Her little hands very early learned to contribute to the support of the family. When eleven years old she earned a dollar and twenty-five cents a week splicing rolls in a woolen factory. She says of this period: “My principal recollections are of noise and filth, bleeding hands and aching feet, and a very sad heart.” Little did the residents of Eaton then dream that this little factory-girl was afterward to become such an honor to their humble village. Subsequently, when she first applied for the position of teacher in the district school, a young farmer who was acting trustee replied, “Why, the scholars will be bigger than their teacher.” But the little schoolmistress made her teaching a success, and before she was twenty years of age had contributed to the village newspaper poems of great literary merit. About this time she attracted the attention of the Misses Sheldon, who were conducting a well-known ladies’ school at Utica. They offered her gratuitous instruction for a single term, and subsequently proposed to complete her education without present charge. This afforded her an excellent opportunity for self-improvement. Her health, however, had been shattered by the hardship and labors of her earlier years, and it was through great weakness and suffering that she pressed toward higher literary excellence. She was continually spurred on by her desire to secure a home for her aged parents. It was for this purpose that she wrote those charming stories in which grace and strength of style are combined with the purest moral tone. It was under such circumstances as these that she sent to the press the stories for children, entitled “The Great Secret,” “Effie Maurice,” “Charles Linn,” “Allen Lucas,” “John Frink,” and also the fascinating tales for older readers, which were afterward gathered together, under the name of “Alderbrook.” Her biographer[65] relates the following incident:
“As Miss Sheldon was at one time passing near midnight through the halls, a light streaming from Emily’s apartment attracted her attention, and, softly opening the door, she stole in upon her vigils. Emily sat in her night-dress, her papers lying outspread before her, grasping with both hands her throbbing temples, and pale as a marble statue. Miss S. went to her, whispered words of sympathy, and gently chided her for robbing her system of its needed repose. Emily’s heart was already full, and now the fountain of feeling overflowed in uncontrollable weeping. ‘Oh, Miss Sheldon,’ she exclaimed, ‘I _must_ write, I _must_ write; I must do what I can to aid my poor parents.’”
While making a visit in New York during the month of June, 1847, Miss Chubbuck wrote a letter to the _Evening Mirror_, which at that time was an exceedingly popular magazine, edited by George P. Morris and N. P. Willis. In a graceful and sportive vein she offered her literary services to this periodical:
“You know the shops in Broadway are very tempting this spring. _Such_ beautiful things! Well, you know (no, you don’t know that, but you can guess) what a delightful thing it would be to appear in one of those charming, head-adorning, complexion-softening, hard-feature-subduing neapolitans; with a little gossamer veil dropping daintily on the shoulder of one of those exquisite _balzarines_, to be seen any day at Stewart’s and elsewhere. Well, you know (this you _must_ know) that shop-keepers have the impertinence to demand a trifling exchange for these things even of a lady; and also that some people have a remarkably small purse, and a remarkably small portion of the yellow ‘root’ in that. And now, to bring the matter home, _I_ am one of that class. I have the most beautiful little purse in the world, but it is only kept for show; I even find myself under the necessity of counterfeiting—that is, filling the void with tissue paper in lieu of bank-notes, preparatory to a shopping expedition.
“Well, now to the point. As Bel and I snuggled down on the sofa this morning to read the _New Mirror_ (by the way, Cousin Bel is never obliged to put tissue paper in her purse), it struck us that you would be a friend in need, and give good counsel in this emergency. Bel, however, insisted on my not telling what I wanted the money for. She even thought that I had better intimate orphanage, extreme suffering from the bursting of some speculative bubble, illness, etc., etc.; but did not I know you better? Have I read the _New Mirror_ so much (to say nothing of the graceful things coined ‘under a bridge,’ and a thousand other pages flung from the inner heart), and not learned who has an eye for everything pretty? Not so stupid, Cousin Bel; no, no!