Among those who sometimes came to listen to little Lib's allegories was
Mary Ann Sherman, a tall, dark, gloomy woman of whom I had heard much.
She was the daughter of old Deacon Sherman, a native of the village, who
had, some years before I came to Greenhills, died by his own hand, after
suffering many years from a sort of religious melancholia. Whether the
trouble was hereditary and his daughter was born with a tendency
inherited from her father, or whether she was influenced by what she
had heard of his life, and death, I do not know. But she was a dreary
creature with never a smile or a hopeful look upon her dark face.
Nothing to her was right or good; this world was a desert, her friends
had all left her, strangers looked coldly upon her. As for the future,
there was nothing to look forward to in this world or the next. As Dave
Moony, the village cynic, said, "Mary Ann wa'n't proud or set up about
nothin' but bein' the darter of a man that had c'mitted the onpar'nable
sin." Poor woman! her eyes were blinded to all the beauty and brightness
of this world, to the hope and love and joy of the next. What wonder
that one day, as she paused in passing the little group gathered around
Lib, and the child began the little story I give below, I thought it
well fitted to the gloomy woman's case!