CHAPTER III.
GIRLHOOD.
Mrs.Willard's Seminary at Troy was the fashionable school in my girlhood, and in the winter of 1830, with upward of a hundred other girls, I found myself an active participant in all the joys and sorrows of that institution.

When in family council it was decided to send me to that intellectual Mecca, I did not receive the announcement with unmixed satisfaction, as I had fixed my mind on Union College.

The thought of a school without boys, who had been to me such a stimulus both in study and play, seemed to my imagination dreary and profitless.
The one remarkable feature of my journey to Troy was the railroad from Schenectady to Albany, the first ever laid in this country.

The manner of ascending a high hill going out of the city would now strike engineers as stupid to the last degree.

The passenger cars were pulled up by a train, loaded with stones, descending the hill.