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A LIFE UNVEILED
BY
A CHILD OF THE DRUMLINS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
JOHN BURROUGHS
[Illustration: Logo]
_Ce livre est toute ma jeunesse; je
l’ai fait sans presque y songer._
--DE MUSSET
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION BY JOHN BURROUGHS vii
TO THE READER xi
CHAPTER
I. THE FAMILY TREE 1
II. THE ROOF-TREE 14
III. “A CHILD WENT FORTH” 42
IV. IN THE OLD PATHS 71
V. “AS TWIG IS BENT” 94
VI. “BRED IN THE BONE” 119
VII. SCHOOL DAYS 134
VIII. THE “MEDIC” 172
IX. THE “MEDIC” (Continued) 229
X. THE “MEDIC” (Concluded) 245
XI. THROUGH THE GATE OF DREAMS 273
INTRODUCTION
I fancy that this “Child of the Drumlins” did not know she was living
amid drumlins when she passed her youth there. She knew them only as
the long, smooth, loaf-shaped hills that were scattered over her native
landscape, upon which she saw cattle grazing and grain ripening, and
upon which she roamed and played in the freedom of childhood.
These curious-looking hills are found in certain parts of New England,
and in a large section of the central and western parts of New York
state. They would suggest artificial mounds were they not so large
as to preclude all idea of their being the work of man. They were
indeed made, but not by human hands. They are the work of the great
continental ice-sheet which tens of thousands of years ago crept slowly
over a large part of the Northern hemisphere, giving to the landscape,
among many other strange new features, these long, low, rounded hills,
called by the geologists drumlins, amid which the “Child” passed her
early life. Carpeted with grass and often dotted with trees, these
peaceful pastoral elevations are seldom more than a quarter of a mile
long, and perhaps a hundred feet high. Their trend is in one direction,
from northeast to southwest--the general course the ice-flood took.
They are simply huge heaps of clay and water-worn boulders shovelled
together by the gods of the Ice Age, though just how it all came about
the geologists are not clear. But there they stand, making a marked
feature in the landscape.
To the Land of the Drumlins, rich in its early associations, the
writer of this narrative turns, giving a moving record of real life
which to me makes fiction insipid. It presents the natural history of
an American girl in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. (And
why should we not have such a history, as well as that of much less
interesting animals?) Herein we see pictured typical and representative
conditions and individuals which contributed to the development
of a dreaming, aspiring girl into a woman of serious purpose and
substantial achievement in a strenuous and useful career. A notable
piece of work of permanent literary and psychological value, it sweeps
one along by its intrinsic interest, its candour, its playfulness,
and its seriousness. Childhood memories, trivial and signal events,
portraiture, incidents, form a picture of real life convincing as
only real things can convince. Through it we look into a heart and a
life. It is life. One sees the writer from her forebears up. With what
admirable art she brings certain scenes before us! One is present,
sees and feels them all, and shares her inmost thoughts and emotions.
One’s tears stand trembling at the doorway; smiles and laughter are
irresistibly evoked. The feeling with which the writer has invested the
narrative is the principal source of its charm and value; it is that
which makes us a sharer in all her life. The book does not appear to be
written, but rather an unveiling of memories, with an entire absence of
literary consciousness. Her mind seems transparent; her life like an
open book before her where she can trace every passage. Does she forget
nothing? Few persons can see themselves objectively and at the same
time achieve such self-analysis.
One is carried along by the rush and spontaneity of the record, as the
author evidently was in writing it. In her passionate confession,
faults and errors are courageously set down. One rejoices to know that
there were imps in the girl who shows at the same time such a serious,
earnest nature, such a vibrant, susceptible personality. One likes her
for her pranks and her naughtiness, her stubbornness, her primness,
and her deep attachments. She piques one and leads one on, a willing
sharer in all her experiences. One comes to see that he is always to
expect the unexpected from this demure, enigmatic creature who, though
preserving her own individuality, is so like all girls of her time
and race. And it is this universal appeal which gives the record its
value: other girls and women, other youths and men as well, will see
themselves in this “Child of the Drumlins” who summons her past before
us so vividly that we, too, live over again the days of our own youth.
[Illustration: _John Burroughs_[signature]]
TO THE READER
Have you ever reached a time in your life when all that had gone before
seemed cut off from the present; when you felt an imperious need to
review whatever had gone to the making of the You; when the preceding
years, full as they had seemed, were barren of that which made the
present so vital; when, because of that barrenness, they seemed to
have belonged rather to the life of one you knew than to your own? If
you have, you will understand the motive that sometimes leads one to
deliberate self-study and self-delineation.
He who honestly undertakes such study is pledged to candour at all
costs. Beginning by reviewing his ancestry and environment, he also
tries to recapture some of those earliest, evanescent sense experiences
and memories of childhood. He peers into that mysterious borderland
between childhood and youth; surveys the formative influences,
the outstanding events, the proclivities, longings, aspirations,
achievements, struggles, temptations, successes, defeats--reviews
them all, tries to estimate their influence, and to recognize their
possible reappearance, in other guises perhaps, in his present self.
The dawning of religious emotion, sex consciousness, the gradual
transition from the receptiveness and naïve simplicity of childhood
to the wilful caprice of adolescence (with its blind gropings, its
heightened emotional life, its contradictory moods, its evolution of
self-consciousness and social consciousness)--all these phases he
passes in review and weighs, hoping to form a just estimate as to
their effect upon his personality as he alone knows it.
One cannot compass this survey until one has passed beyond the
seething period of adolescence which merges so insensibly into that of
maturity. Immaturity, maturity--the difference is only of degree; the
child _is_ father to the man; the psychology we trace in child life
is fundamentally the same that obtains when the individual achieves
that self-control and balance, that steadiness of aim, that harmonious
union of bodily and mental powers which characterize maturity. Until we
understand this merging and blending of experiences that make up a life
history, we may regard as trivial the fleeting events and memories of
childhood which the psychologist knows are significant and far-reaching.
In the rapid setting down of what comes crowding into the consciousness
as the canvas of one’s life unrolls before him, one is not especially
concerned with the orderly sequence of events; mental associations
are intractable forces to deal with; a certain looseness of exterior
matters is inevitable; the eye cannot look both in and out at the
same time. What really matters is that one accurately read one’s own
consciousness, without mistakes, without self-deception, without wilful
deceit. Unless this is achieved, one cheats one’s self.
Perhaps the record is made for self alone; perhaps for another; in any
case not for the public; and yet as the years pass, and the events
recorded have become so remote as to seem dissociated from the present
self, it may happen that the question of sharing the record with others
arises--a question which gives pause to the autobiographer with scant
claim on the public.
“Who is this,” he imagines the reader inquiring, “who so confidently
asks us to share all these details of her life?” And then there
comes to mind that statement of Carlyle’s: that the humblest life,
if truthfully presented, would be of absorbing interest; that a true
delineation of the smallest man and his scene of pilgrimage throughout
life, is capable of interesting the greatest men, since all men are
brothers, and since human portraits, faithfully drawn, must be of all
pictures the welcomest on human walls.
And so the story goes forth. If it faithfully depict the psychology
of child life, of adolescence, of dawning maturity, devoid though it
be of plot and, as a whole, of dramatic interest, it may yet, as a
typical human portrait, justify itself; may aid the young to a better
understanding of their own natures, and help those no longer young
to a keener remembrance, a deeper sympathy, and a broader tolerance
concerning the struggles, problems, and complexities that beset the
young lives around them.
This book of my childhood and youth, written many years ago, is as
sincere as such a thing can well be, and this constitutes its only
excuse for being. Unless I have told the naked, unblushing truth,
why pretend to unveil my life?[1] If I have concealed faults and
follies, what is there in common with your life as you alone know it?
Doubtless you yourself would shrink from the deliberate self-analysis
and self-revelation I have made, and yet may find herein natural human
reactions which tally with your own inarticulate experiences.
L’INNOMMÉE.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The names in the narrative are, of course, fictitious.
A LIFE UNVEILED
_I once wandered in a beautiful garden. It had high walls which made
one feel safe and sheltered. There were many flower-bordered paths, and
some that were stony and rough. There were broad open spaces, dark,
wooded corners, cosy nooks, and friendly trees. Openings in the wall
gave glimpses that made one’s heart beat faster and that filled one
with queer restless feelings, half pleasure, half pain._
_There came a day when I left the garden and started on a long journey.
I have never been back. Sometimes I have wanted to go back, but the
great gate can never open from the outside._
_When we lose our Edens, you and I, is it any wonder that we sometimes
pause in the journey, and long to recapture the days when we played in
the enchanted enclosure? What if, some day, one creeps back close to
the wall, holding up the magic mirror he brought away with him? What
if he gets glimpses that help him to continue on the way? What if he
lets you peep into the mirror, too--the mirror which will reflect the
garden you played in, the paths you trod, the flowers you gathered, the
playmates you knew?_
A LIFE UNVEILED
CHAPTER I
THE FAMILY TREE
I seem always to have lived a life apart from the obvious one, seeing
the strange contrasts, the incongruities, the dramatic moments, though
always these things were unexpressed. Those about me had no inkling of
what was passing in my mind. Perhaps it is so with all children. One
can only know one’s self, and that so vaguely.
I was born near the foot of a drumlin. Their smooth level crests broke
the horizon line of my native village. Amid the drumlins I shared
in all the little world they bounded. On the summit of a drumlin my
kindred lie buried, and back to the drumlins I shall one day turn--back
to the commonplace little village where my life began. The village has
not grown in all the years, either in population or importance; on the
contrary, it seems to have dwindled to tiny dimensions. Whenever I go
back there now, the houses and the prominent buildings look smaller,
the drumlins lower, and all the distances are lessened to a surprising
degree. I look at the one handsome residence the village boasts and
ask, Is that the house I used to think so imposing? Are those the
grounds so illimitable to my childish eyes? And is this the same hill
near Grandfather’s barn that was so steep when three happy children
clambered over it in search of sorrel leaves? What a paltry patch
of ground Grandmother’s garden now is! yet there was a time when,
engaged in one of the tasks of my childhood (that of picking Grandma’s
raspberries and currants), her garden bounded my little world which
then did not seem little at all. Nor was it; for while moving among the
currant bushes, my fingers busy, my thoughts roamed far afield--out
past the hop vines in the rear; out past the clump of big red “pineys”
in front, and the corner where the smallage grew; past the snowball
bush, even past the oxheart cherry tree; through the little blue gate,
and out into the big wonderful world beyond. No, it was not a little
garden; it was a very big garden then; some unkind trickery has been
at work these later years to make it the poor cramped little enclosure
which I viewed last summer through blinding tears.
And Grandma’s old house, too. How low the rooms are now! There was
a time when, caught up in the arms of an uncle, and seated on his
shoulder, the laughing faces below me seemed remote indeed to my
half-pleased, half-frightened eyes. How tall I feel, almost stately, as
I enter the rooms now; and what a chill and gloom strike to the marrow
of my being to find no longer the dear old wrinkled face to greet me!
To see the same paper on the walls, the same clock on the mantel, the
same familiar things at every turn, worn and faded, but still there,
while that cherished face, and those beneficent, toil-worn hands, and
the tired, pain-racked heart are gone forever!
No one was ever so hospitable as Grandpa and Grandma. “Just sit by
and have a bite of something,” Grandma would urge, unaware that she
was dispensing a blessing instead of asking a boon. Their meals were
frugal--no recollection of bounty comes to me, except at Thanksgiving
or other family reunions; but Grandma’s bread and butter, her
warmed-up potatoes, and her sugar cookies (with caraway seeds in them),
touched the spot as no other food ever did or can. Then she used to
place a cup of tea (green tea, it always was) slyly by my plate,
saying: “I guess your Ma won’t care this time if you take a little.”
I can see the little brown tea-pot now as she brings it from the back
of the stove; the silver lustre sugar-bowl with its ribbed sides, and
the nick on the knob of the cover; the blue dishes; the Britannia
spoons--no one but Grandma had Britannia spoons--and the thin, pointed
silver ones; the yellow-handled knives; and the funny little two-tined
fork that Grandma herself used--the rest of us had forks with three
tines.
There’s the Boston rocker in which Grandpa sat of a winter evening and
peeled apples for drying. I wonder where his little old “shoe-knife”
is. “What makes your hands tremble so, Grandpa?” Sister would ask; but
in spite of the tremor he peeled a heaping pile of an evening.
“Eunice, fetch me a bigger pan,” he would call to Grandma, busy in
kitchen or buttery; and how testy he got if she didn’t understand,
or brought the wrong pan! I shuddered when he spoke that way to her,
and wondered why it was; and her meek face and humble silence made
me love and pity her the more. I never learned not to mind Grandpa’s
angry tones. It was “his way” with her. His voice, as I remember it,
was almost always harsh to her, but never to me, never to me. He was
always indulgent with me, and with all of us children--except when we
hung around the barn at milking-time--then he would forget himself,
and one would have thought he was shouting to Grandma or to the
cows instead. We learned not to put his temper to this strain very
often--his hospitality did not extend that far. I don’t know how much
an incident of my babyhood engendered this feeling: Grandpa had a white
cow, a gentle, well-behaved “critter,” but one day when they took her
calf away, maddened, she made a dash at me, playing near; caught me on
her horns, and ran up the bank of the tow-path, while Mother looked on
paralyzed with fear. As Grandpa and a neighbour ran up the bank, the
cow ran faster, then tossed me wildly in the air.
“I didn’t know whether you would fall in the water or on her horns,”
Mother used to say; “I expected to see you drowned in the canal or
horribly wounded; but Mr. Mintline caught you in his arms--Grandpa sold
the cow the next day.” Mother’s voice always trembled in recounting the
incident.
Since then I have always been afraid of cows. If the peaceable
creatures come slowly toward me, try as I will I cannot walk slowly
away. I breathe freely only when the fence is between them and me. By
some childish twist of the imagination, so vivid was the impression
made upon me by hearing of being caught on the horns of that old white
cow, I believed myself to have been injured by the act, and was quite a
big child before I learned that certain anatomical mark on my body--the
little deep dimple in the abdomen--was not made by the horns of that
angry cow. It needed the confirmation given by seeing my sister’s and
other children’s bodies similarly marked to disabuse my mind of that
belief.
I remember when in my early ’teens I would meet that
neighbour--Mintline--an unkempt man, who had long since forgotten his
share in my life, I would think, “He caught you in his arms,” and
would smile to myself at the incongruity as, fluttering past him on
the street in my pretty muslin gown, I was acutely conscious of the
contrast with his rough, untidy clothes. Turning and looking after
him I would say under my breath, “_You_ don’t know, but I do, and I’m
grateful to you, even if you have forgotten it all.”
Grandpa, as I have said, was impatient and irascible; he was easily
moved to profanity; but he was a man of probity of life and character
and a hater of shams. His sense of humour was keen, also his sense
of justice. He was a mason by trade; had built the brick church in
the town, the old Academy, and a few other fine old brick buildings
standing there to-day. I used to look upon these with pride, saying
to myself, “Grandpa built that--and that”; though, since my earliest
recollection, he had not worked at his trade. He led an active life
up to his eighty-sixth year about his village farm, with his cows and
his pigs, and his haying in the low-lying meadows. I can see him now
riding his black horse, straight and sturdy, on his way to the pasture
with the cows. Often they were wayward and the boys in the street would
annoy him. I used to feel chagrined beyond words when I heard him
swearing at the cows, or at the boys, and saw him brandishing his whip
in the air. Mother felt the same. I could detect a look of relief on
her face those days when Grandpa rode peaceably by with the cows.
Grandma was not pious, she was a saint. Though a church member, she
seldom went to church. Toiling from morning till night, she endured
hardship, harshness, and pain with a sweet reasonableness that endeared
her to all. Grandpa’s impatience and shouting never provoked complaints
from her. She seemed to think his quick temper and deafness excused him.
In contrast to her hard workaday life I was always dreaming of the
romance of Grandma’s early days. Filling in related facts with fancies,
I pored over her early picture with its quaint arrangement of gown and
hair, rejoicing in traces of her girlish beauty. I liked her quaint
name, Eunice (a cousin of hers, a courtly old gentleman, used to
call her Eu-ni’-ce--that was beautiful, but Grandpa uncompromisingly
pronounced it Eu’-nis); I liked the names of her sisters,
too--Thankful, Peace, and Nancy.
In retrospect I mourned with my great-grandfather Albro when he lost
his young wife and had to scatter his baby girls among their relatives.
Near neighbours, John Gear and wife, had begged for little Eunice, then
less than two years old. Though he let them take her, he had refused
their repeated requests to adopt her. But one morning the neighbours
were astonished to find the Gear house dismantled and deserted, the
couple having stolen away in the night. They were bound to have that
child. No trace of them could be obtained. That was in 1813. They
easily escaped detection, though for years the poor father inquired
diligently of chance strangers and travellers for news of the fugitives.
The Gears journeyed to a distant county. Eunice was reared in ignorance
of her real parentage. Even when she married, her foster parents were
loth to let her leave them. Her own home and children soon claimed all
her thoughts, and she lived on unaware of the tragedy in the life of
her father.
There was a certain youth, Otis Sprague, to whom Grandma had been
attached before marrying Grandpa; at least, she went to parties with
him. (I can’t tell just how much of this is my own romancing, but I
convinced myself he was a disappointed suitor.) He left home in the
early years after Grandma’s marriage, journeying to Washington county,
the home of his ancestors. (I used to make believe he left because he
could not bear to see Grandma the wife of another.) Visiting among his
kindred, he came upon his uncle, my great-grandfather. As usual, the
old man inquired of the traveller what parts he had come from, and then
ventured, “Did you ever chance to meet a man, Gear--John Gear?”
“John Gear? Why, yes--there’s a John Gear lives in our place. I know
him well.”
I could see the old man trembling with joy--the long-expected answer
come at last! Faltering as he tried to frame the next question, he
hesitated so long the young man thought him a little daft:
“And did you--has he--is there--did you ever hear tell of Eunice--a
child with big blue eyes and”--then he broke off, afraid to question
further--she might be dead, or, if living, must be a woman now.
Otis had his own reasons, I was confident, for remembering Eunice. He
knew just how those wistful blue eyes looked, and how the soft brown
hair waved over her forehead. Seeing at once that this meant more to
the old man than he could express, Otis answered the unasked questions;
told him there had been a Eunice Gear, eldest daughter of John Gear
(for the childless couple had later had children born to them). She
had married a young mason a few years ago--Crandall by name--quick
tempered, but a good fellow; they had two babies when he came away, and
he guessed there was another one a-coming. Yes, he went to school with
her--took her to a party once.
Then I saw the scene that followed--the broken explanations of the
joyous father--questions, answers, hurriedly uttered, and the growing
eagerness of both men as they supplemented for each other the missing
information about the lost-and-found Eunice.
Enraged at the Gears, on his return home Otis told Grandma the story
of her abduction, and gave her the messages from her father and sisters.
After that, one hope dominated Grandma’s life--to save enough money
to go to her father. Loving the Gears, her heart yet yearned for
the father and sisters she had never known. But her children came
near together; money was scarce; means of travel were difficult and
uncertain; two children sickened and died; and the years went by with
her hope unfulfilled, an infrequent and laboured correspondence being
the only link between them.
After many years of careful saving, the little hoard was thought
sufficient for the trip. The children were old enough to be left with
Otis’s sister, and Grandma set out on her long journey.
There were no railroads then. She went on the canal “packet.” This
scene was very real to me. I could see her starting, loth to leave her
little family, yet eager to go; timid at the thought of the enterprise,
but impatient at the slow-moving boat. I’m sure she often walked on the
towpath to relieve excitement and suspense. I wonder how long it took
that snail boat to make the trip. Parts of the journey were made by
stagecoach.
On reaching her old home she found her sisters, but her father
had moved to Warren County. More than that, he had had one or two
strokes of apoplexy and could no longer converse; he would, as the
sisters said, “say one word when he meant another.” Her money was not
sufficient to meet the additional expenses; the extra time it would
take was a serious drawback to the anxious mother; then there was her
father’s inability to talk with her; so, torn between conflicting
interests, hampered, anxious, and sore beset, she abandoned the quest,
renounced her long-cherished hope of reunion with her father, and
turned her face toward home and family, drawn by a half-defined fear
lest they get scattered, too.
During Grandma’s last years her sister Thankful came and lived with
her--two feeble old women, united in infancy, separated throughout
their long lives, reunited just before the end! We children called her
Aunt Unthankful: her presence added much to Grandma’s burdens, but no
murmur passed the patient lips; nor would she suffer criticism of the
poor soul who had found refuge in her home and heart.
As a girl I was keenly alive to the pathos of my great-grandfather’s
life, and to the deferred, then all-but-accomplished hope in Grandma’s.
My own mother’s cherished hope of one day taking Grandma to her
childhood home was also doomed to unfulfilment; and with a curious
prescience I used to ask, “Will the dearest hope that sleeps against
my own heart meet a like rebuff?” Had the tired, saddened woman found
her father at the last, I wonder if his failing mind could have grasped
the truth. Perhaps he would have turned away in bitter disappointment
when they had tried to make him understand; unable to articulate, but
thinking, “That is not my baby Eunice that John Gear stole from me.”
Perhaps he died hoping, believing, that his little Eunice would still
come back.
As a child I remember being gathered into Grandma’s arms, conscious of
an infinite tenderness, inarticulate but encompassing. I used to look
up into her pale, weary face and wonder why she had to work so hard. I
loved to stroke her soft cheeks; was mystified by the wrinkled flesh
that hung beneath her chin; and her poor hands with their enlarged
joints and crooked fingers--it seemed as though they must hurt to be so
bent; vainly I tried to straighten them. It was such a puzzle, too--the
contrast between age and youth as I saw and felt it in Grandma
and myself when patting her face with my chubby hand. I looked and
marvelled and questioned, then gave up questioning, and rested my head
on her breast, content to be folded in her arms.
There was a pink china teapot with a broken spout high on Grandma’s
pantry shelf. I never saw inside it, but a delightful jingle came from
its capacious depths. In it Grandma kept pennies, nickels, half-dimes
and dimes, and those tiny, three-cent coins I haven’t seen since
childhood; yes, and there were the large three-cent pieces and the
two-cent coppers that one sees no more. Grandma had a way of urging us
children: “Now take a nickel for all your trouble,” just as she had of
urging us to help her empty the old brown cookie jar. Although there
were no injunctions concerning a reasonable amount of cookies, we were
taught at home that we must not accept Grandma’s nickels (her milk and
yeast money) for the errands we did; and to our credit, be it said, we
refused them as a rule, even when we had to summon all our strength to
refuse. I can see now three pairs of red-mittened hands quickly drawn
away as Grandma would press the tempting coins, first on one, then the
other, of her little helpers. Sometimes the nickel would fall into
the pail, and we would fumble to get it out, while Grandma’s siren
tones would urge: “There, run along home like good children and mind
Grandma, just this once.” Ah, Grandma! many an enticing temptation of
yours did our childish strength withstand! Would that the forbidden
sweets and glittering coins Life has proffered had oftener met a like
renunciation! And yet, can one ever really say that he would change
anything that has become a part of him, of his experience--that, if he
could, he would blot it out, make it as though it had never been?
So used to serving was she, instead of being served, Grandma seemed
always to ask aid under protest; her gratitude was out of all
proportion to the service rendered: “You poor child, when will you get
paid for all you do for Grandma?” was the burden of her talk, though
the “poor child” fairly doted on running errands for her. “Four pounds
of white sugar, two of light brown, half a pound of green tea, and a
ball of Babbitt’s concentrated lye”--this refrain I would con over and
over on my way to the village, lest I forget it while loitering to
watch the boats crawl under the canal bridge.
How many hours I have spent down in her cool sweet cellar over the
little red churn, the dasher going up and down, up and down, while I
said aloud my favourite poems--after Grandma had gone upstairs. Many
a pat of butter has gathered under the dasher while I rehearsed the
winning of Juliet, Othello’s speech to the senate, Portia’s speech to
Shylock--extracts from Cathcart’s Literary Reader, which was my first
introduction to real literature.
Men do not gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. As
Grandma’s life had been one of service, so her daughter, my mother,
was untiring in devotion to her mother; and so, too, I am glad to say,
Mother’s children have tried to emulate the filial examples set them.
By way of contrast I am reminded of a story illustrating hereditary
tendencies: A boy was arrested for beating his father; the injured
father defended his boy thus, “He can’t help beating me: I beat my
father; my father beat his father; and my son’s son will beat him--it
runs in our family.” I am glad it runs in our family to love and revere
our parents. Yet, there was Grandpa with his habit of profanity, the
son of a Baptist clergyman! Mother used to marvel how he could have
grown up that way, since his father, who used to take boys to tutor
in his own home, was said to have given him and them a very strict
up-bringing. His mother, Katrina Klincke, born in Alsace, was an
inexorable housekeeper. Her exacting ways have cropped out in full
force in one of our aunts; and in later years I’m not sure but this
great-grandmother wields an influence over my sister and me--we cannot
be comfortable in disorder or slack housekeeping, nor--more’s the
pity!--can we let any one else be.
My paternal ancestry is French and, probably, Scottish. Father used to
say we were descended on his father’s side from one of the celebrated
French Revolutionists, an intimate of Napoleon’s and Josephine’s;
but my grandparents and great-grandparents were born in the Land
of the Drumlins. When, some years ago, the memoirs of our reputed
French ancestor were published, bringing to light his brilliant but
unscrupulous career, I took a mischievous pleasure in sending Father
the particularly scathing comments concerning “our ancestor.”
My father was the fifth child in a family of ten; his father died in
early adult life, presumably of tuberculosis, though Father would never
admit it. Two of his sisters had the same disease, and, because of my
resemblance to one of them, and my not robust health in childhood, I
was something of an object of solicitude in early girlhood, though
all fears on that score vanished long ago. I have heard that my
paternal grandfather drank to excess, and know that one of his sons
did, which may largely account for my father’s life-long zeal for the
Temperance Cause. His mother, of Scottish descent, left with a large
family, was brave, strong, and resourceful to an unusual degree. Their
little log-house being miles away from a neighbour, once during a big
snow-storm lasting several days they had nothing in the house to eat
but potatoes and salt. “But we ate them and were glad to get them,”
said Father, who added, “We can never know how much inward anxiety
Mother felt at such times, but whatever it was, none but herself ever
knew.”
We children called her “the other Grandma,” for she then lived “way
out West” (in Michigan), and we never saw her but once. I remember her
serious face, which could look very merry when she smiled; and her
black gown with a purple stripe running through it. She was at our
house on one of my early birthdays and helped us smoke glass to look at
a total eclipse of the sun. When she died, a cousin came running down
the hill waving a yellow paper and saying breathlessly, “Grandma is
dead!” _And she smiled when she said it!_ A sensitive girl, overcome
with the importance of being the bearer of such news, her smile, I
know now, was a purely nervous manifestation; but I could not judge
her leniently then. Moved by the grief of my parents, I wept to see
them weep, but the shadow passed quickly; not so the resentment I held
toward that cousin for her untimely smile.
As youth passes one longs for fuller knowledge of the lives that
preceded one’s own. We are the result of all that has gone before,
but how often important figures are missing; and even when not, how
inexplicable the sum total is! Lives cut off in our childhood and
youth, or perhaps before we were born, may have endowed us with this
or that constitutional bias, this weakness, that strength--to which of
them do I owe this fault?--is this trait, for which I am commended, my
own, or my great grandmother’s?--insoluble complexities, yet how we
seek an answer, here and there, as we study our tree of life from the
roots up!