There are people in books and people in Riverboro, and they are not the
same kind. They never talk of chargers and palfreys in the village, nor
say How oft and Methinks, and if a Scotchman out of Rob Roy should come
to Riverboro and want to marry one of us girls we could not understand
him unless he made motions; though Huldah Meserve says if a nobleman of
high degree should ask her to be his,--one of vast estates with serfs at
his bidding,--she would be able to guess his meaning in any language.
Uncle Jerry Cobb thinks that Riverboro people would not make a story,
but I know that some of them would.
Jack-o'-lantern, though only a baby, was just like a real story if
anybody had written a piece about him: How his mother was dead and his
father ran away and Emma Jane and I got Aunt Sarah Cobb to keep him so
Mr. Perkins wouldn't take him to the poor farm; and about our lovely
times with him that summer, and our dreadful loss when his father
remembered him in the fall and came to take him away; and how Aunt Sarah
carried the trundle bed up attic again and Emma Jane and I heard her
crying and stole away.
Mrs. Peter Meserve says Grandpa Sawyer was a wonderful hand at stories
before his spirit was broken by grandmother. She says he was the life
of the store and tavern when he was a young man, though generally sober,
and she thinks I take after him, because I like compositions better than
all the other lessons; but mother says I take after father, who always
could say everything nicely whether he had anything to say or not; so
methinks I should be grateful to both of them. They are what is called
ancestors and much depends upon whether you have them or not. The
Simpsons have not any at all. Aunt Miranda says the reason everybody
is so prosperous around here is because their ancestors were all first
settlers and raised on burnt ground. This should make us very proud.
Methinks and methought are splendid words for compositions. Miss
Dearborn likes them very much, but Alice and I never bring them in to
suit her. Methought means the same as I thought, but sounds better.
Example: If you are telling a dream you had about your aged aunt:
Methought I heard her say
My child you have so useful been
You need not sew today.
This is a good example one way, but too unlikely, woe is me!
This afternoon I was walking over to the store to buy molasses, and as
I came off the bridge and turned up the hill, I saw lots and lots of
heelprints in the side of the road, heelprints with little spike holes
in them.
“Oh! The river drivers have come from up country,” I thought, “and
they'll be breaking the jam at our falls tomorrow.” I looked everywhere
about and not a man did I see, but still I knew I was not mistaken for
the heelprints could not lie. All the way over and back I thought about
it, though unfortunately forgetting the molasses, and Alice Robinson
not being able to come out, I took playtime to write a story. It is
the first grown-up one I ever did, and is intended to be like Cora the
Doctor's Wife, not like a school composition. It is written for Mr. Adam
Ladd, and people like him who live in Boston, and is the printed kind
you get money for, to pay off a mortgage.
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