OUR close relationship to Old England was sometimes a little misleading to us juveniles.The conditions of our life were entirely different,but we read her descriptive stories and sang her songs as if they were true for us,too.One of the first things I learned to repeat--I think it was in the spelling-book--began with the verse:--"I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth has smiled,And made me,in these latter days,A happy English child."And some lines of a very familiar hymn by Dr.Watts ran thus:--"Whene'er I take my walks abroad,How many poor I see.
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"How many children in the street Half naked I behold;While I am clothed from head to feet,And sheltered from the cold."Now a ragged,half-clothed child,or one that could really be called poor,in the extreme sense of the word,was the rarest of all sights in a thrifty New England town fifty years ago.I used to look sharply for those children,but I never could see one.
And a beggar!Oh,if a real beggar would come along,like the one described in "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,"what a wonderful event that would be!I believe I had more curiosity about a beggar,and more ignorance,too,than about a king.The poem read:--"A pampered menial drove me from the door."What sort of creature could a "pampered menial"be?Nothing that had ever come under our observation corresponded to the words.
Nor was it easy for us to attach any meaning to the word "servant."There were women who came in occasionally to do the washing,or to help about extra work.But they were decently clothed,and had homes of their own,more or less comfortable,and their quaint talk and free-and-easy ways were often as much of a lift to the household as the actual assistance they rendered.
I settled down upon the conclusion that "rich"and "poor"were book-words only,describing something far off,and having nothing to do with our every-day experience.My mental definition of "rich people,"from home observation,was something like this:
People who live in three-story houses,and keep their green blinds closed,and hardly ever come out and talk with the folks in the street.There were a few such houses in Beverly,and a great many in Salem,where my mother sometimes took me for a shopping walk.But I did not suppose that any of the people who lived near us were very rich,like those in books.
Everybody about us worked,and we expected to take hold of our part while young.I think we were rather eager to begin,for we believed that work would make men and women of us.
I,however,was not naturally an industrious child,but quite the reverse.When my father sent us down to weed his vegetable-garden at the foot of the lane,I,the youngest of his weeders,liked to go with the rest,but not for the sake of the work or the pay.Igenerally gave it up before I had weeded half a bed.It made me so warm!and my back did ache so!I stole off into the shade of the great apple-trees,and let the west wind fan my hot cheeks,and looked up into the boughs,and listened to the many,many birds that seemed chattering to each other in a language of their own.What was it they were saying?and why could not I understand it?Perhaps I should,sometime.I had read of people who did,in fairy tales.
When the others started homeward,I followed.I did not mind their calling me lazy,nor that my father gave me only one tarnished copper cent,while Lida received two or three bright ones.I had had what I wanted most.I would rather sit under the apple-trees and hear the birds sing than have a whole handful of bright copper pennies.It was well for my father and his garden that his other children were not like me.
The work which I was born to,but had not begun to do,was sometimes a serious weight upon my small,forecasting brain.
One of my hymns ended with the lines,--
"With books,and work,and healthful play,May my first years be passed,That I may give,for every day,Some good account at last."I knew all about the books and the play;but the work,--how should I ever learn to do it?
My father had always strongly emphasized his wish that all his children,girls as well as boys,should have some independent means of self-support by the labor of their hands;that every one should,as was the general custom,"learn a trade."Tailor's work--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the "trade learned most frequently by women in those days,and one or more of my older sisters worked at it;I think it must have been at home,for I somehow or somewhere got the idea,while I was a small child,that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind.
This thought came over me with a sudden dread one Sabbath morning when I was a toddling thing,led along by my sister,behind my father and mother.As they walked arm in arm before me,I lifted my eyes from my father's heels to his head,and mused:"How tall he is!and how long his coat looks!and how many thousand,thousand stitches there must be in his coat and pantaloons!And Isuppose I have got to grow up and have a husband,and put all those little stitches into his coats and pantaloons.Oh,I never,never can do it!"A shiver of utter discouragement went through me.With that task before me,it hardly seemed to me as if life were worth living.I went on to meeting,and I suppose I forgot my trouble in a hymn,but for the moment it was real.It was not the only time in my life that I have tired myself out with crossing bridges to which I never came.real.It was not the only time inmy life that I have tired myself out with crossing brid,es to which I never came.
Another trial confronted me in the shape of an ideal but impossible patchwork quilt.We learned to sew patchwork at school,while we were learning the alphabet;and almost every girl,large or small,had a bed-quilt of her own begun,with an eye to future house furnishing.I was not over fond of sewing,but I thought it best to begin mine early.
So I collected a few squares of calico,and undertook to put them together in my usual independent way,without asking direction.
