Made up when I was (about) Four.
"I to the hills will lift mine eyes--
The purple hills of Paradise."
That's all! Now laugh! And if you do, I shan't ever love you again.
Father smiles and says that very likely I did put them together, but
that the last line is in a book of poems by a man named Trowbridge.
Well, what if it is? Can't _I_ think it and Mr. Trowbridge too? I never
saw his old book. Why, I could not read then, and _he_ couldn't know
what a little girl was thinking, sitting down by Esk-waterside and
watching the purple hills--till I was told to come in and haste-me-fast,
because the dew was falling.
But of course I don't tell this to everybody. They would call it
sentiment. But I pity the little lonely girl who doesn't have "thinks"
like that all to herself, which she would die sooner than tell to
anybody except to her Dear Diary.
After the boys got bigger and could romp, I didn't have nearly so many
thinks--not time enough, I suppose. Boys need a heap of watching. At
first they have no soul--only a mouth to be silly with, teeth to eat
with, and a Little Imp inside each to make them pesterful and like boys.
Well, little by little, I made a collection of things that were of my
color--all in my head, of course.
"League upon rolling league of imperial purple!"
I think it was father who wrote that, and I believe his heart was pretty
big and proud within him, seeing his own heathery country spread out
before him when he did it. I wonder if something went _cluck-cluck_
(like a hen) at the bottom of his throat? It does in mine sometimes.
Then there is "the Purple Wine of the Balkans," and "the wine-hearted
sea"--but that last I only heard of at school.
And I liked a story about an Irish patriot who, when they brought him an
address of honor with a green cover, told them to take it away and bind
it in purple, the color of the heather.
Also I loved to read about heroines with "eyes like the purple
twilight," though just at present these are scarce in our part of the
country. One of our forbears (funny word--for _we_ are the Four Bears,
the little ones! Somebody I know is the Big Big Growly--only don't tell
him!) well, one of our ancestors--immediate ancestors, I mean--left us
blue eyes, but as we grew older they all turned gray, which I think
unfair.
Later on, I loved to be told about the "purple Codex"--that is, the
Gospels written out on purple vellum in letters all gold. That must be
lovely. I tried to stain a sheet with Amethystine ink, and print on it
in gold paint. But it only looked blotchy and stupid--you never saw such
a mess. So I thought it was better just to dream about the Codex.
I wasn't born in the purple myself, but I resolved early never to marry
anybody that wasn't. And I should have a purple nursery, and purple
bibs, and a purple "prim-pram," and a nurse with purple strings to her
caps, and baby should live exclusively on preserved violets (candied)
and beautiful purple jelly.
Then wouldn't she be a happy child? Not commonplace like me, and
compelled to wear a clean white pinafore. They don't half know how to
bring up children now-a-days.