A New England girlhood, outlined from memory

Front matter

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Preface

The following sketch was written for the young, at the suggestion of friends.

My audience is understood to be composed of girls of all ages, and of women who have not forgotten their girlhood. Such as have a friendly appreciation of girls — and of those who write for them — are also welcome to listen to as much of my narrative as they choose. All others are eavesdropj3ers, and, of course, have no right to criticise.

To many, the word " autobiography " implies

nothing but conceit and egotism. But these are

7 gbt necessarily its characteristics. If an apple

'i'-iossom or a ripe apple could tell its own story,

jb would be, still more than its own, the story of

he sunshine that smiled upon it, of the winds that

whispered to it, of the birds that sang around it,

f the storms that visited it, and of the motherly

iree that held it and fed it until its petals were

nfolded and its form developed.

A complete autobiography would indeed be a icture of the outer and inner universe photoraphed upon one little life's consciousness. For does not the whole world, seen and unseen, go to the making up of every human being ? The commonest personal history has its value when it is looked at as a part of the One Infinite Life. Our life — which is the very best thing we have — is ours only that we may share it with Our Father's family, at their need. If we have anything within us worth giving away, to withhold it is ungenerous ; and we cannot look honestly into ourselves without acknowledging with humility our debt to the lives around us for whatever of power or beauty has been poured into ours.

None of us can think of ourselves as entirely separate beings. Even an autobiographer has to say " we " much oftener than " I." Indeed, there may be more egotism in withdrawing mysteriously into one's self, than in frankly unfolding oneN life -story, for better or worse. There may be more vanity in covering one's face with a veil, to be wondered at and guessed about, than in drawling it aside, and saying by that act, " There ! yof see that I am nothing remarkable."

However, I do not know that I altogether approve of autobiography myself, when the subject^ is a person of so little importance as in the pres-, ent instance. Still, it may have a reason for be-^ ing, even in a case like this.

Every one whose name is before the public at all must be aware of a common annoyance in the frequent requests which are made for personal facts, data for biographical paragraphs, and the like. To answer such requests and furnish the material asked for, were it desirable, would interfere seriously with the necessary work of almost any writer. The first impulse is to pay no attention to them, putting them aside as mere signs of the ill-bred, idle curiosity of the age we live in about people and their private affairs. It does not seem to be supposed possible that authors can have any natural shrinking from publicity, like other mortals.

But while one would not willingly encourage an intrusive custom, there is another view of the matter. The most enjoyable thing about writing is that the relation between writer and reader may be and often does become that of mutual friendship ; and friends naturally like to know dach other in a neighborly way. j We are all willing to gossip about ourselves, s'iometimes, with those who are really interested :in us. Girls especially are fond of exchanging confidences with those whom they think they can ^^rust ; it is one of the most charming traits of a (simple, earnest-hearted girlhood, and they are the Biappiest women who never lose it entirely, i I should like far better to listen to my girl- 'readers' thoughts about life and themselves than ^to be writing out my own experiences. It is to 'my disadvantage that the confidences, in this case, must all be on one side. But I have known so many girls so well in my relation to tliem of schoolmate, workmate, and teacher, I feel sure of a fair share of their sympathy and attention.

It is hardly possible for an author to write anything sincerely without making it something of an autobiography. Friends can always i*ead a personal history, or guess at it, between the lines. So I sometimes think I have already written mine, in my verses. In them, I have found the most natural and free expression of myself. They have seemed to set my life to music for me, a life that has always had to be occupied with many things besides writing. Not, however, that I claim to have written much poetry : only perhaps some true rhymes : I do not see how there could be any pleasure in writing insincere ones. \

Whatever special interest this little narrativfe of mine may have is due to the social influencejs under which I was reared, and particularly to thjj prominent place held by both work and religion in New England half a century ago. The perioi^ of my growing - up had peculiarities which om • future history can never rep)eat, although some* ■ thing far better is undoubtedly already resultinf ; thence. Those peculiarities were the natural de • velopment of the seed sown by our sturdy Puritan ancestry. The religion of our fathers overhung ' | us children like the shadow of a mighty tree against the trunk of which we rested, while we looked up in wonder through the great boughs that half hid and half revealed the sky. Some of the boughs were already decaying, so that j^erhaps we began to see a little more of the sky than our elders ; but the tree was sound at its heart. There was life in it that can never be lost to the world.

One thing we are at last beginning to understand, which our ancestors evidently had not learned ; that it is far more needful for theologians to become as little children, than for little children to become theologians. They considered it a duty that they owed to the youngest of us, to teach us doctrines. And we believed in our instructors, if we could not always digest their instructions. We learned to reverence truth as they received it and lived it, and to feel that the search for truth was one chief end of our beina;.

It was a pity that we were expected to begin s thinking upon hard siibjects so soon, and it was '

^ki&o a pity that we were set to hard work while BO young. Yet these were both inevitable results of circumstances then existing ; and perhaps the ftwo belong together. Perhaps habits of conscien-

itious work induce thought. Certainly, right think-

iing naturally impels people to work.

, We learned no theories about " the dignity of

Uabor," but we were taught to work almost as if

Mit were a religion ; to keep at work, expecting

/I nothing else. It was our inheritance, handed

down from the outcasts of Eden. And for us, as for them, there was a blessing hidden in the curse. I am glad that I grew up under these wholesome Puritanic influences, as glad as I am that I was born a New Englander ; and I surely should have chosen New England for my birthplace before any region under the sun.

Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative need of its own, which shapes its individuality. I believe it was Grotius who said, " Books are necessities of my life. Food and clothing I can do without, if I must."

My " must-have " was poetry. From the first, life meant that to me. And, fortunately, poetry is not purchasable material, but an atmosphere in which every life may expand. I found it everywhere about me. The children of old New England were always surrounded, it is true, with stubborn matter of fact, — the hand to hand struggle for existence. But that was no hindrance. Poetiy must have prose to root itself in ; the homelier its earth-spot, the lovelier, by contrast, its!, heaven-breathinc^ flowers.

To different minds, poetry may present different phases. To me, the reverent faith of the people I lived among, and their faithful every-day living, was poetry ; blossoms and trees and ' blue skies were poetry. God himself was poetry. As I grew up and lived on, friendship became to me the deepest and sweetest ideal of poetry. To live in other lives, to take their power and beauty into our own, that is poetry experienced, the most inspiring of all. Poetry embodied in persons, in lovely and lofty characters, more sacredly than all in the One Divine Person who has transfigured our human life with the glory of His sacrifice, — all the great lyrics and epics pale before that, and it is within the reach and comprehension of every human soul.

To care for poetry in this way does not make one a poet, but it does make one feel blessedly rich, and quite indifferent to many things which are usually looked upon as desirable possessions. I am sincerely grateful that it was given to me, from childhood, to see life from this point of view. And it seems to me that every young girl would be happier for beginning her earthly journey with the thankful consciousness that her life does ' not consist in the abundance of things that she possesses.

< The highest possible poetic conception is that C)f a life consecrated to a noble ideal. It may be pnable to find expression for itself except through lumble, even menial services, or through unselfsh devotion whose silent song is audible to God ilone ; yet such music as this might rise to heaven from every young girl's heart and character if she would set it free. In such ways it was meant that the world should be filled with the true poetry of womanhood.

It is one of the most beautiful facts in this human existence of ours, that we remember the earliest and freshest part of it most vividly. Doubtless it was meant that our childhood should live on in us forever. My childhood was by no means a cloudless one. It had its light and shade, each contributing a charm which makes it wholly delightful in the retrospect.

I can see very distinctly the child that I was,

and I know how the world looked to her, far off

; as she is now. She seems to me like my little

i sister, at play in a garden where I can at any

' time return and find her. I have enjoyed bringing

her back, and letting her tell her story, almost as

if she were somebody else. I like her better than

I did when I was really a child, and I hope never

to part company with her.

I do not feel so much satisfaction in the older girl who comes between her and me, although she, too, is enough like me to be my sister, or even more like my young, undisciplined mother ; for the girl is mother of the woman. But I have to acknowledge her faults and mistakes as my own,*' while I sometimes feel like reproving her severelj| for her carelessly performed tasks, her habit o: lapsing into listless reveries, her cowardly shrink ing from responsibility and vigorous endeavor, and many other faults that I have inherited from her. Still, she is myself, and I could not be quite happy without her comradeship. Every phase of our life belongs to us. The moon does not, except in appearance, lose her first tliin, luminous curve, nor her silvery crescent, in rounding to her full. The woman is still both child and girl, in the completeness of womanly character. We have a right to our entire selves, through all the changes of this mortal state, a claim which we shall doubtless carry along with us into the unfolding mysteries of our eternal being. Perhaps in this thought lies hidden the secret of immortal youth ; for a seer has said that " to grow old in heaven is to grow young."

To take life as it is sent to us, to live it faithfully, looking and striving always towards better life, this was the lesson that came to me from my early teachers. It was not an easy lesson, but it was a healthful one ; and I pass it on to younger pupils, trusting that they will learn it more thoroughly than I ever have.

Young or old, we may all win inspiration to do our best, from the needs of a world to which the humblest life may be permitted to bring immeasurable blessings : —

' ' For no one doth know What he can bestow, What light, streng-th, and beauty may after him go : Thus onward we move, And, save God above, None guesseth how wondrous the journey will prove."

L. L.

I Beverly, Massachusetts, October, 1889.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Up and Down the Lane 17

II. Schoolroom and Meeting-Hol'se ... 37

II. Schoolroom And Meeting-house

There were only two or three houses between ours and the main street, and then our lane came out directly opposite the finest house in town, a three -story edifice of brick, painted white, the " Colonel's " residence. There was a sj^acious garden behind it, from which we caught glimpses and perfumes of unknown flowers. Over its high walls hung boughs of splendid great yellow sweet apples, which, when they fell on the outside, we children considered as our perquisites. When I first read about the apples of the Hesperides, my idea of them was that they were like the Colonel's "pumpkin-sweetings."

Beyond the garden were wide green fields which reached eastward down to the beach. It was one of those large old estates which used to give to the very heart of our New England coast-towns a delightful breeziness and roominess.

A coach-and-pair was one of the appurtenances of this estate, with a coachman on the box ; and when he took the family out for an airing we small children thought it was a sort of Cinderellaspectacle, prepared expressly for us.

It was not, however, quite so interesting as the Boston stage-coach, that rolled regularly every day past the head of our lane into and out of its head - quarters, a big, unpainted stable close at hand. This stage-coach, in our minds, meant the city, — twenty miles off; an immeasurable distance to us then. Even our elders did not go there very often.

In those early days, towns used to give each other nicknames, like school-boys. Ours was called " Bean-town " ; not because it was especially devoted to the cultivation of this leguminous edible, but probably because it adhered a long time to the Puritanic custom of saving Sunday-work by baking beans on Saturday evening, leaving them in the oven over night. After a while, as families left off heating their ovens, the bean -pots were taken by the village baker on Saturday afternoon, who returned them to each house early on Sunday morning, with the pan of brown bread that went with them. The jingling of the baker's bells made the matter a public one.

The towns through which our stage - coach passed sometimes called it the " bean-pot." The Jehu who drove it was something of a wag. Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting in the street for a resident passenger, he was hailed by another resident who thought him obstructing the passage, with the shout, —

" Halloo there ! Get your old bean-pot out of the way ! "

" I will, when I have got my pork In," was the ready reply. What the sobriquet of Charlestown was, need not be explained.

We had a good opportunity to watch both coaches, as my father's shop was just at the head of the lane, and we went to school up-stairs in the same building. After he left off going to sea, — before my birth, — my father took a store for the sale of what used to be called " West India goods," and various other domestic commodities.

The school was kept by a neighbor whom everybody called " Aunt Hannah." It took in all the little ones about us, no matter how young they were, provided they could walk and talk, and were considered capable of learning their letters.

A ladder-like flight of stairs on the outside of the house led up to the schoolroom, and another flight, also outside, took us down into a bit of a garden, where grew tansy and spearmint and southernwood and wormwood, and, among other old - fashioned flowers, an abundance of manytinted four o'clocks, whose regular afternoonopening just at the close of school, was a daily wonder to us babies. From the schoolroom window we could watch the slow hands of the town clock, and get a peep at what was going on in the street, although there was seldom anybody in sight excejit the Colonel's gardener or coachman, going into or out of the driveway directly opposite. It was a very still street ; the front windows of the houses were generally closed, and a few military-looking Lombardy poplars stood like sentinels on guard before them.

Another shop — a very small one — joined my father's, where three shoemakers, all of the same name — the name our lane went by — sat at their benches and plied their "waxed ends.*' One of them, an elderly man, tall and erect, used to come out regularly every day, and stand for a long time at the corner, motionless as a post, with his nose and chin pointing skyward, usually to the northeast. I watched his face with wonder, for it was said that " Uncle John " was " weatherwise," and knew all the secrets of the heavens.

Aunt Hannah's schoolroom and " our shop " are a blended memory to me. As I was only a baby when I began to go to school, I was often sent down-stairs for a half hour's recreation not permitted to the older ones. I think I looked upon both school and shop entirely as places of entertainment for little children.

The front shop-window was especially interesting to us children, for there were in it a few glass jars containing sticks of striped barley-candy, and red and white peppermint-drops, and that delectable achievement of the ancient confectioner's art, the " Salem gibraltar." One of my first recollections of my father is connected with that window. He had taken me into the shop with him after dinner, — I was perhaps two years old, — and I was playing beside him on the counter when one of his old sea-comrades came in, whom we knew as " Captain Cross." The Captain tried to make friends with me, and, to seal the bond, asked my father to take down from its place of exhibition a strip of red peppermints dro2:)ped on white paper, in a style I particularly admired, which he twisted around my neck, saying, —

" Now I 've bought you ! Now you are my girl. Come, go home with me ! "

His words sounded as if he meant them. I took it all in earnest, and ran, scared and screaming, to my father, dashing down the sugar-plums I wanted so much, and refusing even to bestow a glance upon my amused purchaser. My father pacified me by taking me on his shoulders and carrying me "• pickaback " up and down the shop, and I clung to him in the happy consciousness that I belonged to him, and that he would not let anybody else have me ; though I did not feel quite easy until Captain Cross disappeared. I suppose that this little incident has always remained in my memory because it then for the first time became a fact in my consciousness that my father really loved me as I loved him. He was not at all a demonstrative man, and any petting that he gave us children could not fail to make a permanent impression.

I think that must have been also the last special attention I received from him, for a little sister appeared soon after, whose coming was announced to me with the accompaniment of certain mysterious hints about my nose being out of joint. I examined that feature carefully in the looking-glass, but could not discover anything unusual about it. It was quite beyond me to imagine that our innocent little baby could have anything to do with the possible disfigurement of my face, but she did absorb the fondness of the whole family, myself included, and she became my father's playmate and darling, the very apple of his eye. I used sometimes to wish I were a baby too, so that he would notice me, but gradually I accepted the situation.

Aunt Hannah used her kitchen or her sitting-room for a schoolroom, as best suited her convenience. We were delighted observers of her culinary operations and other employments. If a baby's head nodded, a little bed was made for it on a soft " comforter " in the corner, where it had its nap out undisturbed. But this did not often happen ; there were so many interesting things going on that we seldom became sleepy.

Aunt Hannah was very kind and motherly, but she kept us in fear of her ferule, which indicated to us a possibility of smarting palms. This ferule was shaped much like the stick with which she stirred her hasty pudding for dinner, — I thought it was the same, — and I found myself caught in a whirlwind of family laughter by reporting at home that " Aunt Hannah punished the scholars with the pudding-stick."

There was one colored boy in school, who did not sit on a bench, like the rest, but on a block of wood that looked like a backlog turned endwise. Aunt Hannah often called him a " blockhead," and I supposed it was because he sat on that block. Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was made to sit in his place for punishment, for being a " blockhead " too, as I imagined. I hoped I should never be put there. Stupid little girls received a different treatment, — an occasional rap on the head with the teacher's thimble ; accompanied with a half - whispered, impatient ejaculation, which sounded very much like " Numskull ! " I think this was a rare occurrence, however, for she was a good-natured, much-enduring woman.

One of our greatest school pleasures was to watch Aunt Hannah spinning on her flax-wheel, wetting her thumb and forefinger at her lips to twist the thread, keeping time, meanwhile, to some quaint old tune with her foot upon the treadle.

A verse of one of her hymns, which I never heard anybody else sing, resounds in the farthest corner of my memory yet : —

" Whither g-oest thou, pilgrim stranger, Wandering' through this lowly vale ? Knowest thou not 't is full of danger ? And will not thy courage fail ? "

Then a little pause, and the refrain of the answer broke in with a change, quick and jubilant, the treadle moving more rapidly, also : —

" No, I 'm bound for the kingdom ! Will you go to g'lory with me ? Hallelujah ! Praise the Lord ! "

I beffan to 2:0 to school when I was about two years old, as other children about us did. The mothers of those large families had to resort to some means of keeping their little ones out of mischief, while they attended to their domestic duties. Not much more than that sort of temporary guardianship was expected of the good dame who had us in charge.

But I learned my letters in a few days, standing at Aunt Hannah's knee while she pointed them out in the spelling-book with a pin, skipping over the " a' b abs " into words of one and two syllables, thence .taking a flying leap into the New Testament, in which there is concurrent family testimony that I was reading at the age of two years and a half. Certain it is that a few passages in the Bible, whenever I read them now, do not fail to bring before me a vision of Aunt Hannah's somewhat sternly smiling lips, with her spectacles just above them, far down on her nose, encouraging me to pronounce the hard words. I think she tried to choose for me the least difficult verses, or perhaps those of which she was herself especially fond. Those which I distinctly recall are the Beatitudes, the Twenty-third Psalm, parts of the first and fourteenth chapters of the Gospel of St. John, and the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians.

I liked to say over the " Blesseds," — the shortest ones best, — about the meek and the pure in heart ; and the two " In the beginnings," both in Genesis and John. Every child's earliest and proudest Scriptural conquest in school was, almost as a matter of course, the first verse in the Bible.

But the passage which I learned first, and most delighted to repeat after Aunt Hannah, — I think it must have been her favorite too, — was, " Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father's house are many mansions."

The Voice in the Book seemed so tender ! Somebody was speaking who had a heart, and who knew that even a little child's heart was sometimes troubled. And it was a Voice that called us somewhere ; to the Father's house, with its many mansions, so sunshiny and so large.

It was a beautiful vision that came to me with the words, — I could see it best with my eyes shut, — a great, dim Door standing ajar, opening out of rosy morning mists, overhung with swaying vines and arching boughs that were full of birds ; and from beyond the Door, the ripple of running waters, and the sound of many happy voices, and above them all the One Voice that was saying, " I go to prepare a place for you." The vision gave me a sense of freedom, fearless and infinite. What was there to be afraid of anywhere ? Even we little children could see the open door of our Father's house. We were playing around its threshold now, and we need never wander out of sight of it. The feeling was a vague one, but it was like a remembrance. The spacious mansions were not far away. They were my home. I had known them, and should return to them again.

This dim half-memory, which perhaps comes to all children, I had felt when younger still, almost before I could walk. Sitting on the floor in a square of sunshine made by an open window, the leaf -shadows from great boiighs outside dancing and wavering around me, I seemed to be talking to them and they to me in unknown tongues, that left within me an ecstasy yet unforgotten. Those shadows had brought a message to me from an unseen Somewhere, which my baby heart was to keep forever. The wonder of that moment often returns. Shadow-traceries of bough and leaf still seem to me like the hieroglyphics of a lost language.

The stars brought me the same feeling. I remember the surprise they were to me, seen for the fii'st time. One evening, just before I was put to bed, I was taken in somebody's arms — my sister's, I think — outside the door, and lifted up under the dark, still, clear sky, splendid with stars, thicker and nearer earth than they have ever seemed since. All my little being shaped itself into a subdued, delighted " Oh ! " And then the exultant thought flitted through the mind of the reluctant child, as she was carried in, " Why, that is the roof of the house I live in." After that I always went to sleep happier for the feeling that the stars were outside there in the dark, though I could not see them.

I did firmly believe that I came from some other country to this ; I had a vague notion that we were all here on a journey, — that this was not the place where we really belonged. Some of the family have told me that before I could talk plainly, I used to run about humming the sentence —

" My father and mother Shall come unto the land,"

sometimes varying it with, —

" My brothers and sisters Shall come unto the land ; ' '

Nobody knew where I had caught the words, but I chanted them so constantly that my brother wrote them down, with chalk, on the under side of a table, where they remained for years. My thought about that other land may have been only a baby's dream ; but the dream was very real to me. I used to talk, in sober earnest, about what happened " before I was a little girl, and came here to live " ; and it did seem to me as if I remembered.

But I was hearty and robust, full of frolicsome health, and very fond of the matter-of-fact world I lived in. My sturdy little feet felt the solid earth beneath them. I grew with the sprouting grass, and enjoyed my life as the biids and birds seemed to enjo}^ theirs. It was only as if the bud and the bird and the dear warm earth knew, in the same dumb way that I did, that all their joy and sweetness came to them out of the sky.