_SUNDAY._
THE rest of the winter passed quietly, and pleasantly also, in spite of
the whooping-cough, which ran through all our neighbourhood and almost
broke up the school. Among the chief sufferers was poor Elnathan Crum,
who died just as the spring flowers were beginning to come out in the
woods and fields. Elnathan was very fond of flowers, and had them about
him just as long as any could be found; and I well remember how Miss
Tempy surprised and rather shocked some of the neighbours by filling
the dead boy's cold hands with violets and trailing arbutus. I believe
they thought the action savoured of superstition.
Emily Hyde, Jenny's sister, also died this spring. I specially
recollect the fact from hearing Rose say that she thought Emmy must be
glad to go where there were no lessons and no sewing.
"She was a wonderful smart girl," said Mrs. Edwards, who had dropped in
on her way home to tell us the news. "Her father told Mr. Edwards that
Emmy could read her Greek Testament at sixteen as well as he could,
and was quite prepared to enter the Junior class at college. Only that
the poor thing died so young, there is no knowing what she might have
turned out."
"Yes; 'only,'" said Rose, who, as I have remarked before, would have
her say on all occasions—"only that the poor thing died, the mare might
have learned to live on nothing."
My own education did not suffer at all from the fact of my staying at
home. I had begun arithmetic before I was taken sick, and liked it
very much, and I made such progress in the science with the help of
my mother and Jeanne that when I returned to school Miss Tempy placed
me in a class of girls and boys two or three years older than myself.
I also achieved one object of my literary ambition by being allowed
to begin grammar. The manual I studied was Webster's little grammar
arranged with questions and answers. The elder classes studied Murray
with the exercises, than which no better book for teaching English has
ever been contrived. But this was considered too hard for a beginner,
though I do not really believe it was any more difficult than the one
I had in hand. It is by no means the case that things are always made
easier by attempts to simplify them.
Two important family events happened this spring—a new baby was born,
and Ruth, now four years old, began to go to school. She was a sturdy,
merry, sweet-tempered little thing, who made friends wherever she went,
and she was soon quite at home in the little commonwealth, and needed
no protection from me. She was a greater favourite than I had ever
been, which I considered rather hard, seeing I was quite sure that she
never took half as much pains to please Miss Tempy or any one else
as I did; but she had an even, sunny temper and a disregard of small
annoyances much more calculated to make her way smooth than were my
excessive sensitiveness, my various and irregular moods and tenses.
However, I can honestly say I was never for one moment jealous or
envious of Ruth, but rejoiced in all her social and school triumphs as
much as if they had been my own.
The new baby was a fine, bouncing boy, of a whom we were all as
proud—so Rose said—as if we had made him ourselves. To Jeanne's special
delight, he was named Henry Dupont, after her father. Jeanne was now
toward sixteen, very sedate and mature for her age. She did not go
to school this summer, but stayed at home to help mother with the
work and the care of the baby; and a very efficient help she was. I
missed her greatly in school, where we had always been companions,
despite our differing ages, and I used regularly to tell her everything
that happened—a practice which I am sure kept me out of a great many
scrapes. She was a kind of outward conscience, for I was always
thinking, "What will Jeanne say?"
I got on very nicely that summer. The school was small, and Miss Tempy
was able to give me a great deal of individual attention, which she
did, I suppose, all the more readily that I really loved learning for
its own sake. I did rather grudge the time she would have me spend
on fine needle-work and grew somewhat impatient under her extreme
particularity. I specially remember almost breaking out into active
rebellion over a night-cap ruffle which she made me take out and do
over three times before she was satisfied with it.
"The time will come, Olivia," said she, in her precise way—she never
called one Olive or Olly, as other people did—"the time will come,
Olivia, when you will thank me for making you do your work exactly
right;" and she was correct. I have thanked her many a time when I have
seen what work young, and even married, women make of sewing nowadays,
especially of their button-holes. I made a fine linen shirt this
summer—an achievement of which I was very proud; and my father, for
whose birth-day I had prepared it, gave me a dollar—not, he was careful
to explain to me, by way of payment, but as a reward or encouragement
for taking so much pains to improve in my sewing.
I also learned to spin wool this summer, and this learning to spin
was one of the many occasions on which I got myself laughed at by
my brothers and Rose. Mother often employed a spinning-girl named
Lucy Cherryman, who went out spinning by the week and was famous for
accomplishing her day's work in less time than any one else in the
neighbourhood. Lucy had a fine voice, and always sung at her wheel. The
process of drawing out the thread looked very easy to me.
"Gently, gently!" said my mother. "You will have to be very careful at
first."
But I was confident in my own powers, as usual. I drew out my thread,
and at the same time struck up a verse of one of Lucy's favourite songs:
"Lady Margaret sat in her bow-window
Combing out her golden yellow hair."
The consequences were what I might have expected. The thread snapped,
the wheel ran back, and all was to begin over again. I was dreadfully
mortified—not so much at the laugh which followed as at my own
silliness—and could hardly be persuaded to try again. At last, however,
the boys being out of the way, I took hold of the business once more
in a more sober and careful spirit, and succeeded very well, insomuch
that when I was fifteen I could despatch my day's work as well and in
as short a time as Lucy Cherryman herself. I also learned the use of
the little or linen-wheel, but I never spun much linen. The action of
the small wheel affected my head and made me nervous, so that I could
not get rid of the motion even in my sleep. So I left the little wheel
to Jeanne, who was marvellously skilful in its use, and confined myself
to the spinning of wool, and also of tow, which was easy, though dirty,
work.
I often wonder, when I look back at it, how we used to find time for
so much work, and I am almost tempted to think the days were longer
eighty years ago than they are now. Besides all the household work
performed by a farmer's family nowadays—the making of cheese and
butter, the baking and other cooking—my mother brewed beer at least
once in ten days, and usually every week. This beer was a very mild
beverage, of course, and I don't know that any one could possibly have
been intoxicated upon it, but it was very pleasant to the taste, being
brisk and sparkling, at least when new. After a few days it began
to deteriorate, and the appearance of certain white specks known as
"messengers" gave warning that the time was come for another brewing.
But besides these cares, there was also the preparation of the family
clothing, which was all made at home. The farmer sheared his own sheep,
his wife and daughters spun the yarn, and not seldom themselves wove
the cloth and flannel into which it was converted. It was the same
with the flax, which was dressed in the barn and spun and woven in the
house. We had some cotton clothes, but they were not very nice and were
little used, and we had printed chintz, some of which came from India,
for our best dresses.
I remember a story which I heard from Mrs. Sheldon concerning my Aunt
Sylvia, my father's eldest sister. It seems there was to be a grand
party in the town, to which Mistress Sylvia was of course invited, she
being a young lady famous for both her beauty and her accomplishments.
Miss Sylvia had set her heart upon a chintz dress to appear in on the
grand occasion, but it was in the time of the war, and chintz dresses
were not only inordinately dear, but extremely scarce. However, Aunt
Sylvia was not to be foiled. She had a colour-box and was possessed of
some skill in the art of painting flowers. So she took a pair of fine
linen sheets; and having fastened them down on the floor, she proceeded
to ornament the linen with bunches of flowers laid on with her best
colours and skill. The gown thus produced was worn in triumph to the
party, and was greatly admired. * But in general our clothes were
nearly all home-made in every sense of the word.
* I had this tale from Mrs. Chloe Sheldon, a very intelligent old lady,
who died at the "Home" in Rochester at the age of one hundred and four,
retaining her faculties to the last.
With all these manifold employments, women found time for a great deal
of fancy-work, especially in the way of working flounces and piecing
bed-quilts, for much visiting, and also for a great deal of reading. It
was a time of much interest and discussion in the theological world,
and most of the neighbours who visited my mother were fully capable of
taking an intelligent part in the arguments which were pretty sure to
occur on the great points whereon the magnates of the said theological
world were at issue. But their study was not confined to religious and
metaphysical books. My mother was one of the best-read women I have
ever met in classical English literature, especially in poetry, of
which she was very fond; and though she knew no language but her own,
at least she knew that thoroughly, and she saved many a dollar from her
dress that she might spend it on books.
My father was also a reader, and took two newspapers; besides that, he
rarely went to Pittsfield or Albany—whither some business concerning
his father's property usually called him two or three times a
year—without bringing home a new book. I shall never forget Jeanne's
delight and mine when, after his return from one of these excursions,
he produced Miss Burney's "Evelina" and "Cecilia." Mother at once
made a law—more for my benefit than Jeanne's, who was always a law to
herself in all matters of self-denial—that these charming volumes must
not be touched till the work was all done and the lessons all learned—a
rule which, instead of detracting from our enjoyment, only made it last
the longer. We read and reread and discussed these volumes again and
again; and I am sure no people I have ever met are more real to me at
this moment than the characters in these stories.
For Sundays we had the Bible first of all. Grandfather had given each
of his daughters at her marriage a fine family Bible with many prints
and containing the Apocrypha. This book my mother wisely kept in
reserve for our Sunday's entertainment; and as we were not allowed to
have it on any other day, it was always new. Besides this, we had a few
special Sunday books. One of these, and a great favourite of mine, was
"Flavel on the Prophecies," which I used to read and dream over with
great interest. "Paradise Lost" occupied a sort of debatable ground,
especially after I found out that, though the book contained some of
the same people who were in the Bible, yet the speeches and a good many
of the stories were made up. It seemed to me, as indeed it does now,
that Mr. Milton had no right to put his own words into the mouth of the
Creator and Redeemer, and that the doing so was a great irreverence.
Fox's "Book of Martyrs" was quite as much of a favourite and had not
the same drawbacks, and I was never tired of meditating on the heroic
instances of virtue and endurance recorded therein. Jeanne, however,
never liked this book as well as I did. She seemed somehow to feel that
the stories of Roman Catholic persecutions it contained were a sort of
reflection on her own ancestors and on her kind friends the nuns of
Baltimore, whom she always remembered with great affection.
We had no Sunday-school books and no Sunday-school, properly so-called,
though we children learned the catechism in school, and were examined
in the same by the minister in the meeting-house, usually as often as
once in every month.
I don't think I ever found those old Sundays as tiresome as it is the
fashion to represent them nowadays. For one thing, they were broken
by the custom of keeping Saturday night, which prevailed universally
at that time. Saturday morning was a time of considerable haste and
bustle. There was usually baking to be done, and something specially
nice to be prepared, that there need be no unnecessary cooking on
Sunday. Often there was a little mystery attached to the Sunday feast,
which was got ready in the buttery and committed to the big brick oven
unseen by us children, that it might turn out a pleasant surprise. Our
Sunday clothes were all to be looked over and got in readiness and the
best shoes blacked. There were errands to be done at the store; and
happy was I when these errands fell to my lot, for I was a favourite
with old Mr. Clapp, who kept it, and I hardly ever went thither without
receiving some little present—a piece of tinsel, an end of ribbon, a
few raisins, or a lump of white sugar; or if the old gentleman had just
returned from Albany or Boston, my eyes were usually made glad by the
sight of a new little book.
But to return to our Sundays. As the day wore on, the bustle began to
subside, and before sunset it was all over and the quiet of Sunday
descended upon our household. There was often a prayer-meeting
somewhere in the neighbourhood, which my father and brothers attended,
but mother seldom went, and Jeanne and I had her all to ourselves for
one of those precious talks which we loved so much, and to which I
learned afterward to look back with an inexpressible sense of longing
home-sickness and desolation. It could hardly have been so, I think,
but it seems to me now as if on those evenings the sunsets were always
bright and beautiful and the moon always shining. If any trouble or
perplexity or wrong-doing had burdened our minds or consciences through
the week, mother was sure to have it laid before her on Saturday night.
Oh, they were lovely, peaceful hours!
We usually went to bed pretty early, as it was needful to be up in
good season on Sunday morning in order to have the work done up in
time to go to church. The breakfast was a little better than ordinary,
and we children were each allowed a cup of tea; coffee had not come
into general use at that time, though we sometimes had it on great
occasions. A dainty specially allotted to Sunday morning was the Indian
bread which had stood in the brick oven since the day before, and now
came out hot and delicious, as no corn-bread can be which is not baked
in the same way.
From breakfast to meeting-time was, I must admit, rather a weary
interval. We children were all in our best clothes, and could not be
allowed to run about for fear of spoiling them, so there was nothing
for it but to sit still in our chairs, look out of the window, and
fidget, while our elders did up such work as was absolutely needful.
After I learned to read, I used to employ this time in committing to
memory hymns and psalms; and I learned a great deal of the hymn-book in
this way.
Before the first bell had done ringing, we were all on our way to
church, except when there was a little baby; then mother, Rose, and
latterly Jeanne, took turns in staying at home with it. I was never
considered steady enough for this office, to my great indignation—not
that I desired to stay away from church, but I did not like to feel
that I was not trusted.
Our pew in church was a square one, with seats which folded back as we
stood up which we did in prayer-time. My own special seat was a corner
one, with my back to the minister and my face to the window—a position
which not seldom proved a snare to me when I grew so old that I was
expected to remember and give some account of the sermon. A large tree
grew before our particular window, and in this tree a pair of robins
and also a pair of red squirrels made their home summer after summer,
and I sometimes found it quite impossible not to be diverted from Mr.
Henderson's sermons by the doings of these little people.
Mr. Henderson was considered a very fine preacher, but I do not think
his discourses in general were calculated to be interesting or edifying
to a little child. They were nearly always occupied with discussions
of the abstruse points of doctrine which at that time absorbed so much
attention in New England. I could not often follow his reasoning, or
see any particular meaning or use in it if I did; and though I always
remembered the text and the substance of the chapter that was read,
I could make but a poor account of the sermon itself. I was always
delighted when Mr. Henderson occupied himself with any subject of
practical duty or gave, as he sometimes did, a lecture on the chapter
he read, for at such times he was so clear and simple that any child
could understand him, and his illustrations were full of point and
beauty. But in general I must say it was a time of great relief when
the sermon was ended and the last hymn sung. Both my brothers were in
the choir, and it was always an interesting thing to see them standing
in the gallery with their singing-books. I specially delighted in
what were called fuguing tunes, where the different parts followed
and caught and passed each other, always seeming in danger of utter
confusion, but always coming out right in the end.
A good many boys and girls sat in the gallery, but mother always
insisted that her children should remain with their parents, in which
I think she was quite right, for such of the young folks as sat by
themselves often got into sad trouble. Once I remember that two of our
school-girls, Mehitabel Andrews and Abby Sheldon, behaved so badly
that Mr. Henderson spoke to them from the pulpit. This was a terrible
disgrace and distressed poor Abby, who was really a very good girl in
general, though she had the misfortune of being very easily roused to
laughter. She was forced to go and beg Mr. Henderson's pardon, as was
no more than proper. The good man dealt very gently and kindly with
her, pointing out the great impropriety of her conduct in disturbing
public worship, etc., and concluding by the excellent advice that she
should always sit with her grandmother or some elderly friend, and keep
her eyes and attention fixed on the minister.
Mehitabel had nobody to control her except a very foolish and
weak-minded step-mother, who, as Rose said, was always tight in the
wrong place and loose in the wrong place. On this occasion Mrs. Andrews
took Hetty's part against both Mr. Henderson and Miss Tempy Hutchinson,
who was greatly mortified that one of her oldest girls should have
involved herself in such disgrace. I am glad to say, however, that
when Hetty's first anger cooled, and she had time to think the matter
over, she saw her conduct in its true light, and of her own accord made
proper apologies both to Mr. Henderson and Miss Tempy. The lesson was
not lost on the other young folks who sat in the gallery, and for a
long time the tithing-men, whose business it was to preserve order, had
an easy time of it.
At noon we had an intermission of an hour between the services. This
was a very pleasant, social time. Those who lived at a distance from
the church—that is, at least half the congregation—stayed to the second
service, and employed the time between in eating the luncheons they had
brought with them and in quiet conversation. It was a place of meeting
for friends and relations who, living in different parts of the town,
did not see each other through the week, to detail family news and to
compare notes on family affairs. Neighbourhood prayer-meetings were
often arranged at this time; and if any one was sick, his or her case
was talked over with friendly interest, and watchers arranged for where
they were necessary.
We girls—that is, Jeanne and I—enjoyed the time of intermission
greatly, chiefly because we were certain to see Cousin Lemuel's
daughters Margaret and Emma, who were great friends of ours, and
Myra Landon, another very distant cousin, who lived in quite another
part of the town. We usually repaired to a distant corner of the
grave-yard where some moss-grown stones afforded convenient seats, and
clubbing the resources of our lunch-bags spread quite a little feast.
We often took occasion at this time to make an exchange of books,
and I particularly remember Myra's bringing with her "The Pilgrim's
Progress," on which I fastened so eagerly that I had not a word for any
one, thereby scandalizing Maggie and Emma, who declared it could not
be a real Sunday book because there were pictures in it, and stories
of giants and dragons and battles, just like our fairy-tales. Myra,
on the contrary, maintained with doubtful logic that it was a Sunday
book because her father read it on Sunday, and besides, it told about
the "devil;" and to prove her position she turned to the picture of
Apollyon, a very truculent-looking demon indeed. The matter was, as
usual, referred to Jeanne, and she, as usual, advised me to wait
and ask mother, to which I somewhat reluctantly consented. Highly
delighted I was when mother told me that "The Pilgrim's Progress" was
an excellent Sunday book, and father promised me that when I could say
the whole catechism without one single mistake, I should have a copy of
my own if he could find such a thing in Albany.
The afternoon session was usually somewhat shorter than the morning.
Sometimes we had a catechising instead, at which time we children stood
up before the minister and recited the catechism word for word; and
happy was the boy or girl who by the readiness of his or her answers,
and the accuracy with which the "proof-texts" were recited, won a word
of commendation from Mr. Henderson. There were several negroes in
our class, servants or the children of servants, and our gravity was
sometimes severely tried by the oddity of their answers.
When church was out, we went home to a kind of tea-dinner which took
place between four and five, at which the mysterious something which
had been prepared the day before made its appearance, and when we
children were again allowed a cup of well-sweetened tea if we succeeded
in giving the texts correctly.
At sunset the restraints of Sunday, such as they were, ceased, but
we children usually kept quiet till we could see one star, by way of
being quite on the safe side. My mother and Rose took their knitting
and father his weekly paper. Abner put on his best clothes and went to
see his sweetheart. Tom and Ezra, and sometimes Jeanne and I, went to
singing-school. The ringing of the nine o'clock bell sent everybody to
bed; and that ended our Sunday.