IT did not take us younger ones long to get acquainted with our new
home, and to love it.
To live beside a river had been to me a child's dream of romance.
Rivers, as I pictured them, came down from the mountains, and were born
in the clouds. They were bordered by green meadows, and graceful trees
leaned over to gaze into their bright mirrors. Our shallow tidal creek
was the only river I had known, except as visioned on the pages of the
"Pilgrim's Progress," and in the Book of Revelation. And the Merrimack
was like a continuation of that dream.
I soon made myself familiar with the rocky nooks along Pawtucket Falls,
shaded with hemlocks and white birches. Strange new wild flowers grew
beside the rushing waters,--among them Sir Walter Scott's own
harebells, which I had never thought of except as blossoms of poetry;
here they were, as real to me as to his Lady of the Lake! I loved the
harebell, the first new flower the river gave me, as I had never loved
a flower before.
There was but one summers holiday for us who worked in the mills--the
Fourth of July. We made a point of spending it out of doors, making
excursions down the river to watch the meeting of the slow Concord and
the swift Merrimack; or around by the old canal-path, to explore the
mysteries of the Guard Locks; or across the bridge, clambering up
Dracut Heights, to look away to the dim blue mountains.
On that morning it was our custom to wake one another at four o'clock,
and start off on a tramp together over some retired road whose chief
charm was its unfamiliarity, returning to a very late breakfast, with
draggled gowns and aprons full of dewy wild roses. No matter if we must
get up at five the next morning and go back to our hum-drum toil, we
should have the roses to take with us for company, and the sweet air of
the woodland which lingered about them would scent our thoughts all
day, and make us forget the oily smell of the machinery.
We were children still, whether at school or at work, and Nature still
held us close to her motherly heart. Nature came very close to the
mill-gates, too, in those days. There was green grass all around them;
violets and wild geraniums grew by the canals; and long stretches of
open land between the corporation buildings and the street made the
town seem country-like.
The slope behind our mills (the "Lawrence" Mills) was a green lawn; and
in front of some of them the overseers had gay flower-gardens; we
passed in to our work through a splendor of dahlias and hollyhocks.
The gray stone walls of St. Anne's church and rectory made a
picturesque spot in the middle of the town, remaining still as a
lasting monument to the religious purpose which animated the first
manufacturers. The church arose close to the oldest corporation (the
"Merrimack"), and seemed a part of it, and a part, also, of the
original idea of the place itself, which was always a city of
worshipers, although it came to be filled with a population which
preferred meeting-houses to churches. I admired the church greatly. I
had never before seen a real one; never anything but a plain frame
meeting-house; and it and its benign, apostolic-looking rector were
like a leaf out of an English story-book.
And so, also, was the tiny white cottage nearly opposite, set in the
middle of a pretty flower-garden that sloped down to the canal. In the
garden there was almost always a sweet little girl in a pink gown and
white sunbonnet gathering flowers when I passed that way, and I often
went out of my path to do so. These relieved the monotony of the
shanty-like shops which bordered the main street. The town had sprung
up with a mushroom-rapidity, and there was no attempt at veiling the
newness of its bricks and mortar, its boards and paint.
But there were buildings that had their own individuality, and asserted
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 buttercups 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 petitioners 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 Penobscot 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 amusement 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
associates 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 reasserted 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 circumstances 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 assumed 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 circumstances 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-associations 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 cluster of very conscious-looking little girls that assembled
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 Saturday 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 nobody 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 illustrate 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 noble 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 illustrate 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 assured 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 manuscript 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 Constitution 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 snatches 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 passage from Talfourd,--
"The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter,
Have their own season.
It is a little thing to speak a phase
Of common comfort, which, by daily use,
Has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear
Of him who thought to die unmourned 't will fall
Like choicest music."
A very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox, almost the only quotation
made nowadays from his poems, was often on my sister Emilie's lips,
whose heart seemed always to be saying to itself:--
"Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold!"
I had that beside me, too, and I copy part of it here, for her sake,
and because it will be good for my girl readers to keep in mind one of
the noblest utterances of an almost forgotten American poet:--
"Rouse to some work of high and holy love,
And thou an angel's happiness shalt know;
Shalt bless the earth while in the world above.
The good begun by thee shall onward flow.
The pure, sweet stream shall deeper, wider grow.
The seed that in these few and fleeting hours
Thy hands, unsparing and unwearied sow,
Shall deck thy grave with amaranthine flowers,
And yield thee fruits divine in heaven's immortal bowers."
One great advantage which came to these many stranger girls through
being brought together, away from their own homes, was that it taught
them to go out of themselves, and enter into the lives of others.
Home-life, when one always stays at home, is necessarily narrowing.
That is one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful of any
except their own family's interests. We have hardly begun to live until
we can take in the idea of the whole human family as the one to which
we truly belong. To me, it was an incalculable help to find myself
among so many working-girls, all of us thrown upon our own resources,
but thrown much more upon each others' sympathies.
And the stream beside which we toiled added to its own inspirations
human suggestions drawn from our acquaintance with each other. It
blended itself with the flow of our lives. Almost the first of my
poemlets in the "Lowell Offering" was entitled "The River." These are
some lines of it:--
"Gently flowed a river bright
On its path of liquid light,
Gleaming now soft banks between,
Winding now through valleys green,
Cheering with its presence mild
Cultured fields and woodlands wild.
"Is not such a pure one's life?
Ever shunning pride and strife,
Noiselessly along she goes,
Known by gentle deeds she does;
Often wandering far, to bless,
And do others kindnesses.
"Thus, by her own virtues shaded,
While pure thoughts, like starbeams, lie
Mirrored in her heart and eye,
She, content to be unknown,
All serenely moveth on,
Till, released from Time's commotion,
Self is lost in Love's wide ocean."
There was many a young girl near me whose life was like the beautiful
course of the river in my ideal of her. The Merrimack has blent its
music with the onward song of many a lovely soul that, clad in plain
working-clothes, moved heavenward beside its waters.
One of the loveliest persons I ever knew was a young girl who worked
opposite to me in the spinning-room. Our eyes made us friends long
before we spoke to each other. She was an orphan, well-bred and
well-educated, about twenty years old, and she had brought with her to
her place of toil the orphan child of her sister, left to her as a
death-bed legacy. They boarded with a relative. The factory
boarding-houses were often managed by families of genuine refinement,
as in this case, and the one comfort of Caroline's life was her
beautiful little niece, to whom she could go home when the day's work
was over.
Her bereavements had given an appealing sadness to her whole
expression; but she had accepted them and her changed circumstances
with the submission of profound faith which everybody about her felt in
everything she said and did. I think I first knew, through her, how
character can teach, without words. To see her and her little niece
together was almost like looking at a picture of the Madonna. Caroline
afterwards became an inmate of my mother's family, and we were warm
friends until her death a few years ago.
Some of the girls could not believe that the Bible was meant to be
counted among forbidden books. We all thought that the Scriptures had a
right to go wherever we went, and that if we needed them anywhere, it
was at our work. I evaded the law by carrying some leaves from a torn
Testament in my pocket.
The overseer, caring more for law than gospel, confiscated all he
found. He had his desk full of Bibles. It sounded oddly to hear him say
to the most religious girl in the room, when he took hers away, "I did
think you had more conscience than to bring that book here." But we had
some close ethical questions to settle in those days. It was a rigid
code of morality under which we lived. Nobody complained of it,
however, and we were doubtless better off for its strictness, in the
end.
The last window in the row behind me was filled with flourishing
house-plants--fragrant leaved geraniums, the overseer's pets. They gave
that corner a bowery look; the perfume and freshness tempted me there
often. Standing before that window, I could look across the room and
see girls moving backwards and forwards among the spinning-frames,
sometimes stooping, sometimes reaching up their arms, as their work
required, with easy and not ungraceful movements. On the whole, it was
far from being a disagreeable place to stay in. The girls were
bright-looking and neat, and everything was kept clean and shining. The
effect of the whole was rather attractive to strangers.
My grandfather came to see my mother once at about this time and
visited the mills. When he had entered our room, and looked around for
a moment, he took off his hat and made a low bow to the girls, first
toward the right, and then toward the left. We were familiar with his
courteous habits, partly due to his French descent; but we had never
seen anybody bow to a room full of mill girls in that polite way, and
some one of the family afterwards asked him why he did so. He looked a
little surprised at the question, but answered promptly and with
dignity, "I always take off my hat to ladies."
His courtesy was genuine. Still, we did not call ourselves ladies. We
did not forget that we were working-girls, wearing coarse aprons
suitable to our work, and that there was some danger of our becoming
drudges. I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became very
wearisome to me. In the sweet June weather I would lean far out of the
window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside.
Looking away to the hills, my whole stifled being would cry out
"Oh, that I had wings!"