"Oh Lord, Thou knowest that we are all groveling worms of the dust." I
thought she meant that we all looked like wriggling red earthworms, and
tried to make out the resemblance in my mind, but could not. I
unburdened my difficulty at home, telling the family that "Aunt Nancy
got down on the floor and said we were all grubbelin' worms," begging
to know whether everybody did sometimes have to crawl about in the dust.
A little later, I was much puzzled as to whether I was a Jew or
Gentile. The Bible seemed to divide people into these two classes only.
The Gentiles were not well spoken of: I did not want to be one of them.
The talked about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the rest, away back to
Adam, as if they were our forefathers (there was a time when I thought
that Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were our four fathers); and yet I
was very sure that I was not a Jew. When I ventured to ask, I was told
that we were all Christians or heathen now. That did not help me for I
thought that only grown-up persons could be Christians, from which it
followed that all children must be heathen. Must I think of Myself as a
heathen, then, until I should be old enough to be a Christian? It was a
shocking conclusion, but I could see no other answer to my question,
and I felt ashamed to ask again. My self-invented theory about the
human race was that Adam and Eve were very tall people, taller than the
tallest trees in the Garden of Eden, before they were sent out of it;
but that they then began to dwindle; that their children had ever since
been getting smaller and smaller, and that by and by the inhabitants of
the world would be no bigger than babies. I was afraid I should stop
growing while I was a child, and I used to stand on the footstool in
the pew, and try to stretch myself up to my mother's height, to imagine
how it would seem to be a woman. I hoped I should be a tall one. I did
not wish to be a diminishing specimen of the race;--an anxiety which
proved to be entirely groundless.
The Sabbath mornings in those old times had a peculiar charm. They
seemed so much cleaner than other mornings! The roads and the grassy
footpaths seemed fresher, and the air itself purer and more wholesome
than on week-days. Saturday afternoon and evening were regarded as part
of the Sabbath (we were taught that it was heathenish to call the day
Sunday); work and playthings were laid aside, and every body, as well
as every thing, was subjected to a rigid renovation. Sabbath morning
would not have seemed like itself without a clean house, a clean skin,
and tidy and spotless clothing.
The Saturday's baking was a great event, the brick oven being heated to
receive the flour bread, the flour-and-Indian, and the rye-and-Indian
bread, the traditional pot of beans, the Indian pudding, and the pies;
for no further cooking was to be done until Monday. We smaller girls
thought it a great privilege to be allowed to watch the oven till the
roof of it should be "white-hot," so that the coals could be shoveled
out.
Then it was so still, both out of doors and within! We were not allowed
to walk anywhere except in the yard or garden. I remember wondering
whether it was never Sabbath-day over the fence, in the next field;
whether the field was not a kind of heathen field, since we could only
go into it on week-days. The wild flowers over there were perhaps
Gentile blossoms. Only the flowers in the garden were well-behaved
Christians. It was Sabbath in the house, and possibly even on the
doorstep; but not much farther. The town itself was so quiet that it
scarcely seemed to breathe. The sound of wheels was seldom heard in the
streets on that day; if we heard it, we expected some unusual
explanation.
I liked to go to meeting,--not wholly oblivious to the fact that going
there sometimes implied wearing a new bonnet and my best white dress
and muslin "vandyke," of which adornments, if very new, I vainly
supposed the whole congregation to be as admiringly aware as I was
myself.
But my Sabbath-day enjoyment was not wholly without drawbacks. It was
so hard, sometimes, to stand up through the "long prayer," and to sit
still through the "ninthlies," and "tenthlies," and "finallys" of the
sermon! It was impressed upon me that good children were never restless
in meeting, and never laughed or smiled, however their big brothers
tempted them with winks or grimaces. And I did want to be good.
I was not tall enough to see very far over the top of the pew. I think
there were only three persons that came within range of my eyes. One
was a dark man with black curly hair brushed down in "bangs" over his
eyebrows, who sat behind a green baize curtain near the outside door,
peeping out at me, as I thought. I had an impression that he was the
"tidy-man," though that personage had become mythical long before my
day. He had a dragonish look, to me; and I tried never to meet his
glance.
But I did sometimes gaze more earnestly than was polite at a dear,
demure little lady who sat in the corner of the pew next ours, her
downcast eyes shaded by a green calash, and her hidden right hand
gently swaying a long-handled Chinese fan. She was the deacon's wife,
and I felt greatly interested in her movements and in the expression of
her face, because I thought she represented the people they called
"saints," who were, as I supposed, about the same as first cousins to
the angels.
The third figure in sight was the minister. I did not think he ever
saw me; he was talking to the older people,--usually telling them how
wicked they were. He often said to them that there was not one good
person among them; but I supposed he excepted himself. He seemed to me
so very good that I was very much afraid of him. I was a little afraid
of my father, but then he sometimes played with us children: and
besides, my father was only a man. I thought the minister belonged to
some different order of beings. Up there in the pulpit he seemed to me
so far off--oh! a great deal farther off than God did. His distance
made my reverence for him take the form of idolatry. The pulpit was his
pedestal. If any one had told me that the minister ever did or thought
anything that was wrong, I should have felt as if the foundations of
the earth under me were shaken. I wondered if he ever did laugh.
Perhaps it was wicked for a minister even to smile.
One day, when I was very little, I met the minister in the street; and
he, probably recognizing me as the child of one of his parishioners,
actually bowed to me! His bows were always ministerially profound, and
I was so overwhelmed with surprise and awe that I forgot to make the
proper response of a "curtsey," but ran home as fast as I could go to
proclaim the wonder. It would not have astonished me any more, if one
of the tall Lombardy poplars that stood along the sidewalk had laid
itself down at my feet.
I do not remember anything that the preacher ever said, except some
words which I thought sounded well,--such as "dispensations,"
"decrees," "ordinances," "covenants,"--although I attached no meaning
to them. He seemed to be trying to explain the Bible by putting it into
long words. I did not understand them at all. It was from Aunt Hannah
that I received my first real glimpses of the beautiful New Testament
revelation. In her unconscious wisdom she chose for me passages and
chapters that were like openings into heaven. They contained the great,
deep truths which are simple because they are great. It was not
explanations of those grand words that I required, or that anybody
requires. In reading them we are all children together, and need only
to be led to the banks of the river of God, which is full of water,
that we may look down into its pellucid depths for ourselves.
Our minister was not unlike other ministers of the time, and his
seeming distance from his congregation was doubtless owing to the deep
reverence in which the ministerial office was universally held among
our predecessors. My own graven-image worship of him was only a
childish exaggeration of the general feeling of grown people around me.
He seemed to us an inhabitant of a Sabbath-day sphere, while we
belonged to the every-day world. I distinctly remember the day of my
christening, when I was between three and four years old. My parents
did not make a public profession of their faith until after the birth
of all their children, eight of whom--I being my father's ninth child
and seventh daughter--were baptized at one time. My two half-sisters
were then grown-up young women. My mother had told us that the minister
would be speaking directly to us, and that we must pay close attention
to what he said. I felt that it was an important event, and I wished to
do exactly what the minister desired of me. I listened eagerly while he
read the chapter and the hymn. The latter was one of my favorites:--
"See Israel's gentle Shepherd stands;"
and the chapter was the third of St. Matthew, containing the story of
our Lord's baptism. I could not make out any special message for us,
until he came to the words, "Whose fan is in his hand."
That must be it! I looked anxiously at my sisters, to see if they had
brought their fans. It was warm weather, and I had taken a little one
of my own to meeting. Believing that I was following a direct
instruction, I clasped my fan to my bosom and held it there as we
walked up the aisle, and during the ceremony, wondering why the others
did not do so, too. The baby in my mother's arms--Octavia, the eighth
daughter--shocked me by crying a little, but I tried to behave the
better on that account.
It all seemed very solemn and mysterious to me. I knew from my father's
and mother's absorbed manner then, and when we returned from church,
that it was something exceedingly important to Them--something that
they wished us neither to talk about nor to forget.
I never did forget it. There remained within me a sweet, haunting
feeling of having come near the "gentle Shepherd" of the hymn, who was
calling the lambs to his side. The chapter had ended with the echo of
a voice from heaven, and with the glimpse of a descending Dove. And the
water-drops on my forehead, were they not from that "pure river of
water of life, clear as crystal," that made music through those lovely
verses in the last chapter of the good Book?
I am glad that I have always remembered that day of family
consecration. As I look back, it seems as if the horizons of heaven and
earth met and were blended then. And who can tell whether the fragrance
of that day's atmosphere may not enter into the freshness of some new
childhood in the life which is to come?