I liked assorting those little figured bits of cotton cloth,for they were scraps of gowns I had seen worn,and they reminded me of the persons who wore them.One fragment,in particular,was like a picture to me.It was a delicate pink and brown sea-moss pattern,on a white ground,a piece of a dress belonging to my married sister,who was to me bride and angel in One.I always saw her face before me when I unfolded this scrap,--a face with an expression truly heavenly in its loveliness.Heaven claimed her before my childhood was ended.Her beautiful form was laid to rest in mid-ocean,too deep to be pillowed among the soft sea-mosses.But she lived long enough to make a heaven of my child-hood whenever she came home.
One of the sweetest of our familiar hymns I always think of as belonging to her,and as a still unbroken bond between her spirit and mine.She had come back to us for a brief visit,soon after her marriage,with some deep,new experience of spiritual realities which I,a child of four or five years,felt in the very tones of her voice,and in the expression of her eyes.
My mother told her of my fondness for the hymn-book,and she turned to me with a smile and said,"Won't you learn one hymn for me--one hymn that I love very much?"Would I not?She could not guess how happy she made me by wishing me to do anything for her sake.The hymn was,--"Whilst Thee I seek,protecting Power."In a few minutes I repeated the whole to her and its own beauty,pervaded with the tenderness of her love for me,fixed it at once indelibly in my memory.Perhaps I shall repeat it to her again,deepened with a lifetime's meaning,beyond the sea,and beyond the stars.
I could dream over my patchwork,but I could not bring it into conventional shape.My sisters,whose fingers had been educated,called my sewing "gobblings."I grew disgusted with it myself,and gave away all my pieces except the pretty sea-moss pattern,which I was not willing to see patched up with common calico.It was evident that I should never conquer fate with my needle.
Among other domestic traditions of the old times was the saying that every girl must have a pillow-case full of stockings of her own knitting before she was married.Here was another mountain before me,for I took it for granted that marrying was inevitable --one of the things that everybody must do,like learning to read,or going to meeting.
I began to knit my own stockings when I ways six or seven years old,and kept on,until home-made stockings went out of fashion.
The pillow-case full,however,was never attempted,any more than the patchwork quilt.I heard somebody say one day that there must always be one "old maid"in every family of girls,and I accepted the prophecy of some of my elders,that I was to be that one.Iwas rather glad to know that freedom of choice in the matter was possible.
One day,when we younger ones were hanging about my golden-haired and golden-hearted sister Emilie,teasing her with wondering questions about our future,she announced to us (she had reached the mature age of fifteen years)that she intended to be an old maid,and that we might all come and live with her.Some one listening reproved her,but she said,"Why,if they fit them-selves to be good,helpful,cheerful old maids,they will certainly be better wives,if they ever are married,"and that maxim I laid by in my memory for future contingencies,for Ibelieved in every word she ever uttered.She herself,however,did not carry out her girlish intention."Her children arise up and call her blessed;her husband also;and he praiseth her."But the little sisters she used to fondle as her "babies have never allowed their own years nor her changed relations to cancel their claim upon her motherly sympathies.
I regard it as a great privilege to have been one of a large family,and nearly the youngest.We had strong family resem-blances,and yet no two seemed at all alike.It was like rehearsing in a small world each our own part in the great one awaiting us.If we little ones occasionally had some severe snubbing mixed with the petting and praising and loving,that was wholesome for us,and not at all to be regretted.
Almost every one of my sisters had some distinctive aptitude with her fingers.One worked exquisite lace-embroidery;another had a knack at cutting and fitting her doll's clothing so perfectly that the wooden lady was always a typical specimen of the genteel doll-world;and another was an expert at fine stitching,so delicately done that it was a pleasure to see or to wear anything her needle had touched.I had none of these gifts.I looked on and admired,and sometimes tried to imitate,but my efforts usually ended in defeat and mortification.
I did like to knit,however,and I could shape a stocking tolerably well.My fondness for this kind of work was chiefly because it did not require much thought.Except when there was "widening"or "narrowing"to be done,I did not need to keep my eyes upon it at all.So I took a book upon my lap and read,and read,while the needles clicked on,comforting me with the reminder that I was not absolutely unemployed,while yet I was having a good time reading.
I began to know that I liked poetry,and to think a good deal about it at my childish work.Outside of the hymn-book,the first rhymes I committed to memory were in the "Old Farmer's Almanac,"files of which hung in the chimney corner,and were an inexhaust-ible source of entertainment to us younger ones.
My father kept his newspapers also carefully filed away in the garret,but we made sad havoc among the "Palladiums"and other journals that we ought to have kept as antiquarian treasures.
We valued the anecdote column and the poet's corner only;these we clipped unsparingly for our scrap-books.
