After we returned from Texas, being the oldest child and the servants all
gone, my mother sick, and the younger children going to
school, I had the house work, cooking and most of the washing to do. It
was a new experience for me, and it was twice as hard as it ought to have
been. I exposed my health; would slop up myself when I washed, and
almost ruined my health, because I had not been properly educated. Herein
was the curse of slavery. My father saw this, and I don't believe he
had a regret when the slaves were free. Mother, it matters not what else
you teach your daughters, if they have not an experience in doing the
work themselves about a home, they are sadly deficient. It is not the soft,
palefaced, painted, fashionable lady we want, for the world would be better
without her; but the woman capable of knowing how, and willing to take
a place in the home affairs of life. It is an ambition of mine to establish
a Preparatory College in Topeka, Kansas, where girls may be taught, as
women should be, that they in turn may teach others, how to wash, cook,
scrub, dress and talk, to counteract the idea that woman is a toy, pretty
doll, with no will power of her own, only a parrot, a parasite of a
man. To be womanly, means strength of character, virtue and a power
for good. Let your women be teachers of good things, says the Holy
Spirit.
The last school I attended was at Liberty, Missouri, taught by Mr.
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