clock for teaching purposes, as well as a sloping center aisle to compensate for the uniformly sized desks, which overwhelmed six-year-olds and cramped the older pupils. A few years later Clara proudly described the classroom to a former student as “chang’d indeed…within, without and around.”) This project completed, she embraced yet another social cause—the still-controversial establishment and teaching of the mill school.⁵³

The school was established initially in one of the largest local mills. It was a small, dark pocket whose only light came from a large doorway facing a public street. To provide enough light for reading, the door had to be kept open, and the noise from the road was as constant distraction. Every passing dog and cat skipped in, as well as “goats that searched the neighborhood for dainties.” In addition, there was the problem of the diversity in age and nationality of the students. Clara taught a total of seventy pupils, who ranged from four to twentyfour years of age. There were American-born scholars in the school, but also English, Irish, and French, which resulted in conflicts of language and culture. To keep order under such circumstances, Clara appointed monitors—to be one was deemed a high honor among the students—and arranged classes with an eye to preserving each pupil's self-esteem. By using a combination of “gentle restraint, calm reasoning, confidence and encouragement,” she guided her school to success.⁵⁴

Those who had doubted the effectiveness of such a school were surprised to find the makeshift classroom abuzz with productive activity. “There was not a minute of the day for me to lose,” Barton acknowledged, noting that her classes studied not only “the 3 R's,” but algebra, bookkeeping, philosophy, chemistry, and ancient and natural history. In one area the school so excelled that it gained a regional reputation. Convinced that reading aloud would improve the language skills of her foreign pupils, Barton encouraged recreational reading and rewarded those who skillfully dramatized their favorite pieces. To her surprise crowds began to gather outside the open doorway on the days when the readings took place. What had originated as a spontaneous and pragmatic exercise charmed the public into recognizing the school's potential, and the mill school became widely known for its distinguished “concert readings.”⁵⁵

Once she had met the challenge of the mill school successfully, however, Barton became increasingly dissatisfied with the cycle of teaching, which left her with sporadic months of aimless leisure. She was now in her late twenties and had mastered every situation that had been presented to her. She had tamed the unruly boys in countless towns and country schools, fostered the hopes of the area's illiterate mill hands, and helped to bring about educational reforms, which had seemed to her such obvious necessities. In her mind the years of dull routine stretched endlessly before her. With no jobs open to women save teaching or factory work, she could not imagine from what direction she would find new and stimulating work. Instead Barton began to think seriously of leaving the teacher's podium for a pupil's desk, to find, in her words, “a school, the object of which was to teach me something.”⁵⁶

It was not the first time Clara had considered advanced schooling. She was, however, uncertain about the possibilities open to women and the methods of gaining admission to the few institutions that had opened their doors to gifted females. As early as 1838 she had asked Lucien Burleigh for advice on the subject, questioning him also about her potential for earning money while a student. Burleigh recommended a school in Uxbridge, Hubbell s, and one nearby in Charlestown, “where young ladies have an opportunity of paying their board by their labor.”⁵⁷ Money problems and indecision stalled her, and nothing came of the idea at this time. Ten years later, with her capital enlarged by scrupulous savings, Barton again began to actively look at colleges and academies. Only two colleges accepted women at this time: Mount Holyoke and Oberlin. Barton seems not to have been at all interested in Mount Holyoke, possibly because the school was close to her home. She was determined to go far enough away that a run of bad luck at an Oxford school would not lure her back. She gave Oberlin, a coeducational school in Ohio, serious consideration, but after talking with a trusted neighbor on the subject, she dropped her plan of going there for reasons which are not altogether clear.⁵⁸

Barton deliberated her future quietly, telling few people of her plans and continuing to trudge through the day-to-day activities in her school. While she worried over inadequate fuel for heating the classroom and the necessity of expelling two unruly students, her mind wandered to her own educational needs.⁵⁹ She watched with interest as her brothers enlarged their mill complex until it was “quite a village” of two factories, five dwelling houses, barns, shops, and offices, but she could not really feel a part of it as she had in the past. Her health was good but her mind was dissatisfied, and her spirit tired of “working oneself to death to get a living.”⁶⁰ Finally, late in 1850, she determined to go to the Clinton Liberal Institute, a well-respected coeducational academy run by the Universalist church in Clinton, New York. For Barton this would be much more than an academic opportunity. Almost two hundred miles from home, the school would broaden her experience beyond the familiar hills of central Hubbell s and entwine her life with friendships that would have a major impact on her growth and aspirations.⁶¹