" So I
became an author,--very modest at first, I do assure you, and
remonstrating very seriously with the friends who had thought it best
to put my name to the pieces by way of getting up a reputation; and if
you ever see a woodcut of me, with an immoderately long nose, on the
cover of all the U.S. Almanacs, I wish you to take notice, that I have
been forced into it contrary to my natural modesty by the imperative
solicitations of my dear five thousand friends and the public
generally. One thing I must say with regard to my life at the West,
which you will understand better than many English women could.
I lived two miles from the city of Cincinnati, in the country, and
domestic service, not always you know to be found in the city, is next
to an impossibility to obtain in the country, even by those who are
willing to give the highest wages; so what was to be expected for poor
me, who had very little of this world's goods to offer?
Had it not been for my inseparable friend Anna, a noble-hearted
English girl, who landed on our shores in destitution and sorrow, and
clave to me as Ruth to Naomi, I had never lived through all the trials
which this uncertainty and want of domestic service imposed on both:
you may imagine, therefore, how glad I was when, our seminary property
being divided out into small lots which were rented at a low price, a
number of poor families settled in our vicinity, from whom we could
occasionally obtain domestic service.
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