SALLY TELLS HER MOTHER ALL ABOUT IT.
Sally slept in the same room with her mother. The old lady waked, and
finding Sally’s bed not tumbled, called loudly for her daughter. When
she came, her mother said, “Why, Sally, your bed has not been tumbled
this live-long night; how flushed you look! your hair is all of a
frizzle, and you’ve been crying: what is the matter with you?”
Poor Sally, nervous and excited after the night’s conflict, made a
clean breast of it.
“Mother, I’ve said I’d have Ben, that is, if you are willing,” and,
burying her face in the pillow, she burst into a flood of tears. The
good old lady was not so much troubled by tears as Ben had been, but,
putting her arms round her daughter, said, “That’s right, dear; cry
as much as you please; it’ll ease your mind, and do you good;” and,
wrapped up in her own reflections about an event she had long foreseen,
patiently waited till Sally should think best to speak. Finding Sally
not inclined to break the silence, she said, “I think you could not
have done better than to be engaged to Ben; and I’m sure you could not
have done anything so pleasing to me; that is, if you love him, for
that is the main thing.
“I’ve always told you it is very wrong for a girl to marry a man whom
she doesn’t love; it isn’t right in the sight of God, and always leads
to misery. Ben isn’t so good-looking as some young men, nor rich in
this world’s goods; but he has good learning and good manners: he is of
a good family; can do more work than any three young men in town; and
for all he is such a giant, never gives a misbeholden word to any one.
You’ve known him from childhood. It’s a great deal better to marry him
with only the clothes to his back, and the good principles that are in
him, than to marry some one who is rich and handsome now, may die a
drunkard, and perhaps, some time, throw up to your poverty.”
“O, I know all that, mother; but there’s something else, which,
perhaps, I ought not to have done without asking you. I’ve promised to
go and live on Elm Island, right in the woods, and among the breakers;”
and then she told her mother every word that she and Ben had said,
from beginning to end, throwing in, as a sweetener, a circumstance
which she knew would have great influence with her parent; “but then,
you know, he has promised never to go to sea any more.”
She was most agreeably disappointed when the widow, after a little
pause, replied in her mild way, “I not only approve of what you’ve
done, but should have been very sorry if you had done otherwise. Your
grandmother, girl, was born in old Rowley, Massachusetts, was brought
up to have everything she wanted, and knew nothing of hardships; but
she married your grandfather because she loved him, though he was
a poor man. They came down here, and took up this farm when it was
all woods. I’ve stood in the door of our old house, and seen eleven
wolves come off Birch Point and go on the ice to Oak Island: one of
them had lost his leg in a trap, and could not keep up with the rest,
and they would squat down on the ice and wait for him. They burnt up
their first house in clearing the land, and had to live in a brush
camp till they built another. I’ve heard mother say, a hundred times,
that the happiest years of her life were those hard years; that the
anticipation of living easier by and by, and having a good farm, was
better than the good farm when they got it; that there was nothing in
her well-to-do life afterwards to compare with the satisfaction of
looking back to those hard times when she had the strength to endure
those hardships. Then her face would light up, her eyes kindle, and the
color come into her old cheeks; and as I looked at her, I used to hope
that I should live to see such pleasant hardships, to be glad of and
tell about when I was old.
“Well, Sally, I’ve had _troubles_, and _bitter_ ones; the sea has been
a devourer to me; but not _hardships_, because I married and lived at
home; but you have the chance, girl, to know something about it. Don’t
be afraid of being poor; people here don’t know what poverty is. Go to
Liverpool, if you want to see what real poverty is, as I have been many
a time with your poor father, who is dead and gone. A man with a farm
is sure of a living, and a good one, too; the farmers feed the world,
and they are great fools if they don’t lick their own fingers. Two
thirds of the merchants fail; a great many seamen die at sea, and it’s
a dog’s life at best. The sailor is only anxious when the wind blows;
but the wind blows all the time for the poor wife at home, and her
pillow is often wet with tears.
“The last time I was in Rowley, I saw rich men’s sons; whose fathers
scorned your grandfather because he was a farmer, going about killing
hogs and cutting wood for folks. For a farmer to kill his own hogs,
or to change work with his neighbors to kill theirs, then they help
him kill his, or to cut his own wood, is a very different thing from
what it is for people, who felt as large as they did once, and, in
their pride and prosperity, looked down on every one that labored, to
have to do it for a living. Your grandmother said, it used to make her
blood run cold to see them come into the house of God with such an air,
getting up and sitting down two or three times, flaunting with their
‘ribbins,’ and chattering like a striped squirrel on the side of a
tree. I was up there the year before Sam was born; and now to see how
they live! just the least little scriffin of bread and butter, or a
little pie; the least little piece of meat, about as big as your hand,
which they run to the butcher’s to get, for they never have anything
in the cellar; then, instead of doing as we do, cutting it thick, and
telling everybody to help themselves, they cut it into little slices
and help them, for fear, I suppose, they should take too much; and then
so many compliments to so little victuals! But they put it on their
backs, Sally; that’s what they do with it; they put it on their backs.
As they have no hearty victuals and hard work to give them color, they
paint their faces, and look out of the windows, as Jezebel did: they
spend most all their time looking out of the windows.”
Sally rejoiced to find that, when following the inclinations of her own
heart, she had done just right; and with a face from which every trace
of tears had vanished, replied, “I thought I knew your mind, mother;
but I must go and get breakfast, for I thought I heard Sam getting up.”