On one occasion [wrote Miss Cushman] when Henry Ware, pastor of the
old Boston Meeting House, was taking tea with my mother, he sat at
table talking, with his chin resting in his two hands, and his elbows
on the table. I was suddenly startled by my mother exclaiming,
"Charlotte, take your elbows off the table and your chin out of your
hands; it is not a pretty position for a young lady!" I was sitting
in exact imitation of the parson, even assuming the expression of his
face.
Besides singing everything, I exercised my imitative powers in all
directions, and often found myself instinctively mimicking the tones,
movement, and expression of those about me. I'm afraid I was what the
French call _un enfant terrible_--in the vernacular, an awful child!
full of irresistible life and impulsive will; living fully in the
present, looking neither before nor after; as ready to execute as to
conceive; full of imagination--a faculty too often thwarted and warped
by the fears of parents and friends that it means insincerity and
falsehood, when it is in reality but the spontaneous exercise of
faculties as yet unknown even to the possessor, and misunderstood by
those so-called trainers of infancy.
This imitative faculty in especial I inherited from my grandmother
Babbit, born Mary Saunders, of Gloucester, Cape Ann. Her faculty of
imitation was very remarkable. I remember sitting at her feet on a
little stool and hearing her sing a song of the period, in which she
delighted me by the most perfect imitation of every creature belonging
to the farmyard.