Inwardly,I objected to the idea of being an infant;it seemed to me like being nothing in particular--neither a child nor a little girl,neither a baby nor a woman.Having discovered that I was capable of being wicked,I thought it would be better if I could grow up at once,and assume my own responsibilities.It quite demoralized me when people talked in my presence about "innocent little children."There was much questioning in those days as to whether fictitious reading was good for children.To "tell a story"was one equivalent expression for lying.But those who came nearest to my child-life recognized the value of truth as impressed through the imagination,and left me in delightful freedom among my fairy-tale books.I think I saw a difference,from the first,between the old poetic legends and a modern lie,especially if this latter was the invention of a fancy as youthful as my own.
I supposed that the beings of those imaginative tales had lived some time,somewhere;perhaps they still existed in foreign countries,which were all a realm of fancy to me.I was certain that they could not inhabit our matter-of-fact neighborhood.Ihad never heard that any fairies or elves came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower.But a little red-haired playmate with whom I became intimate used to take me off with her into the fields,where,sitting,on the edge of a disused cartway fringed with pussy-clover,she poured into my ears the most remarkable narratives of acquaintances she had made with people who lived under the ground close by us,in my fatber's orchard.Her literal descriptions quite deceived me;I swallowed her stories entire,just as people in the last century did Defoe's account of "The Apparition of Mrs.Veal."She said that these subterranean people kept house,and that they invited her down to play with their children on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons;also that they sometimes left a plate of cakes and tarts for her at their door:she offered to show me the very spot where it was,--under a great apple-tree which my brothers called "the luncheon-tree,"because we used to rest and refresh ourselves there,when we helped my father weed his vegetable-garden.But she guarded herself by informing me that it would be impossible for us to open the door ourselves;that it could only be unfastened from the inside.She told me these people's names--a "Mr.Pelican,"and a "Mr.Apple-tree Manasseh,"who had a very large family of little "Manassehs."She said that there was a still larger family,some of them probably living just under the spot where we sat,whose sirname was "Hokes."(If either of us had been familiar with another word pronounced in the same way,though spelled differently,I should since have thought that she was all the time laughing in her sleeve at my easy belief.)These "Hokeses"were not good-natured people,she added,whispering to me that we must not speak about them aloud,as they had sharp ears,and might overhear us,and do us mischief.
I think she was hoaxing herself as well as me;it was her way of being a heroine in her own eyes and mine,and she had always the manner of being entirely in earnest.
But she became more and more romantic in her inventions.Adistant aristocratic-looking mansion,which we could see half-hidden by trees,across the river,she assured me was a haunted house,and that she had passed many a night there,seeing unaccountable sights,and hearing mysterious sounds.She further announced that she was to be married,some time,to a young man who lived over there.I inferred that the marriage was to take place whenever the ghostly tenants of the house would give their consent.She revealed to me,under promise of strict secrecy,the young man's name.It was "Alonzo."Not long after I picked up a book which one of my sisters had borrowed,called "Alonzo and Melissa,"and I discovered that she had been telling me page after page of "Melissa's"adventures,as if they were her own.The fading memory I have of the book is that it was a very silly one;and when I discovered that the rest of the romantic occurrences she had related,not in that volume,were to be found in "The Children of the Abbey,"I left off listening to her.I do not think I regarded her stories as lies;I only lost my interest in them after I knew that they were all of her own clumsy second-hand making-up,out of the most commonplace material.
My two brothers liked to play upon my credulity.When my brother Ben pointed up to the gilded weather-cock on the Old South steeple,and said to me with a very grave face,--"Did you know that whenever that cock crows every rooster in town crows too?"I listened out at the window,and asked,--"But when will he begin to crow?""Oh,roosters crow in the night,sometimes,when you are asleep."Then my younger brother would break in with a shout of delight at my stupidity:--"I'll tell you when,goosie!--'The next day after never;When the dead ducks fly over the river.'"But this must have been when I was very small;for I remember thinking that "the next day after never"would come some time,in millions of years,perhaps.And how queer it would be to see dead ducks flying through the air!
Witches were seldom spoken of in the presence of us children.We sometimes overheard a snatch of a witch-story,told in whispers,by the flickering firelight,just as we were being sent off to bed.But,to the older people,those legends were too much like realities,and they preferred not to repeat them.Indeed,it was over our town that the last black shadow of the dreadful witchcraft delusion had rested.Mistress Hale's house was just across the burying-ground,and Gallows Hill was only two miles away,beyond the bridge.Yet I never really knew what the "Salem Witchcraft"was until Goodrich's "History of the United States"was put into my hands as a schoolbook,and I read about it there.
