A New England Girlhood Part 12

But there were buildings that had their own individuality, and a.s.serted it. One of these was a mud-cabin with a thatched roof, that looked as if it had emigrated bodily from the bogs of Ireland. It had settled itself down into a green hollow by the roadside, and it looked as much at home with the lilac-tinted crane's-bill and yellow b.u.t.tercups as if it had never lost sight of the shamrocks of Erin.

Now, too, my childish desire to see a real beggar was gratified.

Straggling pet.i.tioners for "cold victuals" hung around our back yard, always of Hibernian extraction; and a slice of bread was rewarded with a shower of benedictions that lost itself upon us in the flood of its own incomprehensible brogue.

Some time every summer a fleet of canoes would glide noiselessly up the river, and a company of Pen.o.bscot Indians would land at a green point almost in sight from our windows. Pawtucket Falls had always been one of their favorite camping-places. Their strange endeavors, to combine civilization with savagery were a great source of amus.e.m.e.nt to us; men and women clad alike in loose gowns, stove-pipe hats, and moccasons; grotesque relies of aboriginal forest-life. The sight of these uncouth-looking red men made the romance fade entirely out of the Indian stories we had heard. Still their wigwam camp was a show we would not willingly have missed.

The transition from childhood to girlhood, when a little girl has had an almost unlimited freedom of out-of-door life, is practically the toning down of a mild sort of barbarianism, and is often attended by a painfully awkward self-consciousness. I had an innate dislike of conventionalities. I clung to the child's inalienable privilege of running half wild; and when I found that I really was growing up, I felt quite rebellious.

I was as tall as a woman at thirteen, and my older sisters insisted upon lengthening my dresses, and putting up my mop of hair with a comb.

I felt injured and almost outraged because my protestations against this treatment were unheeded and when the transformation in my visible appearance was effected, I went away by myself and had a good cry, which I would not for the world have had them know about, as that would have added humiliation to my distress. And the greatest pity about it was that I too soon became accustomed to the situation. I felt like a child, but considered it my duty to think and behave like a woman. I began to look upon it as a very serious thing to live. The untried burden seemed already to have touched my shoulders. For a time I was morbidly self-critical, and at the same time extremely reserved. The a.s.sociates I chose were usually grave young women, ten or fifteen years older than myself; but I think I felt older and appeared older than they did.

Childhood, however, is not easily defrauded of its birthright, and mine soon rea.s.serted itself. At home I was among children of my own age, for some cousins and other acquaintances had come to live and work with us.

We had our evening frolics and entertainments together, and we always made the most of our brief holiday hours. We had also with us now the sister Emilie of my fairy-tale memories, who had grown into a strong, earnest-hearted woman. We all looked up to her as our model, and the ideal of our heroine-worship; for our deference to her in every way did amount to that.

She watched over us, gave us needed reproof and commendation, rarely cosseted us, but rather made us laugh at what many would have considered the hardships of our lot. She taught us not only to accept the circ.u.mstances in which we found ourselves, but to win from them courage and strength. When we came in shivering from our work, through a snowstorm, complaining of numb hands and feet, she would say cheerily, "But it doesn't make you any warmer to say you are cold;" and this was typical of the way she took life generally, and tried to have us take it. She was constantly denying herself for our sakes, without making us feel that she was doing so. But she did not let us get into the bad habit of pitying ourselves because we were not as "well off" as many other children. And indeed we considered ourselves pleasantly situated; but the best of it all was that we had her.

Her theories for herself, and her practice, too, were rather severe; but we tried to follow them, according to our weaker abilities. Her custom was, for instance, to take a full cold bath every morning before she went to her work, even though the water was chiefly broken ice; and we did the same whenever we could be resolute enough. It required both nerve and will to do this at five o'clock on a zero morning, in a room without a fire; but it helped us to harden ourselves, while we formed a good habit. The working-day in winter began at the very earliest daylight, and ended at half-past seven in the evening.

Another habit of hers was to keep always beside her at her daily work something to study or to think about. At first it was "Watts on the Improvement of the Mind," arranged as a textbook, with questions and answers, by the minister of Beverly who had made the thought of the millennium such a reality to his people. She quite wore this book out, carrying it about with her in her working-dress pocket. After that, "Locke on the Understanding" was used in the same way. She must have known both books through and through by heart. Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their physics and metaphysics with our girl boarders, some of whom had remarkably acute and well-balanced minds.

Her own seemed to have turned from its early bent toward the romantic, her taste being now for serious and practical, though sometimes abstruse, themes. I remember that Young and Pollock were her favorite poets.

I could not keep up with her in her studies and readings, for many of the books she liked seemed to me very dry. I did not easily take to the argumentative or moralizing method, which I came to regard as a proof of the weakness of my own intellect in comparison with hers. I would gladly have kept pace with her if I could. Anything under the heading of "Didactick," like some of the pieces in the old "English Reader,"

used by school-children in the generation just before ours, always repelled me. But I though it necessary to discipline myself by reading such pieces, and my first attempt at prose composition, "On Friendship," was stiffly modeled after a certain "Didactick Essay" in that same English Reader.

My sister, however, cared more to watch the natural development of our minds than to make us follow the direction of hers. She was really our teacher, although she never a.s.sumed that position. Certainly I learned more from her about my own capabilities, and how I might put them to use, than I could have done at any school we knew of, had it been possible for me to attend one.

I think she was determined that we should not be mentally defrauded by the circ.u.mstances which had made it necessary for us to begin so early to win our daily bread. This remark applies especially to me, as my older sisters (only two or three of them had come to Lowell) soon drifted away from us into their own new homes or occupations, and she and I were left together amid the whir of spindles and wheels.

One thing she planned for us, her younger housemates,--a dozen or so of cousins, friends, and sisters, some attending school, and some at work in the mill,--was a little fortnightly paper, to be filled with our original contributions, she herself acting as editor.

I do not know where she got the idea, unless it was from Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's "Juvenile Miscellany," which had found its way to us some years before,--a most delightful guest, and, I think, the first magazine prepared for American children, who have had so many since then.(I have always been glad that I knew that sweet woman with the child's heart and the poet's soul, in her later years, and could tell her how happy she had helped to make my childhood.) Our little sheet was called "The Diving Bell," probably from the sea-a.s.sociations of the name. We kept our secrets of authorship very close from everybody except the editor, who had to decipher the handwriting and copy the pieces. It was, indeed, an important part of the fun to guess who wrote particular pieces. After a little while, however, our mannerisms betrayed us. One of my cousins was known to be the chief story-teller, and I was recognized as the leading rhymer among the younger contributors; the editor-sister excelling in her versifying, as she did in almost everything.

It was a cl.u.s.ter of very conscious-looking little girls that a.s.sembled one evening in the attic room, chosen on account of its remoteness from intruders (for we did not admit even the family as a public, the writers themselves were the only audience), to listen to the reading of our first paper. We took Sat.u.r.day evening, because that was longer than the other workday evenings, the mills being closed earlier. Such guessing and wondering and admiring as we had! But n.o.body would acknowledge her own work, for that would have spoiled the pleasure.

Only there were certain wise hints and maxims that we knew never came from any juvenile head among us, and those we set down as "editorials."

Some of the stories contained rather remarkable incidents. One, written to ill.u.s.trate a little girl's habit of carelessness about her own special belongings, told of her rising one morning, and after hunting around for her shoes half an hour or so, finding them in the book-case, where she had accidentally locked them up the night before!

To convince myself that I could write something besides rhymes, I had attempted an essay of half a column on a very extensive subject, "MIND." It began loftily:--

"What a n.o.ble and beautiful thing is mind!" and it went on in the same high-flown strain to no particular end. But the editor praised it, after having declined the verdict of the audience that she was its author; and I felt sufficiently flattered by both judgments.

I wrote more rhymes than anything else, because they came more easily.

But I always felt that the ability to write good prose was far more desirable, and it seems so to me still. I will give my little girl readers a single specimen of my twelve-year-old "Diving Bell" verses, though I feel as if I ought to apologize even for that. It is on a common subject, "Life like a Rose":--

"Childhood's like a tender bud That's scarce been formed an hour, But which erelong will doubtless be A bright and lovely flower.

"And youth is like a full-blown rose Which has not known decay; But which must soon, alas! too soon!

Wither and fade away.

"And age is like a withered rose, That bends beneath the blast; But though its beauty all is gone, Its fragrance yet may last."

This, and other verses that I wrote then, serve to ill.u.s.trate the child's usual inclination to look forward meditatively, rather than to think and write of the simple things that belong to children.

Our small venture set some of us imagining what larger possibilities might be before us in the far future. We talked over the things we should like to do when we should be women out in the active world; and the author of the shoe-story horrified us by declaring that she meant to be distinguished when she grew up for something, even if it was for something bad! She did go so far in a bad way as to plagiarize a long poem in a subsequent number of the "Diving Bell" but the editor found her out, and we all thought that a reproof from Emilie was sufficient punishment.

I do not know whether it was fortunate or unfortunate for me that I had not, by nature, what is called literary ambition. I knew that I had a knack at rhyming, and I knew that I enjoyed nothing better than to try to put thoughts and words together, in any way. But I did it for the pleasure of rhyming and writing, indifferent as to what might come of it. For any one who could take hold of every-day, practical work, and carry it on successfully, I had a profound respect. To be what is called "capable" seemed to me better worth while than merely to have a taste or for writing, perhaps because I was conscious of my deficiencies in the former respect. But certainly the world needs deeds more than it needs words. I should never have been willing to be only a writer, without using my hands to some good purpose besides.

My sister, however, told me that here was a talent which I had no right to neglect, and which I ought to make the most of. I believed in her; I thought she understood me better than I understood myself; and it was a comfort to be a.s.sured that my scribbling was not wholly a waste of time. So I used pencil and paper in every spare minute I could find.

Our little home-journal went bravely on through twelve numbers. Its yellow ma.n.u.script pages occasionally meet my eyes when I am rummaging among my old papers, with the half-conscious look of a waif that knows it has no right to its escape from the waters of oblivion.

While it was in progress my sister Emilie became acquainted with a family of bright girls, near neighbors of ours, who proposed that we should join with them, and form a little society for writing and discussion, to meet fortnightly at their house. We met,--I think I was the youngest of the group,--prepared a Const.i.tution and By-Laws, and named ourselves "The Improvement Circle." If I remember rightly, my sister was our first president. The older ones talked and wrote on many subjects quite above me. I was shrinkingly bashful, as half-grown girls usually are, but I wrote my little essays and read them, and listened to the rest, and enjoyed it all exceedingly. Out of this little "Improvement Circle" grew the larger one whence issued the "Lowell Offering," a year or two later.

At this time I had learned to do a spinner's work, and I obtained permission to tend some frames that stood directly in front of the river-windows, with only them and the wall behind me, extending half the length of the mill,--and one young woman beside me, at the farther end of the row. She was a sober, mature person, who scarcely thought it worth her while to speak often to a child like me; and I was, when with strangers, rather a reserved girl; so I kept myself occupied with the river, my work, and my thoughts. And the river and my thoughts flowed on together, the happiest of companions. Like a loitering pilgrim, it sparkled up to me in recognition as it glided along and bore away my little frets and fatigues on its bosom. When the work "went well," I sat in the window-seat, and let my fancies fly whither they would,--downward to the sea, or upward to the hills that hid the mountain-cradle of the Merrimack.

The printed regulations forbade us to bring books into the mill, so I made my window-seat into a small library of poetry, pasting its side all over with newspaper clippings. In those days we had only weekly papers, and they had always a "poet's corner," where standard writers were well represented, with anonymous ones, also. I was not, of course, much of a critic. I chose my verses for their sentiment, and because I wanted to commit them to memory; sometimes it was a long poem, sometimes a hymn, sometimes only a stray verse. Mrs. Hemans sang with me,--

"Far away, o'er the blue hills far away;"

and I learned and loved her "Better Land," and

"If thou hast crushed a flower,"

and "Kindred Hearts."

I wonder if Miss Landon really did write that fine poem to Mont Blanc which was printed in her volume, but which sounds so entirely unlike everything else she wrote! This was one of my window-gems. It ended with the appeal,--

"Alas for thy past mystery!

For thine untrodden snow!

Nurse of the tempest! hast thou none To guard thine outraged brow?"

and it contained a stanza that I often now repeat to myself:--

"We know too much: scroll after scroll Weighs down our weary shelves: Our only point of ignorance Is centred in ourselves."

There was one anonymous waif in my collection that I was very fond of.

I have never seen it since, nor ever had the least clue to its authorship. It stirred me and haunted me; and it often comes back to me now, in s.n.a.t.c.hes like these:--

"The human mind! That lofty thing, The palace and the throne Where Reason sits, a sceptred king, And breathes his judgment-tone!"

"The human soul! That startling thing, Mysterious and sublime; An angel sleeping on the wing, Worn by the scoffs of time.

From heaven in tears to earth it stole-- That startling thing, the human soul."

I was just beginning, in my questionings as to the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its true definition from the poets,--that it is love, service, the sacrifice of self for others' good. The lesson was slowly learned, but every hint of it went to my heart, and I kept in silent upon my window wall reminders like that of holy George Herbert:--

"Be useful where thou livest, that they may Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still.

--Find out men's wants and will, And meet them there. All worldly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses;"

and that well-known pa.s.sage from Talfourd,--