Free One Glorious Ambition by Jane Kirkpatrick Page A

the table, his wife with graying hair to his side. Marianna’s large red bow tied up her curls, and she swung her feet beneath the table, her eyes watching the several guests. During a lull, Marianna’s little girl voice said, “It’s fun to be downstairs instead of upstairs in school.”
    Dorothea engaged her immediately. “What’s so different?”
    “Here Joseph doesn’t tease me.” She looked at her mother who shook her head.
    “He bothers you?” Dorothea frowned. “Where do you see him?”
    “When we’re outside playing. He takes my basket and runs.”
    “You must stand up for yourself,” Marianna’s mother said. “Not complain. Every girl needs to do that.” Grace’s voice sounded breathless, as though she’d climbed stairs to an attic.
    “He’s jealous because I know the names of plants he doesn’t.” Marianna adjusted her bow, lifted her chin with a note of defiance.
    “Girls need to defer to boys,” a divinity student eating at the table said. He pointed with his fork. “It’s only proper.”
    “I’m not certain I agree with you, Mr. Reynolds.” Dorothea looked directly at the boarder. “No one person should be asked to downplay her intelligence simply not to embarrass one of another gender.”
    “Unless they do, they might never marry,” he countered. “A terrible tragedy indeed.”
    Dorothea exchanged glances with a legislator’s wife with raised eyebrows. Neither said a word, deciding not to add fuel to the fire. She clarified the value though: young girls in her charge would be encouraged to pursue the length and depth of wisdom, even if it bristled a young man down the road—including her little brother, whom she would watch more closely when the girls went outside.

    “Thomas Nuttall, the botanist, will be speaking this afternoon,” one of the boarders at Mrs. Hudson’s table announced a few days after Marianna and Grace had visited.
    “And who is he?” asked one of the legislators.
    “He made the trek into the Louisiana Purchase with John Jacob Astor’s party, going all the way to the Pacific in 1811. He recorded his observations and has dozens of drawings of various flora.”
    “Can anyone attend?” Dorothea asked.
    “Of course.”
    That afternoon Dorothea donned her bonnet, gloves, and reticule and walked to the lecture hall. The summer day of 1822 was balmy, with sea gulls crying over the docks and a lingering scent of lilacs in the air. She took a seat next to a stately young woman dressed in fine fashion who nodded toward Dorothea as the lecture began. Lemon oil made the wooden seats shine and gave off a pleasant scent. Or perhaps it was the woman’s perfume. Dorothea had seen the woman at church, but they had not spoken.
    Dorothea settled in to listen, loving the man’s stories. He spoke of places and plants she might never see. The idea of their existence pleased her. Perhaps it was the orderliness, how plants could be classified in such detail, created by a God who had so many larger things to contend with, and yet He remembered
Nymphaea odorata
, the lowly lily of the pond.
    “Wasn’t that grand?” her seatmate expressed after the final applause for the lecture died down and people stood, gathered their belongings.
    “It was.” Dorothea tugged on her gloves.
    “I’m Anne Heath. I believe I’ve seen you at Mr. Channing’s sermons.” Her dark eyebrows lifted.
    “Yes, Reverend Channing is quite brilliant.”
    “I love information for its own sake,” Anne said. “Whether I
do
anything with the ideas and facts or not.” She leaned into Dorothea. “I hope it’s not a wasteful practice, listening to ideas, reading books on ancient civilizations or medical procedures or even the history of the making of paper, knowing those facts just rattle in my head until perhaps I can interject them into conversations. Nothing more.”
    Dorothea grinned. “I’m Dorothea Lynde Dix,” she said. “My grandmother is Madam Dix.”
    “Of course. We don’t