Hannah went home with her head full of new ideas, and with four books in
her saddle-bags--which, for those days, was a large library. These were
the Bible, the "Universal Preceptor," a volume of the Shakespeare
comedies, and Plutarch's "Lives." Armed with these weapons, how she did
stir things up in Hillsboro! She got the children together into a school,
and taught them everything she had learned in Heath Falls; and that was
so much--what with the studying which she always kept up by herself--that
from our little scrap of a village three students went down to the college
at William's Town, in Massachusetts, the first year it was started, and
there has been a regular procession of them ever since.
After a time she married Giles Wheeler, and began to teach her own
children--she had nine--and very well instructed they were. She was too
busy, then, to go into the schoolroom to teach; but never, then or later,
even when she was an old, old woman, did she take her vigilant eyes and
her managing hand off the schools of our county.
It was due to her that Hillsboro could boast for so long that its
percentage of illiterates was zero. If, by chance, anyone grew up without
knowing how to read, Aunt Hannah pounced on him and made him learn,
whether he would or not. She loaned about, to anyone who would read them,
the books she brought from Heath Falls; and in time she started a little
library. Remembering the days when Captain Winthrop had read aloud to her
in the granary, she had her children go about to read aloud to sick
people, and to busy seamstresses or spinners who had no time for books.
And the number of girls in declines she cured by Master Necronsett's
system! You would not believe it, if I told you. And she had our river
named after that wise old heathen, and we think it the prettiest name
possible for a river.
All this time, Ann Mary's position was getting grander and grander, for
Captain Winthrop was on the American side when the Revolution came, and
grew to be a very important man. Ann Mary dressed in brocade every day and
all day, and went to Philadelphia, where she met General and Mrs.
Washington, and ever so many more famous people.
Wherever she went, she was admired and loved for her beauty and
gentleness; but she did not forget Hannah. Nearly every traveler from the
South brought a message or a present from Madam Winthrop to Mistress
Wheeler, and once she and General Winthrop came and made a long visit in
Hillsboro.
Grandmother's grandmother was old enough, by that time, to remember the
visit very clearly; and it was from talk between the two sisters that she
learned all about this story. She said she never saw a more beautiful
woman than Madam Winthrop, nor heard a sweeter voice. But how Hannah had
to hush the unmannerly surprise of her brood of quick-witted youngsters
when they found out that elegant Aunt Ann Mary did not know her letters,
and had never heard of Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell! For marriage did
not change Ann Mary very much; but as her husband was perfectly satisfied
with her, I dare say it was just as well.
However, when the Winthrop cousins begin to put on airs, and to talk about
autograph letters from Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson addressed to their
great-great-great-grandmother, and to show beautiful carved fans and
lace handkerchiefs which she carried at State balls in Philadelphia and
New York, I have to bite my tongue to keep from reminding them that they
have no autograph letters of _hers_!
Then I go up into our garret, and look at Hannah's shabby old books, and I
ride over to the place on the road where she tended the fire that night,
and I think of the number of Hillsboro boys and girls to whom she opened
the great world of books, and--somehow, I am just as well pleased that it
was not the lovely Ann Mary who came back to our town and became my
great-great-great-grandmother.