We were rather a young nation at this time.The History of the United States could only tell the story of the American Revolution,of the War of 1812,and of the administration of about half a dozen presidents.
Our republicanism was fresh and wide-awake.The edge of George Washington's little hatchet had not yet been worn down to its latter-day dullness;it flashed keenly on our young eyes and ears in the reading books,and through Fourth of July speeches.The Father of his Country had been dead only a little more than a quarter of a century,and General Lafayette was still alive;he had,indeed,passed through our town but a few years before,and had been publicly welcomed under our own elms and lindens.Even babies echoed the names of our two heroes in their prattle.
We had great "training days,"when drum and fife took our ears by storm;When the militia and the Light Infantry mustered and marched through the streets to the Common with boys and girls at their heels,--such girls as could get their mother's consent,or the courage to run off without it.(We never could.)But we always managed to get a good look at the show in one way or another.
"Old Election,""'Lection Day"we called it,a lost holiday now,was a general training day,and it came at our most delightful season,the last of May.Lilacs and tulips were in bloom,then;and it was a picturesque fashion of the time for little girls whose parents had no flower-gardens to go around begging a bunch of lilacs,or a tulip or two.My mother always made "'Lection cake"for us on that day.It was nothing but a kind of sweetened bread with a shine of egg-and-molasses on top;but we thought it delicious.
The Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day were the only other holidays that we made much account of,and the former was a far more well behaved festival than it is in modern times.The bells rang without stint,and at morning and noon cannon were fired off.But torpedoes and fire-crackers did not make the highways dangerous;--perhaps they were thought too expensive an amusement.
Somebody delivered an oration;there was a good deal said about "this universal Yankee nation";some rockets went up from Salem in the evening;we watched them from the hill,and then went to bed,feeling that we had been good patriots.
There was always a Fast Day,which I am afraid most of us younger ones regarded merely as a day when we were to eat unlimited quantities of molasses-gingerbread,instead of sitting down to our regular meals.
When I read about Christmas in the English story-books,I wished we could have that beautiful holiday.But our Puritan fathers shook their heads at Christmas.
Our Sabbath-school library books were nearly all English reprints,and many of the story-books were very interesting.Ithink that most of my favorites were by Mrs.Sherwood.Some of them were about life in India,--"Little Henry and his Bearer,"and "Ayah and Lady."Then there were "The Hedge of Thorns;""Theophilus and Sophia;""Anna Ross,"and a whole series of little English books that I took great delight in.
I had begun to be rather introspective and somewhat unhealthily self-critical,contrasting myself meanwhile with my sister Lida,just a little older,who was my usual playmate,and whom Iadmired very much for what I could not help seeing,--her unusual sweetness of disposition.I read Mrs.Sherwood's "Infant's Progress,"and I made a personal application of it,picturing myself as the naughty,willful "Playful,"and my sister Lida as the saintly little "Peace."This book gave me a morbid,unhappy feeling,while yet it had something of the fascination of the "Pilgrim's Progress,"of which it is an imitation.I fancied myself followed about by a fiend-like boy who haunted its pages,called "Inbred-Sin;"and the story implied that there was no such thing as getting rid of him.I began to dislike all boys on his account.There was one who tormented my sister and me--we only knew him by name--by jumping out at us from behind doorways or fences on our way to school,making horrid faces at us."Inbred-Sin,"I was certain,looked just like him;and the two,strangely blended in one hideous presence,were the worst nightmare of my dreams.There was too much reality about that "Inbreed-Sin."I felt that I was acquainted with him.He was the hateful hero of the little allegory,as Satan is of "Paradise Lost."I liked lessons that came to me through fables and fairy tales,although,in reading Aesop,I invariably skipped the "moral"pinned on at the end,and made one for myself,or else did without.
Mrs.Lydia Maria Child's story of "The Immortal Fountain,"in the "Girl's Own Book,"--which it was the joy of my heart to read,although it preached a searching sermon to me,--I applied in the same way that I did the "Infant's Progress."I thought of Lida as the gentle,unselfish Rose,and myself as the ugly Marion.She was patient and obliging,and I felt that I was the reverse.She was considered pretty,and I knew that I was the reverse of that,too.I wondered if Lida really had bathed in the Immortal Fountain,and oh,how I wished I could find the way there!But Ifeared that trying to do so would be of no use;the fairies would cross their wands to keep me back,and their wings would darken at my approach.
The book that I loved first and best,and lived upon in my childhood,was "Pilgrim's Progress."It was as a story that Icared for it,although I knew that it meant something more,--something that was already going on in my own heart and life.
Oh,how I used to wish that I too could start off on a pilgrim-age!It would be so much easier than the continual,discouraging struggle to be good!
