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 .
 
 
 EARLY DATS 
 
 ELIZA W. FARNHAM. 
 
 Each child, but especially the girl-child, would task the whole lore of a sage, deep as Slinks- 
 penre, to distinguish those subtle emotions, which we giown folks have outlived. BULWBH. 
 
 
 For not to us on earth is given 
 
 The ripe fulfillment of desire ; 
 Desire of Heaven itself is Heaven, 
 
 Unless the passion faint and tire ; 
 So upward still, from hope to hope, 
 
 From faith to faith, the soul ascends j 
 And who has scaled the ethereal cope 
 
 Where that sublime succession ends? 
 
 Hun* 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 THATCHER & IIUTCHI 1ST S O N, 
 
 623 (Sr. NICHOLAS HOTEL) BROADWAY. 
 1859.
 
 ELIZA W. FARNHAM, 
 ID th. Oak'. Offio. of tho Dtotriet Court of tli Uniwd Suit., forth. South. Diwrict of N.w York. 
 
 W. H. TINIOII, SUraot)-pr and Priour, 
 Rr of 42 ud 4t Cotr< trtt, N. T.
 
 To G. B. K 
 
 Nor by way of introduction or explanation to yon, 
 dear friend, who know me so well, do I write this ex- 
 ordium.. Neither that I may put you forward as the 
 apology for the book which now lies ^before me. If I 
 felt that it needed any, (as to its motive) I should return 
 it to the shelf whence I have just taken the manuscript. 
 If I believed that, (as to its execution) it was inferior to 
 my best power, I would not ungraciously charge you with 
 the responsibility of its production. Then why do I 
 place your sign upon this page ? -Because, in view of 
 what is done, there are a few words to be said which can 
 be more freely and vitally said to you than to any other 
 individual, or to that vague personage, the public. 
 
 "We have each trodden the steep round of the globe of 
 life by difficult, though different paths. And the toil has 
 brought to each a kindred result. You know it is one 
 article of my Faith, that like natures have like experi- 
 
 1704030
 
 VI DEDICATION. 
 
 ences, however the outward phases of them may vary. 
 There are two trees on the lawn, where, of old, we were 
 wont to linger in deep talk a Pine and a Chestnut. On 
 the mountain, higher up, and elsewhere in wild and waste 
 places, less beautiful and fertile, are other Pines and 
 Chestnuts. The outward facts of their existence differ 
 more than yours or mine have, yet, to each there is the 
 same interior result of peculiar nutrition and growth. 
 Human souls draw from the external, like the forest 
 trees, what they best assimilate, and though one be 
 planted in a palace and the other in a hovel, the near and 
 mortal, and shall I not say the distant and immortal, 
 goal of each is the same, with difference only in the time 
 and travail of winning ? My nursed and petted Pine is 
 larger and quicker of growth than the poor stunted trees 
 that struggle up towards Heaven, among those huge 
 masses of rock where we used sometimes to wander. It 
 is better fed and of nimbler movement in its progress, 
 but it is a pine still. Its evening music falls more sweetly 
 on my ear, because it comes from the finer touch of airs 
 that lie nearer the high courts of the Heavens. 
 
 Experience like that sound comes to us softened by dis- 
 tance. Contemplate that of any soul, no matter how 
 much greater than ours, with kindred desires PREVAILING 
 in it, and if we can come near enough we shall find joys
 
 DEDICATION. Til 
 
 and pains of like significance nnto our own, occupying 
 there. The merciful wife of my poor neighbor, the shoe- 
 maker, would make, as a legislative woman, a Duchess 
 of Sutherland, were she in her castles with her incomes, 
 and I have no doubt their inmost daily experiences would 
 be found very similar, could they be closely and honestly 
 compared. Because both are good, true-souled women 
 struggling, each in her fashion, towards a better than her 
 actual. What matter the ducal robes and jewels of the 
 one, or the patched threadbare garments of the other, to 
 the momentous question of soul-destiny, which each is 
 asking for herself? Either may prove helps or hindran- 
 ces to her whom they befal. But neither can make 
 or unmake the sublime result which must come to 
 each in virtue of her Human Life. 
 
 The cup of hemlock was not the first trial of Socrates. 
 Had we been with him there in Athens, you and I, we 
 should have seen that the days and weeks went over him 
 much as ours do; sorrows, humiliations, and triumphs, 
 following each other, as to all lesser souls. History re- 
 cords them not, as the viewless air brings not down to our 
 ears from my lofty Pine, the sharp tones and broken 
 cadences I should hear were I standing with my head 
 among the boughs of those outcast dwarfs among the 
 rocks.
 
 Till DEDICATION. 
 
 "We both disclose and conceal ourselves in the external, 
 which becomes thinner and less available as the soul ex- 
 ceeds it. As the true man becomes immanent in his out- 
 growths, the true man will rise to claim the highest posi- 
 tion in our visible creation. Time was when Louises, 
 and Charleses, and Henrys, and Georges Royal, could 
 be made out of the commonest and even vitiated clay, 
 and held sacred too, because the place superseded and the 
 man were but the symbols of that with which time and 
 chance had clothed him. It will never more be thus. We 
 shall live to rejoice in beholding the inauguration of the 
 Spiritual to see, clear and tender, the dawn of that era 
 which is to enthrone woman in her own and man's rever- 
 ence, and so bring the creative power which the All- wise 
 has delegated, to earth, into free harmonious and artistic 
 relation to its fruits. Then life shall glorify itself in 
 deed, and in truth ; and, divinely born, the human soul 
 shall know and reverence itself, as the effect of a Divine 
 cause, working through pure and holy instruments of 
 true womanhood and righteous manhood. 
 
 Rebuke not my faith because this day is distant its 
 beams of promise scarcely yet visible in the grey 
 east. For, dim though they be, they are there, and reach 
 to us, to you and me in long and quivering lines of 
 thought and aspiration, at whose touch our souls tremble
 
 DEDICATION. IX 
 
 and break forth in music, as the strings of the wind harp, 
 when the airs of night wander, darkling, over them. 
 Truly I thank God for life, but almost more, for the day 
 in which it came to me the day of so much truth of 
 such high powers of such uplifting prophesy of such 
 divine recognitions. 
 
 But high blessing can only be seized, like fruit that 
 ripens on the topmost bough, by the hand that is cour- 
 ageous and resolute enough to take it where it waits us ; 
 and, you and I, sisters on the way to the vast Beyond, 
 have a common joy in those fellow-travellers, who prove, 
 by their augmenting personality, as we advance, how far 
 exalted, above everything that can attach to it, is the life 
 embodied in the soul the life which possesses the great 
 future, and thus is clothed with an interest, against which 
 the whole body of nature, with all her mystical inferior 
 existences, is as a grain of sand against a universe. This 
 interest it is in human experience, as at once the cause 
 and evidence of that sublimest of all phenomena, human 
 growth, which calls for and justifies that life-analysis by 
 which our literature is beginning to be very noticeably 
 marked, and of which courageous autobiography is per- 
 haps the best form. It is a kind of book I did never use 
 to like, and do not now, when it stops at the soul's 
 gates. You must let me in there, or I would rather take 
 1*
 
 X DEDICATION. 
 
 the history of your life at the hand of any honest, clear- 
 headed spectator of it than your own. 
 
 You, if you are separating and shrinking, weighing 
 and withholding, dividing and combining, with the world 
 before your eyes, are the poorest narrator of yourself 
 that can be found. If Mrs. Grundy is your arbiter, Mrs. 
 Grundy will, to a certainty, be your biographer how- 
 ever, you may nominally elect yourself to that office. 
 And the highest value, which, as I conceive, this sort 
 of writing can possess, is that of its fearless and clear 
 analysis of the life-processes, by which a man or woman 
 has been produced, and set, to work or idleness, in this 
 world of ours. This is what we wish now, of all souls, 
 and I am quite sure that my neighbor, Mrs. Crispin, as 
 she lay in bed the other day, with her eighth child, a 
 twenty-four hours baby beside her, and related to me her 
 early experiences, furnished therein a more interesting 
 and improving memoir than any Duchess or Peeress 
 could have, who had not suffered and grown in the suffer- 
 ing, as she had. 
 
 You will say perhaps that I have begun too abruptly, 
 but if I had dated two years back of the time I have 
 chosen, I should only so far, and as I think fruitlessly, 
 have extended the painful relation of my early sufferings. 
 And I like directness. With a life history to tell it seems
 
 DEDICATION. XI 
 
 to me as well to begin at once, as to hover in preparation, 
 wearying both auditor and narrator. And that we may 
 be spared that too common experience, I will say no 
 more, except that I rejoice in you, as it is rarely given to 
 
 one woman to reioice in another. 
 
 E. W. F.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "Folded eyes see brighter colors than the open ever do." 
 
 THE storm was over, but the whole meadow where the trees 
 stood was submerged, so there was no nutting for me that 
 day. 
 
 " Dear, dear," I said to myself, with many a sigh heaved from 
 the bottom of my little, sad heart, while I stood watching the 
 exhausted clouds as they trooped away toward the lake, " dear, 
 dear, how I wish it hadn't rained. She will never be away so 
 long again, and I might have had a play with the squirrels, and 
 filled my basket, without being scolded or beaten, when I came 
 in." I had a complaint against the heavens and the earth, for 
 defrauding me of the rare pleasure I had lain awake nights to 
 anticipate the pleasure of two whole days of freedom alone. 
 And now the last was gone, and there had not been an hour of 
 blessed sunshine in either. The out-door solitude under the 
 glorious autumn skies, the wild frolic with winds and flying 
 leaves, the half gay and half solemn wanderiugs amid the golden 
 showers of the soft maples and butternuts along the creek side, 
 the boat-row up to the " ripple," where the water that was else- 
 where dark and sluggish, spread itself broadly out over a bed 
 of bright gravel, and seemed to dance joyfully down it ; none 
 of these were now possible. I must lay aside holiday thoughts, 
 
 13
 
 14 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 and get supper. So I dragged the great table which was al- 
 most as high as my head, from the wall, and proceeded to lay 
 dishes, and place food for the three men who were at work some- 
 where on the farm. 
 
 I brightened my fire, laid fresh coals upon the lid of the iron 
 oven, which, filled with potatoes, swung from a hook high above 
 the blaze, and having put the roasted rye into the coffee-pot, 
 and filled it with boiling water, I sat down, as I often did when 
 alone, to think upon the past, for my little memory had already 
 its little store of bright and dark incidents, and then to dream 
 of the future. 
 
 Ah, what blessed gifts lay in that wide, infinite future 1 The 
 power to do the power to be j and, to my child-faith, both 
 were attainable without suffering. The cloud of sacrifice, the 
 black shadow of struggle had not yet darkened that bright 
 horizon which rimmed, but did not bound, the glorious Before. 
 I peopled its long avenues with recipients of bounties which I 
 would dispense. I made the poor, rich ; the suffering, happy ; the 
 feeble, strong ; the bad, good and loving. In imagination, I 
 gave, joyfully, what came to me without cost, and saw myself 
 the possessor of continually increasing stores of such wealth. 
 
 I verily believe that my growing heart was as purely moved 
 in these directions, as any that ever beat with mortal pulse ; for 
 in my most glorious achievements, it was only my deeds, never 
 myself, that commanded praise. I never imagined myself clothed 
 with external splendor, or gifted with beauty, when approving 
 eyes seemed to gazed upon me. My experience, indeed, was the 
 extreme reverse of both these conditions. I was wretchedly clad, 
 and said to be ugly to a degree, but I felt that in the central 
 heart of me there was something that people loved and ap- 
 proved wherever they found it ; and so, at this time, I rarely 
 pined at the poverty of my personal gifts, or my untoward 
 fortunes. 
 
 A heavy curtain of lead-colored cloud had stretched itself 
 broad and dark across the clear, mellow west just as the sun
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 15 
 
 was setting, and the twilight was made chill and sullen by it, 
 at the moment when I thought a flood of golden glory would 
 have overflowed the earth and dripping autumn foliage. I had 
 retreated from the window to the fireside, and sat there gazing 
 with my natural eye into a fantastic palace of glowing coals; 
 but, with my spiritual vision, beholding the ecstasies of a poor 
 woman whom I had released from prison, and restored to her 
 frightened, friendless children, when a heavy footfall at the door 
 recalled me to the actual. 
 
 " Is supper ready, Tonewanta ?" asked the man who opened 
 it. 
 
 He had a kindly voice and smile, and as he entered, he cast 
 a pleased glance at the table and the baking kettle. " All right, 
 Dolly," chucking my chin in his hard fingers, "good girl," he 
 said, with an awkward approach to a caress, which, though I 
 liked him well, and was not at all afraid of him, I managed to 
 escape from. 
 
 "Shy, eh?" he exclaimed. "Well, you're a strange little 
 thing. You've the face of a grandmother on a doll's body. 
 You're not bigger than my thumb, and you look thirty at least. 
 Eight to-morrow, are you? You shall have a present, Doll. 
 What would you like ? These potatoes," he continued, lifting 
 the cover at the same moment, " are so fine, that you must have 
 a birth-day present to-morrow, surely. What shall it be, little 
 one ?" 
 
 " I'd rather have a book than anything else, Mr: Radford," 
 I replied ; " but you can't get that, I know, so I shan't choose 
 anything." 
 
 "Well, we will see, we will see," he said ; "get the supper on 
 the table now, for the boys'H be here directly." 
 
 I laid the potatoes, brown and smooth, and very tempting to 
 the eye of my companion, upon a large plate, and placed it on 
 the hot hearth. Then he lifted the kettle and its cover to their 
 places for me, and, after polishing himself off at the long towel 
 behind the door, and scratching his hair up on one side, and
 
 16 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 down on tbc other, and all ways on the top of his bald head, we 
 we sat down to wait. 
 
 I was not in an external mood, and I had such entire trust in 
 his kindness toward me, and felt his presence so little, that I 
 immediately fell to finishing up the scene of the mother and 
 her children. I had dreamed long enough to forget that there 
 was anythiug real in the world besides them, when a hand was 
 laid heavily, interrogatively upon my shoulder, and I heard my 
 name spoken, and the question emphatically uttered: "What 
 do you think of when your face looks so awful old ? Tell me," 
 he added ; giving me a slight shake after waiting a moment. 
 
 " Of things you can't understand, Mr. Radford," I replied. 
 
 " Thunder and lightning 1" his favorite and most profane ex- 
 pression, " of things I can't understand ? Greek things, or 
 Latin things, are they ? or maybe Indian things, pappoose ? 
 What do you mean ? Tell me now," and he laid my hand under 
 his own upon his knee. 
 
 I hesitated. " Could he understand," I questioned, if I spoko 
 frankly to him, " that these dreams were the only real part of 
 my life ; that all the slavish toil which he saw me perform every 
 day, so far beyond my childish strength, all the passion, threat- 
 ening, and beating were as nothing to me ; that my life was 
 without and beyond them, quite ?" I longed to speak to some- 
 body, but I was afraid, not merely of being laughed at, but that 
 he could not see my world, if I attempted to show it him, and I 
 had a shrinking dread of the exposure. So I stood silent. 
 
 " Tell me, now, Dolly," he repeated kindly, " what it is. The 
 old woman says you are half fool and half witch ; and though 
 I don't believe her, I should like to hear what you are thinking 
 of sometimes when yon forget that her fist, or the broomstick, 
 or maybe something heavier, is just ready to fall on you." 
 
 I was shocked, and made dumb to him, by this common mention 
 of the outrage and ignominy of my daily life. My nerves became 
 lines of flame running through my stunted body as the speech 
 fell from his lips. I could not then have given him a word of
 
 MY EARLY f)AY8. 17 
 
 my confidence, thongh, but for his last utterance, I should pro- 
 bably have told him of the woman and her children, or some 
 other imaginary object, which my dreaming charity had over- 
 flowed, and so have opened to him the vast kingdoms of my 
 delights. 
 
 As it was, I only said, with a little more firmness, " Mr. Rad- 
 ford, you can't understand the things I think of, though you are 
 a man, and know a great deal that I don't. When I am as old 
 as you are, I shall know much more ; for I shall read all the 
 books I can get, and I shall talk with many wise people, and if 
 you live in my part of the country, you'll see what I think of 
 now, for I shall be doing it then." 
 
 What he would have replied I never knew ; for at that moment 
 the boys came, and we sat down to supper. These three indi- 
 viduals were almost the only human companions I had. Mr. Rad- 
 ford was a man of thirty-five or thirty-eight years, unmarried, a 
 native of New England, but long out of it. Temperate, con- 
 scientious, practical and unspeculative, he was a respectable 
 working man ; with heart enough to feel for my obvious suffer- 
 ings such as arose from being beaten, or from sleeping cold, 
 or from being compelled to labors for which I lacked strength ; 
 but too destitute of imagination, to have the faintest concep- 
 tion of the deeper pain which came from none of these causes, 
 and could not be removed by abundance of food, a warm bed, 
 or even a birth-day present. Yet I spoke more freely to him 
 than to any other person. 
 
 One of the boys, Albert, was a lad of perhaps fifteen, of 
 excellent moral nature, and more than ordinary intelligence. 
 The library of the district was kept at his father's house, two 
 miles away ; and his employment on our farm was a providen- 
 tial opening to the small collection of books there gathered, for 
 which almost every day I exercised a glad and exulting thankful- 
 ness ; Albert had read what then seemed to me a groat deal. 
 He knew much about Napoleon's life aud wars ; Bolivar, also, 
 and the first settlement of South America ; and he used to
 
 18 MY EAELT DATS. 
 
 discourse to me on these subjects, not always, as I have since 
 concluded, in the most lucid style, since I believed for a long 
 time, that Bolivar was the immediate successor to the glorious 
 Incas ; and that the wrecks of Cortes' ships would be still visi- 
 ble, if I could stand upon the shore whence he witnessed their 
 destruction. I used to wonder how he felt in the midst of his 
 career, which, somehow, seemed much more interesting and real 
 to me then than Napoleon's (the romance made it so, I suppose), 
 and fancy that if he had done good to the poor people whom 
 he subdued, he should have felt himself the happiest man in the 
 world. 
 
 The other boy was three or four years older ignorant, vain 
 of his curling hair, his white, regular, unmeaning teeth, and 
 impudent manners : selfish and shallow : to himself a person of 
 importance to me nothing, but a body with a mouth to be sup- 
 plied ; nothing more or else than a similar aperture would have 
 been in a wooden image of a man, if it had required the same 
 quantity of food to fill it. 
 
 I had, besides, a large cat, which was my bed-fellow ; a dog 
 that I occasionally condescended to romp with ; and innumera- 
 ble poultries, which, however, grew out of my affections every 
 year. 
 
 " Dolly," said Albert, while we sat at the table, " I am going 
 home to-night, and I'll take that History of Ireland back, if you 
 have read it, and bring you something else. What would you 
 like ?" 
 
 "I have not read that," I answered, "and I shan't. You 
 can take it with you." 
 
 " Don't you like it ?" 
 
 " No ; and I don't like the people it describes, either. They 
 would cut each other to pieces from morning till night. I can't 
 bear to read of their horrid fighting. Bring me the Life of 
 William Penn again. How much I should like to have been 
 under the great tree with him when he had the Indians there !" 
 
 41 Your mother was a Quaker, wasn't she, Dolly ?" said curly-
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 19 
 
 head, speaking for the first time with a slight sneer. He hated 
 that people, and never spoke of them but with contempt. 
 
 His words and tones sent the fire of a deep indignation from 
 my heart to my fingers' ends. It was sacrilege for him to speak 
 thus of my mother ; and though I had never been angry with 
 him before, because he had not the power or opportunity to 
 make me so, I now said, hotly, "Don't you speak about my 
 mother ! She was good." 
 
 " She was a Quaker, though ; for my aunt says she was, and 
 I guess she knows. And I should think you'd love them all, 
 Dolly, this one is so good to you. Is the black and blue spot 
 gone off your arm yet ?" he asked, with a touch of kindness in 
 his voice. 
 
 " Let the child alone," said Mr. Radford, interposing as he 
 often did, when people were worrying me too late to save my 
 feelings ; for by this time the tears had gathered in my eyes : 
 but I retained steadiness enough still to say spitefully, "The 
 bad Quaker is your aunt she's no relation of mine nor my 
 mother's." And I left the table and the room. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " And this our life which God hath given, 
 How 'tis checkered o'er with grief and pain ! 
 As, when the night and morning meet, they dapple 
 The sky o' the east." 
 
 I HAD lived two years at Maple Spring, It was a large 
 country house, unfinished standing npon the high bank of a 
 dark, sluggish creek, that meandered through rich meadows and 
 was so extremely tortuous that it multiplied distance immensely, 
 running often four or six miles to make one or two. From 
 side to side it went of the narrow alluvial belt which in earlier
 
 20 MY EABLT DATS. 
 
 times had been the bed of a broad stream, and which was shot 
 in on both sides by considerable hills, crowned with forest, and 
 generally clothed from foot to summit with wild vines of grape 
 and hop, blackberry, raspberry, plum and nut trees. The mar- 
 gin of the water was fringed with the willow and poplar, while 
 a little further removed stood the magnificent maple, imbower- 
 ing its humbler brethren, and occasionally shaking hands with 
 an imperial elm on the opposite side. In the immediate vicinity 
 of the house are only a few apple and peach trees, and, across 
 the road, a large wild cherry, my especial delight and pleasure 
 in the season of its fruit. In its generous arms I spent many a 
 golden hour. I could step easily from the fence upon its lower 
 boughs, and ascend to its very top, without once having my 
 head whirl. It contained a dozen birds'-nests, of which I was 
 the special guardian ; and I fancied, as I used to sit, reading or 
 dreaming, close by them, that the old birds sung more sweetly 
 than when I was not there. They were grateful, perhaps ; or I 
 loved them so much, and had such a care for them, that I felt 
 they ought to be, and that made me as happy as if they were. 
 
 I had lived two years at Maple Spring. I had gone there 
 at six, two years after my mother's death ; and now I was 
 eight. I was an adopted daughter ; and the journey of four 
 or five hundred miles which I had made in the company of my 
 new parents, to reach our future home, had been one long holi- 
 day. It was interrupted often enough, by visits along the way, 
 not to be tedious ; and the new places and people I was con- 
 stantly seeing, had been a succession of delights. I had been 
 treated, generally, with kindness ; had been praised for my 
 quickness at learning ; had been pardoned many acts of child- 
 ish mischief ; and, passing through the country of the Tonewan- 
 das, had been called by their name, to express resemblance of 
 color. The appellation had degenerated, by hourly use, to 
 Tonewanta, and the diminutive Tonny. From which it may be 
 concluded that I was not a fair child. Neither had I any other 
 clement of beauty. The two years' neglect and hardship I had
 
 MT EARLY DAYS. 21 
 
 passed through, had not improved my person. My features had 
 grown older, my skin darker, and my hair, which was never 
 before neglected, had become frowsy and rough ; for, on reach- 
 ing Maple Spring, I had found the woman who was to be my 
 mother, quite a different person to the one I had been riding 
 aud visiting with during all those weeks of travel. Domestic 
 cares and labor seemed to give her a new character, and the 
 exchange was a loss to us all. Her ill-temper, which had slum- 
 bered during the journey, found abundant provocation in the 
 many annoyances consequent upon the resumption of her posi- 
 tion at home ; and though it did not for some time descend 
 directly upon me, I was made sufficiently uncomfortable by it 
 from the first ; for I had ever a dread of a violent temper. 
 Nothing in my own nature warmed to meet it. I could defy it, 
 but it was an internal, calm defiance, breathed from conscious 
 superiority to such rage. I could not quarrel, but I could be 
 always cool and strong. Hence, when her fury was turned upon 
 me, my small self-possession and indifference to her greatest 
 cruelties, seemed only to increase her rage. She called me fool, 
 witch, devil. She was baffled, defeated, dissatisfied, and never 
 victor ; for when she had threatened and beaten me, she felt 
 I was not yet subdued. Submissive I certainly was ; but, as I 
 often heard her say, there was something in it she could not 
 understand, and which always made her feel that she had not 
 gained her point had not cast out the spirit which ever and 
 again circumscribed her triumphs. These two years had, I 
 think, made us fully known to each other, but had brought us 
 no nearer to terms of peace. For though I was as quiet as at 
 first, I was more resolute, having a deep sense of wrong to 
 sustain me a clear conviction that I ought to resist the rapa- 
 cious selfishness that would have extinguished my soul and left 
 my body a convenient machine for the use of my oppressor. 
 
 I had no young companions. Very rarely was I permitted to 
 spend an hour in play with two or three children from the next 
 house. They attended a school, and had books and classes to
 
 22 MY EARLY DAT8. 
 
 talk of, which I was denied participation in ; yet they were not 
 companions for me in any sense, except that they were full of 
 young life, of which, old as were my ways and thoughts, I had 
 an abundant fund when it was stirred by their presence. 
 
 Once, in a confidential moment, in my favorite resort, at the 
 root of the great maple-tree near the spring, I had said to the 
 most sympathetic and loving of these children her name was 
 Betsey, and she was about two years my senior : 
 
 " When you are a woman, what do you think you shall like 
 to do, Betsey ?" 
 
 " Oh," she replied, " I shall get married, and get some of my 
 mother's tin pans, and have a cow, and some plates, and cups 
 and saucers, and knives and forks, and live in a house by myself ; 
 and when anybody comes to see me, I shall make a short-cake, 
 and give them currants and sugar with it." 
 
 My eyes were fixed earnestly on her face while she was an- 
 swering my question; and more rapidly than she spoke did I 
 idealize her thick nose, and expressionless lips, and faded grey 
 eyes. She was no longer the plain Betsey, ambitious only of 
 being at the head of her spelling class, and having certain tin 
 pans and a cow for her life achievements. I looked into and 
 peopled her soul. 
 
 " Oh, Betsey," I said, while I felt my eyes glow and my brain 
 reel with the tremendous disclosure I was about to make of my- 
 self, " wouldn't you like to be a very rich and great woman, to 
 go and stop bad people from hanging and murdering each other, 
 and let folks out of prison, and get teachers for poor children, 
 and give them good books, and have the men vote for Mr. Clay, 
 BO that everybody could have plenty of money ? Yon and I 
 could go together in a carriage, and where we went the people 
 would thank us and love us so much!" 
 
 Her grey eyes opened upon me wider and wider, but there was 
 no glow of sympathy in them ; even wonder could not long keep 
 them astare. When I came, breathless, to the end of my sum- 
 ming up of life, she looked quiet and commonplace as usual, an- 3
 
 MT EARLY DATS. 23 
 
 answered me, for the first time, with somewhat of the severity I 
 was accustomed to from older persons : 
 
 " Mother says she thiuks, sometimes, you are either foolish or 
 crazy, aiid I believe you are. Men do all such things, and 
 women stay at home and cook, and milk, and sew." 
 
 There was a moment's silence, during which I shrunk to an 
 atom in my own eyes, before the rebuke of what I felt to be her 
 common sense ; but I collected dignity enough, nevertheless, to 
 struggle up to utterance once again, and said: 
 
 " But for all that, a woman," and I had to emphasize the word 
 to convey some faint notion of what I felt in it, " could do a great 
 many good things." 
 
 It was my first and last attempt to be understood by Betsey. 
 That night, as I lay on my little straw bed underneath a large 
 one, which was unoccupied, I burned nervously all over at the 
 thought of having spoken so to her. I felt a sort of sacrilegious 
 guilt in having so exposed the secrets of my heart. I had read 
 in some paper a short sketch of Elizabeth Fry's labors, and 
 that, no doubt, had given direction to the struggling sympathies 
 and yearning tenderness of my nature. Their commonest mani- 
 festation provoked only coarse laughter, or threats, or actual 
 violence from everybody about me save two individuals, my 
 adopted father and the boy, Albert. Even Mr. Eadford, with 
 his reasonable, measured sort of kindness, was certain to be very 
 much amused if he saw me racing to the rescue of the small or 
 timid among my poultry from the strong or tyrannical. 
 
 Nothing fired me so irresistibly as the cause of a victim. The 
 pigs sometimes intruded in the preserved inclosures sacred to 
 young chickens, ducks, turkeys, and goslings, and as they robbed 
 them of their food, and frightened them sorely, I could not rest 
 in the times of these invasions. I was quick and enduring as 
 the deer of the forest, and the little animals had difficulty in es- 
 caping me when I was thoroughly roused. One afternoon I had 
 driven out the same pig many times, and had fed him, even, in 
 order to be entirely merciful; but he came back again. His
 
 24 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 cool, brutish way of walking in among the broods for which I 
 felt such a tenderness, and almost turning over with his senseless 
 snout the mother hens, angered me deeply. I started after him, 
 with a piece of thin board in my hand, bent upon inflicting ex- 
 emplary punishment on him, but in the use of my weapon I 
 made a misdirected blow, and broke the Leg of one of my young 
 charges. It dropped to the ground with a piteous little cry, 
 and laid quite still. How terrible a revulsion of feeling came 
 over me. My head spun, the sunlight turned to darkness, the 
 earth seemed to heave before me, and* the air became palpable. 
 I could scarcely breathe it; but I straggled forward to the little 
 victim, took it tenderly in my hand, and sat down on the grass 
 till I could recover myself and pour out my pity, which was not 
 unavailing, because it relieved my own heart. The little fragile 
 thing lay in the hollow of my small hand, looking more tender 
 and perishable than anything ever had before. Its broken leg 
 stuck awkwardly out, and it only opened its eyes when I moved 
 it a little, and closed them as soon as it was still, it seemed from 
 exhaustion. 
 
 " If it had never lived, now," I said to myself, as I raised and 
 brooded it under my warm chin, " it never would have suffered," 
 and for a moment I wished intensely that it had died in the 
 shell. " But it has lived," I thought, " and been happy, and 
 would be now if I had not been so angry with that pig; and I 
 should not have been so angry but for having to leave my book 
 so often to run after him." 
 
 I did not dare to take the chicken to the house for attention, 
 because, although very little value was set on my pets, and no 
 one took any considerable interest in them but myself, I should 
 almost certainly be beaten, at least violently scolded, for what 
 I had done. I knew that broken legs were set with splinters 
 of wood around them ; but my notions of surgical operations 
 were so extremely theoretical and imperfect, and my tenderness 
 for the little sufferer so intense, that I dared not touch except 
 in the way of caressing it. Mr. Radford was at work in the
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 25 
 
 meadow near the house. I said he will set it for me, for he 
 knows a great deal about animals. I gathered two or three 
 small splinters of wood, took a bit of soft cloth, and went down 
 to him. I knew he would laugh, because, though he was kind, he 
 lacked tenderness. I did not then understand how it was, but 
 I know now that he lacked deep reverence for life, and for the 
 right to its enjoyment which God has bestowed on everything 
 he has created. Death to the lower animals is in harmony with 
 God's law, but not pain. When I came to Mr. Eadford, he 
 gave me the same good-natured glance he always did, and said, 
 as he looked more closely into my face : 
 
 " Why, Tonny, what's the matter, child, that you are so pale ? 
 What have you got there under your chin ?" 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Eadford," I said, " don't laugh. I have hurt one 
 of my poor little chickens so much, and I want you to help me. 
 Look." 
 
 My own distress checked his mirth, and he said, as he laid his 
 rake down, and pulled off his large gloves he always wore 
 gloves in summer, his skin was so very fair, and blistered so 
 readily: 
 
 " Yes, Tonny; what have you done ? broken a leg, eh ?" 
 and he blew an immensely prolonged whistle between his lips, 
 which quite appalled me, for I feared that it meant there was 
 no hope. He examined the fracture, as I thought rather 
 roughly, but I suppose with a far tenderer touch than many' a 
 writhing human patient is handled. It extorted piteous cries, 
 tmt in a moment he said : 
 
 " Sit down on the hay-cock, and take it in your lap, and hold 
 the leg just so very still." 
 
 I did not move, and in a moment he had a splinter oil one 
 side under my finger, and another under my thumb; a bandage 
 was \vrapped about all, and I was just rising with a light and 
 thankful heart, after a few words of direction and encourage- 
 ment, when my adopted father came up. I did not call him ' 
 father, nor his wife mother, but uncle and aunt. I could have
 
 26 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 given him the tenderer appellation, for he was always kind and 
 gentle to me, but he did not check his wife's harshness, and that 
 fact made it impossible for me to give him the title which, to 
 me, represented every sort of protection and blessing. 
 
 " What, Dolly," he said, " got a sick chicken ? Is Mr. 
 Radford, a good doctor, eh ?" 
 
 " He has mended a broken leg, sir," I said. " But you told 
 me yesterday the boys should mend the fence, so that the pigs 
 couldn't get in any more, and then its leg wouldn't have been 
 broken." 
 
 " Did the pigs break it ?" 
 
 " No, sir; I broke it driving one away. But," I added, " I 
 do not wish aunt to know that I did it." 
 
 " No, she shall not, child; say nothing about it to her. Yon 
 have done right to tell me the truth ; but she need not 
 know of it at all and the fence shall be mended to-night. Mr. 
 Radford, when one of the boys comes this way, send him up to 
 do it." 
 
 " Thank you," I said; and I felt so truly grateful that, as he 
 came toward me, I put aside my nursling and gave him a 
 kiss. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 "But who shall tell, when want and pain have cross'd 
 
 The clouded light of some forsaken day, 
 What gems of beauty have been crushed and lost, 
 What flashing thoughts have woke to fade away ?" 
 
 MY adopted father, or Uncle John, as I always called him, 
 was a man of about fifty. He was a little inclined to stoutness, 
 slightly bald, with square and rather heavy, but well-defined 
 features, the expression of which was altogether pleasing; his 
 mouth indicated good-humor, sweetness and patience; his chin
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 27 
 
 was full, but not prominent; his forehead ample iu height and 
 breadth; his nostrils were well expanded, but the defect in his 
 face was, that above them the nose lacked prominence. It gave 
 you an idea of a too easy good nature. He had fine teeth, and 
 a laugh that was so sympathetic, that the sound of it always 
 infected me, even when I knew nothing of what provoked it. 
 Good stories were his delight, with a pipe. The sight of him, 
 sitting comfortably beside a great fire, in a winter night, smok- 
 ing and telling, or hearing stories, used to suggest my brightest 
 picture of comfort. It seemed so sufficient, indeed, that when I 
 was quite young, but little more than six, I thought nothing 
 could be finer than the seeing, except the actual enjoying. So 
 one day, when I was left alone, I determined upon trying it. I 
 filled the pipe, placed the large chair at the right angle to the 
 hearth, and sat down. One puff I thought the pleasure must 
 be in those which came after. But the next two or three 
 seemed worse, and the few which followed still worse. The pipe 
 fell from my hand, and in an effort to reach the door for the 
 room seemed suddenly turned to a dark stifling oven I fell to 
 the floor, from which somebody, coming in shortly, raised me in 
 great alarm ; but I was conscious, and able to signify, by ges- 
 ture, that there was nothing to fear. It was not aunt, or I know 
 not how I should have escaped. I never indulged myself in ex- 
 periments but in her absence, and the good nature of the house- 
 hold generally shielded me from her wrath. In this instance it 
 was my good friend Albert, and after I recovered so as to tell 
 him what I had done, he seemed to be so much amused that I 
 could not refrain from asking if men and women smoked, and 
 found so much comfort in it, and nobody laughed at them, why 
 should not children do the same, without being laughed at, and 
 without being sick, too ? But he only laughed more, and did 
 not condescend to enlighten me. 
 
 It was quite different with my uncle in the times of domestic 
 tempest. From being the comfortable, sunny, genial person I 
 have described, he became shrinking, subdued, careful of him-
 
 28 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 self, and reluctant to make a demonstration in behalf of the vic- 
 tim, be it whom it might. He had a strong repugnance to 
 violence; scarcely ever struck an animal, and shed tears, secretly, 
 over a favorite horse when he lay dying in a field adjoining the 
 house. I was always assured, by his troubled look, that he 
 sympathized strongly with me in difficulties; but this did not 
 satisfy me. I felt that he ought to have and exercise the power 
 to rescue me, and that feeling caused me to reserve myself to- 
 ward him, as I have said. 
 
 He had been a seaman; had made many voyages to different 
 parts of the world; had finally lost his vessel, and been taken 
 prisoner at an early period of the war of 1812, and having got 
 exchanged, had fled the sea-board and penetrated this forest re- 
 gion, where he was now the owner of a large property, industri- 
 ous, enterprising, respected, but in his domestic life subjugated 
 by a violent and coarse woman. At the time of their marriage, 
 she was considered to be making a painful descent from her 
 social level. She had been educated; was intelligent, spirited, 
 and independent to a daring degree. She had been handsome 
 in her early years, and must, I think, have been always artful. 
 Thus she bad fascinated the uncultivated youth who had run 
 away from an obscure, poverty-stricken home, to get himself 
 born into the world of which he had before only dreamed. 
 They had now been married twenty years, and the well-bred 
 woman had degenerated into the reckless termagant, who was 
 sometimes even profane, while her unpolished husband, against 
 her many bad influences, and the strong tide of an adverse for- 
 tune, had preserved his original goodness, untainted by excess, 
 unsoiled by the degradations of selfishness. 
 
 Let me not judge her too harshly. She had never been a 
 mother ! That irreparable calamity to woman, falling upon a 
 hard, daring nature, ought to move me to charitable consider- 
 ation for some of the bad acts which make her memory seem a 
 bitterness and degradation a hideous, foul spectre, haunting 
 that beautiful morning-time of my life. I yearned for love, for
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 29 
 
 tenderness, for beauty, for sympathy in my wild dreams of uni- 
 versal mercy of good deeds that should spread happiness 
 through the earth. I received instead, blows, raving, denun- 
 ciation. I was called a fool, forbidden books, threatened, and 
 severely punished when found reading them. I might as well 
 have been punished for breathing. To learn was almost equally 
 a necessity of my being. 
 
 Thus I was repulsed, and my thoughts and emotion?, driven 
 back to their source, remained pent in a fiery tumult, or the 
 half slumber of wonder, overshadowing the unknown path before 
 me ; or they flowed out upon the objects about me, and found 
 expression in soliloquy in talks with trees, with the waters, with 
 contemplative cows, and thoughtful-looking sheep. I longed 
 for human tenderness and help, but nature never failed me, 
 when, lacking these, I turned to her. How rich in beauty and 
 purity she was to me in those days ! The spring alone seemed 
 inexhaustible. It oozed visibly from a dark hillside, and lay 
 gathered in crystal .purity at its foot, surrounded by old crumb- 
 ling logs on three sides, and the bright, gravelly earth over 
 which it flowed on the fourth. A loose house of small logs had 
 been built over it many years before, but the dampness had 
 penetrated them, and they were decaying and leaning against 
 the bank. It was now roofless. On the lower side stood a 
 maple, whose ample height and spread of branches made it 
 magniQcent. A broad board partly covered the little stream 
 that flowed out, and I used to watch the water curling in the 
 faintest ripples over the pure gravel, and follow it in its devious 
 journey through the black, sluggish creek, into which it fell a 
 few feet below ; through the great lake that next received it ; 
 down the falls of Niagara, and thus out to the vast ocean, the 
 mere thought of which gave me a pleasant sort of sickness, 
 from excess of feeling, as one enjoys the delightful pain of a 
 tragedy. 
 
 One of my holiday occupations was to watch a pan of cream 
 placed in this little current for cooling. It generally remained
 
 SO MY EARLY DAYf. 
 
 several hours, arid while I sat beside it, I had liberty to read, 
 or think, or dream. What sweet days of freedom and growth 
 were those ! No other time was permitted me for reading, 
 save aloud for the convenience of others ; and as the long, 
 sunny hours rolled by, and the shadow of the great tree swept 
 round from before the door, so as to lie due north on the clear, 
 cool water, and the cattle gathered to the creek to bathe their 
 feet in it, and enjoy the shade of the trees upon its margin, I 
 used to feel the soothing influence of the drowsy noontide, 
 and dream myself away into far-off lands of rest and beauty, 
 where only gentle and persuasive spirits held power. Some- 
 times a great panting frog, leaping into the water, startled me 
 from my reverie, and sometimes a ruder awakening came, in the 
 shrill tones and harsh words which were always ready ; which 
 no attention could avert, no alacrity purchase exemption 
 from. 
 
 Then my charge was removed, and the penalty exacted for 
 my few hours of tranquillity. Multiplied tasks, voluble denun- 
 ciations ; sharp, exacting commands were laid upon me without 
 stint. I was always pronounced lazy, for having spent the 
 morning sitting by the spring, though I had been commanded 
 to do it, and I was expected to accomplish many times more 
 than my usual labor, for the rest I had enjoyed. But I had a 
 fund of patience under all. I could bear a great deal of un- 
 reasonable exaction, because while my hands were employed 
 on the irksome tasks, I myself was far away ; and if I were 
 rudely recalled, I bore the reproaches and abuse, silently, for 
 the most part, because they seemed so insignificant an atom in 
 the great world filled with beautiful and good things. Wore 
 there not the meadows, and the creek, and the woods, and the 
 plum-trees, and the nut-trees, and the cows always a great 
 resource to me and should I not directly escape to some of 
 them ? 
 
 Beyond the creek, beyond the meadows, through a wide pas- 
 ture-field, bordered by a thick western wood, was a blackberry
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 31 
 
 patch. It was my favorite resort in the season of its fruit. I 
 was fqnd of the great, luscious berries, but still better did I like 
 the deep solitude of the place in which they grew. With my 
 basket on my arm, I walked down the devious, wild path that 
 run along the face of the bank to the ford, or sometimes I took 
 my canoe from near the spring, and paddled myself across. 
 Beyond the large meadow where the creek turned, there rose a 
 high bank, perpendicular, and wooded on its summit. From 
 this the whole farm could be seen ; the herds of cattle, the 
 flocks of sheep, the great barn with its open doors, which I 
 looked right through the stacks around it ; the orchard and 
 the plum thicket just at my feet by the water side ; the neigh- 
 boring farms on both hands, the loaded wagons in the fields, 
 and the groups of haymakers. What a picture it was ! On 
 the very verge of the high bank stood a large sugar maple, 
 whose trunk, after rising some five feet from the ground, bent 
 itself suddenly downward again, and shot along horizontally, 
 my full length at least. It was a magnificent couch I Not a 
 single fleck of the afternoon sunshine could reach me there, and 
 the rest was so entire, the place seemed so sacred, the work so 
 far away, that I felt myjelf sole monarch. I never disclosed 
 the charm of this spot to anybody. When Betsey was berrying 
 with me I avoided it. When Mr. Radford got rare permission 
 for me to take a walk with him, I refrained from all mention of 
 it. One day, when I was sitting on the tree, looking solemnly 
 over the scene, I was startled by the rustle of a footstep, and 
 looking up I was frightened, almost terrified at the sight of a 
 man, a stranger, whom 1 only recognized, from having seen him 
 at a distance once or twice before. He was a man of middle 
 height and size, with a red face, flattened features, and very 
 small eyes. His lips were spotted, and though he was well 
 dressed, he had an appearance that suggested to me something 
 very wrong. I shrunk from him, and would have fled without 
 speaking, but he addressed me kindly, though in an indistinct 
 voice, and said :
 
 32 MY KAKLY DAYS. 
 
 " Don't be afraid of me, little girl. I will not hurt you ; I 
 like little girls." 
 
 " Don't you like women, too, sir ?" I said, half timidly, linger- 
 ing at his bidding. 
 
 He smiled, bnt looked a little redder than before, and said 
 something which I did not understand. In a moment he added : 
 
 " Why, what made you ask that question ?" 
 
 " Because I thought if you liked women, and spoke pleasantly 
 to them as you do to me, you wouldn't burn your wife's clothes, 
 nor break her dishes." 
 
 " Damn you, you little brat," said the man, flushing angrily, 
 and piercing me with his little flaming eyes, now rimmed with 
 scarlet, " what do ysu mean, talking so to me ? Who told you 
 such stuff ?" 
 
 I had seen his wife weep when telling it to my aunt ; but I 
 felt in an instant that she would have, to weep again if I said 
 so, and I answered, what was also true, that I had heard aunt 
 speak of his doing such things. 
 
 "Your aunt is a d d old hag, and had better hold her 
 tongue than talk of me or what I do. Tell her so, will 
 you?" * 
 
 " I shouldn't like to," I replied, " for she gets very angry 
 sometimes, and speaks almost as badly as you do now." 
 
 By this time I had lost the feeling of timidity with which I 
 first spoke to him. What I had heard of him had made me 
 feel a keen interest to know the mystery of his bad deeds. A 
 certain courage and self-possession, such as I had often fjelt 
 before, came into my bosom, and I advanced a little towards 
 him. The movement attracted a kindlier glance than the last 
 had been ; and when I had stood silent a moment, I said, look- 
 ing earnestly into his eyes, "You didn't al\v:iys burn clothes and 
 break dishes. What makes you do it now ?" 
 
 He flashed down upon me with the angry look again, bnt my 
 steady regard checked the rough reply, and he said, " That's a 
 fact, child. I didn't always."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 33 
 
 I laid my hand lightly on his knee, by way of repeating my 
 question. 
 
 " Why do I do it now ? Because I get drank first." 
 
 " Isn't that very bad !" I asked ; for I did not then know just 
 what it meant. 
 
 " Yes ; it's very bad very bad, indeed ! But I do it because 
 the doctors told me to drink, in the first place, and now I've 
 got used to it." 
 
 t( Did it make you well, sir ?" I said. " I should think you 
 would have to work very hard to get the clothes and dishes 
 again." 
 
 " My wife does that," he said. " She is well, and has plenty 
 of money." 
 
 " Yes. I saw aunt give her a great deal for making uncle a 
 coat, the other day. But if she gets new dishes and new 
 clothes, you wouldn't break and burn them again, would you ? 
 because you say it is very bad ; and I am sure your wife feels 
 dreadfully when you do it, for she is always good." 
 
 I was looking steadily at him, hoping he would promise what 
 
 I asked ; but he smiled at me and said, " They say you are the 
 
 oldest-fashioned child that ever was, and so you are. Why don't 
 
 , you go and romp and play, like other little girls, instead of sitting 
 
 about in such places alone, and talking to old folks like me ?" 
 
 ."I don't have time to play," I said ; "and when I am at 
 work or resting, I often think of many things it would be good 
 to do." 
 
 " And so you thought it would be good to get me to promise 
 not to drink any more, eh ?" 
 
 " I thought so, when you said it was very bad ; for I am sure 
 you don't want to do that." 
 
 " No, I don't want to ; but you see I do it, any how ; and I 
 expect I shall keep on." 
 
 " Oh, don't, sir 1" I said. And I could have cried myself ; 
 for I remembered poor Mrs. Rumsey's tearful face and her bitter 
 sobbing. 
 
 2*
 
 34: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 "Well, shake hands, little girl, ^they're getting up some 
 new-fashioned societies now temperancje societies, they call 
 them. You'll do for one of tbefc^fefrtrm afraid I never shall. 
 However, we'll always be friends," he added, lightly squeezing 
 my hand in his. " Come to our house, sometimes. I like to 
 talk to you, and my wife thinks a deal of you." 
 
 He was moving away, but he turned and said, " Your aunt, 
 as you call her, does almost as bad as 1 do, sometimes, don't 
 she ? She is not good to you. Wouldn't you like to come and 
 live with us ?" 
 
 " I should like to live with your wife," I said. 
 
 " Not with me, eh ? Well, perhaps that's not strange. But 
 let us be friends, any how. Good bye." 
 
 When I reached home that evening I wanted to talk to Mr. 
 Radford. I wished to turn that leaf quite over, and understand 
 both pages. It was moonlight and warm. The owls were 
 abroad in the trees, and the well-filled cows ruminated and 
 groaned as they laid themselves down in the farmyard adjoining 
 that of the house. When the supper things were washed, I 
 walked up to Mr. Radford, who stood near the door, and put 
 my hand into his. 
 
 " What, Dolly ? What is it now ?" he inquired. 
 
 "I want to ask you something," I said, "but not here. Come 
 away, please. If aunt hears me she will be angry and call me 
 a fool, as she always does when I speak of such things." 
 
 We walked to a plum-tree at the end of the yard, and I said, 
 " When I was after blackberries to-day, Mr. Rumsey came 
 where I was." 
 
 "Thunder and lightning 1" he exclaimed, with a start. "Did 
 he frighten you ?" 
 
 " At first I was frightened ; but we got to talking, and then 
 1 wasn't afraid of him." 
 
 ' He wasn't drunk, then ?" 
 
 " 1 don't know what drunk is," I said ; " but his eyes are so 
 queer. Are they di unk ?"
 
 MY EABLY DAYS. 35 
 
 " Generally, I suppose, they are. What did he say to you ?" 
 
 " He said he liked little gftls, and risked me to stop and speak 
 with him ; and then he called me a damned little brat, for ask- 
 ing him why he burned the clothes and broke the dishes." 
 
 " Dolly, Dolly 1" exclaimed my friend, with sudden ami 
 irrepressible mirth, holding his sides and doubling himself down. 
 " Dolly, you'll be the death of me some day !" 
 
 I was silent from perplexity and wonder. 
 
 " To think," he added, after a hearty but silent laugh, " of 
 your asking him that ! There isn't a man in the country would 
 dare do it. The hair would be cursed off his head. I wonder 
 he didn't bite you, or frighten you into an ague. Come, tell me 
 all about it." 
 
 I related as well as I could what had passed. 
 
 " I hope you didn't tell him that his wife said he had done 
 those bad things, as you call them." 
 
 " No," I said quickly ; " for I was afraid it might make him 
 angry at her. But now I want to know, Mr. Radford, what Mr. 
 Rumsey does to make himself so bad. He did not seem bad 
 to-day." 
 
 " He drinks whisky the whisky they make at Edwards's 
 and that makes him crazy." 
 
 " What does he drink it for ?" 
 
 " Because he likes it, of course." 
 
 " But does it do him any good ?" 
 
 "No, faith, you may be sure of that." 
 
 " I don't understand," I said, " how it can be. If it hurts 
 him, I cannot think why he should drink of it." 
 
 " For the same reason, Dolly, that you eat sugar, though 1 
 have told you many times it will destroy your teeth." 
 
 " But if I really believed it would, I would not eat another 
 morsel ; and he knows how bad this makes him, for he said so." 
 
 " But he drinks it for all that, just as you eat the sugar ; and 
 before you are a woman, your teeth will be all out of your 
 mouth."
 
 36 MT EARi-Y DAYS. 
 
 I felt annoyed at the repetition of the illustration, though it 
 gave me light. After thinking a inoment, I said, " What does 
 .Squire Edwards make whisky for, if it's so bad for folks who 
 drink it ?" 
 
 " Because they give him money for it." 
 
 " Then," I said, " I shall talk to Rosanna and Luther about 
 it the very first time I see them." 
 
 " Oh," laughed Mr. Radford again, with another of his 
 doubling-up movements, "going to have the distillery stopped, 
 are we ? Thunder and lightning, Dolly, but you'll make a rare 
 one, some day I Stop a minute," he said, " as I was walking 
 toward the house. " Tell me, will you, what you are goi'ng to 
 say to Rosanna and Luther ?" 
 
 " I can't tell you everything now," I replied, " because I 
 can't think- of it ; but when I see them I shall think of a great 
 deal, and I shall say that it is very bad, and their father ought 
 not to do it. Mrs. Rumsoy has a great deal of trouble, and he 
 ought to think of that." 
 
 "Well, you tell him, Dolly, will you?" said my careless Mentor. 
 " He'll stop, I think, if you do." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Then methought I heard a mellow sound 
 Gathering up from all the lower ground." 
 
 THE Edwards family was the elite of our rustic neighborhood. 
 It was a large one. There were grandparents, children, and 
 grandchildren innumerable; but the particular branch I had to 
 deal with, was a man who had nine children, of whom the oldest 
 daughter and her young brother were, in a sort, patrons of 
 mine. They were rather finer than Betsey. Their father was a
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 37 
 
 military mau and a magistrate; lie had a few books, but as they 
 were chiefly on military tactics and law, they did not interest 
 me, though whenever I was in their house, I could not help 
 picking them up and searching for any little live passage which 
 might have escaped me before. Squire Jackson himself did 
 sometimes descend to a few phrases with me. He seemed a 
 good-natured and superior mau to me, probably from a certain. 
 easy and assured manner, which few of the persons I saw pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 Their house was a log cabin of some pretensions in size and 
 style. There was a children's room, in which, on the rare occa- 
 sions of my visits with uncle and aunt, I spent the evening sit- 
 ting with the older children, while the younger ones slept in the 
 same apartment. Rosanna, and Luther, and Marcia, were all 
 rather grave children at least not boisterous. They liked me 
 to visit them, and though two of them were older than myself, 
 we all seemed to be companions. Luther was quiet and studi- 
 ous; but he appeared to learn whatever he did either from van- 
 ity or curiosity. He told me many things I had no other means 
 of finding out; but when, occasionally, I made deductions from 
 his facts, and said, then if that is so, something else must be so, 
 he would look mildly at me, and invariably answer, " I don't 
 know; I haven't thought of that." 
 
 A heavy forest advanced quite to the garden fence in the rear 
 of their house, and when the winter snows melted away, and the 
 spring rains fell, the low places were filled with water, which 
 was alive with frogs. Their piping enchanted me. At that 
 season it was delightful to visit the Edwards's, and I cared little 
 for the books, the children, the nuts, or anything but the invis- 
 ible and tireless orchestra of the woods. The children would 
 look with a kind of demure slyness at each other, when they saw 
 me station myself in the door, if it were not too cold to have it 
 open, but they never ridiculed me. 
 
 One evening, when Marcia and I were alone for a little while, 
 she said:
 
 38 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Mother is in one of her bad humors to-night." 
 
 " Does sfie, get very angry, too ?" I asked in astonishment, for 
 my notion of bad tempers was represented by tornadoes and 
 tempests that stirred everything around them. I expected at 
 every breath to hear the first peal from the adjoining room. 
 
 " Oh, no ! she doesn't get angry like your aunt. She thinks 
 none of us love her, and says father never gets her anything she 
 wants, and she looks very unhappy; but she never talks angrily, 
 like your mother." 
 
 " She is not my mother," I said; " don't call her so, or I shall 
 be angry at you. But your mother always looks unhappy when 
 I see her. What makes her ?" 
 
 Marcia looked around and behind her, in a manner to prepare 
 me for a terrible disclosure, and bending her head forward, she 
 said in a whisper, " Rosanna and Luther, and I, think it's tea ! " 
 
 " Tea !" I repeated, and the whole surface of my body was 
 chilled by the solemnity of the confidence. " How can tea make 
 her unhappy ?" 
 
 " It isn't that," said the child, " it's because she can't get 
 it." 
 
 Like the sugar and the whisky, I thought, with a kind of 
 discouragement stealing over me. 
 
 "Father says," continued the girl, "that he cannot always 
 get enough for her, and as soon as it's gone she looks and talks 
 as she does to-night ; and then the baby gets cross, and after a 
 day or two, father goes off and brings her some." 
 
 " And does she get better then ?" I asked. 
 
 " Oh, yes. She is pleasant right away, and all of us feel bet- 
 ter, too." 
 
 " Well," I said, " that is so curious I Now, Mr. Rumsey is 
 always pleasant and kind when he don't drink whisky. At 
 least I think so, because when he does drink it he does such 
 dreadful things. I don't see why having it should make him so 
 bad, when tea makes your mother so pleasant." 
 
 " Oh," said Marcia, with a bright, knowing laugh, " tea is not
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 39 
 
 the same as whisky, by a great deal. My father makes whisky, 
 you know, in the ' still,' but he can't make tea." 
 
 " Why does he make it when it makes Mr. Rumsey behave so 
 dreadfully ? Do you know," I whispered, " what terrible things 
 he does after he drinks it ? he burns up his wife's clothes, and 
 breaks the dishes." I expected to see a look of horror and in- 
 dignation on her face, answering to my own, but she smiled a 
 common, little smile of indifference, and said " yes, I know it." 
 
 " And does your father know it, too ?" I asked with rising 
 indignation. 
 
 " Oh, yes," she replied, " everybody knows it." 
 
 " Well, then," I said, " I should think your father would not 
 make it for him ; I wouldn't for anything, would you ?" 
 
 " Oh, everybody buys whisky that wants it, and has got mo" 
 ncy or something else to pay for it with." At thia moment her 
 brother came in, and while 1 sat in a painful state of disappoint- 
 ment at her indifference, she told him in a careless way what we 
 had been talking about, and she concluded, laughingly, " Lizzie 
 says she shouldn't think father would make whisky for Rum- 
 sey." The boy turned his fireless eyes to me, partly ft appeared 
 in question, partly in amusement at the idea. 
 
 " Well, I shouldn't," I said stoutly, warming ; "I don't think 
 it's good in him, any how, and if I were you, Luther, I should 
 talk to him about it." He smiled broadly, but expressed just 
 what his sister had. " Well," I said, finding myself entirely baf- 
 fled, " I never saw people that wouldn't think of such things, 
 when they knew how bad they were." 
 
 It was my first temperance crusade, and I could not think it 
 possible that any other persons would have been so indifferent 
 as they were. My indignation, however, was soon forgotten in 
 a game of blind man's buff, in which my activity enabled me to 
 elude my pursuers so successfully, that at last they protested. 
 " I should never get the handkerchief on," they said, "uuless one 
 of them could see a little to catch me." So when Rosanha, who 
 was a little fat, and very good natured, had been wholly blinded
 
 40 MY EARLY UAY8. 
 
 of one eye, and partly of the other, there was another flying 
 race, and skipping of chair and beds, and I was caught. 
 
 " Children," said Squire Edwards, mildly, stepping into the 
 room and closing the door after him carefully, " don't play too 
 hard. You know, Rosanna, your mother isn't well to-night." 
 
 " I know she wants some tea," said the girl, sotto voce, as the 
 door closed after him. Dear, dear, I thought, how curious. 
 We can't play blind man's buff heartily because Mrs. Edwards 
 wants tea. I must ask Mr. Radford about it. But Mr. Radford 
 was either not clear-headed, or patient enough, to unfold the dif- 
 ficulties in which I was involved. He laughed at my questions ; 
 called Mrs. E\ by some irreverent names ; amused himself with 
 my account of the remonstrance about the whisky ; and ended 
 with a remark which was often made to me, and which always 
 discouraged. tfnd perplexed me. Speaking of the indifference of 
 the little Edwardses to what excited me so much, he said, " Ah, 
 Dolly, those kildren know a great many things that you don't." 
 
 " Do you mean," I said, ready to cry, with the vexation that 
 oft-repeated saying caused me, "do you mean what aunt always 
 says, that>I am a fool ?" 
 
 " No, indeed, Dolly," he replied, kindly ; " very far from it, 
 I should say ; but you see there are many things you don't un- 
 derstand as well as other children do, and it makes me laugh 
 sometimes, to see how you try to find out -what you want to 
 know ; that's all. Don't cry."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 " All good and guiltless as thou art, 
 Some bitter griefs will touch thy heart 
 Griefs that along thy altered face, 
 Will breathe a more subduing grace, 
 Than e'en those looks of joy that lie 
 On the soft face of infancy." 
 
 THUS I had but little of the hearty, careless, child-life that 
 belonged to ray years. I romped sometimes by moonlight with 
 the dog ; I loved and nursed my poultry, and, if I could get 
 alone with kittens or lambs, I could laugh till the fields or the 
 barns rung with my merriment. I had the spirit that belonged 
 to my age, and an intense capacity for enjoying childish pleas- 
 ures, but I had another phase of the human nature that, when 
 I lacked these, threw me back upon thoughts and questionings 
 of years older than mine. Had I loved, and been beloved by 
 any tender, intuitive person, I should have speculated less, but 
 I could be content to let no striking phenomena pass without 
 hunting out their cause. Broken dishes and burnt clothing, 
 racked nerves, and pining spirits moved me to inquiry ; and so 
 I was called old-fashioned, queer, foolish, and, in the passion- 
 ate language I heard every day, a fool. With all my native 
 mirthfulness, I was often very sad. There was a great sorrow 
 and darkness that overshadowed me, about which I could never 
 speak. Even Mr. Radford, who shared all my confidences as 
 to external facts, could not be trusted with this. And yet, I 
 half doubted sometimes, if he did not know it the fact, not my 
 feeling about it. I used to hear words sometimes in the conver- 
 sations between my aunt and her visitors, that deepened and 
 widened this shadow fearfully words importing mystery, sus-
 
 42 MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 picions, and foul imputations that made my heart stand still, or 
 beat in a vague kind of wild terror. These words directly 
 referred to my father and mother. For my mother I had a very 
 strong sentiment of reverence, made tenderer by a pity, which, 
 from some source, I did not know what, had crept into my 
 memory of her. My recollections were chiefly of her sufferings 
 in her last illness, and on her death-bed. But from casual ex- 
 pressions and half-uttered sentences, which had graven them- 
 selves, as in letters of undying flame, upon my heart, I had 
 learned the fact of her having been oppressed and wronged by 
 my father and a woman, whom I remember as having been 
 much with us after she was gone. Once the horrible conjecture 
 fell on my ears, that her early death was, perhaps, hastened by 
 neglect, and the dreadful presence of this person in her own 
 home. My father still lived, but it would be difficult to tell 
 what my feelings towards him were at that time. I had a reve- 
 rential respect for the name of father. The relation singled 
 him out from all the world to me, and some of the deepest 
 wretchedness of those years of bondage, was that I suffered iu 
 trying to reconcile the veneration I felt for him as parent, with 
 the detestation I entertained for him as man. dissolute fa- 
 thers 1 be warned. Winter nights and summer nights, bright 
 days and dark days, I used to spend hours, in vain attempts to 
 settle this harrowing question. If I could have spoken to any 
 earnest, loving soul, the relief would have been inestimable. 
 But the individuals from whom, iu broken fragments and at long 
 intervals, I picked up what I knew, were those to whom I would 
 not have disclosed my fearful secret for worlds, and I was long, 
 ing and pining more than ever for love and sympathy, when a 
 letter came for me from my young sister at home. She was 
 older than myself by two years and a half, had been at school, 
 wrote well, and said she loved me very dearly, and wished to 
 see me. How the condescension charmed me ! How the atten- 
 tion lifted me up ! So wise, and write to me so much in the 
 great, full world, and yet actually think, as she said, so often and
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 43 
 
 much of me a dark, frowsy, ragged child, who was so ignorant 
 and foolish. When I thought it all over, I was so much moved 
 that I had to run away to the great, solemn, black* walnut in 
 the little meadow, and have a melting cry over it. I could 
 read it myself, and write a little too, for though prohibited every 
 means of improvement, I did manage, with the help of sheets of 
 paper and ink, from my friend Albert, and copies by Mr. Rad- 
 ford now and then, to scrawl a little by stealth ; and though 
 sometimes I was detected and punished, I was never deterred 
 from seizing the next opportunity. Thus I lost nothing of the 
 little I had learned before leaving home, but I had added little 
 to it. I wrote a letter, but it had to be approved, and, in the 
 exultation consequent on so momentous a -performance, I called 
 Mr. Radford into the low chamber over the kitchen, where I had 
 cleared a space by the four-paned sash, and writjten, with the 
 paper lying on an old barrel-head upon the floor. He came, 
 crawling along, muttering something that I did not attend to. 
 When he saw the writing materials, he said: " Oh, it's the letter, 
 is it, Dolly ? Do you want to know how to spell a word-?" 
 
 "No, sir," I said, with dignity, "I can spell every word, but 
 I want to read this letter to you, and you tell me, please, if 
 there is anything wrong, will you ?" He smiled, and I set off. 
 
 "Sh ! sh !" and his hand came pretty firmly over my lips, " not 
 so loud, child. If the old woman heard that, what would she 
 say ? Do you think she will send a letter that says she is a 
 bad woman, and gets so very angry that she is sometimes like 
 the foolish Joe who used to frighten you when you were little 
 girls ? Little girls, indeed ! What else are you now, I should 
 like to know ? Your sister must be bigger than you are, or 
 both of you'd be put in a gallon measure." 
 
 " But, Mr. Radford," I said, altogether crest-fallen and com- 
 fortless at this criticism, " won't the letter do ? You haven't 
 heard it either." 
 
 " The letter, so far, would do very well, for it's true' as gospel; 
 but it can't go, don't you sec, because it must please the aunt,
 
 44 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 and it's not likely that what you've said will do that. But let 
 me hear the rest of it." 
 
 I went*on to the close. 
 
 " Well, child, you do astonish me," he said. " I wish that 
 letter could go, the more that you've given me so good a name 
 in it ; but it dan't : so you'll have to write another." 
 
 " How ?" 
 
 " Why, that's the puzzle. You see you can't write the truth, 
 and" 
 
 " And I won't write a lie, if I never send a line," said I burst- 
 ing into tears. " I won't say she is good and kind, and that I 
 love her ; because she is not, and I don't love her, and she 
 hates me. And if I can't write that, I won't write at all," I 
 said, tearing the sheet to fragments. But then I thought of my 
 sister, and of how I should like to tell her of my life, and get 
 other letters from her ; and my vexation gave place to a feeling 
 of pure pain a genuine heart-ache. " Oh dear," I said, the 
 tears raining into my lap, "what shall I do ?" After a moment's 
 silence, Mr. Kadford said, " Come out and take a walk with 
 me ; we will go down to the chestnut-tree. I think the burs 
 are beginning to open, and maybe we can find some nuts on the 
 ground." I rose to go out, but Mr. Radford stayed back till I 
 had stepped through the low door into the large chamber. 
 When he came out, he had the fragments of paper in his hand. 
 
 " I thought," he said, " it was better not to leave these to be 
 picked up, and read, or you might get some hard blows, and 
 I'd like to save you them if I could, poor Dolly." 
 
 I choked and swelled all the way down stairs in silence, and 
 then I said, " Don't say that again, Mr. Iladford, or I shall cry, 
 I can't help it." 
 
 It was a glorious autumn evening, yet an hour to sunset, 
 but the air began to grow chill, and my blood to rise 
 to quick motion, as soon as I was out on the turf, with the 
 winds and the birds about me, and the sky above. When we 
 reached the top of the hill that looked down into the little
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 45 
 
 valley at the head of the large meadow, where the chestnut 
 tree stood, I could no logger keep Mr. Radford's measured 
 pace. I let go his hand, and darted away, as he said, when he 
 came to the tree, " like a swallow." 
 
 With diligent search and some pelting of the lower branches, 
 we found a very few nuts. But the more serious purpose was 
 fully attained of cheating me of my present sorrow. The evening 
 wind, rustling the broad leaves, seemed like electric fire to my 
 young nerves. I ran, bounded, leaped, pelted Mr. Radford with 
 burs, and laughed at his make-believe distress. When I had 
 expended my excitement, in a measure, I stood more quietly 
 aside to watch the sticks and stones which, hurled by his strong 
 arm, reached a height that surprised me. The dark tree-top 
 stood out clear against the flame-colored sky, and the fluttering 
 leaves that bordered it seemed actually to dip themselves in the 
 warm light that overflowed the west. The spectacle quieted me 
 at once. It reminded me of thoughts I had entertained a long 
 time before, as it seemed to me. My companion, perceiving that 
 my gaiety had subsided, came toward me, and said, " Come, 
 Dolly, now let us gather the chestnuts, for we must be 
 going." 
 
 But I no longer cared for the nuts. " Mr. Radford," I said, 
 " look at the tree from this side come here." He looked doubt- 
 ful and moved slowly nearer. 
 
 "I don't want you, Dolly" he began. But I interrupted him, 
 saying, " Don't you see how near the branches are to the sky ? 
 When I was a little girl, a long time ago, at school with Mary, 
 we used to see high trees that reached almost to the sky, and 
 we thought a tall man could climb to the tops of them and step 
 right up into Heaven. Did you ever see. any such when you 
 were a little boy ?" 
 
 " I don't know, Dolly," he replied. " It's a long time ago 
 that I was a little boy, and I suppose I have forgotten a great 
 deal that I used to think of then. But don't YOU go to getting 
 old, talking about such things agaiu. Come and pick up the
 
 46 MT EARLY DAY3. 
 
 chestnuts I have knocked down. * It is time we were going 
 home, I say." 
 
 I was very reluctant. A beautiful dream of the olden time 
 was coming over me, and memories of days when, it seemed, 
 looking back upon them from that life-stirring evening, that I 
 had been wholly happy, surrounded by love. I should have 
 cried in a moment, but Mr. Radford took my hand and raised 
 me to my feet. 
 
 " Dolly," he said, " don't you cry again ;" and he began to 
 be funny, as was his wont occasionally. " I've thrown my arm 
 almost off to knock down some nuts for you to gather, and I've 
 strained my eyes up so far to see them, that I can hardly look 
 down to the ground again, and now you begin to be as solemn 
 and old-womanish as ever, and tell me about a long time ago 
 when you were a little girl (he had a peculiar way of drawing 
 out those words that made me feel myself a mere atom a dust 
 speck in his eyes), and you look as if you'd cry again in a min- 
 ute. Don't do it, I say, but come here and look at these great 
 fellows lying so snug and warm side by side tucked in, in that 
 thick blanket." 
 
 I began to feel cheered again, and I said, " If I should cry, 
 Mr. Radford, it would not be such a cry as that was before, for 
 I should cry now from remembering how happy I used to be at 
 home. That don't hurt me ; but when I cried at the house it 
 was because I was so unhappy here." 
 
 " Well, I don't see much difference," he said, " for my part ; 
 but don't let's have any more of either." 
 
 We walked homeward, and the wildness of the evening, for it 
 was now sunset, and a brisk, hollow-sounding breeze which flew 
 over the dark green earth and rustled the sear leaves of the 
 trees as we passed, seemed to carry my thoughts away over im- 
 mense spaces. The lakes the great rivers I had read of the 
 ocean the vast forests, 611ed with birds and animals the des- 
 erts, so solemn and endless, where camels and elephants could 
 live, but nothing else, as I thought away I went careering over
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 47 
 
 these, in a freedom as absolute as that of the* wind itself. As 
 we ascended the hill, the frosted orchard, and the yellow corn- 
 field before the house, with its great piles of golden grain, and 
 the distant, mysterious chime of the waters of the lake, which 
 I often heard on such evenings, seemed to me all so very beauti- 
 ful and comforting that I thought no more for the time of my 
 sorrows. 
 
 Mr. Eadford had told me often of great flights of pigeons 
 that came over in the fall of some years, to the beech forest 
 which bordered the lake so many, he said, that they darkened 
 the day and sametimes you couldn't see the sky at all, not even 
 a little piece of it, for hours. I wondered, in an ecstasy at the 
 thought, and believed every word he said, and yet, I somehow 
 always thought if they came, as he said they would be sure 
 to agap, when the beech trees bore a great many nuts, that I 
 should be able to see a little patch of sky, even on the days 
 when they flew most thickly. 
 
 This beech forest was a grand place to me. Its trees were 
 tall and symmetrical, and closely set, and the undergrowth of 
 mandrake vines and small light shrubs was so exquisitely beauti- 
 ful. And then, I always thought when walking in its dim reli- 
 gious aisles, of the great lake which washed its other border, 
 and of the very long time that had gone over them, for Mr. 
 Radford told me that the trees were three or four hundred years 
 old. And I used to think with awe of the dark, wild autumn 
 storms, and how many times they had stripped the straining 
 branches ; and of the winter snows that had whitened and bent 
 them.
 
 48 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Questions, questions ! Our life is a question 
 Put too high or low. The Sphynx 
 Standetk by the wayside ever. 
 The doubting spirit weareth a dagger." 
 
 AWAY in the heart of this forest lived a woman whom I loved 
 better than any female who was known to me there. She was a 
 niece of my adopted father ; young, strong, energetic and faith- 
 ful, and so kind of heart that I felt always a certain freedom 
 with her that no other presence gave me. She had a lazy, 
 thriftless husband, and seven children, whom she supported by 
 ceaseless industry, and yet she was alw.ays cheerful. Her pre- 
 sence seemed to invigorate and sharpen me. I did not dream 
 so much with her, though I never confided to her my inner life. 
 She interested me because, although she would not compare with 
 Mr. Radford in point of intelligence, and very, very often said, 
 " Don't know," or " La, child, what a strange question 1" to what 
 I asked her, yet she met me more satisfactorily through her ear- 
 nestness and motherly tenderness. She never bantered or put 
 me away, as he often did, with light raillery, which I felt, though 
 not always painfully from him. 
 
 Mrs. Peterson was of middling size ; she must have had origi- 
 nally a fair complexion, but it was slightly browned by the in- 
 tense activity of her life, in doors and out. Uer whole physical 
 being seemed to have toughened under her tasks. One never 
 felt a sense of weariness in seeing her at the hardest work, for 
 she did it with corporeal ease, and such hearty consent of the 
 spirit that it seemed an enjoyment to her. Her husband was a 
 man who sat long at table, and when he left it, removed himself 
 carefully to the fireside in winter, or just without the door in
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 49 
 
 summer. He also smoked, but I never saw him doing it without 
 feeling more than at any other time, the immense difference be- 
 tween him and uncle. They were even farther separated in 
 their enjoyments than their labors. 
 
 Mr. Peterson was of a dirty grey complexion, with coarse, 
 brown hair, that hung uncared for on each side of his dull, easy- 
 looking face. His hands were rarely clean, though his clothes 
 were always so ; but that was the merit of his good wife, who 
 used to say briskly, never ill-naturedly, that she would always 
 wash his clothes, but she would not wash him. Mr. Peterson 
 was a person whom I never remembered till I saw him. He al- 
 ways surprised me when he came in, for I forgot till that mo- 
 ment that he was anywhere ; but I had too much delicacy not 
 to try to conceal this from his wife. Of his oldest daughter, 
 however, who was a coarse girl, like him, I did not feel so con- 
 siderate. She, too, was good-natured and dull, except in the 
 gratification of her lowest appetites, and she appeared never to 
 think of anything, nor learn anything, nor wish for anything, 
 that was not entirely for herself. Therefore I had a positive 
 dislike of her, which her father could never rouse me to feel to- 
 ward him. 
 
 One day when I had stood a long time by her mother's loom, 
 watching the slow growth of the web in it, as the shuttle flew 
 back and forth, he surprised me, as usual, by coming in. I was 
 afraid Mrs. Peterson would see it in my face, so I said hastily, 
 " Oh, Mr. Peterson, have you finished my shoes yet ? I want 
 them very much." 
 
 " No, Tonuy/' he said, for he took the liberty, in his sublime 
 laziness, of calling me by a name which I did not like, and 
 which, with everybody else, I had nearly outgrown. " No, they 
 ain't done yet, but you shall have them next week." 
 
 I was on the point of asking Mrs. Peterson to tell her husband 
 
 not to call me by that name, which she, with her mother's 
 
 instinct, never used, and thinking that if he did it again I 
 
 shouldn't forget him so easily as I had, when the girl, Rhoda, 
 
 3
 
 50 MT EARLY DAYS. 
 
 called me to the door, to see her love apples (tomatoes). While 
 we were stepping about the plant, admiring its crimson fruit, 
 and I was learning from her that it was dreadfully "pison," 
 though nothing that she ever said made any impression on me, 
 I remarked, " Isn't it droll I always forget when I come to your 
 house, that your father is here at all ; and it seems so funny, 
 when he comes in, that I haven't thought of him ! What's the 
 reason ?" 
 
 " I'm sure I don't know," was the reply ; and after a moment 
 laughing a little unmeaning laugh, she said, " I guess we all feel 
 a little so, somehow or other." 
 
 I did not speak in answer, but I thought, " I shall ask Mr. 
 Radford what kind of a man Mr. Peterson is, and then I shall 
 know all about it." 
 
 Mrs. Peterson had twin sons handsome, jolly-looking babies. 
 I remember them an inexplicable mystery to me, which I was 
 only restrained from questioning Mr. Radford upon, by my 
 intense dread of his downright, doubling-up laugh. And an 
 older son she had, her second child, who was an object of my 
 unmitigated detestation. There was something in his low, 
 coarse manner from which I shrunk instinctively, with a terror 
 almost. Once, when I had expressed my disgust and dread to 
 Mr. Radford, he replied, with an earnestness quite unusual to 
 him, " Yes ; he's a bad boy, Dolly, and I advise you not to 
 speak to him, nor let him speak to you, if you can help it. 
 Mind, I advise you so." 
 
 I would as soon have ventured into a lion's cage after that 
 caution. Indeed, for a long time the boy inspired me with a 
 perfect dread. His very laugh, even in presence of his mother 
 and sisters, silenced me ; and a direct address from him would 
 send me edging round behind the loom or into his mother's seat, 
 with an uneasy feeling that I could not quiet till I had got very 
 close to her. 
 
 One day, when I had watched Mrs. Peterson a long time at 
 the weaving, which it seemed to me never stopped, I said, while
 
 MT EABLY DATS. 51 
 
 she was joining a broken thread, " What a great deal of cloth 
 you must have made since you were big enough to weave 1" 
 
 " Yes ; a good deal." 
 
 " But not enough, though, for all the people about here ' 
 wear." 
 
 " Oh, no." 
 
 " Who makes the rest ?" 
 
 " Miss Weber weaves, and Miss Griffin." 
 
 These were both mothers, like herself ; but she spared herself , 
 the trouble of the distinguishing syllable that would have indi- 
 cated their social ties. 
 
 " Do you think," I asked, " that all of you together weave 
 enough ?" 
 
 " La ! no, child." 
 
 " Well, where does the rest come from ? Where does all the 
 cloth come from that all the people in the world wear ?" 
 
 " Now, there, you see ! That's what Pve often told Uncle 
 John and Aunt Phebe you ask so many strange questions. But 
 I can't answer that one, for I don't know myself. It's made 
 somewhere, certainly, but I don't know where." 
 
 " Does Mr. Radford know, do you think ?" 
 
 " I guess he does know something about it." 
 
 " What a dreadful thing it would be if a great many of the 
 looms should be broken or burnt up at once !" I said, as much 
 to my own thought as to her. 
 
 "Yes, it would be bad enough ; but it aint very likely to 
 happen, I guess." 
 
 When I addressed Mr. Radford on this question, he informed 
 me that, as well as he knew, most of the cloth worn in the 
 world was manufactured in England ; explained the difficulty of 
 so small a country containing so many looms, by the fact that 
 two of their looms would not occupy more room than Mrs. 
 Peterson's one, and would make eight or ten times as much 
 cloth. 
 
 " And are the English women as good weavers ?" I inquired.
 
 52 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " It is not women, Dolly, that weave in those looms, I think. 
 But I don't very well understand all this myself. I'll show you a 
 gentleman, sometime, who came from England, and who can tell 
 you all about it, and many other things that you want to know." 
 
 " Who is he ?" I asked. 
 
 "It is Mr. Fleming. He was here the other day, but not in 
 the house." 
 
 " Did he weave cloth in England ?" 
 
 " No ; he was an officer a lieutenant in the navy." 
 
 " Dear me 1" I was quite breathless almost afraid to think 
 of speaking to a man who had fired broadsides, and knocked 
 ships full of holes, and killed people, as I firmly believed every 
 officer must have, in the wars I had read and heard of. When- 
 ever I thought of him, it was as a fearful man, with a large 
 sword hanging on one side, and sabre and pistols on the other ; 
 and dimly I suspected there would be a cannon following after 
 him. I begged Mr. Radford to speak to him for me, and tell him 
 what I wished to know. " But," I said, " you mustn't let aunt 
 hear you ; for she would be very angry and tell him I was a fool." 
 
 " I think he'd soon find out you were not, Dolly ; and so will 
 she, too, some day, or I'm mistaken." 
 
 The earnest way in which he spoke encouraged me to a bold 
 question. It was one which had caused me many an hour of 
 anxious debate with myself. " Mr. Radford," I said, looking, 
 not at, but into him, " do you think I am a foolish child ?" 
 
 " No, Dolly not foolish." 
 
 The tone and the pause before the last word so qualified the 
 answer, that my heart, which had bounded with hope, seemed 
 turned to lead. Tears, which I could not repress, sprung into 
 my eyes and overflowed. 
 
 " Dolly," he said, very kindly, " what does that mean ?" 
 
 " Oh Mr. Radford," I sobbed, so brokenly that he bent close 
 down to understand, " aunt always tells me I am a fool, and I'm 
 afraid I am." 
 
 " Ilaven't I just told you that you are not ?"
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 53 
 
 " Yes ; but you didn't say it in the right way. I don't know 
 but you think I am partly one. Do you ?" 
 
 " Why, you see, Dolly," he began, " you are not like other 
 children. You're a little strange, certainly ; and though I don't 
 think you a fool, nor foolish either, if 7ou will have me say so, 
 yet I can't tell just why I don't think so, when she says you are. 
 The fact is, you often puzzle me, and I don't know exactly what 
 to make of you. Sometimes I think you're a thundering smart 
 little girl, and then again I don't know what you are." 
 
 I heard this long opinion in dismay, which increased at every 
 word. I had revolved this question secretly in my own mind 
 for hours, by day and night. In the cold winter I -slept in a 
 large room and a large bed, with nothing living near me, 
 except Old Tom, my cat, who always lay inside at my feet. I 
 could not read much in those nights, even when I had a book, 
 and a bit of candle, and was not afraid of aunt's stealing in to 
 detect me, which she sometimes did. When my hands got very 
 cold, I would put my light out, and lie and think on the various 
 questions, painful and pleasant, that were locked up in my little 
 bosom, and this was the absorbing one of them all. If I were 
 really a -fool, then all my dreams and visions of Doing must 
 vanish away ; for a fool, I knew, was. a person who could do 
 nothing whom bad people laughed at, and good ones pitied. 
 How terrible it was to think, as I did sometimes, that I should 
 see people shrink from me, and wish not to speak to me ! For, 
 in my states of deepest discouragement which, however, were 
 rare, thanks to that undying, unslumbering consciousness which 
 no oppression can fully extinguish in the nature that is clothed 
 with power to individualize itself I had a dim foreshadowing of 
 some mouth, or week, or day, or hour, when the fact would 
 become palpable when everybody would recognize me for the 
 thing I had been so often called, and in my mind I dramatized 
 the whole agonizing scene, and saw myself dismissed from the 
 presence of the actors on my stage, marked beyond the possi- 
 bility of mistake.
 
 5t ! AUI,Y DAYS. 
 
 In other times I endeavored to help myself to a solution of 
 my great difficulty, by comparing myself with the children whom 
 I knew. I was conscious of thoughts to which they never 
 responded, but I had no means of knowing that this differ nice 
 was not the chief proof 'of the assertion I wished to refute. 
 Certainly my young companions knew, as Mr. Radford said, :i 
 great deal of which I was entirely ignorant ; and this, I had to 
 confess, was clearly against me. And when I said anything to 
 them on the subjects which interested me so much, there seemed 
 to be an intelligence among them by which they accounted for 
 the strangeness of my thoughts and speech. A look, a slight 
 laugh, an exclamation, such as, "What a queer thing you are !" 
 " How old-fashioned you are 1" or the partial assent to what 
 appeared to be in other minds an admitted statement, "Well, I 
 believe you really are foolish," or the open, coarse assertion that 
 I was, weighed me down sorely. 
 
 I would have given oh, what would I not have given, for 
 communion with some clear-seeing, gentle person, who would 
 have lifted this cloud from my life 1 After Mr. Radford's 
 opinion, I felt more timid than ever about it, but also more 
 earnest to have it settled.. It seemed to grow into a sudden 
 necessity. I had entered my tenth year. For want of any 
 proper child's reading, I was devouring Congressional debates, 
 political newspapers, cabinet reports, and Presidents' and Gov- 
 ernors' messages. I was a repository of a great deal of statisti- 
 cal information with respect to the Navy, the Treasury, the 
 Post-office, and War Departments. I was forming opinions 
 upon tariff and free-trade, upon federal sovereignty and State 
 rights, nullification, internal improvements, and I must know 
 whether I had the common sense, as we called it, of children, 
 or not. A day or two after Mr. Radford had given me 
 the equivocal opinion which distressed me so, I found an 
 opportunity to speak to him, unheard, as I thought, by any 
 one. 
 
 "Do you think, Mr. Radford," I asked, "that that Mr.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 55 
 
 Fleming could tell me what I asked you the other day, about 
 myself ?" 
 
 " What was that, Dolly ?" 
 
 He had wholly forgotten what had scarcely been out of my 
 thoughts, and I felt an inexpressible difficulty in getting it before 
 his mind again. 
 
 "About my being what aunt says I am," I said, very slowly 
 and painfully so painfully that some sense of its great magni- 
 tude to me seemed, while I was forcing the words out, to pene- 
 trate his mind. 
 
 "Thunder and lightning!" he exclaimed; "have you been 
 thinking of that ever since ?" 
 
 " I have been thinking a great deal of it," I replied, " and so 
 would you, I think, if people called you that and you didn't 
 know but it was true." 
 
 " Ah 1 but I should know." 
 
 " Yes, because you are a man, and know everything that you 
 want to. But I am not a woman I am only a little girl, and 
 I cannot tell, myself ; and I want to know, and I must know," 
 I added, passionately crying at last. 
 
 " Well, Dolly," he replied, " I should say if anything could 
 satisfy me that you were not the least bit foolish, it would be 
 this. If you were, you see," he went on, " you wouldn't be so 
 anxious about it." 
 
 But Mr. Radford had lost the pow'er to say a consoling word 
 to me on that subject. 
 
 " I didn't ask you, sir, now to talk about that. I want to 
 know if you think Mr. Fleming, when he comes, could tell me 
 because I would ask him." 
 
 Mr. Radford laughed aloud. I was perplexed and hurt. 
 " Dolly," he said, " I laughed to think how you would do it. 
 You can't talk to Mr. Fleming, you know, as you can to me." 
 
 The words opened a great gulf before me. I had been two 
 years trying to speak to my friend, and how should I address 
 a stranger, the first time seeing him, on such a subject ? I had
 
 56 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 never thought of that before. I was silent ; and my face, con- 
 cealed from Mr. Radford, was drenched in tears. Still, as I 
 stood and weighed every difficulty, I felt, rather i\\&\\~ thought, 
 that his being a stranger was, perhaps, a reason why I could 
 more easily speak to him. I revolved it much in ray mind that 
 night, sometimes feeling valiant enough to have spoken instantly 
 to any person, and again shrinking in painful timidity from the 
 thought of the utter strangeness of the question, and the 
 wretchedness I suffered when people betrayed how much they 
 were amused by such unusual talk in a child. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 " True heart and hand, whom the defenceless loveth." 
 
 IN the morning I felt languid and spiritless, and was abused 
 and cuffed proportionably. Mr. Radford walked down towards 
 the spring, and met me toiling up the hill with a pail of water, 
 which he took from me with a quick motion, so expressive of 
 his sympathy, that I could scarcely restrain my ready tears. 
 
 " Dolly," he said, " don't fret so, child. You know you are 
 not foolish ; and the more I think of it, the more I believe " 
 
 " Don't say anything to me, Mr. Radford," I said, with a 
 violent effort at self-control, " or I shall certainly cry, and then 
 she'll be so very angry." 
 
 I was already sore, in body as well as spirit ; for recently she 
 had been more than commonly passionate and outbreaking. 
 
 " I know it," he said, impatiently ; and he muttered some 
 words which, I believe, were profane, about her skin. We 
 reached the door while he was relieving his feelings in this 
 under tone. She, unfortunately, saw him place the pail of 
 water, for which she had sent me ; and though he was waiting 
 breakfast, and might therefore as well as not go and fetch it,
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 57 
 
 his having done it, especially at a time when she chose to be ill- 
 natured, enraged her. I saw the storm coming, and shrunk in 
 terror from its outburst. I dreaded to have Mr. Radford appear 
 as my champion, lest I should lose his protection altogether ; 
 and I knew that if attacked, in the mood he was then in, he 
 would not be non-committal. I felt, from his tone and looks, 
 that he at last understood me better than he ever had, and that 
 he was consequently more angered with her. 
 
 Places were taken at the table. The coffee was poured in 
 silence ; but the storm continued to gather and darken. Uncle 
 was away on business, as he often was ; and, as usual, Mr. Rad- 
 ford was in charge. He was an important man ; and though 
 modest and quiet, to a degree, he knew his advantage. By the 
 dignity of his position and the easiness of his nature, he had 
 hitherto preserved himself from being embroiled, as every other 
 individual who remained long in the family invariably had been. 
 But now I felt what was coming ; and though it was a warm 
 morning in summer, my flesh seemed to become icy. I could 
 not even feign to swallow my food. It would not leave my 
 mouth ; nor could I help casting furtive and terrified glances at 
 her. I wished her to imagine me eating my breakfast, and so 
 kept putting small morsels in my mouth (though every particle 
 staid there), not knowing what I was to do with it ultimately. 
 I seemed never to have been so utterly miserable as at that 
 moment. If any one had spoken a word it would have "relieved 
 me, but all were silent. Mr. Radford handed his cup, and, as 
 it was returned, I glanced at him, and received, the next instant, 
 a blow on the side of my head, that sent me reeling against the 
 person next me a day-laborer for the haying. 
 
 " Go out doors, thee idiot ! thee little black brat ! After 
 breakfast I'll see if thee can't eat and mind thy own business !" 
 
 The man whom I had fallen against gave me a little help to 
 regain my equilibrium, and I left the table and dragged my 
 nerveless limbs outside the back door. 
 
 " Jacob," she said, speaking to Mr. Radford, as she always 
 3*
 
 58 MY BAKLY DAYS. 
 
 did, by his Christian name for she adhered in every particular 
 to the language of the sect she had been born in (except her 
 occasional profanity) " I wish thee to let that young one 
 alone. When I want thee to bring water, I'll ask thee ; but 
 when I send her, I don't want anybody to help her." 
 
 I had only passed through the little entry, and stopped upon 
 the door-sill, so that I heard every word. 
 
 Mr. Radford was at first prudent. He said, quietly, " I was 
 waiting for breakfast, and the child is not well this morning ; so 
 I thought, when I saw her with the pail, I'd just step down and 
 bring it the rest of the way." 
 
 " It's none of thy business if she's well or not," was the fierce 
 reply. " That's for me to take care of. I'll show thee she is 
 well, and can bring as much water as I want, without thy help." 
 Her voice was very angry much more so than her words ; for 
 ehe seemed to be under a little restraint in quarrelling with him. 
 " Lizzie," she called in her hardest tone, " pour that pail of 
 water into the gutter, and go and bring another." 
 
 I had come into the room at the sound of my name ; and 
 though I was not astonished at the order, yet some spirit, good 
 or evil, prompted me to ask, " Shan't I put it in the kettle ?" In 
 fact, I felt so extremely weakened by that time, that it seemed 
 impossible to bring more water. It was always one of my very 
 hardest tasks the hill was so long and steep, and I was so very 
 small. The little remonstrance I uttered, kindled broad the 
 slumbering flame of passion. She left bet seat, seized me by 
 the shoulder, and whirled me through the passage and out of 
 the door, which was a step from the ground, so furiously that 
 wliou I reached it I could scarcely stand on my feet, and then, 
 lifting the full pail that stood near, she dashed its contents over 
 me. She had often done this ; and though it was intended as a 
 high expression of her anger, it was one that gave me the least 
 pain or sense of outrage. At this time it braced me wonder- 
 fully. The water was very cold, and though I felt weak and 
 low, it was not so much from exhaustion as from nervous stag-
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 59 
 
 nation. The shock brought an instantaneous reaction. My 
 courage rose with my bodily warmth and energy ; and when I 
 came up dripping with the second pailful, and she dashed that 
 over me, and sent me for a third, I felt I did not care at all how 
 long she went on doing so. When I reached the house again, 
 there were warm words passing between her and Mr. Radford 
 I stopped at the outside door, for I was yet very wet, my thin 
 clothing having been as perfectly drenched as if I had fallen 
 into the creek ; and, besides, I did not care to provoke a fresh 
 attack. I knew it would come in some form less agreeable than 
 the bath. The first words I heard were from Mr. Radford. 
 
 " You say you'll do whatever you please with the child, and I 
 suppose you will if she's got no friends ; but I tell you, ma'am, 
 that if she was my sister, or anybody I had a right to take care 
 of, she shouldn't stay an hour longer in your house." 
 
 " Thee shan't stay an hour thyself, after John comes home. 
 Mind that !" 
 
 " Don't say much of that sort of thing to me, ma'am, or I 
 may not be here when he comes. I think I can do as well with- 
 out you as you can without me, just now, anyhow." 
 
 " I wish thee was in ," was the fierce reply, accompanied 
 
 by a quick movement, of which I heard the sound where I sat. 
 " Is she going to strike him ?" I thought ; for she sometimes 
 had so far forgotten herself towards other men and the boys. I 
 did not stir, and Mr. Radford evidently sat still. 
 
 The next words he spoke were a dreadful oath, uttered with 
 a deliberation that made me creep all over. " Don't rise in that 
 threatening manner to me, ma'am. I'm a man, and I won't 
 strike you, but if you were one, Pd knock you down quicker 
 than lightning." 
 
 There was a general moving of chairs and rising up. " And 
 I tell you further," he continued, " and I want the men and 
 boys to hear it, I won't have that girl abused as she has been. 
 I'm going to stay here till Mr. Smalley comes home, and don't 
 you whip her, nor knock her about any more while I'm ou the
 
 60 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 farm. If you do " he paused. " Come, boys, let's go to the 
 
 field." They passed out by me, and as he went, he said, in a 
 reasoning, persuasive tone, "Be a good child, Dolly, and I'll 
 take care of you." 
 
 " I will," I said thankfully ; and though I was extremely 
 doubtful if she would not fall upon me furiously the moment I 
 entered her presence, I had, nevertheless, nerve enough to 
 walk at once into the room, where she was standing by the table. 
 I commenced at the further end to gather the dishes up, and 
 did not look at her after the first glance, but went on with my 
 task. She remained silent some moments, and I began to ques- 
 tion whether Mr. Radford's getting angry, and swearing at her 
 had not done good, and whether if her husband, and the other 
 grown persons whom she abused, did so too, it would not be a 
 great deal better, when she said, or rather hissed, " Go along, 
 thee nasty little wretch, and take off thy wet clothes. I've a 
 great mind to break every little bone in thy hateful body ; get 
 out of my sight !" and she made a quick motion towards me, from 
 which I darted away into the next room, where my few clothes 
 were kept. 
 
 While I was arranging myself in dry garments, I had time to 
 consider the probabilities of the day before me. I knew that 
 if anything could restrain her, it would be the dread of what 
 Mr. Radford had threatened his leaving. There was a great 
 deal of hay and grain to be cut and gathered. I had seen the 
 season often enough to know how very much it pressed upon 
 every one, and I knew that if Mr. Radford should go away, in 
 uncle's absence, it would be considered a serious calamity. I 
 had never heard him threaten before. He was not a man, I 
 think, who ever used threatening language without fully mean- 
 ing to do all he said. But although this somewhat reassured 
 me for that day, it quite terrified me for the future. If I 
 lost Mr. Radford, what should I do ? In view of that pro- 
 bability, he seemed to me entirely sufficient for all my demands. 
 I forgot his raillery forgot the many things of which I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 61 
 
 could not speak to him forgot all his shortcomings, and remem- 
 bered only that he was always kind ; that I could always tell 
 him of whatever happened to me externally, and that in quiet 
 ways he did me a great deal of good. I dared not trust myself 
 to think seriously of his going, for it would not do to be tear- 
 ful or sad that day; so, as briskly and as quickly as I could, I 
 went out to my tasks. 
 
 I assumed that her rage had evaporated, and addressed her, 
 when it was necessary, in a natural way, with as much amia- 
 bility as I could exhibit, towards such a monster as she then 
 seemed. We got through the forenoon without another 
 skirmish ; and when I went down to the meadow with luncheon, 
 I reported progress to Mr. Radford, who was in an astonishing 
 state of independence, and who said with satisfaction, after I 
 had told him all, " Hum I Yes ; blast her, she'd better carry 
 herself tidily, after offering to strike me !" 
 
 As I was starting homeward, Albert followed me a few steps, 
 and said, " Eliza, when we are milking to-night, get one of your 
 cows near mine, if you can. I want to tell you something." 
 
 " Yes," I replied, filled with a kind of glad wonder ; for I 
 knew from his looks it was nothing bad he had to say. 
 
 That the forces might be as strong as possible, the dreadful 
 Peterson boy was there among them ; and his presence, which 
 always made me uncomfortable, was not the less disagreeable at 
 that time, when I felt that all the others, however dull or 
 strange to me, were kindly disposed. I was in a sort, coming 
 out, and the presence of one decidedly negative spirit troubled 
 me more than it would have, before the scene in the morning. 
 
 When I was going down with the afternoon lunch, he had 
 contrived, upon pretence of getting a drink, to slip away to the 
 bank of the creek, where I had to pass. He sat under the 
 shrubbery that overhung the path, and I did not perceive him 
 till my skirts brushed his knees. When I looked in his face 
 there was something in it that made me speechless for an 
 instant almost breathless.
 
 62 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " I say, Tonewanta," he said, with his diabolical leer and 
 grin, stretching out his feet at the same moment across the nar- 
 row path, and so stopping me, " couldn't you love me as well as 
 you do Albert ?" 
 
 " Yes, if you were as good a boy, and as kind to me ; but 
 you are not, and I hate you. Take away your feet and let me 
 pass." 
 
 If I had attempted to step over them, he would have tripped 
 me he had just that low love of tormenting. 
 
 " Oh, don't be in a hurry 1" he said, taking hold of my dress ; 
 " stop and talk a little." 
 
 " If you don't let me go, this instant," I replied, setting down 
 my basket for I had a pail of milk in one hand and a basket of 
 food in the other and snatching my frock from his abhorred 
 touch, " I'll scream to Mr. Radford." 
 
 " He won't hear you," he said, tauntingly, standing up at the 
 same moment, and putting his arm about my shoulders. He 
 was almost of the stature of a man, and though I was very small 
 and active, and could, unencumbered, have escaped him like a 
 weasel, I never thought for a moment that I could drop my 
 things and run. When he touched my neck, I sent forth a 
 scream that made the little valley ring. 
 
 " You little devil, you," he said, removing his hand and 
 raising his foot, as if he would have sent me off the steep bank 
 into the water, " get along ! I don't wonder Aunt Phebe beats 
 you. I've a great mind to do it myself." 
 
 A dozen steps brought me to the corner, in full view of the 
 workmen, who were, as he had said, a considerable distance 
 away. But they had evidently heard me, for their work was 
 suspended at the moment, and they were all looking about as if 
 expecting something. I walked hastily on, my face blazing, 
 and every drop of my blood seeming to boil in my veins. Mr. 
 Radford was nearest me. I dropped my basket and pail ; and, 
 the instant he stood up to speak to me, I seized his arm and 
 drew it about me very tight.
 
 MY EAKLT DATS. 63 
 
 " Why, Dolly !" he exclaimed, " why in the world do you 
 hurry so in this hot day ? Has that old Jezebel been" 
 
 " No, no," I said, shaking my head rather than articulating, 
 " not she Torn Peterson." 
 
 " Thunder and lightning 1" he exclaimed, almost dashing me 
 upon a bunch of hay near us. "Where is he? Did he stop 
 you on the path ?" 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Then," said he, with a dreadful oath, " I'll skin him alive ! 
 I'll whip him till he can't stand 1 Here (to the men), here is 
 luncheon ; take it and go on without me. I don't want any. 
 Dolly," he said, " you wait here till I come back." He pulled 
 off his gloves, drew his knife from his pocket, and strode off." 
 
 " Is he going to cut his throat ?" I thought. But as he 
 passed the chestnut-tree, he stopped and cut a whip a straight, 
 elastic one that shot up from the root, and then walked hastily 
 on. He disappeared around the corner, and in a few moments 
 the shouts and outcries announced that he was doing his work, 
 and doing it well. 
 
 The men looked up from their eating with astonishment. One 
 said hastily, " Where is Tom ?" and the question and the noise, 
 and my appearance, seemed to suggest all in an instant. 
 
 " That's good," said another; " I hope he'll lather him well." 
 
 " He'll do that, you may be sure," said a third, " for he's up 
 to-day anyhow, and he don't love the boy any better than the 
 rest of us do." 
 
 " Th-th-th-there ain't another so beow-beow-bero-bad a one in 
 the country," said a fatherly, kind old man, named Eaton, whose 
 frightful impedi ment had amused me irresistibly, till he spoke a 
 few times to me, and then I could never laugh at him. 
 
 I did not speak; but in a moment they were all silenced by 
 the boy and man appearing, and coming rapidly towards us. 
 Mr. Eadford was behind, and occasionally he raised the whip as 
 if he would have struck, but the boy walked straight forward, 
 and he did not. When they came near, Mr. Radford, though
 
 6-i MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 he was very warm, was as white as a piece of paper. He shook 
 with rage. He paid no attention to the presence of the men, 
 nor did he speak, but with occasional touches of the whip he 
 drove the blubbering wretch to me. 
 
 " Now," he said, " pull off that old hat of yours." 
 
 It carae off. 
 
 " Tell Eliza that you are very sorry you stopped her, and 
 spoke to her on the path, and ask her to forgive you." 
 
 The speech did not commence at once; up went the whip, but 
 the words came at the moment. 
 
 " Promise her and me, now, that you will never open your 
 lips to speak to her again when she is alone." 
 
 " I never will." 
 
 " Nor when she's with anybody, either, if you can help it." 
 
 " I won't." 
 
 " Now put on your jacket and go home, and tell your father 
 I've whipped you till you're sore, and I advise him, if he isn't too 
 infernal lazy, to give you another. You young scoundrel, don't 
 show your face here again this summer; and mind, if I hear of 
 you, it must be of your behaving well to her when you see her, 
 or I'll skin you next time." 
 
 The boy went off, hanging his head, and Mr. Radford sat down. 
 
 " There's a fellow going to the gallows," he said, " or I'm 
 mistaken. Give me a drink, will you ? I am very warm." 
 
 The men applauded Mr. Radford warmly, though they knew 
 only what they had seen. Mr. Eaton said the boy ought to be 
 " weaw-weaw-weaw-w-w-whipped every day of his life till he 
 behaved better," a course of discipline which my humanity, out- 
 raged as I felt, dissented from at once, but I was silent. 
 
 " Dolly," said my champion, " if I have one or two more bat- 
 tles to fight for you, I shall become quite a hero, eh ? I am 
 getting stirred up considerably," he added, shaking himself, as 
 if he enjoyed the excitement. " I couldn't whip the old woman 
 this morning, but cursing her came next to it in satisfaction; and 
 iiow she's broken the ice, she can get plenty of it any day. I'm
 
 MY KARLY DAYS. 65 
 
 going to take you in hand from this time, Dolly: you've been 
 abused long enough. Now be a good girl, and you'll see, if I 
 know it, nobody shall hurt you, or treat you ill." 
 
 He said it in such a hearty way, and I felt such an entire and 
 grateful reliance on him, that I took his hand from his knee and 
 kissed it. He looked at me a moment with quivering eyelids, 
 compressed his lips, took a long breath, cleared his throat as if 
 he had taken a cold, and said: 
 
 "Well, Dolly, I've sent off one hand, and so I must do the 
 work of two." 
 
 " What will aunt say ?" I asked. 
 
 " She be . No, I've said enough of that sort to-day, I 
 
 think I mean that I don't care what she says. Out of doors 
 I'll do what I think proper. I know Uncle John will say I am 
 right, and I don't care for her what time I shall stay now." 
 
 " Oh, dear," I said, keenly pained at his last words, " you are 
 not going away, are you, Mr. Eadford. ? If you do, what will 
 become of me ?" I could scarcely restrain my tears. 
 
 " I can't talk to you now, Dolly, about that. Sometime be- 
 fore long, I'll tell you something that I'm going to do," he 
 added, with a pleased, happy look, "but not now. Go to the 
 house, child, and don't hurry yourself so much." 
 
 " Shall I say anything about " 
 
 " No, no; I'll manage that."
 
 66 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 " The hopes, that nurtured in my breast, 
 Have been the very wings to me 
 On which existence floats or rests 
 These only shall my eras be." 
 
 As I walked back, I felt myself very much lifted out of my 
 oppression. Somebody had defended me. The current no 
 longer swept irresistibly on, all, all one way. To have had a 
 wrong acknowledged, and my forgiveness asked, and an indi- 
 vidual bound by a promise which I thought he could not dare to 
 break, never to indulge again towards me his love of insulting 
 and tormenting really I was emerging into light, freedom, and 
 consequence. I should not always be obliged to cower and 
 shrink before the coarse, low people whom I had so dreaded. It 
 did me a world of good to have been so vindicated; and as to 
 Mr. Radford, I could have baSed potatoes for him on the hot- 
 test day and never felt warm. I thought how could I do some- 
 thing to make him comfortable. At night he always bathed his 
 feet, and he had a little vessel for that purpose which he kept 
 in his chamber. I could think of nothing else but filling this 
 with water, so that he should not have to go for it himself. He 
 smiled, when he came down-stairs after supper, and taking ad- 
 vantage of the back of the enemy for a moment, laid his hand 
 on my shoulder with a gentle pressure, which was a full acknow- 
 ledgment of my small effort. Aunt and he were very dignified 
 and restrained after the morning. The contempt that occa- 
 sionally flashed out of his blue eyes, and spoke in his gestures, 
 was suppressed chiefly, I thought, on my account. But it 
 showed a bow that would not bear further bending without 
 peril.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 67 
 
 I had no chance to get Albert's communication in the dairy- 
 yard. We each milked eight cows, and there were eight others 
 milked by anybody who could be spared, and when no one came 
 we had to divide them between us. I could have wept with the 
 pain in my hands and arms almost every night and morning, but 
 that I had so much else to do and think of. This night, espe- 
 cially, after the excitements and fatigue of the day, I had great 
 difficulty in getting through my double task, but as Tom had 
 generally assisted us, I said not a word about other help. After 
 supper, aunt had fortunately to go out and call on a sick neigh- 
 bor, poor Mrs. Rumsey, and when Albert had watched her be- 
 yond hearing, he came back and said hurriedly : 
 
 "I heard you talking with Mr. Radford the other night 
 about her calling you a fool, and I want -you to talk with my 
 father about it. I am going home to-morrow night, and I'll 
 tell him to come over, shall I ?" 
 
 "But I could not talk with him," I said; "she would hinder 
 me all the time." 
 
 " Well, if he comes he'll contrive some way to speak to you; 
 and if you could only hear him ten minutes, you'd never think 
 of asking anybody again if you were a fool or foolish. I'll tell 
 him, and he'll be sure to come." 
 
 " He don't know me, I suggested," half doubtfully. 
 
 " He knows you well enough," said the boy earnestly; " and 
 I've heard him say that he'd give all he has in the world if one 
 of his children had the talents you have." 
 
 While he was saying this, I seemed to undergo a transforma- 
 tion. I felt a power, as it were, swelling through my whole 
 being. My brain seemed to glow with the life that flowed into 
 it from those wondrous words. I could not doubt their truth, 
 for Albert was strictly honest, and his father was acknowledged 
 to be the most intelligent and reading man of the neighborhood. 
 How strangely I felt 1 I turned this over and over, and wings 
 seemed lent to my spirit. My oppression fell, as a cast-off gar- 
 ment, to my feet. Conscious of a strength of which I had
 
 68 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 vaguely dreamed, but always doubted, even in my best moments, 
 I suddenly felt myself a giant for my own rescue. I looked back 
 upon the past, with burning contempt for what was coarse and 
 degrading in it; and wild, broken visions of the future swept 
 over me, as the sunbeams illuminate portions of the earth that 
 have just passed out of eclipse. I stood up, feeling taller than 
 when I was last on my feet, and said, I imagine with some dig- 
 nity, for a faint, queer smile flickered over the face of my inter- 
 locutor : 
 
 " I shall be very glad to see and talk with your father, 
 Albert, but since Mr. Radford spoke to her yesterday morning, 
 and I have promised him to be as good as I can, I should not 
 like to do anything to make her angry, so I hope he can manage 
 it in some way without that." 
 
 "Yes, he will. He knows her well, and you may be sure, he'll 
 do it right." 
 
 "I thank you, Albert," I said, gravely; and I offered him my 
 hand which he took and retained, while I added, " You couldn't 
 have said anything that would make me so happy. Some other 
 time I'll talk to you more about it. Now, I want to get alone. 
 Good night." 
 
 I was not long alone before I found another want as pressing 
 as the last had been that of instruction. My whole nature rose 
 and seemed to consume me with one giant craving the desire 
 to know. I no longer sought to measure or regulate myself by 
 Betsey or Rosanna. I felt I was to live my own life a differ- 
 ent one from theirs ; and they were no longer anything more to 
 me than playmates, with whom I could spend my lighter hours; 
 there was to be no more stretching or curbing by them no de- 
 ferring to their standard. 
 
 I did not go to bed, for I wished aunt to come home and re- 
 tire first, that I might keep my candle "burning a little longer. 
 Light seemed to help clear my ideas. When she came in, I was 
 mending a torn frock as well as I could. She had taught me to 
 sew well, and it pleased her to speak graciously to me now, and
 
 MY EARLY DATS. 69 
 
 even to commit the almost unprecedented act 'of uttering a word 
 of commendation. I could 'not respond to it, for I felt that I 
 had been too grievously wronged, and was now too earnest in 
 seeking redress. She retired, bidding me go to bed as soon as 
 I had done a few more stitches. This I did, indeed ; but, being 
 in extreme want of help, I took a book from the bureau in my 
 room, where the few which the household contained were chiefly 
 kept. They were large, unwieldy volumes, mostly medical, to 
 aid the administration of common remedies in the absence of a 
 physician. They were Thatcher's Dispensary, somebody's Prac- 
 tice, Darwin's Zoonomia., and two or three other smaller works. 
 How Darwin found his way there I am unable to conjecture. I 
 had often looked into the volume, and had a dim notion that the 
 man who wrote it must have been very learned ; for it differed 
 from the few other books I had seen, in neither relating what 
 persons had done, nor describing things that they had seen ; 
 and so I felt how much he must have thought to write all this. 
 To-night I had a greater interest than ever before in -examining 
 this book. It was its size and its large words that I wished to 
 estimate. Of course, I could scarcely derive any clear idea 
 from one sentence that I read. But I knew he must have un- 
 derstood all, and thought all ; and if he had, there must be the 
 same power in other minds, for he was only a man. 
 
 I turned and tossed all night. My dreams were gay frag- 
 ments of magnificent visions. The spirit seemed to unfold from 
 its slumber and struggle up into the glorious light of the possi- 
 ble. Great achievements 
 
 " in glimmering dawn 
 
 Half shown, were broken and withdrawn." 
 
 When I arose in the morning I felt myself etherealized. The 
 grand assurance of power, the consciousness thereof unqualified 
 by the oppressive doubts that had hitherto held me in chains, 
 buoyed me above the earth, so that I seemed to float, rather 
 than walk on it. I was passing through imaginary scenes all
 
 70 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 day. If I went into the pantry I fancied myself entering a room 
 full of wise persons, who received me as one of themselves. The 
 ranks of cheeses on the shelves became men and women, who 
 treated me cordially, and talked to me on grave and learned 
 subjects. More than once during the day, I found the evil eye 
 fixed on me, with an expression of wonder, but it did not trouble 
 me. I was far above, and away from it. If it appear that I 
 exaggerate the intense joys of that time, let any soul consider 
 what it is to be utterly stripped of that which it craves ; to have 
 the whole force of a powerful nature concentrated upon one de- 
 sire, without which, life itself would seem a painful vacuity ; and, 
 after ceaseless struggle, and doubt, and questioning, to attain it 
 suddenly in a moment to feel the inrushing tides of freedom 
 and strength, and hail in exultant joy the clearly defined me, the 
 something which. I had so long and painfully groped after, which 
 doubled myself and multiplied indefinitely my advantage the 
 bridegroom, who came in from without and wedded himself ten- 
 derly, with all his overflowing power, to the feeble, oppressed, 
 shrinking consciousness, that held uncertain occupancy in my 
 bruised bosom. Think not that I can ever overstate the emotions 
 of that day, memorable as few others in my life have been. 
 
 The miser who after long toil discovers inexhaustible treas- 
 ure ; the ambitious, who has conquered the last enemy ; the 
 vain, who sees no successful rival in the show of life; the loving, 
 who, through consuming anxiety, and apprehensions that sicken 
 the fainting heart, at last obtains the object of yearning; all rejoice 
 when their time of fruition arrives. The world sees their joy 
 and sympathizes in it. I had attained in the few words spoken 
 to me more than each or all. I had attained myself, and the 
 possibility, it seemed to me, of all else that I could desire. I 
 was intensely happy, and removed infinitely further from the 
 material degradations of my daily life. Out of these I now saw 
 the certain escape not exactly the path, but in glimpses, the 
 broad, full life to which by some path I should by and by come.
 
 MY EAELT DATS. 71 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " A good man is God's best legacy to this straying world." 
 
 " Thou banishest my sweetest dreams, 
 And yet, I cannot call tb.ee foe." 
 
 I WAS made glad a day or two later, by the sight of Albert's 
 father, for though I no longer awaited his decision, I wished to 
 talk with him. It was not possible at the house ; for she seemed 
 at times to have the gift of ubiquity. I was out during most of 
 his stay there, but passing once or twice through the room, I 
 heard him asking leave for me to visit his daughters. At first 
 I think she refused peremptorily ; and when he went away I did 
 not know if he had prevailed or not ; but on Saturday afternoon 
 a young girl whom I had never seen before, came to our house. 
 I recognized her at once, for she bore a striking resemblance to 
 her brother. She had come to take me home with her, she said. 
 
 We milked the cows early, and Albert went with us ; and a 
 happy walk it was, over the meadows, and by a devious, clean 
 path through a broad belt of wood. When we reached the well- 
 ordered, neat log cabin, with its little " flower patch " in front, 
 supper was already laid, and the whole family assembled in the 
 room we first entered. Mrs. Garland, who was in feeble health, 
 had a plain face, but the softest and gentlest expression. She 
 stood up a moment when I was presented to her, and took my 
 hand kindly ; then she looked full in my eyes, and, as if approv- 
 ing what she found there, drew me toward her and kissed my 
 forehead. It was so new to me I could not remember that 
 any one of my own sex had kissed me since I parted with my 
 sisters long ago ; only once or twice in more than four years 
 that I could recollect, had my adopted father treated me with
 
 72 
 
 MY RAKLT DAYS. 
 
 that mark of personal affection. I had been so often told that 
 I was frightfully ugly I knew so well that I was, too that I 
 never expected it from any one. It seemed to me that I must 
 be a little less homely after it. 
 
 We were invited to table, and Mr. Garland, after all were 
 seated, stood up. I was looking at him, wondering why he stood 
 so still, when he raised his right hand, with a gesture and ex- 
 pression which my instinct understood at once, though I could 
 not remember ever having seen such a ceremony since I left my 
 good grandfather's, where, according to Friend's custom, we had 
 been trained to sit silent, with face downward, for a few moments 
 before taking our food. I did not know then what it meant, 
 but Mr. Garland, in a few reverential words, solemnly spoken, 
 explained it all. I was afraid to speak cheerfully after the grace 
 lest it should offend; and was quite surprised by the children pre- 
 sently plunging into a succession of little jokes and banterings, that 
 were perfectly dazzling and wonderful to me. I could not at once 
 get free among them, and, though I felt that I was breathing a 
 very atmosphere of love and tenderness, I was not for some time 
 happy. Mary, the oldest daughter, who had come with me, was 
 a little graver and seemed to feel a sort of responsibility toward 
 me, which reserved her a little from the general conversation j 
 and Mrs. Garland, also, occasionally addressed me. She offered me 
 a cup of tea, which I ventured to decline, and then Albert, with 
 a queer look, said, " shall I tell, Eliza, why you won't drink tea ?" 
 
 " Oh, do !" exclaimed several voices at once. But Albert did 
 not speak instantly, and when I looked up, I saw that he was 
 waiting for his father, who said, when they were all silent : 
 
 " Children, Eliza has not said yes ; and I am sure you would 
 not wish Albert to tell something she had said to him, if it would 
 displease her." 
 
 " Oh, but would it displease you ?" said a vivacious little thing 
 of about my own age, who seemed to me very young. She un- 
 derstood her brother's expression, and thought there would be 
 something very amusing in the story.
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 73 
 
 " No, it wouldn't displease me," I replied, " if you didn't laugh 
 too much at me." 
 
 "I'll tell it easy," said Albert, with a comical look, which 
 seemed to mean, it is very funny, and I could make you split 
 your sides, if it were not for her. 
 
 So he related what I had communicated to him one day ; that 
 Marcia and Rosanna Edwards had told me of their mother's want- 
 ing tea so much, and how I concluded from that, and from hear- 
 ing aunt and other women who visited her talk about it, that it 
 must be very bad to get to wanting it, and so I had determined 
 never to drink a single cup. And be added, " She's never going 
 to drink any whisky either, because, Eumsey, when he drinks it, 
 destroys the things in. the house. There, now, I told you I'd tell 
 it easy, and you see nobody laughs." 
 
 " I don't see anything to laugh at," said little sprightly. 
 " No ; but father and mother and I do," he said. " That 
 story is for older heads than yours, miss." 
 
 " But Eliza isn't any older than I am," she insisted. 
 " She's fifty years at least," said her brother. 
 " Yes, my dear," said the mother, her mild, distinct utterance 
 seeming to overcome the rapid chatter, as a lull breaks the 
 whistle and rush of a gale ; " Eliza is a great deal older than 
 you in her thoughts, for I am sure you would never think of 
 leaving off eating or drinking anything because it hurt somebody 
 else." 
 
 All the evening I felt a little confused. I did not know if it 
 would be right to speak Or do certain things that I felt im- 
 pelled to, the grace before supper had so unsettled me. In every 
 pause I was trying to clear my mind about it, and ascertain my 
 relation to the people " who believed in such things." For at 
 home I never heard the acknowledgment or worship of God al- 
 luded to but with coarsest ridicule or virulent ill-nature. I was 
 quite distressed. Doubts even of Mr. Garland's infallibility in 
 the matter that had so comforted me, did vaguely rise in the 
 remote borders of my thought. Religious, praying people I
 
 74 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 always heard denounced as fools or hypocrites, and the more I 
 thought of it the more unhappy I grew, that Mr. Garland should 
 he among them. I felt that he was good, and that the family 
 was charming ; so loving and considerate, and never a harsh or 
 cruel word, for Mary and Albert had proudly told me so in the 
 woods, and yet I thought he must be either bad or weak. 
 
 Before we went to bed there were prayers regularly attended, 
 with all the children on their knees. (I did not know what to 
 do till I saw the last one go down and then I knelt too.) But 
 my thoughts were in the wildest tumult, and when he prayed 
 specially for the little orphan stranger, I was well-nigh dis- 
 tracted, between the deep tenderness that was stirred in my 
 heart and the insult I thought was offered to my reason. For 
 nil my teaching had brought me to disdain prayer, and despise 
 those who offered it. I doubted if I ought not to protest, and 
 yet, when we rose, they were so very kind, and bade me good- 
 night, as Mary and I retired op the narrow, straight, rude stairs, 
 so tenderly, that I could not say a word. Mary and I talked a 
 little, but I could not startle her with my thoughts ; so we only 
 said a few commonplace tilings beside my expression of great 
 admiration for her mother, and went to sleep. 
 
 I had heard it said by the girls of my acquaintance, that what 
 one dreamed the first night one slept in a house, would come to 
 pass ; and the extreme novelty of the circumstance in my life, 
 made me think of this. I wished for certain dreams, and in my 
 heart, prayed the Something Invisible that I believed in, to send 
 me those I wanted. I desired to dream of going to school ; but 
 I did not, nor of much else that I could remember in the morn- 
 inir ; but I felt more comfortable and settled for the sleep. If, 
 'nly, they wouldn't pray now, I thought, while I was dres.-inir, 
 HIM I I ventured to ask Mary, when she came up-stajfs, if they 
 wtmld. 
 
 " Oh, yes !" she replied ; " we have prayers every morning, 
 i nl Sunday mornings longer than other days. Father bas more 
 i.uie then."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 75 
 
 " And does he think," I asked, " that God has more time to 
 hear ?" 
 
 The words were spoken, and I could not recall them, though 
 I would have given my right hand to have done it. She gave 
 me such a look of astonishment, and I thought she shrunk 
 further back as she said, " Why, Eliza, Albert has always told 
 me you were so very good !" 
 
 " Has he ?" I asked, going on fastening my frock, though my 
 fingers became suddenly benumbed and cold, for I felt the whole 
 weight of that broad condemnation. It sunk with leaden pres- 
 sure into every fibre and current of my being. } condemned 
 myself, too, for I knew that the feelings of religious people were 
 very tender in regard to their religion. I had seen that often 
 in controversies in our house, and my large veneration gave me 
 an intuition of the same fact. Yet I thought it weak to be gov- 
 erned by that. I ought to speak my mind. I was in great 
 danger of making a total failure this time. I trembled with the 
 sudden nervous depression, and knew not how to regain what 
 I had lost. But my frank, loving nature, which had been very 
 strongly appealed to in this house, prompted me to throw myself 
 on the girl's kindness, and, choking back my rising emotions, I 
 said, as firmly as I could, while I put my arm about her 
 waist 
 
 " Well, Mary, don't think ill of me for what I have said. I 
 wouldn't speak a word to hurt one of you, who are so kind to me, 
 for the world. I know very little about such things, certainly, 
 and I shouldn't have spoken if I had thought of the difference in 
 our feelings ; but don't think I am worse than Albert says I am, 
 for I wouldn't do anything wrong if I knew it. Will you for- 
 give me, and not tell your father and mother ? I'd rather talk 
 to them myself." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she answered kindly, but less heartily than I wished. 
 She just touched her lips to mine, and I followed her down- 
 stairs, eouijKinitively strengthened and tranquillized. The little' 
 scene ami ii> result had calmed me for tlie morning devotion ;
 
 76 MT EARLY DAYS. 
 
 aud when the cheerful breakfast was over, and Mrs. Garland 
 had shown me about the girls' flower-beds, and spoken very 
 kindly to me on several subjects, such as the apples and peaches 
 on our farm, and the haying, and uncle's absence, I felt quite re- 
 assured and easy. By and by her husband came out of his little 
 bed-room, shaved and dressed, and I was about to ask if he were 
 going away, when he said, " There is no meeting to-day, Eliza, 
 and the children all want to walk down and see the great drift 
 wood. Will you go with us ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," I answered, gladly, for I had thought of sitting in 
 the house all day ; " I^hall be very glad to go. Will Mary go 
 along ?" 
 
 " No," said her mother. " I have to keep Mary at home with 
 me." But the girl was very cheerful and bright, and said her 
 turn would come next time. So I saw she was not selfish or ill- 
 natured. So different from Rhoda Peterson ! We set off, aud 
 after we got well into the fields, Mr. Garland came close to my 
 pide and asked me how I had liked the last book Albert had 
 taken me. It was a life of Lafayette. 
 
 " Oh, very much, except I thought it was mean in him to 
 thwart Napoleon," who was just then a great hero to me. 
 
 Mr. Garland smiled, and said, " I think Lafayette was a 
 better man than Napoleon, aud it was quite right that he should 
 oppose him." 
 
 " But," I replied, " Lafayette did not love anybody as Na- 
 poleon loved Josephine. And he couldn't fight battles so well, 
 and he was never half as handsome. His eyes were too big, aud 
 his forehead too low." 
 
 "His eyes and his forehead, my dear," said he, "looked, I 
 suppose, as God made them to. It is what we do, and not what 
 sort of eyes, and nose, and mouth, we have that makes us hand- 
 some or homely." 
 
 When he said this, it diverted me from the characters we were 
 discussing to my own great calamity of an ugly face. 
 
 " Mr. Garland," I said, " do you think that being very good
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 77 
 
 as good as one could possibly be would make a girl that was 
 very homely look handsome ?" 
 
 " It would make everybody love her, and that would be the 
 same thing, wouldn't it ?" 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed, sir ; because they wouldn't know that she 
 was very good when they first saw her, but they would know if 
 she was handsome, when they looked once at her." 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "but we do not always love handsome 
 people, nor handsome children, when we first see them." 
 
 " We love to look at them, though. I love to look at your 
 little Laura, because she is handsomer than any of the other 
 children. I'm so very homely myself that I should like somebody 
 that knows, to tell me whether if I was very good I should grow 
 handsome." 
 
 "-And then would you be good for that ?" 
 
 " I would try, for that," I said. 
 
 " And if it did not make you more beautiful ?" 
 
 " Then I should be sorry." 
 
 " But you would still be good ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, because I shouldn't be happy if I were not." 
 
 " Then, my dear," he replied, " if you are always of that mind 
 it won't make much difference whether you are handsome or 
 not. People will love you all the same. God has not given you 
 beauty, but he has given you a great deal that other little girls 
 have not fine talents, which you must use to do good, and a 
 wonderful memory, by which you may become very wise, if you 
 study." 
 
 Mr. Garland's words fell very quietly on my ear, and on my 
 spirit. I had become so well acquainted with myself since Albert 
 had told me his father's opinion, that I was not in the least ex- 
 cited by what he now said. 
 
 I confessed to him that 1 had been very anxious to know if I 
 had good sense or not, but that Albert had already told me he 
 thought so, and so I was at rest about it. "But, sir," I said, 
 " there is another thing I wish you would advise me about, and
 
 S MY KAI.I.Y I>AV8. 
 
 that is, how I urn to get to school ?" We walked some time in 
 silence after this question. At length he said 
 
 " I cannot advise you about that now, Eliza. Poor child, 1 
 can only pity you ; but I trust much in God for you. He has 
 given you good gifts, and in some way or other He will take care 
 that you are educated, so that you can use them." 
 
 I felt partly inclined to c*omfort myself with this vague trust 
 secretly, but strangely impelled to renounce it altogether in 
 words. If Mr. Radford, or anybody whom I respected, had 
 helped me to the opinions I wished to express, I should have 
 quoted my authority without fear or shame ; but I shrunk from 
 referring to aunt, and uncle always seemed to me to believe and 
 say what he did, because she demanded it of him. 
 
 I walked on meditating what I should do. At length I said, 
 rather timidly, " Mr. Garland, at home they don't believe -that 
 God does any such thing as you say he will, and they laugh 
 about people who do, or who pray to him." 
 
 " I know that, my child," he said, sadly, " and that is the 
 greatest danger you are in. Your mind will be very apt, I'm 
 afraid, to be affected by it ; but I believe God will take care of 
 you in that, too. Don't think as they think, if you can help it ; 
 but whatever you may think, Eliza, always be as good as possi- 
 ble. Do not let anything or anybody tempt you to do wrong. 
 Never say what isn't true ; never let bad people or children 
 lead you astray, and learn all you can from good ones and from 
 the few books you can get ; and in time I feel certain that some 
 way will open to you to get to school. It is right in you to 
 desire it. Do not give it up, Tind God will help you." 
 
 This conversation tamed and yet it strengthened me. It 
 made assurance doubly sure, as to myself and what I ought to 
 do*; and it helped me to look practically at my duties and diffi- 
 culties, with a purpose to work my way out of them. 
 
 That evening Albert and I had to return home early, that we 
 miirht be in time for the milking. Mr. Garland accompanied us 
 to rlie bank of the creek, opposite our house, and sat with me
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 79 
 
 while Albert waded the stream and paddled the canoe over. 
 He was very encouraging and helpful, and yet he pruned the 
 extravagance of my ideas most effectually. Listening to his 
 sensible, tender, and unimaginative talk, I could feel something 
 of the struggle that was before me the patience that would be 
 demanded : the humiliating and wearing delay. 
 
 " Eliza," he said, " you are young enough yet. Do not feel 
 too impatient." 
 
 " I am almost ten years old," I said. 
 
 " Yes ; but if you do not get to school for three or four years 
 yet, it will do." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Garland three or four years ! I shall be a woman 
 soon after that, and then I can't go." 
 
 " You can go when you are twenty, if you choose, child ; and 
 you'll learn the fnster for being older. Whenever you can learn 
 anything now, do so ; and, I need not say, don't forget it, for 1 
 believe you could not. Any book that you want, Albert shall 
 bring to you. I would not encourage you to disobedience in 
 anything else, but this is right, I know, whatever she says only 
 try to avoid provoking her. It grieves us to hear of your being- 
 beaten and abused, and perhaps if yon were more careful a part 
 of it could be avoided." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " The unhappy man was found, 
 
 The spirit settled, but the reason drowned ; 
 And all the dreadful tempest died away, 
 To the dull stillness of the misty day!" 
 
 TIME went on with me, after these events, much as before. 
 The strong inner purpose which now I clearly and unquestion- 
 ingly cherished, lent, I imagine, a certain dignity to my bearing ; 
 for from tUts time my diminutives began to be heard less
 
 80 MY KAKLY DAYS. 
 
 frequently. Tonny and Tonewanta were never spoken. They 
 were not coarse enough to satisfy the ill-temper that demanded 
 the most wounding epithets, and not respectful enough to be 
 used by those who began to understand in me something else 
 than a child to be pitied and petted for her natural infirmities. 
 In moments of extreme satisfaction, Mr. Radford did occasion- 
 ally call me Dolly yet ;~ but except on such occasions, I was 
 given my Christian name. 
 
 I was most anxious to see Mr. Fleming ; for, by much thinking 
 on the subject I wished to inquire of him about, and upon others 
 of which he was likely to be master, I had come to regard him 
 as a sort of living encyclopedia, which 1 had but to turn to for 
 anything I wished to know. Mr. Garland had told me that he 
 was a kind man and a gentleman, and that I need not fear to 
 approach him. But he did not come. Meantime, fortune 
 favored me in another way. Our house being larger than any 
 other in the neighborhood, and perhaps better kept, was the 
 resort of those, who, for any reason might wish to stop for a few 
 days in it. Some persons from a town about thirty miles dis- 
 tant, connected with land agencies, came and put up with us. 
 The party numbered five or six, the chief persons being a 
 wealthy German gentleman and his two sons. 
 
 I scarcely spoke to these young men. In their eyes I was a 
 scullion, with scarcely stronger claims to their consideration 
 than my pet lamb. But I gathered many details of external 
 refinement from them. I learned that my hair could be greatly 
 improved by much brushing ; that my hands pleased me much 
 better when my nails were well cleaned ; that polished persons 
 never attempted to speak with the mouth full of food ; that 
 well-bred young people never interrupted the speech of older 
 persons ; and I corrected many little vulgarisms of expression, 
 of which I had never before been conscious. I watched them 
 keenly the few days I had the benefit of their presence, nnd I 
 know I profited sensibly by it ; for when I next saw Mr. Gar- 
 land, and told him what I had endeavored to correct in myself
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 81 
 
 by their example, he expressed the greatest satisfaction, and 
 called the attention of his wife and daughter to it with as much 
 interest as if I had been one of themselves. Thus one sees that 
 purity and delicacy, even in external things, are not without 
 their value. 
 
 This autumn poor Mrs. Rumsey's troubles reached their climax. 
 I used sometimes to go in and talk with her ; but I rarely saw 
 her husband, and when I did, he was so entirely repulsive and 
 brutal, that I fled from his presence as I would from that of a 
 fiend. I never saw them without wondering how she stayed in 
 the house with him, and I was often on the point of asking her, 
 but was as often restrained by a sense of delicacy that warned 
 me to stay my tongue, lest I might pain her. One afternoon 
 she came into our house, weeping, and told aunt that she had 
 determined to go away to her brother, who lived about forty 
 miles distant, in another State. This brother had had her little 
 boy for a year or more, because the mother would not keep him 
 with his father, to witness his dreadful conduct. I pitied Mrs. 
 Rumsey intensely, painfully, to myself ; and I could never feel, 
 notwithstanding Squire Edwards's fine appearance on military 
 days, and the holding of courts at his house, that he was really 
 so fine a man as people generally thought him, because of his 
 participation in this business. In a few days after Mrs. Rum- 
 sey's visit, I heard aunt and uncle and Mr. Radford talking over 
 her affairs ; and when, afterwards, I asked Mr. Radford about it, 
 he told me that she was to leave her husband and go to her 
 brother the next week. 
 
 "And what will become of him?" 
 
 " Why, Dolly, to tell you the truth very plainly, I expect he'll 
 go to the devil, as fast as he can." 
 
 " But who will take care of him, and cook his food, and keep 
 his clothes clean and whole ?" 
 
 " I don't know," said he, " and I care as little. It's of small 
 consequence what .becomes of such as he is. But, if you wish, 
 you can have a chance to help her off. Bill King is going to 
 4*
 
 bii MY EARLY DAY8. 
 
 drive the wagon, with her things in it, to her brother's, and I 
 dare say she'd be glad of a handy little girl, like you, to help 
 get them together." 
 
 " I'll help her," I said, heartily ; and I felt quite enthusiastic 
 at the thought. " I should be glad to know she was where she 
 could have a little comfort." 
 
 AVhen the day came for her departure, some one invited her 
 husband out, drunk as he was, and kept him through the day 
 and night. In the morning he went home quite sober, and 
 found his house left to himself. One room was prepared for his 
 occupation, and the others, quite deserted but neat, looked 
 blank and comfortless enough. He had himself banished all 
 comfort, nay, even decency itself, from the house, for long 
 months ; but he went into a fearful state of rage when he found 
 himself alone. He shouted, raved, cursed, but all in vain. 
 There was nobody now to be terrified or tortured by his bru- 
 tality. After expending his fury, he came out with a bottle in 
 each hand, and repaired to the distillery, and I do not think he 
 was ever again quite sober. I had an intense desire to see and 
 speak to him ; but Mr. Radford cautioned me so sharply and 
 frequently, during the first two or three days, that I did not 
 venture near the house. He promised that when he became 
 good-mitnred enough to be safe, he would let me know, and then 
 I should go, if I wished to. There were in our field, just across 
 the road from his house, two huge crab-apple-trees, to which I 
 was very fond of resorting. I had often talked from beneath 
 them with Mrs. Rumsey, at her door or window ; and I went 
 over there, when Mr. Iladford told me he was quiet, and saw 
 him sitting by the open window. He looked htigjrard nnd 
 wretched, and I could not help feeling an almost tearful com- 
 pnssion for him, notwithstanding his bad deeds and words. 
 
 IVi-.-'t-ntly he leaned upon the sill, and, putting his head 
 , called to me, in a thick voice, " I say, little girl Eliza, 
 or wluit's your name, come here, will you ? I. want to speak to 
 you."
 
 MY EARLY DAY*. 83 
 
 I had been cautioned too often, to put myself now entirely 
 within his reach ; but I advanced into the road, and finally, by 
 degrees, got up to the gate, waiting for him to speak ; but I de- 
 termined to go no farther. When he saw me stop he said, 
 " Come in, won't you ? I want you to tell me about my wife." 
 
 " No, sir," I said, " I can't come any farther." 
 
 " Why not ? I shan't hurt you ; come in." 
 
 " No," I said, " Mr. Radford told me not to, and I shan't 
 come inside the gate." 
 
 " Mr. Radford ? He ain't your master, is he ? He was 
 among you when you helped her off, wasn't he ?" 
 
 " Yes ; and Mr. Heath, and Mrs. Ball, and the Pomeroys, and 
 everybody helped her, because you behaved so very badly, sir." 
 
 " Yes," he said, with a fearful imprecation upon them all ; 
 " if I had 'em in hell I'd roast 'em." 
 
 " But why," I asked, " were you not good to your wife ? and 
 then she wouldn't have gone away, and nobody would have 
 wanted to help her. We all wanted her to go long ago." 
 
 " You did, did you, you little d 1 ?" he said, with an impatient 
 motion, as if he would have hurled something at me. " What ! 
 did you help her off too ?" 
 
 " I carried things out of the house to be put in the wagon. I 
 carried some small boxes, and Johnny's little chair, and the 
 spider, and a looking-glass wrapped up between two pillows, be- 
 cause Mrs. Ball said-it would perhaps get broken, unless it was 
 put with something soft." 
 
 " If I had her here," he said, " I'd break her old neck, d n 
 her." His frightful profanity revolted me. It was so different 
 from Mr. Radford's, which seemed always to express right feel- 
 ings, that were too strong for common language. 
 
 Still I lingered, because I wished to remind him of what I had 
 said to him long ago, and that if he had remembered and done 
 it, his wife would not now be gone from him. So I'said, what 
 was quite true, " Mr. Rumsey, I am very sorry for you, but if 
 you had promised not to drink any more whisky, when I met
 
 84 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 you once over on the bank, and had kept your promise, your wife 
 wouldn't have had to go away. I wish you had ; don't you ?" 
 He looked at me a moment out of his little red, shrunken eyes, 
 flaming with rage. Gradually the anger died out of them, and a 
 softer expression came there. 
 
 I was watching for the next turn when it came with a great 
 outburst of tears, " By God, I wish I was dead 1" 
 
 I did not know what word to say to that. Such a wish, so 
 fearfully expressed, was quite beyond my depth. The utter mis- 
 ery defied my small power of consolation. Thinking a moment, 
 it seemed to me that if even now he would give up drinking 
 whisky, he might yet be happy. Even his wife might come 
 back. 
 
 I was quite inspired by this thought, and said, with the en- 
 thusiasm of the moment, " Oh, Mr. Kumsey, if you should never 
 get drunk again, perhaps Mrs. Rnmsey would come back and 
 bring Johnny with her. I believe she would. I'd write to her 
 myself, and you can't think how glad I should be I should, in- 
 deed. Now don't swear so any more, and then you'll think bet- 
 ter about it. And don't go to Jackson's again, and you'll see 
 that by and by you'll look so much better and feel so much hap- 
 pier. Now won't you do it ?" I said, in my earnestness advanc- 
 ing within the gate. 
 
 "You're a good little girl, I believe," he said, " but you don't 
 understand what you're talking about. If I should do what you 
 ask I shouldn't live a year." 
 
 "Aunt and uncle say," I replied, "that you won't live six 
 months going on so." 
 
 " Do they ? Then I'll go to hell in spite of them. Tell 'em 
 so." 
 
 I walked quickly away from the gate, considering myself 
 answered finally in those words. A week or two afterward I 
 saw a wagon standing before his house. Some men were in it, 
 and another came out with him, bringing a trunk. They drove 
 away, and when I asked Mr. Radford where he was going, ho
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 85 
 
 replied, " To the county house he's a pauper in earnest now, 
 Dolly. If he had gone there months ago it would have been 
 better for his wife and child." He never appeared among us 
 again. I used to take a hurried, frightened turn through the 
 deserted garden occasionally, half expecting to hear him start 
 upon me from behind some rose or currant bush ; but after the 
 flowers faded with the touch of the autumn frost, I almost forgot 
 that there had ever been such a being. 
 
 This fall I often missed Mr. Eadford in the evening. As usual 
 at this season of the year, we had a great many apples to dry, 
 and the peeling, cutting, and threading them on long twine 
 strings were tne evening work of the whole household. I won- 
 dered a great deal why Mr. Radford was so often away, but when 
 I asked him he laughed and said he had been to see a bird up 
 in the woods a pretty one that sung more sweetly than the 
 robins or thrushes I was so fond of in the spring. Another time 
 he said it was a mermaid, and then a pair of white swans that 
 had been taken in a heavy storm a few days before. I under- 
 stood perfectly that I was not to believe any of these stories, and 
 at length I so worried and beset him after every absence, that 
 he said once, very gravely, in reply to one of my attacks, " Eliza, 
 I am going to be married by and by." A great shock run over 
 me, for quick as thought I saw that then he would live in an- 
 other house. I said so very sadly. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, " certainly, I shouldn't bring my wife to 
 live here with tier." 
 
 " Who is it going to be ?" I inquired. 
 
 " I think she isn't among your acquaintance, Dolly," returning 
 to his old bantering tone. " I'll introduce her to you some day 
 when she is Mrs. Radford." 
 
 "What is her name ?" 
 
 " Julia Anna, of course," he said, affecting astonishment. It 
 was his pet name, and whenever he particularly wished to tease 
 me, he told me that if I were handsomer he would call me Julia 
 Anna, but I was too homely.
 
 86 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Dolly," he said, " when we Julia Anna and I get to living 
 in our own house you'll come sometimes and see us, you know. 
 I must be very fine with her, so that she'll let you, and you'll have 
 such good tifles." 
 
 " I hope Julia Ann is " 
 
 " Julia Anna, miss ; don't cut her name short." 
 
 " I hope Julia Anna is good-natured, and will be as kind to 
 me as you've been," I said, the tears at last running over. 
 
 " She will be," he replied, a little moved himself. " She is very 
 good, and I have told her about you, and that you're the only 
 relation I Jjave here. I think there is "nobody else will cry when 
 I'm married." 
 
 " And I shouldn't," I said, " for I suppose you like it or you 
 wouldn't do it ; only that I don't like you to go away from this 
 house. I shall be so lonesome and and afraid without you.' 
 My grief was becoming violent, and Mr. Radford drew me to his 
 knee, and laid my head on his shoulder. When I had sobbed, 
 and choked, and smothered my emotions, so as to be able to 
 speak, I said, " There will never be anybody here like you. No- 
 body else will ever whip Tom Peterson, or tell him not to abuse 
 me. Oh, I shall feel so dreadfully sometimes, and you will be 
 away 1" 
 
 " But, Eliza," he said, constraining me to sit erect and listen 
 to him, " you are getting older now, and can take care of your- 
 self better. As to Tom Peterson, or any other fellow who under- 
 takes to frighten you as he did, I'm always ready for them. 
 Only tell me of anybody that does it, and I'll take care of 'em. 
 Keep out of their way as much as you can ; but that you do, I 
 know. Don't let 'em have a chance to speak to you, if you can 
 help it. But if they plague you and talk to you in ways you 
 don't like, speak to Uucle John about it. He'll take care of 
 that." 
 
 "Will you tell him?" I asked, "for I believe he thinks what 
 a little girl says or wants isn't of much consequence." 
 
 " Yes, I will," he replied, promptly. "And as for the old wo-
 
 MY KARLY DAYS. 87 
 
 wan it's difficult, I know, for you to get along with her. It is 
 for anybody ; but maybe if you try very hard, you may do a little 
 better. Sometimes you might start a little quicker when she 
 speaks, though lightning itself couldn't always be quick enough 
 for her ; and sometimes I've seen that your looking as if you 
 had forgotten everything around you, enrages her. But I sup- 
 pose you can't help that, can you ? That's when you're think- 
 ing of the things you told me a long time ago when the great 
 freshet was, that I couldn't understand, eh ? You can't help 
 that always, I know ; but maybe trying sometimes will make it 
 a little better. You've grown since that time, Dolly, though 
 you're small enough now, and you ought to be able to remember 
 better than you could then." 
 
 " I do remember, Mr. Radford, everything I read and 
 hear." 
 
 " Yes, but it isn't those that she wants you to remember. She 
 doesn't care whether you know who captured Cornwallis and who 
 took Ticonderoga or not. She wants you to remember all about 
 "the housework, and the things you have to do." 
 
 " And I don't care anything about them ; they are not a bit 
 interesting to me, arid I cannot remember them." 
 
 " But you must try, child ; so that you get along in the best 
 way with her, that's all; for I guess you'll never be a famous 
 cook or cheeseinaker." 
 
 " I don't want to be. Now I've found out that I am not a, 
 fool, I mean to do something else when Fm a woman." 
 
 " Yes, that's right enough, too; but take it easy, Dolly; you 
 are young enough yet, and don't provoke her to beat you, by 
 reading or studying when she wants you to be at work." 
 
 " That is always," I said. " She never wants me to take a 
 book, except to read to her or uncle, or somebody that comes 
 here ; and when they say anything about my reading well, she 
 makes them think I learned from her, and that isn't true. Oh, 
 I wish I wish " 
 
 " Come, come, now, Eliza ; you're growing older and wiser ;
 
 88 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 don't fret about what you can't help; but try to do your best, 
 and better days will come." 
 
 I felt Mr. Radford's loss sadly, in more ways than one. Be- 
 pides that I was lonely from having no one in his place to speak 
 to, and that I often wanted his advice and opinions, which I 
 had been accustomed to rely much upon, I thought in his 
 absence more of my father than I had before. Having lost the 
 only efficient protector I had known in my exile, my mind very 
 frequently reverted to him with a painful sadness an actual 
 dismay, which I cannot express. My nature demanded some- 
 body to trust in. As to love, I had been too long denied the 
 indulgence of that tenderer feeling, to think much of the possi- 
 bility of ever loving anybody as I had my sisters and grand- 
 parents. I did not love my father, I only wished that I could, 
 and that he would save me from the ill treatment I was receiv- 
 ing. 
 
 But amid all my conflicting emotions and painful experiences, 
 I did not forget Mr. Garland's kind and welcome encourage- 
 ment to learn all I could. He sent me a few sheets of paper 
 one folded and cut as a little book, for memoranda of notable 
 facts, and a pencil to write them with, which I often used, but 
 more from the love of doing things in what I thought a regular 
 and right way, than from need of putting anything in writing, 
 for my memory was perfect. I was a sort of living register of 
 all sorts of facts that came within my knowledge.
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 89 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 " Hold thy words, for each thou utterest 
 Hath its weight of horror. These will never more 
 Be music to my ear." 
 
 " Is there no soul, no heart no God ?" 
 
 MY personal appearance at this time, though somewhat 
 improved upon what it had been, was yet sufficiently rude and 
 poor to cause me many troubled thoughts. Mr. Eadford had 
 very kindly procured me a hair-brush, and sometimes I set about 
 using it thoroughly, with a full purpose to do all that was pos- 
 sible to make myself look better ; but I had so little respite 
 from the drudgery that seemed never to be ended, that these 
 resolutions failed almost with their formation. For I could not 
 endure to let the few spare minutes I could get within doorsj 
 pass without a book or paper in my hand. I found, occasion- 
 ally, in prints that fell in my way, bits of verses which I wished 
 to commit, but I think I did not see a volume of poetry during 
 all the years that I spent in this abode. There was a little 
 poem on the discovery of America in which were expressed the 
 emotions of that moment when lights were first beheld proclaim- 
 ing the presence of the land they sought. It used to come to 
 me often sometimes when I was walking out of doors alone in 
 the evening, and kindle such vivid realizations of what he must 
 have felt in that proudest hour of a sublime life, that every 
 nerve in me*would thrill with a sort of electric glow as I recited 
 mentally its finest passages. 
 
 My clothing was often much torn, because I had very little, 
 and because no care was taken of it beyond the little I did 
 myself. Thus my ugliness was aggravated. One day when I
 
 90 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 was quite alone at the house, walking about the yard in a torn, 
 dark, worsted frock, a person whom I at once pronounced to be 
 Mr. Fleming, came and inquired for uncle. He was away from 
 home, I answered for his wife, then. She was gone to Mrs. 
 Spicer's across the fields would be home soon. I invited him 
 to walk in, which he did hesitatingly; apparently debating with 
 himself whether to stop at all or not. Meanwhile I was in a 
 flutter for some expedient to detain him, for never again should 
 I have such an opportunity to speak to him. What could I 
 say ? He was so entirely courteous and elegant in his manner, 
 more so than anybody I could remember, except the young Ger- 
 mans and their father, and handsomer than either of them. 
 After thinking a moment, he seemed to make up his mind to 
 wait, and sat down. He looked at me and asked if I were Mr. 
 Smalley's daughter ? 
 
 " No, sir ; I'm only his adopted daughter." I wished I had 
 on my better frock, for now that I looked at him in speaking, I 
 saw he was well dressed, and I knew he was Mr. Fleming, 
 because he had the slightest possible softening of the aspirated 
 h, which I had heard before, and heard spoken of, so that I had 
 not forgotten it. But I could not talk to him till I knew his 
 name; and though I was afraid I could not ask it like an Eng- 
 lish child, I mustered courage at length to say, " Will you 
 please to tell me, sir, if you are Mr. Fleming ?" 
 
 " Yes," he replied; " that is ray name." 
 
 " The reason of my wishing to know," I said, " is that Mr. 
 Radford, the man who lives with us, told me that you could tell 
 me about the weavers in England." 
 
 He looked at me, half-laughing, but not rudely, and said, 
 " Pray what do you wish to know, my girl, about the weavers of 
 England ?" 
 
 I felt a great difficulty in telling him just what I wanted to 
 know, or how I came to desire the knowledge ; but at last I 
 said, feeling very warm and red in my face, " Mrs. Sandford 
 weaves all the cloth I have ever seen made here, and there are
 
 MY EAKLY DATS. 91 
 
 only two women besides her who have looms ; but they can't all 
 make enough for the people that live about here, to wear; and 
 when she told me so, I could not help thinking where all the 
 cloth came from that all the people in the world want. I asked 
 her, and she told me to ask Mr. Radford, and he told me to ask 
 you, sir." 
 
 " Well, my child," he said, " I hardly know how to tell you 
 what you wish to know. Is it whether all the cloth used in the 
 world is made in England ?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," I said, my tongue now well loosed; "and whether 
 women weave it as they do here, and what sort of looms they 
 have ? I hope ray asking you doesn't trouble you ; Mr. Gar- 
 land told me ' you were a kind gentleman, and I need noi be 
 afraid to ask you." 
 
 " Oh, not in the least not in the least," he replied, looking 
 not so strangely or so much amused at me as strangers were apt 
 to when I spoke to them in any such way. He laid his hat on 
 a little stand near his chair, and went on to tell me in very clear 
 and plain language about the great manufactories, and the spin- 
 ning machines, and the looms, and the kinds of cloth they 
 made, and how much a day in each loom. There were towns, 
 he said, that were nearly all factories, and where the noise, 
 night and day, would keep me from sleeping at first when I went 
 into them ; but that was where they made iron and other metal 
 things. 
 
 " But," I asked, " do they work all day and all night ?" 
 
 " Not the same persons," he replied. 
 
 " Do women weave the cloth in those looms as they do 
 here ?" 
 
 " No, men do it there ; women do other things in the fac- 
 tories." 
 
 " Do they like to ?" I asked, with a kind of doubt, that in the 
 great noisy places he described, they could not be as happy and 
 cheerful as Mrs. Peterson was in her loom, singing as she often 
 did so merrilv.
 
 92 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " I suspect very few of them like it," said Mr. Fleming; " for 
 they get very little pay, and sometimes don't have work enough, 
 and then they have hard times." 
 
 Now, I had never witnessed actual destitution ; hardly any- 
 thing approaching to it. The people whom I had known, at 
 home and here, were generally poor, but they had always plenty 
 to live on, and the great question of supply had never come 
 into my mind. But I had heard people talk of hard times, and 
 an old woman who had taught aunt, when they first got all the 
 cows, how to make cheese, had told me about a hard season 
 when her children were all young, in which the cold weather 
 destroyed the crops, and folks could scarcely get enough to eat. 
 I knew, therefore, that hard times meant that people had trou- 
 ble had to take care, I thought, to have plenty of everything 
 they wanted; but I had a general notion that in times that 
 were not hard, all this came without care. That was pretty 
 nearly my idea, when Mr. Fleming said that sometimes the 
 weavers had hard times. So I said, " I suppose they can go 
 visiting then, and do their sewing, and so on ?" 
 
 Mr. Fleming looked at me, and smiled a queer smile. I had 
 seen such ones so often. " He thinks I'm a fool," I thought ; 
 and my face felt heated as by a blaze. But before I had time 
 to say anything else, lie replied, " I am afraid they don't feel 
 much like going visiting, as you call it, child. Poor things ! 
 they don't get enough to eat and keep them warm." 
 
 " Haven't they any friends," I asked, in astonishment, " who 
 could give them some "' 
 
 " Their friends are generally no better off than themselves. 
 They don't have enough to eat, either." 
 
 " What 1 not all day ? not for supper ?" 
 
 " No ; not for breakfast, nor dinner, nor supper." 
 
 I began to feel horribly oppressed with the idea which was 
 growing out of his words. 
 
 " How many days ?" I asked. " They must have enough on 
 Saturdays and Sundays." I felt this, because on those days we
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. r* 93 
 
 always seemed to have the greatest variety and abundance. 
 The pantry was always filled with the Saturday cooking ; and 
 the feeling of plenty, without the labor of preparing it, was so 
 pleasant and regular a thing to us, that I never doubted it was 
 the same in all houses. 
 
 " No," said my informant, " not on Saturdays, nor Sundays, 
 nor Mondays, nor Tuesdays, nor any other days. They are 
 always hungry." 
 
 Merciful Heaven ! with what a sickening feeling his words 
 penetrated me. I could never bear that any animal should 
 hunger for one hour ; and to think of men and women, " and 
 their little children, too ?" I said, a new horror seizing me at 
 that idea, which was so much more terrible. 
 
 " Yes ; their little children, too their boys, and girls, and 
 their babies." 
 
 I felt dizzy at the thought of tender little infants, such as 
 Mrs. Peterson's twins had been when I first saw them, being 
 kept hungry. She would never let them be so, for anything. 
 As soon as it was said, "The babies are hungry," she let go 
 whatever she was doing, and attended to them. 
 
 " How dreadful that is 1" I said. " Are there no rich people 
 in that country ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, a great many ; but they can't feed the poor." 
 
 " Then I think the poor people oughtn't to weave them any 
 cloth." 
 
 " What would you have them do, miss ?" 
 
 " Can't they plant corn and potatoes, and have wheat grow 
 in their fields ?" 
 
 " They have no fields to plant in." 
 
 " But they could get some of the rich men's fields, and give 
 them part, and then have enough for themselves." I knew peo- 
 ple had fields of uncle in that way. 
 
 " But the rich men don't wish them to have their fields ; and 
 if they did, they have nothing to plough and plant them 
 with."
 
 94 MY KAKLY DAYS. 
 
 As my hopes for them were Urns, one after another, cut off, I 
 sonned to feel the despair of their own dreadful lot. 
 
 Mr. Fleming," I said, very earnestly, "what are they going 
 to do ? Will the rich people let them die ?" 
 
 " Some of them I am afraid will die," he replied, " before 
 they see better times. I can tell you a little story that will 
 show you how they sometimes get along." And he related that 
 a farmer, who had grain- Gelds and a fine garden, found his 
 turnip-beds disturbed one morning. He didn't know what to 
 think of it ; but he concluded he would watch the next night, 
 and see who did it. So he stayed concealed behind a bush or 
 tree a long time ; and at last a mau came over the high fence, 
 and walked to the turnip-bed and pulled some up. The farmer 
 followed, and saw him go into a house v,ery near his own. He 
 knew the man was very poor, and had several children ; so he 
 thought he would say nothing about it till next morning. 
 Wiii-n he went into the house, the children were standing round 
 a little bed in a corner of the room, and a sick boy lay on it. 
 Their mother was there ; and she had a basin and spoon in her 
 hand, from which she was feeding him some broth. The farmer 
 stepped forward, and she seemed very much frightened ; but she 
 sat -till, and lie saw in the bowl the pieces of his turnips. But 
 he could not tell her of it, for the sick boy looked so eager for 
 the broth, and the other poor children wak-hed every spoonful 
 he took with such hungry faces, though they did not speak, that 
 he pitied them, and would not say anything about what their 
 father hud done. He asked the woman if he could sec her hus- 
 band, and she became paler than before, but told him the man 
 MM- in !>.! yet ; for he had no work to do, and nothing to eat. 
 " Hut you appear to have food for your children," said the 
 farmer. 
 
 "A list].-, sir." she replied, "for this poor sick one. The 
 other ones have hardly a mouthful, and hu>laiid lies in bed 
 -i- he d-M'Mi't get so hungry there as if he was up." 
 
 "The farmer," continued Mr. Fleming, "was going away.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 95 
 
 without saying another word, but he thought he would tell her 
 to send one of the children to get some vegetables for more 
 broth. She thanked him, and told him that she had no more 
 meat to make it of. And what do you think she had made 
 that of ?" 
 
 I sat frozen into silence by this dreadful narration. 
 
 " Of a cat that had come to their house I" 
 
 I could not speak for some time. I did not feel at all like 
 crying, but I was weak and cold ; for I instantly imagined myself 
 one of those poor children that one lying sick and helpless, so 
 much worse off than the others. I felt shame in my heart for 
 ever having thought my lot so hard, and wished that I could go 
 there and say something kind to them. And I thought, " How 
 can the rich people let them be so poor ?" 
 
 Mr. Fleming was evidently studying me, for he said : " I see 
 you feel very sorry for those children. You look pale. You 
 would give them a dinner if you could." 
 
 " I would give everything in the world," I said, " if I had it, 
 to feed them all. It is so dreadful, it makes me sick here," put- 
 ting my hand on my chest where I felt such a sinking, wretched 
 sensation. " Couldn't any good persons," I asked, " help them, 
 if they went there ?" % 
 
 " Not very easily, I am afraid," said Mr. Fleming. 
 
 " Well, if it wasn't easy, I should think they would do it, if 
 they could. I am sure I would. I never knew that anybody 
 was hungry before, except sometimes. It makes me very un- 
 happy. I wish you hadn't told me, Mr. Fleming." 
 
 " But you asked me, child," he said. " What is your name ?" 
 
 " Eliza, sir." 
 
 " A pretty name ; but what else ?" 
 
 " Woodson. Eliza Woodson." 
 
 " Have you a father and mother living ?" 
 
 " No mother." 
 
 " But a father ?" 
 
 I said " Yes," reluctantly.
 
 96 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 " Do you like to stay here ?" 
 
 At this moment I heard aunt's footsteps, and had no time to 
 reply in words, but my looks must have told the whole story to 
 him. I rose before she entered, and busied myself with some- 
 thing ; for she always scolded if she found me not at work, 
 though everything I could possibly think of or do, was done. 
 So I had got into the fashion of pretending that I was doing 
 something, whenever she came in. It was the only habitual 
 sham, or approach to anything like insincerity, that I can 
 remember in all my life there. 
 
 I was at first a little fearful that Mr. Fleming might tell her 
 of our conversation ; but, for some reason or other, he abstained 
 from all allusion to it or to me. He stayed a few minutes, and, 
 having got his inquiries about uncle answered, went away. 
 After he had gone, she gave me strict charge if he ever came 
 again to the house when I was there alone, to be sure and ask 
 him to sit down, if they were about house, and not to let her 
 hear of my talking to him at all. He was a gentleman, she 
 said, who had been used to see children mind their own busi- 
 ness, and she wouldn't have him annoyed by me. 
 
 While she was saying it, I suddenly remembered that I had 
 not asked him a word about the battles, and the ships, and the 
 cannon, nor taken time to consider how he must have looked 
 with a sword on for real fighting. 
 
 My interview with Mr. Fleming was a source of great pain to 
 me. It was the first time I had ever comprehended the fact that 
 hopeless suffering was in the world. I had before thought my 
 own lot of the hardest, and I confidently looked for relief from 
 my troubles ; indeed I was fully determined upon having it, and 
 so there was nothing like despair in my views of it. But here 
 was a different case altogether. These people were so many, 
 many thousands, Mr. Fleming had said, and so very badly off. 
 It did not console me at all, to think that they were away in 
 England, and that a great ocean was between us, which it took 
 many weeks to cross. I could see them and feel their hunger all
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. , 97 
 
 the same as if they were near me. I thought of them when I sat 
 down to meals ; when I slept and when I woke ; when I worked 
 and when I was resting. And I never remembered them but to 
 think, and think intensely, if nothing could be done for them. I. 
 wondered why any good people, such as Mr. Fleming was, ever 
 left that country. If I were there, I thought, I should find so 
 much to do. 
 
 When I talked to Mr. Radford about it, and expressed my 
 great anxiety, he said, "Why, as to that, Eliza, how many 
 weavers, men, women, and children, do you suppose you could 
 feed in a day upon nothing ?" 
 
 " But I would get something. I would go to the rich men and 
 women, that you say ride in carriages and live in those great 
 palaces, and tell them that there were people starving to death 
 there, and they would have to give me something for them." 
 
 " But if you got something for Monday, what would you do 
 for Tuesday 1 Don't you see the rich people could not keep on 
 feeding them if they would, and at last they would have to go 
 hungry." 
 
 " What did God make them for, then ?" said I, altogether re- 
 bellious at their lot. . *. '- 
 
 " You must ask a wiser man than I am that question," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 " I wish I could know about it," said I, quite darkened and 
 tormented. " The cattle and the lions, and the elephants and 
 birds, and fishes, arid whales, even (uncle had told me a great 
 deal about whaling), have always enough to eat. I do not see 
 why all these people should be hungry. I don't believe they 
 ought to be, for though the rich could not feed them always, they 
 could a while, till they got some weaving or other work to do, 
 and then they could buy them food." 
 
 " Yes, that's exactly what they want work ; you see if they 
 had work they never need be hungry." 
 
 " I know that," I said ; " but why don't the rich people give 
 them something to do ? If that farmer had let the poor man 
 5
 
 98 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 work in his fields all day, he wouldn't have had to steal the tur- 
 nips at night, nor kill the cat to eat (feeling an inexpressible 
 loathing at the thought), and the children could all have had 
 enough. I am sure," I said, thinking very earnestly for a while, 
 " it's the rich people that have got to do something about it, 
 for the poor can't, and it cannot always be so, I know." 
 
 " Do you know it ?" said Mr. Radford ; " I'm afraid you'll be 
 mistaken in that. I'm afraid there will always be poor people 
 who will be hungry." 
 
 " But if I were in their places, I'd stop being born," I said, 
 hotly, for I felt that somehow or other I must find a way to get 
 them out of their troubles. 
 
 Mr. Radford clasped his hands suddenly on the top of his head, 
 and stretched himself perfectly straight, balancing his chair on its 
 two back posts. He laughed all the time, but when he had put 
 himself in this position he shouted with outrageous merriment ; 
 he rubbed his head and his face, and shouted again. Then he 
 ot up and hobbled to the door, pretending that he could 
 scarcely walk. 
 
 " I don't see what you're laughing at," I said, almost angrily, 
 for he hadn't spoken, and I was so, earnest that I felt sure I 
 couldn't have- said anything that deserved to be so treated. 
 Presently he came back, and began in a tone that I understood 
 instantly, to put an end to serious talk. He said I was a great 
 child ; there was no mistake about it. It was such a mercy there 
 was not another in the house, or in the neighborhood, or in the 
 State, for he thought if there were two alive at the same time, 
 they would endanger his life, and so on, in an endless, ex- 
 travagant sort of banter that sometimes amused and sometimes 
 vyced me. I was not a bit amused at this, and I told him so. 
 
 " Well, that's unfair," he said, " for your last speech was cer- 
 tainly the very best you ever made, Dolly." 
 
 I put down in my note-book many of the facts which Mr. 
 Fleming had told me, as to numbers, and so on. I was obliged 
 to write them in words, not being sufficiently acquainted with
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 99 
 
 the use of figures to trust myself to express large amounts in 
 them. I wished to show them to Mr. Garland, and from him I 
 learned several things, connected with the subject that so much 
 interested me, which I had not had time to get from the other, 
 as that there were many people in England who were distressed 
 about this state of things, and who talked about trying to make 
 it better ; and he said also there was a man by the name of Cob- 
 bett, whose speeches were printed in a pamphlet ; he had seen 
 it, and would try to get it for me. This quite comforted me. I 
 thought, if some of the people, then, understand how bad it is, 
 and try to do something, it will be better by and by. Otherwise 
 I felt that I ought to go myself, and in the meantime many 
 would die without ever knowing how much I thought of them, 
 and wished to help them. 
 
 These inquiries and speculations developed me into a full-grown 
 Democrat. It is true that Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster were my 
 greatest living heroes, and I rejoiced that Mr. Adams had been 
 elected President ; and all these gentlemen were called Whigs, 
 while the other people, whom I disliked, were called sometimes 
 Democrats ; but when I had asked Mr. Garland what Whig and 
 Democrat meant, he told me that a true Democrat was one who 
 wished all the people to be equally free and happy. 
 
 " Then, I don't care," I said, " who calls me a Whig, I'm a 
 Democrat. Don't Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster like that too ?" I 
 asked. He said he supposed they did, but men had different 
 ways of thinking how the people should be made free, and so 
 they were called by different names. I did not puzzle myself 
 much in splitting party questions. I loved all the people, the 
 poor and ignorant as well as the rich and wise, and wished they 
 could all be equally happy and good, and for the rest I gave my- 
 self to worship the great men whom I admired, as heartily as I 
 wished to.
 
 100 MT EARLY DATS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " What ! was I married to her in my dream ?" 
 
 I LIVED at this time almost purely in the intellect, or my affec- 
 tional motions swept so widely out over the great ocean of hu- 
 manity, that individuals were of comparatively little importance 
 to me. I began to wish very earnestly for more years, that I 
 might have knowledge and a more independent existence. For 
 the selfishness and violent temper still surrounded and hemmed 
 me in still cut off, and coarsely or fiercely ridiculed the expres- 
 sion of my thought. Mr. Radford married during the winter, 
 and my mourning for him was happily mitigated, by the queer 
 kind of interest I at first felt in his successor. This was a man 
 of forty or forty-five years of age. He came along one mild 
 January day, when I happened to be out of doors and witness 
 his arrival, driving a pair of hornless oxen in a yoke. One of 
 them had over his back a leathern portmanteau tied with two 
 strings beneath. As he was passing slowly by the barn, where 
 the men were at work, uncle hailed him. He stopped, and shortly 
 after they came into the house. He was a darkish man, with a 
 face which, look at it as I would, I could not understand. His 
 name was very queer James Dole. The word dole had been 
 in one of the definition lessons I had learned while watching 
 cream in the summer, and it puzzled me to see what propriety 
 there could be in it as a name. However, I always doubted its 
 being his real name ; and he had such odd ways, and spoke in 
 such a buried voice, that I sometimes almost doubted his exist- 
 ing at all. The oxen, too, seemed a part of the mystery. I had 
 seen hornless cows we had one but never such an ox, and to 
 have two together was doubly strange. All his clothing was in
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 101 
 
 the portmanteau. It was very little for a man, though he was 
 not ragged. He never said anything in the house but to answer 
 questions, and never used an unnecessary word to do that. 
 
 We, none of us, at least the young people, knew whence he 
 came, or whither he would have gone if he had not stopped at 
 our house. When asked the first question, he said he had been 
 at work down here, jerking his head in the direction which he 
 came from ; but his manner and voice were so vague that I felt 
 it must have been at the least several hundred miles away. He 
 said he was going out yonder, and it seemed as if he must be 
 thinking of a great extent of country, a thousand miles off, at 
 least. For a considerable time he quite absorbed my attention, 
 and my curiosity about him was troublesome to me, because I 
 did not like to question him myself. Indeed I scarcely ever 
 spoke to him. He wore no stockings, but a kind of leather case 
 within his boots, and when he drew these off, sitting by the 
 kitchen fire in the evening, with his short, black pipe in his 
 mouth, his feet had such a strange look, that after bearing with 
 it silently for several nights, I at length said, " Mr. Dole, don't 
 you like to wear stockings better than such things as you have 
 on?" 
 
 " No, not so well." 
 
 He did not speak surlily, so I ventured again, 
 
 " Why not ?" 
 
 " These are warmer, and they don't want washing." 
 
 " But I should think they would," I said, my disgust rising. 
 " If I wore such things I'm sure I should wash them." 
 
 " Well, that's just as people feel, you see," he answered ; 
 " you're different from me." 
 
 " Yes," I said, and I am sure my tone must have betrayed my 
 thankfulness for the fact. I had a kind of dim belief that if Mr. 
 Dole would talk freely, he would be very funny ; but his odd, 
 reserved ways, and his dirtiness more than anything else, for he 
 was never ill-natured, deterred me from making any inquiries 
 that could satisfy my interest in his past life. Among other
 
 102 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 things, I had an intense desire to know if he had ever been mar- 
 ried (it would seern, I thought, to identify him with the rest of 
 mankind if he had), but my own courage was unequal to asking 
 the question. I therefore elected to this delicate service a boy 
 who was then with us in Albert's place. He was almost a man 
 in years, but so stupid and easy that he was the standing target 
 for all the random fire of verbal, practical jokes that we saw fit 
 to entertain ourselves with. He had broad, blunt features, and 
 a nose so prophetic of stagnation in the character it rendered, 
 that I think no one ever dreamed of his changing or improving 
 in the least degree. He would do whatever I asked of him not 
 that he cared to please me, but because he seemed to have no 
 power of resistance ; so I told him privately one evening, to ask 
 Mr. Dole this momentous question, and when, a favorable oppor- 
 tunity came, I drew near unnoticed to hear the answer. He was 
 sitting beside, and a little behind the man when he spoke, and 
 I felt myself flush deeply, as a party implicated, when, without 
 a word of preparation, he drawled, in his unmeaning way, " Was 
 you ever married, Mr. Dole ?" 
 
 Thus interrogated, Mr. Dole slowly removed his pipe from his 
 lips turned his eyes rather than his head, to look at the ques- 
 tioner over his shoulder, and slowly, and very distinctly replied, 
 " Not much." I made an extreme effort to suppress the sudden 
 laughter I could scarcely restrain, but the boy looked entirely 
 the same straight into the fire, and said, in a quiet, assenting 
 tone, as one does when an answer is expected from him" h-m, 
 I thought likely." 
 
 " Did you ?" said Mr. Dole, with a shade more of spirit ; " then 
 the devil 's in you." 
 
 I smothered my mirth till I could reach the door,' and even 
 then had to choke it, for though I did laugh a great deal, and 
 with an irresistible heartiness when anything really ludicrous ap- 
 pealed to me, I had to be restrained when I could not freely 
 speak of the reason of my merriment. I had more difficulty when 
 I went in again and saw the two grave, commonplace looking
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 103 
 
 faces there as quiet as ever, and for months, years nay, even 
 to this day the memory of that occurrence, and of the coun- 
 tenances enacting it, will sometimes shake me irresistibly. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " I walked as ere I walked forlorn, 
 
 When all the path was fresh with dew, 
 And all the bugle breezes blew 
 Reveille to the breaking morn." 
 
 SPRING came on the season of inexhaustible charms to me. 
 I loved so dearly in the early sunny days to steal away to the 
 creek, where the variety of budding foliage was so rich and 
 exultant, that I felt gladdened in my inmost soul by he sight of 
 it. The majestic maple, with its deep-folded and exquisitely 
 tinted buds ; the tender willow at the margin ; the tasselled 
 birch higher up; the butternut, the walnut, the light vines and 
 the ground plants, sturdy and exuberant, pushing their strong 
 leaves above the dark soil, seemed to have almost a social 
 power in these days, and yet it was my loneliest season. My 
 gladness was sad and tender, rather than boisterous or playful. 
 I longed more for human companionship at this time than ever 
 before. 
 
 One of the young Germans had left at our house a book he 
 had been reading while there : the Letters of Hibernicus. 1 
 have never seen another copy, but I think it must have painted 
 very vividly, iu some passages, the full, vigorous life of spring- 
 time ; for I remember it impressed me as a book one could 
 enjoy more at that season than at any other. It contained an 
 extract from Moore's Translations of Anacreon " To the swal- 
 low " commencing : 
 
 " Once in e;ich revolving year 
 Gentle bird, we find thee here."
 
 104: MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 I did not greatly admire it, bat my longing for poetry caused 
 me to accept, thankfully, anything above mere rhyme, that 
 described nature as I saw it. The pastorals in the good old 
 English Reader, which I had taken from home, were as familiar 
 to me as the alphabet. " Day," in three parts ; the "Cuckoo," 
 the fine ode to " Contentment," and Dr. Beattie's " Hermit," so 
 suggestive in thought, so grandly musical in construction, were 
 part of my small stores of poetical consolation. Adjoining the 
 yard in which the house stood, there was a small field which 
 was never planted or sown. On the high bank which there bor- 
 dered the creek, stood a few fruit-trees, apple and peach. For 
 about half its length, this bank was precipitous, and the other 
 half descended with a rapid slope, green, and thickly dotted 
 with occasional trees and shrubs, to the very margin of the 
 stream. There were beautiful spots on this slope, where 
 glimpses of the water, and its rich, embowering foliage could be 
 enjoyed, while one reclined in the shade of a great maple or nut- 
 tree, and listened to the birds, and watched the sunlight dappling 
 the elastic velvety turf. Being very near the house, yet entirely 
 out of sight from it, and so beautiful, it was one of my commonest 
 resorts, in moments of leisure. I called it " Sunny Bank," and 
 when I was younger, had tried sometimes to imagine it a very 
 romantic foreign country, containing great, and good, and lov- 
 ing persons, whom I could visit and talk with, and when my 
 visions fell rather coldly back on myself, as they often did, I 
 gladdened my heart with enjoying its beauty, such as it was. 
 
 The peach and apple blossoms were very fragrant above, 
 when the evening dews descended upon them, and the soft 
 sounds of the lazy current, gliding over its bed below, very sooth- 
 ing. As the field was never cultivated, no presence ever 
 excluded me from " Sunny Bank," and very rarely did any one 
 visit it but myself. But tin's spring, there came a company of 
 gentlemen, living in tents, who set them in this little field. 
 They were government engineers, surveying a route for a canal, 
 that was projected from far southwest, to the Lake. The
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 105 
 
 officers had their tents, among the fruit-trees, on the summit of 
 bank, while those of the laborers were further out towards the 
 wood, on the open ground. 
 
 These men were all strangers to us ; they were moving 
 through the wild country, occupying different stations along the 
 proposed line for a few days or weeks, and the detachments fol- 
 lowed each other, so that when one party broke up its encamp- 
 ment, another came into its place the same day, or very soon 
 after, and remained till the next succeeded. There were three 
 detachments. The first consisted of five gentlemen, with their 
 attendants, chain and instrument bearers, and axemen, for the 
 country was covered with a dense forest, surrounding the 
 " clearings," which included but a very small portion of it. 
 They were out from morning till night, nearly.-every day. At 
 evening they were gay either in their tents or our house, sing- 
 ing songs, smoking cigars, and telling stories ; joking with each 
 other, and sometimes if I were in their presence, teasing me into 
 saying odd sometimes, I suppose, saucy things. For I found very 
 little pleasure in their noisy ways of going on. They did not 
 care to satisfy my childish interest in anything, and I did not 
 like being always bantered and laughed at, by people who never 
 condescended to be earnest with me for a single moment. Two 
 whom I remember, were my especial dread, Messrs. Ramsay and 
 Turnbull. They were rollicking, headlong fellows, who invented 
 all sorts of outrageous nicknames for me, and laughed at my 
 indignation when addressed by them. They gave me the 
 wildest and most preposterous answers to questions, trying to 
 provoke me to sharp retorts. They attacked my self-love by all 
 sorts of ludicrous disparagements, telling me sometimes that I 
 was worth a fine horse dead and with skin off ; and at 
 others, worth my weight in onion-skins. Major Kearney, who 
 was in charge of the whole work, was a more satisfactory per- 
 son to me, but even his presence did not always restrain the 
 spirits of the others. If I approached his tent, however, when 
 he was alone, he would, if engaged, or not disposed to entertain 
 5*
 
 106 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 me, give me a dismissal that could not hurt my feelings ; or he 
 would very kindly and patiently answer my questions till he 
 wished to be alone, and then tell me so. 
 
 One day he said jocosely, "I am going away to morrow 
 going to take the tents and leave you ; won't you be sorry ?" 
 
 " Not very, sir," I replied. " I shall be glad if you take Mr. 
 Ramsay and Mr. Toirnbull away, but please don't tell them I 
 said so," I added ; for they had ways of annoying and trying 
 to frighten me ; catching me up suddenly by the arms, and 
 swinging me about, which my small stature enabled them to do 
 with great ease.' And I was afraid to meet Mr. Ramsay, who was 
 the larger man, and very strong, anywhere near the low fence 
 between the " camp " and the house, for he would pick me up 
 and set me over Jt so suddenly, making such a mite of me, that I 
 had many a time cried with pure vexation, at his indignities. 
 If I said anything severe to him it only challenged hotter per- 
 secution, so I was obliged to restrain my tongue, generally, or if 
 I indulged it, to flee instantly from his presence. Yet he was 
 kind withal, for he made me occasional little presents, and if he 
 went where there were stores in the course of his day's labor, 
 was quite apt to bring me raisins or candy, and give it to me 
 when aunt would know nothing of it. 
 
 Major Kearney told me that another party was coming to 
 take their place the next day, or very soon ; and that there was 
 no one in it who would tease me as much as Mr. Ramsay had ; 
 that I should like Mr. Clarke who belonged to it, and Mr. 
 Capron, and he thought that I would not be afraid of any of 
 them. 
 
 I did not much care when they were gone, though it dimin- 
 ished so materially the amount of life near me. They had not 
 interested my affection, nor won my gratitude more than could 
 be expressed by a " thank you," nor satisfied the wants of my 
 intellect, so ttrat my interior life suffered little pain from their 
 absence. 
 
 Their successors came on the third or fourth day, and it was
 
 MT KAKLY DAYS. 107 
 
 pleasant to see again the white tents among the green trees, 
 and hear the sound of cheerful yoices near us in the evening; 
 but I did not become acquainted with them as I had with the 
 others. There was no aggressive spirit among them to draw 
 me on to expression, and so we met and passed quietly for some 
 days. I was not in the least drawn towards Messrs. Clarke and 
 Capron; the gentlemen whom Mr. Kearney had undertaken I 
 should like, and- 1 wondered a little at his saying it, but was 
 fast settling back upon my old interests, my few books and my 
 casual interviews with -Mr. Garland and others. 
 
 One afternoon, before the gentlemen had returned to camp, I 
 was taking a little tour among the fruit-trees, near their tents ; 
 and, fancying myself quite alone, I directed my steps towards the 
 point at which I usually descended to the water. The walk 
 took me beneath a low maple, whose wide-sweeping branches 
 grew so unusually low, that when I stood beneath it, on a fallen 
 one, I could, by the utmost stretch of my muscles, touch the 
 lower leaves. Thus I was in the habit of measuring my height. 
 The year before, I could not touch the leaves, nor when the 
 first spring days of this came ; but now that they were 
 developed to their full size, I could seize the tips of a few of the 
 lower ones between my longest fingers. I had been afraid that 
 this branchlet would be broken off by somebody straying under 
 it, and when I went down on this afternoon, I was truly vexed 
 to find that it was gone. I said aloud, " That is too bad," and 
 a man's voice answered quite near me, " What is that that is 
 too bad ?" 
 
 I was so startled by the sound, that I lost my balance on the 
 small support I had stepped upon, and was in danger of falling, 
 when a hand kindly took hold of my arm from behind, and sus- 
 tained me till I fairly found my feet, and was able to look up to 
 the face of my helper. Then I saw that it was a young man, 
 the youngest person I had seen among these gentlemen. I had 
 heard him called Henry, and by some sirname, also, which I had 
 forgotten. I had never seen him in the house where the others
 
 108 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 frequently came, but often by himself, walking or sitting, gene- 
 rally with a book. He seemed to participate but little in the 
 gay talk of his companions, and had never spoken to me, so that 
 I felt very shy and timid in this accidental meeting, and after 
 saying to him that he had frightened me so much because I 
 thought there was no one there, I was just turning to go up the 
 hill, and back to the house, when he stopped me by saying, 
 "You are the little girl named Lizzie, or Eliza; are you not, 
 whom Mr. Ramsey knows ?" 
 
 " My name is Eliza," I replied ; " but I am called by many 
 others, sometimes." 
 
 " Well," he rejoined, " I saw Mr. Ramsay yesterday, and he 
 requested me to tell you that he has found the book you asked 
 him about, and when he comes up he'll bring it." 
 
 " I did not ask him for it," I said, " because I don't really like 
 Mr. Ramsay, and so I wouldn't, but he told me about it, and I 
 did say I should be very glad to read it." It was some Arctic 
 narrative, then, I suppose, recently published, which Mr. Ram- 
 say, in almost the only rational moment I had ever found him in, 
 had told me of, because I was extremely interested in the won- 
 ders of the Polar world. When he looked for it he had not been 
 able to find it, but he said he had lent it to some of the " other 
 fellows," he supposed, and he would be sure to get it for me. It 
 did please me much to hear that I was to have it, for a book was 
 the only treasure that I really coveted, and I felt quite rich in 
 the thought of having one, so interesting for my own. I must 
 have shown my pleasure in my countenance, for the young gentle- 
 man said, interrogatively, " Yon are very fond of books, then ?" 
 
 " There is nothing in all the world I want so much," I replied. 
 " Von like them too, I think, for I see you very often reading." 
 
 " Yes, and I have several here that you might have ; but they 
 are not such as would interest a little girl." 
 
 I looked at the one he had in his hand. It contained all sorts 
 of three-sided, four-sided, eight-sided, and circular figures, and 
 Deemed to be chiefly a dissertation upon the value of the first
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 109 
 
 six or seven letters of the alphabet. It was all mystery to me, 
 and I handed it back, saying that I had rather read books about 
 people, than about letters and figures only. So our talk spun 
 out, I standing near him, as he lay upon the grass propping his 
 head on his elbow. He was of a dark complexion, with a high 
 forehead, well filled in the upper region, both in front and later- 
 ally. His mouth was large ; but his lips, flexible, full, and well 
 cut, in clear, beautiful lines, had very sweet expressions when 
 he spoke. I thought his mouth much handsomer when I was 
 talking to him than before, but his other features had a certain 
 ruggedness, which made me avoid looking much at them. This 
 effect was heightened by the darkness of his aspect, and the 
 heavy brow, projecting over an eye that gloomed upon me. It 
 was not a lowering look ; on the contrary, I felt that he was a 
 kindly person, and I was not at all timid or doubtful in his pres- 
 ence, which I almost always was, on first speaking to strangers. 
 
 I told him about my little treasures of poetry ; those which I 
 had committed to memory, and of some that I did not like well 
 enough. And he asked me to recite one that I liked best of all. 
 I was at a loss for some moments to decide, even among the few 
 at my command ; but at length, curiously enough, I chose one 
 in which the despair of grief, indulged in solitude, is reproved by 
 Faith, or Hope, or some of the comforting spirits. It was brief, 
 containing only twelve or sixteen short lines. 
 
 When I had finished, he asked, " Is that the one you like best, 
 of all that you know ?" 
 
 " It is the one I like best now," I replied ; but I could give no 
 reason for my preference. I was rather surprised at this myself, 
 when I fully understood it to be a fact, and it set me into a new 
 train of thinking. I felt that there ought to be some reason for my 
 choosing this little poem, and that I ought to be able to tell what 
 it was. I had not then learned, that only critics or philosophical 
 readers are expected to give a reason for the taste that is in them. 
 
 I did not again, for many days, see this young gentleman ; 
 but I understood from his being generally called Henry, and
 
 110 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 from his youth, and from his sometimes being left at camp when 
 the others went out, that he was different from them in some 
 way. Everybody seemed to like him so much, and spoke so 
 kindly of him, and he was so fond of being alone, never coming 
 into the house once, in the long days that he stayed in camp ; and 
 always, when I saw him, moving about the tents or walking 
 among the trees, either with a book or looking thoughtful and 
 serious, that I grew quite interested in thinking of him, and be- 
 gan to wish very much that I could get acquainted with him. 
 But the more I thought about him the less I liked to approach 
 him. It called up all. my shyness, to think of walking out in the 
 direction of the camp, at any time when I happened to know 
 that he was staying there. 
 
 One day Mr. Ramsay came to see his friends in this party. 
 He called in the house, and while there took the book which he 
 had promised me from his pocket. Aunt was in one of her 
 pleasant moods at the time, and, in my eagerness and very 
 settled expectation of having it for my own, I stepped quickly 
 forward when he showed it me, to take it and thank him. I 
 stood very near her, and I suppose the pleasure that gleamed 
 from my eyes, as I looked first into his, and then at the book, 
 was more than she thought so small a creature ought to enjoy, 
 for she gave me at the instant a sound box on the ear, and with 
 one of her harsh epithets, bade me go into the other room, 
 meaning my own sleeping-room. 
 
 I had not for some time, been so shamed and outraged in pre- 
 sence of a stranger, and it stung me deeply. I dropped upon a 
 trunk that stood near the door I had passed through, and 
 seemed to be shrinking away to nothing again, as in the old 
 days, before I had known myself as I had of late ; but I think I 
 had not been sitting more than two minutes, when a thought 
 came into my mind, that seemed to go through my nerves and 
 muscles like an electric curreut ; it energized and gave them 
 their full size. Instantly I stood up, and opened the door to 
 walk back. I did not even stop to say to myself, as I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. Ill 
 
 had often before, when inclined to rebel against her tyranny : 
 " She can only beat ine, she dare not kill me ;" but I walked 
 straight forward to the seat I had before occupied, and 
 sat down. = It was a little back and aside, from herself and her 
 visitor ; but on hearing me, he turned so as to bring his face into 
 my view. I looked clearly into it, for I felt clear, and strong, 
 and said to myself : " Now I know I am right, for she had not 
 been displeased before he came in. I had done everything she 
 wished me to, so as to please her ; if he chose to give me the 
 book it was no business of hers ; or, if she did not wish me to 
 have it, she could have said so, without calling me an ill-name or 
 striking me." She looked very black on my return, but I did 
 not drop my eyelids before her, for I felt no quailing in my 
 heart ; I thought " I may as well do it now I've begun." 
 
 Mr. Ramsay's face bore an expression that puzzled and gave 
 me uneasiness, after looking a second time at it. I had relied 
 upon his seeing my view of the case, and this look did not satisfy 
 me at all. He had the book in his hand, and turned it over and 
 over, resting one end on his knee. His voice, too, had a kind 
 of suppressed sound, not at all like the broad, full, jolly tones in 
 which he usually spoke, and he talked as if he were thinking of 
 something else. I was not used to seeing people suppress their 
 anger, or I should have known what I afterwards learned, that 
 these were indications of the pent up fire, into which his whole 
 nature had been kindled, by what he had seen. He soon rose to 
 take leave. Usually I was not included in this ceremony, unless 
 by some good-natured taunt or half-insulting joke, but when he 
 stood up now, I also rose, for I felt I would include myself ; I 
 would demand that attention. 
 
 When he had touched her hand, he turned to me, as if I also 
 had been a woman, and taking my small fingers in his, he in- 
 clined himself slightly towards me, and said, very encouragingly 
 and distinctly : " Good bye, Eliza, I shall come and see you 
 again some day, my dear." He retained his hold of my hand 
 one perceptible moment after the last word, and then walked
 
 112 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 away, seeming to me a giant as he did so. For the first time I 
 felt the strength I had dreaded, as a comfort and protection. 
 In that instant I forgave him all the sudden pickings up and 
 settings over fences, and the thousand annoyances by which he 
 had before tormented me. He had not promised another visit 
 to her bat to me, and I felt as if all the strength and power 
 were for me, and against her : for, by the leave-taking, I had re- 
 ceived assurance that his displeasure was not against me. He 
 had taken the book with him. - .- 
 
 When he had passed beyond the house, and was out of hear- 
 ing, she walked, menacingly, close to me, livid with rage, and 
 in words that quivered from the intensity of her passion, de- 
 manded what I meant by coming back when she had sent me 
 away. Her raised hand was over me while she waited my an- 
 swer. I looked full into her flaming eyes, and said : " If yon 
 strike me, I'll tell him as sure as I live to see him." She had a 
 strong love of approbation, and these were gentlemanly persons, 
 of whom she saw too few in her wild, rude life there, to be wil- 
 ling to forfeit the good opinion of any. She dropped her arm, 
 and, in the impotence of her anger spat upon me. It was not 
 the first time, but it outraged me far more keenly than a blow. 
 Every drop of blood in my body seemed to press into my head. 
 1 sat down while she stood. It was time now to come to some 
 terms. 
 
 " If ever you do that again I'll tell every man and woman 
 that comes to the house," said I. " I'll tell Mr. Ramsay and 
 Mr. Clarke" whom she particularly liked "and Mr. Fleming," 
 I added, with a lucky thought that he was living there, and 
 would not be gone, as these gentlemen would, in a short time 
 ' I will do it," I repeated, "I don't care what you do to me." 
 
 "What does thee mea.n with this impudence, thee little 
 
 blark wn-tch thee nasty little beggar ?" and she raised her hand 
 
 again, but let it fall as before. "What does thee mean, I say ?" 
 
 " I mean," I said, " that when I do everything you tell me to, 
 
 as well as I can, and try as hard as I can to please you, I won't
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 113 
 
 be called names and struck, without letting people know about 
 it. And," I added, taking courage from the sound of my own 
 voice, " as long as I don't go to school, I mean to read books 
 whenever I can get them, and have done all my work." 
 
 " Thy work never is done !" was the passionate answer. " It 
 ain't done now. Go and get the broom, and sweep that dirt 
 from under the chair there." 
 
 She pointed to a scrap of dried leaf or grass, that had been 
 blown aside in the position she indicated. The house was 
 always kept scrupulously clean ; for, besides that she enjoyed 
 keeping me constantly busy, she had the virtues of order and 
 cleanliness. I did as I was told, secretly glad to escape without 
 worse consequences of what, the moment after I had committed 
 it, seemed to me my extreme rashness. 
 
 I had scarcely finished she watching closely all the time 
 and received an order to bring water and put the tea-kettle to 
 boil, though it was yet early in the afternoon, when, some one 
 knocking at the open door, I looked up and saw Mrs. Radford. 
 I always rejoiced at seeing her, not only because she was young, 
 and pretty, and kind, and the wife of Mr. Radford", whom I 
 remembered with so much grateful affection, but because her 
 presence was a real good to me. She would do my tasks, if I 
 were missing, and divert attention from the fact, and, if possible, 
 from me, on my return. 
 
 I wished now very much to get out to the camp before Mr. 
 Ramsay should leave it to return to his own, which was some 
 eight miles away ; and her presence insured me the opportunity 
 to do so. I saw directly that she had come for an afternoon 
 visit. Mr. Radford, she said, would be passing on his way from 
 Creckville, the nearest town on the lake, towards night, and she 
 had become so lonesome staying at home with no one to speak 
 to, since the morning of the day before, that she thought she 
 would come to our house and meet him. She half blushed when 
 she said it, as. if somebody might think it foolish ; but I did not, 
 and aunt said, in a mild tone, as if she had not, the moment
 
 114: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 before, been in danger of spontaneous explosion, " Ah ! that's 
 the way with you young folks. It'll be different, by and by, 
 when you grow older." I remember that these words, quiet as 
 they were, seemed hateful to me ; but as soon as I could get off, 
 I left them, and went out to the camp. 
 
 The party was away ; but there was one gentleman lame, 
 from an injury to his foot or ankle, and I knew he would be 
 home, and that Mr. Ramsay would be in his tent. It was the 
 farthest from the house, and, as I approached it, I smelled the 
 cigar, which was the unfailing indication of the presence of my 
 new friend. He always smoked ; and one of his ways of annoy- 
 ing me was, by blowing great clouds in my face sometimes, and 
 at others, taking a cigar from his pocket, and offering it to me,, 
 with a polite gravity that both amused and vexed me to that 
 degree, that I sometimes wondered how I could refrain from box- 
 ing his ears. The smell of the cigar made me almost fearful. 
 I dreaded finding the old Mr. Ramsay, instead of the one who 
 had just walked out of the house and been so earnest to me. 
 As I drew near, I could not avoid hearing the words that were 
 spoken. Some of them were profane, and others not at all 
 complimentary to a woman whom they did not name. I walked 
 rapidly forward, for I wished not to hear what I knew they did 
 not intend me to, and made a slight noise as I came near the 
 open end of the tent, to bring Mr. Ramsay out. 
 
 " Hallo !" he exclaimed, almost in his natural tone, as he rose 
 and came to the door, " here you are, are you, little one ? I 
 thought you'd be here. Not crying ?" he asked, looking sharply 
 at me. " She hasn't done anything to you, then, since I bade 
 her good bye." 
 
 He had laid his hand on my shoulder, and so drawn me into 
 the tent. Its other inmate I had never spoken to, and I felt so 
 much embarrassed and restrained in his presence, that I could 
 scarcely speak. Mr. Ramsay said, " I brought the book out 
 with me, Eliza, because I wouldn't leave it with that d d 
 old respectable aunt of yours."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 115 
 
 "Will you leave it with Mr. Henry?" I asked. "I have 
 spoken to him once or twice ; and when I can have it, I will 
 ask him for it." 
 
 " Yes ; I'll give it to him for you. But, tell me, does she 
 often do the sort of thing I saw to-day ?" 
 
 I burned at the thought of having to acknowledge it, but 
 answered, in a low voice, "Yes, sir sometimes a great deal 
 worse. But, Mr. Ramsay," I added, drawing quite near to him, 
 " I don't like to talk of it before this gentleman. I don't know 
 him as well as I do you." 
 
 " Well, that's quite right," he said, rising. " Come out a 
 little way with me. I'll be back again, directly, Williams," he 
 said, nodding to the person he left behind. 
 
 When we were outside, he took hold of my hand, as we 
 walked along, and, seeming to measure me by clasping it in his 
 large one, he said, "You are a very little girl, Eliza, to be 
 living alone with that old " 
 
 He paused some time, and, not seeming to find an epithet 
 that suited his need, added, " I am afraid you have, some hard 
 times. She needs a great fellow, like me, to get along with her. 
 I think if I lived in the house awhile, I could get her broken of 
 those little indulgences. What did she strike you and send 
 you away for, child, when I was going to give you that book ?" 
 
 " Because," I replied, " I suppose she did not wish me to 
 have it." 
 
 " Did she know what it was ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well, then, why did she wish yon not to have it ?" 
 
 " Because she doesn't wish me to have any book to read." 
 
 " Why not ?" 
 
 " I think it doesn't please her that I should be so happy." 
 
 He muttered something, but he was so tall and spoke so low, 
 that I did not hear distinctly. 
 
 " What did you say, sir ?" I asked. 
 
 " I said never mind what I said. She made me very angry,
 
 116 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 and perhaps it is quite as well you shouldn't know all I say. 
 Did she do anything more after I came out ?" 
 
 " She offered to strike me, sir ; but I told her if she did, I 
 would tell you." 
 
 " Did you ?" he said, proudly, with a small oath. " That was 
 right. You're a brave little girl ! You'll get along. Tell her so 
 next time, too. I wish she was a man for about five minutes," 
 he said, shaking himself, as if the thought of what would hap- 
 pen if she were, set his muscles into involuntary play. " But a 
 woman one can't punish, and an old woman that you can't flat- 
 ter without lying so damnably I" 
 
 I was astonished at these words ; for I did not understand 
 their meaning, and he seemed, while uttering them, as much 
 inclined to laugh as to be angry. I was thinking if I had better 
 ask him what he meant, when he suddenly called, though we 
 were not in sight of anybody, to Henry. "This fellow," he 
 said, " is always down here, in the bushes somewhere the best 
 fellow that ever Iked, but always out of the way." We were 
 on the slope, near my favorite tree ; but Henry was not there, 
 nor did he make reply from below, where Mr. Ramsay evidently 
 thought he was. He called again, louder this time, and a 
 " Hallo !" came up, apparently from the very water-side. 
 
 "Ah 1 there he is," said my friend. "Now sit down on the 
 grass here a moment, because I want to speak to him. He is 
 the very best fellow," he added, " among us all, and you'll like 
 him better than any, when you get acquainted with him. He 
 won't amuse himself with you as I have, and God knows I 
 believe I shouldn't have done it myself, if I had understood that 
 this was the way you get on in there." 
 
 Mr. Henry, as T called him, did not present himself at once ; 
 and, in the meantime, Mr. Ramsay, in the restlessness of his 
 new character, seemed to feel bound to talk to me without ces- 
 sation. He did not question me further as to the difficulties of 
 my position, but he mixed up denunciation of my oppressor with 
 words of encouragement to me, and occasional lamentations
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 117 
 
 that she was not a man, in which case I was given to under- 
 stand that he should have indulged himself in giving her "a 
 devilish good whipping." 
 
 " Ah ! is that you, Ramsay ?" said Mr. Henry, coming in 
 sight at the moment, and looking surprised and curious, at me. 
 
 " Yes, it is I, and somebody else, you see," he said, noting the 
 look. " The fact is," he added, shaking hands warmly with 
 him, " I've got myself into a position, in reference to my young 
 friend here," looking, with a queer mixture of mocking and 
 earnestness towards me, " and I want to turn it over to you. 
 You're partly an idler, you know, among us hard-working fel- 
 lows, and so you can afford to take little odd jobs off our hands, 
 now and then." 
 
 Mr. Henry looked both surprised and amused at his friend, 
 who said, " Come, sit down a moment, and I'll tell you. But 
 first let me introduce you." And, with a serio-comic look, that 
 annoyed me very much, while I felt myself made ridiculous by 
 it, he said, " Dolly I beg pardon Miss Eliza or Lizzie, this is 
 my friend, and your friend that is to be, Mr. Cranstoun. 1 ' 
 
 Mr. Cranstoun came forward and shook hands w'th me, in a 
 manner that I felt to be very equivocal. It partook, I fancied, 
 too much of the mocking air, to assure me, in any degree, that I 
 was being treated with genuine consideration, and he did not 
 say a word about having seen and talked with me before. I 
 looked at him, expecting that he would do so, but finding that 
 he did not, I said, "Mr. Ramsay, I have seen Mr. Cranstoun 
 before. I talked to him one day under that tree." 
 
 " So much the better," he said, as if my statement made no 
 difference in his view of our relation. 
 
 " Now, Cranstoun, I must tell you, in dozen words what it is, 
 and be off ; I shall be late in, if I stay here much longer ;" and 
 so, first he told him 'of the book, and the reason why he could 
 not give it to me, including a graphic statement of the scene in 
 the house when he had offered it, and of his towering rage; and 
 then of his wish that Cranstoun should occasionally go in and
 
 US MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 notice me ; " and make her feel," he said, " that somebody 
 is observing what she does. She is the greatest old tyrant I 
 ever saw It will take me all the way home to get cool. I give 
 you my word I have not been so angry since I left Washington. 
 Now, my dear fellow," he continued, " I know you don't like to 
 go among these people, but you will do it, won't you, after what 
 I've told you ? There's more, too, but " and he looked at me 
 in a way which said, " I can't say all in her presence, you know; 
 and then," he added, aloud, "you're such a good fellow, so 
 sober and steady, and all that, that I think you are just the 
 man for this affair." 
 
 " I don't know," said Mr. Cranstoun, " that I can do any- 
 thing like what yon ask, but I can try. I don't clearly under- 
 stand what you wish; the child looks as if she were hardly 
 kept, certainly." 
 
 " Well, make yourself watchful," said Ramsay, " and gooo 
 bye; and good bye, little one," turning to me. " Be brisk, and 
 here's the Don Quixote who'll fight that old windmill in there, 
 when she goes too far wrong." They laughed, and went to- 
 gether up the hill. But I did not feel satisfied, and clear about 
 the state of my affairs, and I stayed still, meditating. Mr. Ram- 
 say meant altogether well I was quite certain of that; but his 
 harum-scarum way of doing and talking were not suited to my 
 systematic, downright, earnest notions. I thought, if he wished, 
 in his good-nature for which, with all my silent fault finding, I 
 felt truly grateful to have engaged some possible protection for 
 me, he should not have had me present. It remained on my 
 mind unpleasantly, that both the gentlemen had seemed rather 
 more amused than distressed at the case; for I could not seo 
 from their point of view, how strongly their proposed champion- 
 ship must have been tinctured with the ludicrous. It did not 
 occur to me till years after, when the great sorrow of my child- 
 hood had 
 
 " Lost ita bitter weight of woe "
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 119 
 
 when the passionate grief with which I had mourned for one of 
 those friends, had been mitigated by time, and by new affec- 
 tions, how preposterous the whole affair must have looked to 
 them. If I had been gifted with beauty; if I had been well 
 dressed, it would doubtless have amused them much less; but I 
 felt certain that the two or three hearty laughs I heard at the top 
 of the hill, were at my expense, and they made my blood boil. 
 
 I waited for Mr. Cranstoun's return, to speak to him, for, in 
 my spirit, I protested against being thus made party to a solici- 
 tation of protection from a stranger. Where it came casually, 
 I accepted it thankfully if it had been asked without my know- 
 ledge, I should have been only grateful to both parties ; but I 
 could not beg it, which I seemed to have done in this case, by 
 hearing all that had passed ; and then the laughing decided me. 
 When Mr..Cranstoun walked down the hill again after his friend 
 had gone, he found me looking not the most amiable, I dare say; 
 but he sat down with the book in his hand, and said in the plea- 
 sant manner of an old acquaintance, "I am sorry, Eliza, you can't 
 have this now, as you want it so much, but do not fret about it; 
 I will keep it safely, and you shall have it whenever you are 
 ready. I shall go in and see more of your what is it ? your 
 aunt ?" 
 
 " No, sir," I replied, indignantly; " she is not my aunt at all; 
 I call her so because I can't bear to call her mother, though I 
 am her adopted daughter. She is no relation of mine." And in 
 answer to other questions, I informed him that I was mother- 
 less. Of my father I did not like to speak ; the thought of him 
 made me flush all over; I could not endure to say more than 
 that he was living, but I had not seen him for more than four 
 years the time I had lived here. The genuine interest shown 
 by my auditor, in the little history which I briefly related, quite 
 drove the protest I had determined upon making from my mind. 
 I told him of my great love for books of the few I had read 
 how I had obtained them, and under what difficulties I had got 
 through them; concealing bits of candle in iny room and lighting
 
 120 \ MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 one after the other (matches were unknown to us), and some- 
 times being severely beaten when I was detected. I told him of 
 Mr. Radford, Mr. Garland, Mr. Fleming, Albert, every one 
 who had helped me; and how very gratefully I thought of them; 
 and finally, that I had determined, siuce I had found I was not 
 a fool, to learn all I could, in spite of her, and get to school 
 some day. 
 
 When I had finished, Mr. Henry said very kindly, looking at 
 me with eyes that glistened with earnest sympathy, " My poor 
 child, I wish indeed that I could do anything to help you. I 
 did not understand Mr. Ramsay as well as I do you." 
 
 " Mr. Ramsay," I replied, quickly, "doesn't understand me, sir. 
 He has been very kind to-day, but before this he has always 
 teased me so much that I could not like him. I am not angry 
 with him now for anything he ever did, but he had rather laugh 
 at me than teach me anything, and if you would be kind enough 
 to let me ask you questions once in a while you know so much, 
 I should be very glad. I could learn a great deal if I had some- 
 body to go to sometimes when I think of things that I wish to 
 know." 
 
 " You may come to me whenever yon wish to," he said, 
 " and do not be afraid ; nobody will tease you when you wish to 
 speak to me." 
 
 This was a boon, indeed an inestimable blessing ; I could 
 not express my gratitude in words, but my happy tears con- 
 veyed what my tongue refused. He was so entirely sincere and 
 respectful. There was none of the banter and badinage which 
 I always had to encounter from his companions, and I felt so 
 wholly set at ease in his presence, that I said, " Oh, Mr. Henry, 
 if you will always be so kind, I shall like you very much, and 
 I shall never, never forget you."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 121 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 *' The white kine glimmered and the trees 
 Laid their dark arms about the fields." 
 
 WHEN I returned to the house from which I had been a much 
 longer time than usual absent, even good Mrs. Radford's pre- 
 sence, though she was laying the table for tea, and insisted that 
 she liked BO well to do it, that she was very unwilling to let me 
 finish, did not save me from a violent scolding, and two or three 
 "casual" cuffs, when I happened to pass near my tormentor; 
 but I did not feel them, for I was clad in spirit-mail. I did my 
 household tasks ; I drove the cows to the dairy-yard, and 
 milked my number ; I spread the supper-table, and cleared it 
 away in a dream or trance. I moved about on my feet, and my 
 hands did the labor, but I was not there. Mr. Radford did not 
 come as was expected, and the first circumstance that pene- 
 trated my mind as a reality, that evening, was that Mrs. Rad- 
 ford was to share my large bed. 
 
 Her personal presence was always most agreeable to me. 
 Her sweetness, and gentleness, and sincerity, were so apparent. 
 I told her that I thought Mr. Radford must be so much happier 
 living with her than with us, and that I was glad, though I 
 often wished he was back again, for a little while. I asked 
 her how old she was, and told her my own age; and wlu-ii we 
 found there were but seven years between us, for she was only 
 seventeen, we both wondered very much, and I asked her if she 
 thought, when I was seven years older, I should be married, and 
 live in a house without anybody to scold and drive me ? But 
 1 answered the question myself, before she had time, by telling
 
 122 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 her that I was going to school, and did not intend to keep house 
 and work, when I became a woman.. 
 
 She expressed a great deal of sympathy for me, and told me 
 some very kind things her husband had said about me. I asked 
 her what flattery was, and what Mr. Ramsay could have meant, 
 by saying about aunt, that she was an old woman whom he 
 " could not flatter without lying so damnably." And then I 
 learned what my hard and literal life had never taught me, that 
 people often said kind and pleasant words to others which 
 meant nothing; and that Mr. Ramsay would perhaps have tried 
 to flatter aunt into good nature, if she had been younger or 
 kinder. 
 
 " But what difference does the age make ?" I asked, for I 
 could not understand that. 
 
 " I hardly know,"- said Julia Anna ; " I suppose he meant if 
 she had been younger he could have liked her better, and then 
 he could have said something that would please her without 
 lying. 
 
 " I don't see," I said, " why her being old should make any 
 difference about his liking her. I never knew any woman who 
 was very old except my grandmother, and I loved her better 
 than any young woman." Mrs. Radford did not explain these 
 profound mysteries to me, and I fell asleep wondering over them, 
 and thinking with inner gladness and trust on my new-found 
 friend. I fully believed that IIB could explain everything. 
 
 When I rose in the morning I began to feel the precious 
 value of the time that I could have with Mr. Henry. I knew 
 they would remain only a few weeks, at most, and there were so 
 many things that I wished to talk with him about. And first I 
 wished to know how it was that, when the other gentlemen 
 were never at camp in the day-time, unless they were ill or 
 lame, or calculating (which, as I had found out, meant sitting at 
 a table covered with paj>ers, and being very busy indeed), he was 
 RO much of tlic time there. I determined npon learning this as 
 as I saw him, for I was distinctly impressed that he was
 
 MY EAKLT DATS. 123 
 
 not under the same necessity of duty that the others were, and 
 I was prepared to be very much pleased with the fact when he 
 should tell me it was so. 
 
 But alas for my anticipations ! The thorough, vigilant, ill- 
 nature of the next three or four days seemed incredible. I 
 could scarcely get out of doors, but in her sight. I could not 
 speak but I was railed at. I could not be silent but it was de- 
 manded of me why I was sullen and sulky ? And yet, for the 
 first time in my life, I think, I was endeavoring to be hypocriti- 
 cally pleasant. I was taxing my utmost powers of accomplish- 
 ing to gain, if possible, a little time. But I could not even 
 approach it in prospect, for accumulated tasks were kept before 
 me from morning till night. I was three or four deep in them 
 all day, and so discouraged before night, that I could have wept 
 in sheer despondency. This was revenge for my independence 
 on the day of the book affair. 
 
 In these times I was very little iven to tearful bewailing of 
 my lot ; I had strong resolution within, and a trust in, I knew 
 not what, but something which, though they occasionally 
 threatened, in extreme emergencies like this, to fail me very 
 rarely did do so altogether. I said, too, mentally, while I was 
 submitting to her tyrannous exactions : " She doesn't beat me as 
 much as she used to. I have gained that at least." But before 
 two days were at an end, I almost wished she would take the 
 shorter method of blows to sate her evil passions, the slavery 
 was so very trying when I so much desired to be free. Mr. 
 llenry came in, the second evening, with another gentleman. 
 They both spoke to me, with noticeable purpose, I feared, and 
 it soon proved so, by my being ordered peremptorily to light a 
 candle and go to bed. I had the satisfaction, however, of hear- 
 ing them depart soon after I left the room. 
 
 Uncle, who had been a long journey in the early part of the 
 summer, had returned a few days before this, and when they 
 were gone, I heard him say to his wife : " Phebe, I wouldn't 
 have sent Eliza to bed so soon, I saw the young man look at
 
 12^ MY EAELY DATS. 
 
 his friend when you spoke to her, and I think they notice what 
 I have often told yon, that you are very harsh with her." 
 
 " Let 'em notice and be hanged," she said, her temper rising 
 instantly. " I am not afraid of 'em, tho' I might be if I was as 
 good-natured a fool as thee is. What do I care what they 
 think, or how they look ? I'll do what I've a mind to with the 
 little brat, for all them. She's getting very independent with 
 them to notice her, and I'll take it out of her, I'll warrant thee. 
 She wouldn't be worth her salt if I let her have her own 
 way." 
 
 " I wouldn't recommend letting her have her own way," 
 said uncle, when the torrent of her speech was checked, " but 
 you often speak very harshly to her when she is doing nothing to 
 deserve it, and she is getting old enough now for people to notice 
 it. They always have, you know, even before this time." The 
 door of my little room was ajar, and as I lay at the extreme 
 front side of the bed, I could look upon them both, as they sat 
 on opposite sides of the small stand, at which she continued her 
 sewing, till he had nearly finished his last speech. Every word 
 he spoke increased my astonishment, for her choler was visibly 
 rising, and still he kept on till, for once at least, he appeared to 
 have said all he began to say. I thought : " What has hap- 
 pened to uncle ? Is he going to take my part too ?" But the 
 burst of passion that followed, soon smothered the intention, if 
 he had entertained it at first. She raged vehemently for a few 
 minutes, and finally wrought herself up to the point of seizing a 
 small stick of wood from the hearth, and hurling it in the di- 
 rection jof his feet. 
 
 There was silence after this act till he spoke, raising the mis- 
 sile at the same moment, and said : " If you had thrown that 
 harder you might have done me a serious injury. A splinter 
 has gone through my stocking and pricked the top of my foot 
 as it is." 
 
 " I wouldn't have cared if it had hurt thee," she replied, in 
 somewhat gentler tones. " Thee had no business to talk so like
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 125 
 
 a ninny to me about that young one. I'm sure she's more 
 trouble than forty like her would be worth, and people are 
 noticing her so much now, that she don't pretend to mind, only 
 when she pleases ;" and she went on to relate to him the story 
 of Mr. Ramsay's visit and the book. She told it truthfully, and 
 he heard it without comment. Soon after they retired, and I 
 thought, as they went, that " uncle had better not have said a 
 word for me, for she had silenced him, and I was sure she felt 
 that she was right and he wrong." I did not wonder that 
 he had always left me to make my own way through my 
 troubles. 
 
 The next day they were to pay a visit about three miles dis- 
 tant, and there was a debate in the morning what should be 
 done with me. After his unsuccessful venture of the previous 
 evening, he left her to decide the question herself, which she did, 
 by finally determining not to take me, and by issuing orders re- 
 specting the disposition of my time during the day, that would 
 have filled a closely-written sheet* My secret joy at this decision 
 was intense, for I could get the book, and have a whole day in 
 peace, to read it, or talk with Mr. Henry, if I wished to. When 
 they had gone, and I had seen them so far away as to feel quite 
 assured there would be no returning, I literally flew through my 
 tasks. I cleared the breakfast things, and set the house in 
 order, with a quickness that surprised myself. I was so consti- 
 tuted that I could not neglect what I knew I ought to do, but when 
 that was done I ran out to the camp, and fortunately finding 
 Mr. Henry there, got the book. I explained to him that I had the 
 great happiness of being quite alone all that day, and that I should, 
 perhaps, after reading a while, wish to come out and talk with 
 him, which I was cordially invited to do " Or," he said, " I 
 will come in, by and by, and see you. When there is nothing to 
 hinder," he added, playfully, "gentlemen should call on ladies, 
 when they wish to see them. I will call and see you in the 
 afternoon." 
 
 I walked in, thinking about this all the way. There was such
 
 126 MY EARLY DAYB. 
 
 a difference between the pleasantry of this little speech, and any 
 other that had ever been made to me. It seemed to elevate, in- 
 stead of depressing me, in my own esteem. I thought : "He 
 will teach me something that little girls know, who have ladies 
 to teach them." I was very desirous to learn them, and I 
 thought so much about it that I changed my dress to receive the 
 expected visit. My clothes were rarely dirty, for that condition 
 I could not endure, and, as I have said, cleanliness was among 
 the few virtues that were exemplified in the daily life of our 
 household ; but my garments were very often torn x generally 
 scanty, and of the plainest home-made fabrics. Mrs. Sanford 
 had, at that time, woven nearly every dress I had had. They 
 were some kind of striped, or plaided linen, or cotton, or tow 
 cloths. But I was now the possessor of a print frock of two 
 shades of blue, made fuller and larger than the commoner ones, 
 and this I put on to receive my visitor in. I made a careful 
 toilet altogether, brushing my hair, cleansing my teeth with 
 table-salt, upon a bit of linen, and attending to all the minor 
 points of adjustment that I could remember, as belonging to the 
 process of dressing, as I had seen it. It took possession of my 
 mind so thoroughly, that by the time I was ready to sit down, I 
 felt much less interest in the book than I had before. I looked 
 at the great watch hanging above the mantel, and saw it would 
 be yet some two hours before the camp dinner would be over, 
 and I knew that Mr. Henry's afternoon did not commence till 
 that event was past.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 127 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 " That voice re-measures 
 Whatever tone and melancholy pleasures 
 The things of nature utter ; birds or trees, 
 Or where the tall grass, 'mid the heath-plant waves 
 Murmur and music thin, of sudden breeze." 
 
 WHEN my visitor came, he had in his hand a small volume, 
 curiously bound, in what I now know is called embossed binding. 
 It fastened with a clasp of gold, and its leaves were of thick, 
 fine paper, gilt edged. It was a book of pictures, and each leaf 
 had a fine one upon it, which Mr. Henry told me to call en- 
 gravings. He explained the difference between paintings and 
 engravings, so that I understood' it quite distinctly. He told 
 me that, " the man who paints a good picture must have more 
 genius and love of his work, than the one who makes a good en- 
 graving." These pictures were copies of some of the finest 
 paintings in the world. There was a woman and child, I re- 
 member, of such pure and exquisite beauty, that my eyes filled 
 with tears while I looked at them. I asked who they were ? 
 and he told me, " it was Mary and her son Jesus, and that the 
 name for her, in picture, was Madonna." I thought they were 
 likenesses, and I said : " If that is Jesus and his mother, I 
 don't believe a word of what she, says about them." 
 
 " What does she say ?" he asked. 
 
 I was ashamed to tell him that, as far as she ever taught me 
 at all, it was to despise these persons ; and that she called 
 Jesus a thief and a liar, and said his mother was a very bad 
 woman. But I did utter it all, somehow or other, and added, 
 " But if she was so beautiful and kind looking, it cannot be 
 true, can it ?"
 
 128 MY KAELY DAYS. 
 
 I raised my eyes to his face when I asked the question, and 
 found his fixed upon me, with so earnest and searching a gaze, so 
 full of pain, so expressive of being shocked by the coarse, hate- 
 ful thoughts, though I had conveyed them in the gentlest lan- 
 guage I could command, that I was frightened, lest I had 
 fatally wounded the interest he felt in me. I wished to say 
 something, but could not ; and when my eyes fell again on the 
 pure faces which were still before me, I burst into tears. Partly 
 it was the effect of the heavenly countenance of the mother, 
 and partly the reaction of my own wounded reverence, which 
 his look seemed to kindle into keen, sensitive life. 
 
 " Lizzie," said he, " do you remember your own mother ?" 
 " I remember her a very little," I answered ; " only twice 
 while she was able to walk about, and once when she lay sick in 
 bed ; and then," I added, with a kind of creeping awe, " when 
 she was dying." 
 
 " Do you think she would have taught you such things ?" 
 " Oh, no," I replied ; " for one of the times that I remember 
 her, is when she was taking me to meeting. Oh, no ; my mother 
 was a good woman very good, indeed !" 
 
 " Well," he said, " do not believe anything of this sort, that 
 she teaches you, which you think your mother would not have 
 taught you. What a dreadful condition," he added, seriously, 
 after a moment, " for a little girl ! Have you no friends who 
 would take you out of it ?" 
 
 " I mean to get out of it myself, when I am a little 
 older." 
 
 " But you told me the other day that your father was living 
 where is he ?" 
 
 " He is in New York," I replied, " but" . I could get no 
 
 further. All the tenderness of my nature was roused by these 
 recollections and 'the shock I had given myself, and I quite 
 broke down, at the last word, in a shower of tears. 
 
 When I had recovered a little my self-control, Mr. Henry 
 said, very kindly but seriously, " I wish to ask you one or two
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 129 
 
 more questions, child, but if you cry so, you will not be able to 
 answer them." 
 
 This appeal had the effect he intended. I instantly felt that 
 it would not do, and dried my tears and choked my sobbings, 
 and said, " I'll answer anything you ask me, Mr. Henry ; but it 
 makes me grieve to remember my mother, and to speak of my 
 father. That was why I cried." 
 
 " Have you any brothers ?" 
 
 " Yes, two ; and one of them is named as you are Henry." 
 
 " Well, now, call me Henry, and not Mr. Henry any more ; 
 and think I am your brother, and talk to me as if I were. I 
 wish to ask you about your father. Do not cry now, but tell 
 me, if you can, why he leaves you in this place." 
 
 " He does not know," I said, " that it is so bad. She will 
 not let me send a letter to my sister, without her first seeing it, 
 and then I can't tell them about her at all." 
 
 "If he knew all about it, do you think he would come for 
 you ?" he asked. 
 
 I had no longer any way of evading what I shrunk from with 
 inexpressible pain. In spite of myself, tears of wounded pride 
 and real anguish overflowed my eyes. I looked appealingly at 
 him, and he took hold of my hand very gently, and said, " Poor 
 child 1 I am sorry I have pained you so much. If there is 
 something you do not wish to tell me, let us forget all about it, 
 and talk of other things. Let us look at the pictures again." 
 
 " Oh no," I said ; " I will tell you all ; but I wouldn't any 
 one else, not even Mr. Radford. 
 
 Then I expressed the reverential affection I had for my 
 mother, I told him how we all loved her, and grieved at her 
 death ; how I had since learned that my father's cruel neglect 
 of her bad hurt her so much ; and how a woman whom every- 
 body thought very wicked, and who was said to have almost 
 killed my mother, had been with her when she died, and stayed 
 with us afterwards, and my father had been very kind to her ; 
 and how, when I used to expect my mother to come back out 
 6*
 
 130 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 of her grave, to see us, my sister, who was older, told me she 
 would never come while that bad woman was with us ; and how, 
 on all these accounts, I could not help thinking my father very 
 wicked, and could not love him at all, though he was my 
 father. 
 
 " And you would not like him to come for you, if some one 
 should write and tell him how ill you are treated ?" 
 
 " Oh, no;" I said, almost alarmed at the idea ; " no, not my 
 father. I wouldn't live with her again, and she is his wife now. 
 She is Mary wrote it, in her last letter." 
 
 My friend sat silent for some time. " It is very difficult," he 
 said, at last. "I wish I' could talk to my mother about 
 you." 
 
 " Is your mother very good ?" I asked. 
 
 " She is the best and kindest woman living," I think. " She 
 would know just what to say to you, and what it was best to 
 do ; for it seems as if something should be done. I am sure 
 Mr. Ramsay had very little idea of what he was talking about, 
 when he spoke to me the other day." 
 
 " Oh, no," I said, " Mr. Ramsay doesn't know at all how 
 much I wish to learn, nor how something grieves me, and I 
 should never tell him, if he lived here all his life." 
 
 " Well, Eliza, you cannot always live so." 
 
 " I don't mean to," I replied. " I am going to school as soon 
 as I get old enough to get away from her." 
 
 " How old are you now ?" 
 
 " I am past ten." 
 
 11 Past ten ! That is not a very great age, though you seem 
 to think it so much. But you are very old for those* years, 
 child. Except for your size, one would think you were at least 
 twi-lvc or thirteen." 
 
 1 -:i;d : "Mr. and Mrs. Garland think that is because I have 
 had no children to play with, and have read papers and books 
 so much, that are made for grown people. I haven't had any 
 others to read," I added, by way of excusing myself ; for I
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 131 
 
 thought it must look very badly to him, and I was anxious that 
 he should approve me. 
 
 " I see," he replied, apparently very much occupied with his 
 own thoughts ; and I remained silent a long time. At length 
 he said, " Let us finish the book. You have only seen a few of 
 the pictures yet." And he went on telling me, as he turned the 
 leaves, what the buildings were famous for, where the land- 
 scapes were, and if any historical event was connected with 
 them, and so on. I was quite conversant, for a child of my age, 
 with physical geography. I had brought a small class-book 
 from home not a baby geography, but one for advanced 
 classes and had read it through so many times that I could 
 have recited almost from the title-page to the "finis." This 
 helped me to understand his explanations much better than I 
 otherwise could have done. 
 
 There was a series of views of the lakes of Scotland, of 
 exquisite beauty, that affected me deeply. The miniature 
 sheets of water, nestling lovingly between the towering moun- 
 tains, the foliage that margined them, seeming almost to quiver 
 in the still air, very nearly wrought me to tears again. I grew 
 sad looking at them, and when they were all passed, I begged 
 to turn those leaves again ; for I did not care for fine churches 
 or palaces after them. I asked Mr. Henry if there were such 
 beautiful places anywhere else in the world, and he told me of a 
 great many, in India, in Italy, in Spain, in Switzerland, and iu 
 our own country. 
 
 He had a dreamy way of talking about it, which made it 
 seem a reality to me. I could almost see the places he de- 
 scribed the rivers sweeping tranquilly on between banks laden 
 with foliage ; the glassy surface, reflecting the trees and leaves, 
 as I had seen them in our own creek ; the little lakes, nestled 
 among hills ; the immense, towering mountains, buried in snow 
 and ice ; the plunging cataracts ; and the great ocean, the 
 grandest and most awful mystery of all, with its huge whales, 
 and seals, and linns its millions of lesser inhabitants, and that
 
 . 
 
 132 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 awful treasury, which I imagined to sleep in its depths, of 
 broken ships, guns, weapons, gold, jewels, books, and those who 
 had once read them. 
 
 That was a memorable afternoon. It seemed to have feasted 
 my memory for all time. I thought, there cannot be much else 
 besides all this, to remember and think of. On the other hand, 
 it made the return to my commonplace life so much more repul- 
 sive and wearisome than it had been before, that it required the 
 heroism of a martyr to nerve myself to it. And it was time I 
 should ; for the afternoon was wearing towards evening, and I 
 had too keen and abiding a sense of the terror of that return 
 that should find me with unfinished tasks, to forget them, even 
 in this great pleasure. 
 
 At last I said, " Mr. Henry, it is getting late, and I shall have 
 to go for the cows. Aunt would be dreadfully angry if she 
 knew I had sat so long, but I shall not tell her that you 
 came in." 
 
 " What if she asks you, Eliza ?" 
 
 " Oh, she won't think of it," I replied ; " but if she should, 
 I would tell her the truth." 
 
 " That is right," he said, apparently well satisfied. " Never 
 tell her a falsehood." 
 
 " I never do," said I ; "she can only punish me, if she is ever 
 so angry, and I get over that ; but I should feel very bad for 
 a long time, I think, if I told what was not true." 
 
 " Yes," he said; "you have enough to suffer without that. 
 Never, on any account, try it. But do you think it would be 
 any better for you if I sometimes came in, and talked to her and 
 to you, when she is here ?" 
 
 "i cannot think whether it would or not," I replied ; "she 
 doesn't like people to talk to me at all. She always says, even 
 now, that I am a fool when I speak much ; and the other day, 
 when a strange gentleman was here, talking with uncle, and 
 they called me to ask me a question about the debate between 
 Mr. llayne and Mr. Webster, she was very cross, though I only
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 133 
 
 answered just what they asked, and went right away to my 
 work. Sometimes she gets angry about things she hardly 
 notices at others, and I don't know what she would do if you 
 came in." 
 
 " I think I shall try it," he said, " for I should like to talk 
 with you sometimes, and I should like to feel that nobody would 
 object to it, or punish you if it were known." 
 
 He took his leave, cautioning me to put Mr. Eamsay's book 
 away lest it might cause me trouble. I concealed it carefully in 
 the bottom of my little trunk, changed my frock hastily, and, 
 with that chilly kind of heart-sickening, so terrible to the young 
 spirit oh ! how many times I felt it there stepped forth again 
 to the dull, repulsive routine of my hateful life. I no longer 
 loved the cows and the poultry ; the places that I had thought 
 beautiful, were robbed of their charms, they were not like the 
 pictures. There were far more beautiful birds and trees else- 
 where than them, and I thought, " I shall never be happy again 
 with these." 
 
 I shed some tears as I walked over the unsightly pasture, 
 filled with charred stumps and trunks of fallen trees. The little 
 dark stream, which issued from the swamp that I crossed every 
 summer evening, on the body of a small tree, quite disgusted me 
 by its familiar placidity and blackness. There was neither new- 
 ness nor mystery in it. I was suddenly grown too large for 
 my environments. The external limitations which had before 
 seemed only very wearisome, were made insupportable, by what 
 those few hours had revealed to me. How should I ever attain 
 the freedom to enjoy what I now knew the world contained for 
 me ; for Mr. Henry had said that the beauty which God had 
 created, was for every soul that loved it; and that people would 
 grow, not only wiser but more beautiful themselves for loving 
 and seeking beauty. I thought he meant by this to comfort and 
 encourage me, " but how," I asked myself, " am I to grow hand- 
 somer if I can never see what is beautiful, and be made happy 
 by it?" I determined to ask him distinctly about this, for I was
 
 134 MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 now very desirous to kuow if I could cause myself to grow hand- 
 somer. Such burning flushes went over me now, at the recol- 
 lection of the undisguised surprise which my ugliness called forth. 
 I could remember meeting one day, long ago, a man and woman 
 riding along in a little covered carriage ; the road was sandy, 
 so that the wheels made no noise, and I heard the woman say, 
 "What a homely child! I never saw another so ugly." It did 
 not hurt me then, but I remembered it, and similar remarks 
 now, with agony of spirit ; and I felt that driving and milking 
 cows, and sweeping floors, and washing dishes, and bringing 
 water, would never help me to what I so longed for. Oh, how 
 intensely miserable I was! 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 " Then black despair 
 The shadow of a starless night was thrown 
 Over the earth, oil which I moved alone." 
 
 "Made quiet by the power 
 
 Of harmony, and the deep power of joy." 
 
 MR. HEXRY was out with his party the next day, and the 
 next ; but on the third he came in, and I thought took pains to 
 make himself as pleasant as possible to aunt. The sound of his 
 voice, bringing back the memory of the delightful hours when I 
 had sat uninterruptedly by him, listening to those sweet and 
 grand utterances that had breathed a larger life into my soul, 
 gave me the keenest pain. I hid my face, lest the shadow of my 
 deep emotions should be visible on it. He talked to her about 
 the country, and their labor in it ; and her husband's journey, 
 and their early settlement, when the forest was almost unbroken; 
 and expressed sympathy for her in the rude, hard life she had 
 bad. I was surprised, for I had not often seen anybody who
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 135 
 
 seemed to make himself so entirely agreeable to her. She 
 was in her sweetest vein, when he said, "You must, indeed, 
 have seen many sad days, and have been more lonely, as you had 
 no children about you. How long have you this little girl with 
 you ?" 
 
 " About four years." 
 
 " She seems a quiet, old-fashioned little thing ; but even her 
 presence, I suppose, may at times have been a resource to you, 
 when alone." 
 
 "Yes, she is better than nobody about the house; but she 
 makes me a great deal of trouble ; she is idle and lazy, and 
 loves to read better than to do anything else; so that I have 
 great difficulty to keep books away from her." 
 
 " Oh, yes; when you wish her to do something else, that must 
 be very troublesome," he said, turning to me with a look of 
 slight rebuke. " You should not read when you ought to be at 
 work, Eliza; but when the work is done." 
 
 " I don't expect her ever to read much, while she is here," 
 was the decisive reply to this attempt at a reasonable view of 
 my case. " I don't intend she ever shall; when I get ready she 
 will go to school, and then it will be time enough for her to get 
 hold of books." 
 
 " But," said Mr. Henry, in a cold, indifferent tone, as if he 
 merely argued the point, but cared nothing about it, "a young 
 scholar is very much helped in study by general reading; it pre- 
 pares the mind for the sharper appreciation of the school, and 
 gives one ideas which one is always better for having." 
 
 To this she replied in words and tone which burned them- 
 selves into my very heart's core. " That is very likely ; but I 
 didn't bring this child here to educate her. If I had wanted 
 one for that purpose, I should not have got a simpleton, like 
 her, nor a fright ; but I promised to send her to school, and 
 t/iey are always writing about it, so I suppose she'll have to go, 
 by and by. I got her to help me, not to be waited on herself. 
 If she was as bright as other children, I should have more
 
 136 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 patience with her; but she talks about everything, whenever 
 there's a chance for her to speak, and about a hundred things 
 that she can't know any more of than of the cows she milks. 
 Some children," she added, after a pause, " seem to be born for 
 one thing, and some for another; but I'm sure I don't know what 
 she was born for, unless it was to torment me and work. She 
 does one all the time, and she'll have to do the other as long as 
 she is with me." 
 
 In the commencement of this conversation, I had turned so as 
 to conceal my face from the speakers, for I did not wish her to 
 see .any signs of emotion in it. Every word every syllable of it 
 had fallen on my spirit, with the distinctness with which particles 
 of molten lead drop from the overflowing mass. I expected, 
 too, at every word to hear myself ordered from the room, and I 
 was so much excited between the hope, and the chilling dismay 
 between wonder at being permitted to remain, and dread of 
 being noticed enough to be sent away, that by the time she had 
 said her last words, my bead seemed to have distended 
 immensely, and to ring, as if its walls were metal, with the rush 
 of blood, and the vibrations of nervous excitement. I could not 
 help hoping, when my friend began to speak, in his quiet, reason- 
 able way, that she would admit something of what he said, if 
 only a very little, it would have so encouraged and quieted me; 
 but she could not be further from it, except that his entire 
 courtesy gave no provocation to her passion. She did not rage 
 as she was always used to, in speaking on most subjects that 
 interested her personally, and on which she differed from her 
 interlocutor, but cool and calm as the day around her she 
 announced her diabolic purpose ; .it was worse than her fury, 
 which, however shocking and terrible, one always knew would, 
 by and by, abate. 
 
 ilenry remained silent for some time ; so long, that my head 
 began to subside, and my heart to beat less heavily, before he 
 spoke. I should have left the room to escape the pain, but I 
 could not have done it unless commanded, without hearing his
 
 MT EAKLT DATS. 137 
 
 next words. I thought, " Now, when he speaks again, 1 shall 
 know what he is." Without knowing what the position, or my 
 own mind demanded of him, I felt, that, if after that rude 
 speech, he dared another word for me, my soul would bow down 
 in worship of him. 
 
 When he spoke, it was in this wise, with the utmost 
 courtesy, but with a deep tone of elevated sincerity : " Par- 
 don me, Mrs. Smalley ; I can quite understand that it may 
 seem presumptuous in a young man like me, a stranger, to 
 speak to you on a subject which concerns you alone, or at least, 
 chiefly; but my father and mother have taught me always to 
 speak what I earnestly think, and I trust you will not impute to 
 me, in what I am about to say, any intention to offend. I have 
 been at leisure a good deal, since we have been in this encamp- 
 ment, and having little to interest me, and being very fond of 
 children, I have several times spoken to Eliza indeed, one day 
 I kept her through quite a long talk, and her intelligence and 
 power of thought seemed very striking to me. I must differ from 
 you in thinking the child simple ; she seems, on the contrary, 
 remarkably bright ; in some directions, especially so." 
 
 "Yes," she interrupted, "she knows a great deal too much 
 of some things, and not half enough of others." 
 
 " Perhaps that may be in part owing," suggested my advocate, 
 " to the want of a child's education and reading. She has had 
 what men only read, and so expresses men's thoughts, which 
 seem out of place and unnatural in a girl of her age, but one 
 cannot soberly conclude that for that reason she is deficient in 
 understanding. I take the liberty of saying this to you, madam, 
 because, as I said, I love children naturally, and I am inclined, 
 when near a child, and not otherwise occupied, to try the 
 young spirit and prove what it is. I trust I have not given 
 offence.'' 
 
 " No," she replied, in a dubious tone, but with a promptness 
 that reassured me ; " Oh, no ; thee hasn't offended me. I 
 don't agree with thee at all, and it isn't of consequence enough
 
 138 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 for any more talk about it. If she lives, it will be seen which 
 of us is right. 1 have no doubt about it now, but it's not 
 likely that thee will ever know, and so it makes no difference 
 how much thee is mistaken." 
 
 Great God ! how my soul seemed to wither and die at 
 those words, and that tone which so dismissed me my life, my 
 being, my hopes, my purposes, all that was of me. I could not 
 stay for another word, but I crawled, rather than walked, out of 
 the nearest door. J went so silently that, as Mr. Henry told 
 me afterward, thej did not hear the sound of my going. 
 I was utterly broken down, dissolved to tears ; my self-respect, 
 my resolution, my courage, all gone. I walked away to the great 
 maple, by the spring, and seated myself between its roots, beside 
 the little stream, and my tears mingled with the senseless waters. 
 Never had I been so wholly disheartened. Never had the life 
 before me seemed such a dead level of hopelessness. Cold, 
 nerveless, paralyzed, I sat ; my very anguish so negative in its 
 character, that it was more akin to death than life. I know not 
 how long I had been sitting, my head drooped forward, my 
 hands clasped over my aching knees, that felt as if they would 
 never again support me, when I heard my name called, in a sharp, 
 warning tone, which at least served the purpose of partly re- 
 calling me to life. I cared, indeed, little for any punishment 
 that might be inflicted on me then, but my obedience to that 
 voice was almost involuntary. It moved me, as the galvanic 
 battery stirs the muscle and nerve, that are no longer warmed 
 and propelled by the vital presence. I rose and ascended the 
 hill. There were no voices in the house. Henry then was gone, 
 and in becoming conscious of that fact, I realized that there was 
 yet something positive to me in the world. The thought of him 
 recalled, in some measure, the natural warmth and action of life. 
 I moved with less effort. I spoke, and my voice was not sepul- 
 chral, as I knew it must have been a moment before. 
 
 She inquired where I had been ? 
 
 " Down along the bank," I replied.
 
 MY EAKLT DATS. 139 
 
 " What did thee go there for ?" 
 
 " Because I did not like to stay, and hear you and Mr. Henry 
 talk about me ; that was all. Shall I put the tea-kettle on ?" I 
 asked, anxious to have no more words on that subject. 
 
 " No, it is not time yet. Thee can get the comb, and comb 
 my hair a while." 
 
 This was an occupation to which I could always be called, for 
 she had a curious love of having me stand behind her chair, and 
 busy myself about her head. A tranquil state of mind was 
 always the result of these manipulations. In a few minutes 
 after I commenced, she would begin to sing, in a tolerable voice, 
 snatches of poetry and old songs. She had no tunes, but the 
 sounds were musical, and the pleasanter to me, because I felt 
 no dread when hearing them ; so that, in common times, I liked 
 the occupation, and its results, well enough to feel seldom dis- 
 pleased when called to it. On some of these occasions she 
 had even talked with me quite pleasantly, and gone so far as to 
 laugh, now and then, at something J said. But those were rare 
 spots in my life, and as they never touched my heart, I remem- 
 bered them more as a wonder than a, pleasure. 
 
 I now pushed my low foot-stool behind her chair, stepped 
 upon it, and commenced my task. It was, indeed, one, at this 
 time, for I could not remember ever to have felt so repelled from 
 her. Every touch excited the deepest repugnance of my nature, 
 and at last I was compelled to say : "I feel very sick, aunt. 
 Will you let me sit in the door a little while ?" 
 
 "Why, what's the matter, now ?" she exclaimed, turning in 
 her chair to look at me. She laughed heartlessly, as she caught 
 sight of my face, and said, in her favorite phrase, when she 
 was slightly amused : " Well, of all things, thee really looks 
 pale." 
 
 This had reference to my very, very dark complexion, and the 
 sun-tan that was upon my face, because no pains were ever taken 
 to provide me with bonnets. I was indeed very dark, but I felt 
 that none of the misfortunes, which she had brought upon me,
 
 140 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 ought to expose me to her ridicule, and her unfeeling laugh 
 grated on my unstrung sensibilities so harshly, that, without 
 waiting for her permission, I stepped, or rather staggered, away, 
 and dropped upon the sill of the front door. 
 
 She remained sitting, but asked me, not savagely, if I had 
 a headache, or was sick at the stomach? and on being an- 
 swered, " No ;" she said, " What does ail thee ?" 
 
 " I feel cold and heavy here," I said, laying my hand on my 
 chest, " and I can hardly breathe." In truth, my breath came 
 with such extreme difficulty, that I thought I was going to die. 
 I had a harrowing recollection of my mother's last struggles for 
 breath, and I thought this must be the same. I threw myself 
 over, on the floor, actually gasping. 
 
 " Aunt," I said, faintly, " I believe I shall die, as my mother 
 did." I was terrified, for love of life is generally strong in the 
 young. She must have been a little startled, for I was aware 
 that she approached me, and when I opened my eyes I found 
 her standing over me. Her face betrayed excitement and 
 alarm, but no tenderness or compassion softened its insensitive 
 lines, or irradiated its common, hard expression. The spasm, or 
 crisis, or whatever it was doubtless, the extreme ebb of the 
 magnetic tide of my being passed away, and the refluent cur- 
 rent came slowly back. I breathed more freely, but lay pros- 
 trate as the waste weed which the sea has rejected and tossed, 
 in its scorn, upon the sands. So I was rejected from the great 
 moving and pulsating sea of life. There was neither care, nor 
 love, nor tenderness, for me. Presently my eyes began to fill 
 with tears, and I sat up and asked permission to go out a little 
 while. It was granted. I made still another desperate effort ; 
 it seemed to be for life. 
 
 " May I go out to the camp, and talk with Mr. Henry 
 awhile ?" 
 
 I felt that she turned her face towards me, with a sharp 
 glance, though my eyes were not upon her. I looked steadily out 
 upon the turf, because I wished that she should not see my tears.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 141 
 
 " What does thee want to talk to him for ?" she inquired, 
 shrewishly. 
 
 " He has some pictures," I said, " which he told me the other 
 day he would show me, and I should like to see them now." 
 This was an evasion. I did not care for the pictures. I only 
 felt that if I could speak to him, and hear him say something 
 kind, it would take the icy feeling away. If I could speak 
 to anybody besides her to the cook, even, if I did not see 
 Mr. Henry, for he was always good-natured and friendly to 
 me. 
 
 It was some time before she answered me, and then she sur- 
 prised me, by giving the permission I had asked, but told me 
 not to stay very long. I did not start at once, for I still felt 
 very languid, but at length I rose to my feet, and walked so 
 slowly away from the door that she recalled me, and told me 
 I had better go to bed. 
 
 " Oh, aunt," I said, " I feel as if I could not breathe in that little 
 bedroom. I had rather be out of doors. Besides," I added, 
 " I feel a little better now, only my legs and back are very 
 weak." 
 
 " Well, thee may go out," she said, " but don't talk about 
 things thee doesn't understand, nor about me. Little girls should 
 never talk about older people." 
 
 " I will not," I said, and I meant it, for nothing could pos- 
 sibly interest me less. When I reached the tent, I spoke out- 
 side, as was my custom, and, being invited to enter, I presented 
 myself before the door, and saw my friend sitting upon a chest, 
 with a table before him, and two or three books lying upon it. 
 He came forward and took my hand, and said : " Eliza, what is 
 the matter, that you look so very ill ?" 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Henry," I replied, " I was very much frightened just 
 now ; I thought I was going to die, and when I got my breath 
 again, I asked aunt to let me come out and see you." 
 
 He took a pillow from a hammock, that was suspended from the
 
 142 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 tent pole, and, by some arrangement, made me a comfortable 
 resting-place on the chest. Then he closed his book, sat down 
 by me, and said : " What is it, Eliza ?" 
 
 " I can't tell, sir ; unless I believe it mast have been what 
 she said to you when you were in just now." And I could not 
 help clasping my hand upon his, as it rested on his knee, in 
 acknowledgment of his kindness. I had, no doubt, a much 
 higher appreciation of the heroism of his act than he had him- 
 self, for I knew what he had braved, in risking her insane anger, 
 and he did not. 
 
 " You were very brave," I said ; " but it did no good, and 
 nothing ever will. Will it ?" 
 
 " No never," he replied. " I am very much troubled about 
 yon, Eliza; I know my mother and my father, too, would feel 
 BO much pity for you. My mother is almost an angel, she is so 
 good and loving." 
 
 " And your father he is good, too, isn't he ?" 
 
 " Yes, as good a man as lives ; but a good woman is so much 
 better than even a good man." 
 
 " Like the Madonna," I suggested. 
 
 " Yes, like the Madonna." 
 
 " Will you let me see that picture?" I asked ; " I think it 
 would make me feel better." 
 
 He handed me the book, opened at that page, and I looked 
 at it, but went on to say, that " if my father were good, too, as 
 my mother was, I should ask you to write to him for me ; 
 but," I added, " bad as it is, I would rather stay here, only 1 
 hope I shall never feel again, as I did to-day." I attempted to 
 explain to him how my life seemed to ebb out when she told 
 him it was all the same whether I was a simpleton or not ; and 
 how I had crawled away to get by myself ; and how I had wept 
 in such abandonment of misery, that I knew nothing about the 
 time till I was called; and how the extreme repugnance I felt 
 to her person, had at last, it seemed to me, amounted to the
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 143 
 
 illness which had procured me permission to pay this visit ; and 
 how I could not now remember a single person but himself to 
 whom I could speak for comfort. 
 
 " Eliza," he said, " I am very much troubled ; 1 would do 
 everything to help you, and I cannot see how it is possible to do 
 anything for you, poor child." 
 
 His serious look impressed me with the hopelessness of my 
 condition, even more than his words. I had won my way 
 through many seasons of trial and depression, but never one so 
 heavy as this, and as I thought of all that his words and looks, 
 and my own mind suggested, my tears began to flow afresh. 
 
 " This will never do," he said, smoothing my hair on my tem- 
 ples, with the tenderness of a loving sister. " You must be 
 courageous, and keep these tears back. Can you take a walk 
 down to the water ?" 
 
 " I will try," I said ; and I did feel my strength very much 
 restored, when I stood up and passed out of the tent, holding his 
 hand. We went down the bank, beneath the boughs of the low 
 maple, where I had first spoken 'to him, and to the very margin 
 of the creek, where, beneath a willow, whose pendant branches, 
 falling in graceful curves, laved their outmost leaves in the 
 water, forming there a perfect bower, he had placed a block or 
 log, that served for a seat. It was delightfully cool, and there 
 was a freshness in the air of the spot, which, together with 
 his gentle, assuring presence, seemed almost at once to reani- 
 mate me. 
 
 " Mr. Henry," I began 
 
 " Don't say Mr. Henry, any more, Eliza. I am your brother 
 now only a very poor, good-for-nothing one, who can do nothing 
 for you." 
 
 " Oh, no, you are not," I said; "for though I have felt very 
 bad to-day, worse, I think, than I ever did before, you have 
 done a great deal for me. Do you know that it seems to me, 
 if you had not spoken the last time, and told her you did not 
 think me a foolish child if you had not, I would almost as lief
 
 144 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 you had died there. While I was waiting to hear you speak, 
 rny head rang so that I was almost deaf. I knew you thought 
 it, and I thought if you didn't say it, I should never feel it was 
 you, any more. You would have seemed to be somebody else in 
 the same body. Oh, I am so glad, for now you will be always 
 yourself, and I shall never forget you, or think of you as if you 
 might be somebody else, just as well." 
 
 He looked very kindly at me, with a pleased expression, and 
 said, "You are a strange little one, Eliza; I believe none of 
 us understand you very well. But I want to say something to 
 you now, that you must not forget when you feel disheartened 
 aud wretched again, as you have to-day. Do you see that very 
 small stream that runs from the bank of black earth into this 
 large creek ?" 
 
 " Yes, I see it." 
 
 " Well, you see that it is darkened by trees and plants all the 
 way, as it runs. It mingles with this water, and goes in shade 
 a long distance, down to the lower meadow, yonder, where there 
 are no trees growiug. It has a dark passage, but it gets into 
 sunlight at last, Eliza, does it not ?" 
 
 " Yes," I said, already dimly comprehending his meaning. 
 
 " Well, child, your life is like that little stream; it is small, 
 and feeble, aud darkened now, by the overshadowing evil, which, 
 at present, you cannot escape. But you will reach the light at 
 last, as certainly as the little brook does. Remember this when 
 a great sorrow comes to you again, for then I shall not be here 
 to help you, even the little that I have to-day." 
 
 " Are you going so soon ?" I asked, stifling the rising feelings 
 that threatened my speech. 
 
 " Not so very soon," he replied; but I hope it will be long 
 before you see another so sad a day as this "has been. We shall 
 be here, I suppose, two or three weeks yet." 
 
 IIow little was there in our thought of the sorrow that was 
 so swift aud awful in its coming, to both of us 1 
 
 I sat some time silent, thinking about the water and my life.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 145 
 
 At last, I said, "Henry, the water. from that little brook gets 
 into sunshine before it reaches the meadow. There is always a 
 streak of light on the middle of the creek, and some of it may 
 go there." 
 
 " That is quite true," he replied; " but it may also be in 
 shade, or it may be .in the light for a moment, and then go 
 back. And so it is with you; you have streaks of sunlight, and 
 then the shade comes again." 
 
 " Yes, it is sunshine now, while you are here; but I am afraid 
 it will seem very dark, when you are gone." 
 
 " Well," he said, " you must then remember that the light 
 will come again, sometime." 
 
 " I don't see how it can, for you will never come back, and I 
 shall never love anybody else as I do you. Nobody else," I 
 added, warmly, " would ever take so much pains to make me 
 happy, and to teach me; and everybody else, even Mr. Kadford, 
 has laughed at me ; but you never have since " 1 hesi- 
 tated, remembering the scene with Mr. Ramsay. 
 
 " Not," he said, promptly, " since I heard Mr. Ramsay's 
 account of you. Since you told me of yourself, I have never 
 been amused; but I have pitied and loved you. I pitied you 
 because you were so hardly treated ; and then when I knew you 
 better, I loved you, because you are so good, and wish so 
 earnestly to be better. Do not change," he said; "be always 
 as good a child as you are now, and as much better as you can 
 learn how to be, and you will find people who will love you' as 
 I do." 
 
 " But," I said, " I don't care to find people to love me that 
 is I mean yes I want everybody to love me ; but if they 
 did, it wouldn't pay me, if I lost yours." 
 
 " Do not fear but I shall always remember you," he said ; 
 " and if you are ever tempted to do anything that is bad, think 
 how very much it would grieve me to know it. You will get away 
 from this place after a while ; but since you cannot go to your 
 father, I do not see how it is to be done till you are much older." 
 7
 
 146 MY EAKLY DATS. 
 
 I could make no answering suggestion, and my mind ran 
 much on the simile of the water. " Henry," I said, " when the 
 water gets below these trees, it runs only a mile or two in 
 light, and then it is darkened again. When I get away from 
 this place, and am a woman, to do as I please, shall I not have 
 steady sunshine ? I am sure I shall be very happy then, all the 
 time." 
 
 " What, with all those poor, starving people in the world, 
 that you have told me about ; besides a great many millions 
 more, that you have never heard of ?" 
 
 A gigantic shadow seemed to shoot over and darken my 
 future at once I reflected. Then I said, " Well, at any rate, I 
 shall be some happy, for I shall be glad to work to help them; 
 aud then I shall not be quite miserable about them. I shall 
 not be in the dark, if I do that, Henry." 
 
 " Did your mother live in perpetual sunshine, Eliza ?" he said, 
 after a long pause; " or that poor Mrs. Rumsey you told me of 
 once ?" 
 
 I was silent and oppressed. " I should not talk so, Eliza," he 
 said, " to any other little girl of your age that ever I saw ; but 
 you are so peculiar, and are growing up under such strange cir- 
 cumstances, that I think it better you should look forward to 
 life as it is ; and I wish when trials come, after you are a 
 woman, you should remember me, and that I told you of them. 
 No, my dear Eliza, you will never see perpetual sunshine. I 
 should say you are as little likely to as almost any one, for 
 other people's sorrows will be yours, and I am afraid you may 
 have some great ones of your own, that nobody can take from 
 you." 
 
 " And is there no long happiness anywhere, to anybody ?" I 
 asked, despoudingly. 
 
 "To very few in this life," he replied ; "perhaps to none, 
 but in the life beyond this that we go to when we die," he 
 added, in explanation. 
 
 " I know," I said, nodding my head.
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. /v^^ 147 
 
 " In that life," he continued, " if we have lived purely, and 
 done good on earth, we shall fiiid sunshine that is never dark- 
 ened?' 
 
 " Does your mother believe that, Henry T' 
 
 " Certainly," he replied, startled by the inquiry. " Why do 
 you ask me so strange a question, child ?" 
 
 "Because," I said, "she. doesn't, and she speaks very ill of 
 people who do." 
 
 When I said this, Henry took both my hands in his own, and 
 his eyes glowed and darkened with the earnestness that stirred 
 him. " Eliza," he said, " Eliza, that is the worst thing you 
 have told me yet. Nothing could be worse than that. If you 
 were cold, and hungry, and beaten every day, it would not be 
 s<5 bad." 
 
 He was very deeply moved, and we were both silent a long 
 time. At length I said, timidly, remembering Mary Garland, 
 " Is it so very bad ?" 
 
 " Does she teach you that ?" he at last inquired. 
 
 " She doesn't teach me anything," I answered, "except defini- 
 tions, out of the spelling-book, and those I get while I am 
 watching' cream at the spring ; but she always talks so, and I 
 should be almost ashamed to have her know I thought of any- 
 thing else, unless," I added, " I could know it was true, and 
 then I shouldn't care." 
 
 This new difficulty seemed quite to overpower my kind friend. 
 He remained so long silent, that I had time to note the length- 
 ening shadows of the trees on the water, and remembered that 
 .1 could stay no longer from the house. It was already late, so 
 that I felt quite startled at the first thought, and said, " Oh, 
 Henry, I am afraid I have stayed too long, and aunt may be 
 angry." I was less disposed to do anything that might dis- 
 please her, since she had shown me the little kindness of the 
 afternoon, and I rose at once to go. 
 
 He said : " I am so much distressed at what you last told me 
 Eliza, that I do not know what to say to you about it. You
 
 148 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 must go now, I see ; bat I shall talk to you again, some day, 
 before we go away from this place. I wish, more than ever 
 now, that I could speak to my mother about you. But when- 
 ever you hear her talking so wickedly, remember your own 
 mother, and that beautiful Madonna ; and, good night, child." 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " Blessed mood, 
 
 In which the burden of the mystery 
 In which the heavy and the weary weight 
 Of all thi^unintelligible world 
 Is lightened." 
 
 THE haying was not yet quite finished. There were workmen 
 in the meadows, and I hurried to the house, thinking of the sup- 
 per, and the milking, and the probable ill-nature I should have 
 to encounter, from having stayed out longer than I intended. I 
 went through the woodyard, and carried in an armful of sticks, 
 for kindling the fire. When I entered, she looked up, but not 
 angrily, and seeing what I was bringing, she said, "Yes, it's 
 time the fire was made. Thee stayed too long." 
 
 " I know it, aunt," I replied ; " but I did not think of it till I 
 saw the shadows of the trees getting long, and then I came just 
 as quick as I could." 
 
 " Well, well, be quick and get the tea-kettle on, and then go 
 for the cows. Thee's got over thy bad turn, hasn't thee ?" 
 
 " Yes ; I feel well now. I can go very quick and drive the 
 cows up." 
 
 And so cheered was I, by her good temper, and the fresh air 
 of the golden-shadowed evening, and the pleasant recollections 
 of the long, quiet conversation, that had not only given me 
 ideas, but the assurance, more prized than anything else could
 
 , MY EAELY DAYS. 149 
 
 be, of an affection that seemed to render life, at its worst, bright, 
 and under its better aspects, as now, quite glorious, that I fejt in 
 myself almost the capacity of flying. 
 
 Only one thought abated my great happiness, as I skimmed 
 the pasture-field, where, a few nights before, I had been so 
 utterly wretched. That was of the religious difficulty. For I 
 could already find in myself a bearing towards the infidel side ( 
 not with anything like contempt for my beloved friend, such as 
 had threatened my peace with the excellent Garlands, but with 
 a certain sympathy and pity for the weakness or superstition, 
 as I thought it must be, which led him to feel so pained about it. 
 I had learned, from knowing the Garlands, that very good, and 
 happy, and intelligent persons could be religious ; but I found 
 myself disposed to believe that they were mistaken ; and I did 
 not incline to the religious side, except in certain tender or sor- 
 rowful moods, that passed away and left me in the same hard / 
 reasoning state "of mind. She rejected belief, she said, in every- I 
 thing that could not be proved to her. " And this, I thought, is 
 doubtless the right way ; but I am sorry she is not good with it." 
 
 My mind was not material in its cast. On the contrary, it fr 
 contained the elements of a^warm, and clear spiritual life. But 
 it demanded ever the cause. " Why ?" " Wherefore ?" " What 
 made it ?" were the everlasting questions of my intelligence ; 
 and while the sentiments that would, if steadily appealed to, 
 have exalted me to a sweet religious life, slumbered, except at 
 rare moments, the spirit of inquiry never rested within me. 
 Unconscious pride of intellect, therefore, inclined me to that . 
 belief which, proudly, though coarsely, claimed to give a reason 
 for everything it asserted ; and though I was sometimes, nay, 
 often shocked at the gross and bitter assertions by which it sup- 
 pftrted itself, yet I thought it must be so, and that I ought to 
 overcome the weakness or superstition which made me feel thus. 
 
 But I would not trouble myself much on this evening. I 
 would let go all questions of difference, and think of my great 
 happiness. The earth and the sky were beautiful ; the fields
 
 150 MY EARLY DAY8. 
 
 seemed larger and more smiling, the golden harvest which 
 waved upon them more luxuriant, the creek more tranquil, the 
 very cows walkiug before me, more quiet and contented than at 
 other times. Every one of the diversified objects about me 
 seemed more palpably clothed upon with its characteristic 
 beauty. My spirit was clearer sighted, to see what, in its duller 
 or disturbed states, it more dimly perceived. I had more to 
 to think upon now than ever before. 
 
 When I retired to my room, I repaired to my truuk, to take 
 thence Mr. Ramsay's book, in which I had not yet read a page. 
 I quite wondered at myself, when I saw it it looked so tempt- 
 ing a thing to my eyes ; but I sat down on the floor, letting the 
 hand that held it rest inside the trunk, and began to think 
 whether I should try to read, or give myself up to the idle lux- 
 ury of thinking over what had passed ; and while I was attempt- 
 ing to decide, I wandered so far away, to the sunshine and 
 shadow on the water ; the Madonna ; the good living mother, 
 whom Henry had spoken of, in such words that I could scarcely 
 think of her as less sweet or tender than the pictured one ; the 
 distant school, and the life beyond it that I did not return till 
 I was startled by the quick dropping of my candle in its socket. 
 
 I undressed hastily, by its last flicker, and laid down. Tom 
 was on the bed-cover, as usual. I had not observed him for 
 several nights, and now I said, " Poor old Tom 1" and passed 
 my hand over his head and back. He walked up to my pillow, 
 purring, drew the side of his head against my cheek, and mewed 
 in his low, affectionate way, and then laid down above my 
 shoulder, as close to my neck and face as he could get. I was 
 qnite moved ; for I remembered the time when nobody loved or 
 noticed me but Tom, and now his demonstrativeness seemed to 
 accuse me of the neglect with which I had treated him, since I 
 had been interested in persons and other things. I apologized, 
 imperfectly in words, but most heartily in spirit and act ; for I 
 at once gave up all my grand thoughts, all my delightful remem- 
 brances, and devoted myself to iny humble, but faithful, old
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 151 
 
 comforter, stroking his back, and patting him, and speaking to 
 him in low tones, till we both fell asleep. 
 
 I had very placid times for the next two or three weeks. I 
 remember them well, because of what followed. Uncle was very 
 kind. He was, indeed, always so ; but generally it was made a 
 negative sort of kindness, by his dread of raising a storm if he 
 noticed me. Now he seemed to feel more at liberty ; and occa- 
 sionally he talked with me in the house, in her presence, as 
 before he used only to talk in the fields or in her absence. And 
 he won my gratitude, that was ready to overflow for the least 
 real kindness, by giving me, one day, a pair of shoes fine 
 morocco shoes, much more elegant than those Mr. Peterson 
 made for me, and I had never before had any others. He 
 seemed a little doubtful himself, if this was not a dangerous 
 liberty to have taken ; for he did not show them to me till two 
 days after he had been to the town where he bought them, and 
 iust as we were making ready to go out to spend the day at some 
 distance from home, when they were> pretty certain to pass with- 
 out severe condemnation. 
 
 During the ride, going and coming, aunt spoke many times to 
 me, in a pleasant way ; and uncle was so far encouraged, that 
 he even tried one of Mr. Ramsay's jokes upon me, which I reso- 
 lutely laughed at, though it was stale, and had annoyed me 
 before. 1 wondered at what was passing, and still more at what 
 had produced it, and whether it could have been Henry's taking 
 my part, on that day never to be forgotten. But I was too well 
 . content with what was, to let my inquiries trouble me. 
 
 We called at Mrs. Peterson's, on our way home, and I 
 remember feeling so much pity for Tom, as he sat hanging his 
 head outside the door, that I could hatfe shaken hands warmly 
 with him, but that I had such a sense of his being bad, and a 
 consequent dread of him. I had long ago forgiven him. It was 
 my great weakness, indeed, that I could not long retain a just 
 indignation. The clemency of my nature, united with my strong 
 interest in ideas, and things that I thought aud read of, made
 
 I.:- 
 
 152 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 me forgetful of injuries, and totally oblivious, after a sort time, 
 of the burning sense of wrong in which I first suffered them. 
 Mrs. Peterson, who always npticed me, but in that spontaneous, 
 motherly way, that did not admit of ill-natured criticism, asked 
 me why I had not been to see her for such a long while. 
 
 I replied that I had been learning a good deal lately, and had 
 no time to go about the neighborhood. 
 
 " Are you going to school, then ?" she asked. 
 " No, not going to school ; but I read whenever I can get a 
 chance ; and one of the gentlemen who are encamped at our 
 house, is kind enough to teach me about many things, when I 
 can go to him ; and so, I am getting to know a great deal more 
 than I used to." 
 
 " Do you know where the cloth is all made, now ?" she asked, 
 laughing. " I believe that was the last of your big questions to 
 me." 
 
 " Yes," I replied ; " Mr. Fleming has told me all about that, 
 and the weavers, too ; and it's a dreadful story that I'll tell you 
 some day, when I can come here. They're not as happy as you 
 are. There comes aunt don't tell her about Mr. Fleming." 
 
 " Don't fear me, child ; you'll never get a scolding or beating 
 for what I say." 
 
 Aunt had been across the road to speak to a sister-in-law, who 
 lived opposite. They stood at her gate to chat, for, notwith- 
 standing that uncle was the most placable of men, and seemed 
 one of that sort to whom continued anger, or an unforgiving 
 state of mind would be impossible, there was a feud of years 
 standing, between himself and his brother. They never spoke to 
 each other, and none of us ever went to their house. The 
 
 : k ther's wife visited at our house, but, though she was cordially 
 corned and respected there, no invitations to return her visits 
 e ever given or looked for. She was a meek woman very 
 good, I think whose life seemed to me one long martyrdom. 
 She had been bred in a social position far superior to that she 
 now held ; and almost always in the course of her afternoons
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 153 
 
 with us, she spoke, with glistening eyes, of her feeling so very 
 much the separation from her mother and sisters, and other 
 friends, and of her having so little acceptable society around her. 
 She lost her children, too, so that, of a family of six, she had but 
 two living at this time ; but none of these afflictions ever took 
 aunt to her house, though she made as much profession of regard 
 to the suffering mother as to any woman who ever visited 
 her. 
 
 I had wondered very much at this, for I always had a feeling 
 that, however angry I might be with a. person, I should forget 
 it at once, and go to them, if I knew they were suffering and I 
 could comfort or help them. On reaching home, I found that 
 uncle, who had been talking with Mr. Peterson in the same room, 
 had heard my reply to his wife about the weavers, for when we 
 were by ourselves, he said, " Eliza, how came Mr. Fleming to 
 tell you what you told Priscilla ? did you ask him ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir," I replied, a little timidly, for I didn't know how 
 he would like my having done so. ' " But don't tell aunt she 
 might be angry with me for it." 
 
 " I shall not tell her," he said ; "but you might have asked 
 me, and I could have told you as well." 
 
 " Did you know about them ?" I inquired. 
 
 " Certainly, child. Haven't I been in England a great many 
 
 times ? and when I lived in did I not have English 
 
 weavers in the factory ? I could have told you all about them, 
 and I wish, Eliza, that you would ask me, sometimes, things that 
 you want to know. It will be better than always going to 
 strangers." 
 
 " I will, uncle," I said, " if you will let me, and aunt will not 
 always say something that I don't like to hear, when I speak to 
 you. But nobody told me that you knew this, and Mr. Radford 
 and Mr. Garland both told me Mr. Fleming would tell me all." 
 
 " And so you are learning from everybody but us, are you ?" 
 he said, sorrowfully. 
 
 I felt a reproach in his words whiek was painful to me, for
 
 154: MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 I had that kind of affection for him that grows in a child's 
 heart out of habit, and daily relations that are peaceful and 
 kindly, and I was tBoroughly convinced of his personal good 
 intentions towards me. He drew me to him as he said this, and 
 seated me upon his knee. 
 
 I was afraid I should cry, and I wished not to, lest it should 
 banish the sunshine that he, as well as I, was so much freer and 
 happier in. So I swallowed hard two or three times, with a firm 
 determination that the tears which I felt starting should 
 not be seen ; and when I got command of myself, I said: " I 
 should not go to other people, uncle, but sometimes I think you 
 would not like to have me talk much to you : and I wish so very 
 much to know about things that I think of, and to learn about a 
 great deal that I never think of till somebody tells it me, that-'you 
 can't think, uncle, how happy I am when I can get a book that I 
 like, or some gentleman who will talk to me about what is in books." 
 
 " It's a very cheap happiness, my dear," he said, " and one 
 that you should have enough of if" 
 
 "Eliza!" exclaimed aunt, at this moment, from the cheese- 
 pantry, where she was engaged, " come here." 
 
 I darted in. 
 
 " Why hasn't thee changed thy clothes and shoes, to go and 
 milk ?" 
 
 " I will now," I replied ; " but the cows are not in the yard 
 yet, and I was speaking to uncle." 
 
 By the time I was ready, I heard the low of Star, my pet 
 cow, who had this fashion of calling me, when it happened that I 
 did not go to the pasture to drive them. I took my pails, for I 
 had to carry two, and went forth. To my surprise and alarm, 
 when I stepped down the stile, Tom Peterson was standing a 
 little distance from it, apparently waiting for some one. I 
 walked in the opposite direction, and Star, who insisted on being 
 always milked first, walked briskly almost indignantly after 
 me, with her head raised and her eyes opened wide, as if she 
 would say : " What does such conduct as this mean, miss ?"
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 155 
 
 When I had reached a safe distance, and sat down to milk 
 her, I glanced furtively at the face of the boy, and I was less 
 frightened. It had not the old look at all. I could not describe 
 the difference, but I knew at once that that was not the old Tom 
 Peterson whom I was never to speak to, and who had promised 
 never to speak to me. I wondered how it was, for I had never 
 thought of his becoming better than he was. He did not move 
 till Jim, the boy who was in Albert's place, came into the yard, 
 and then he stepped up to him and spoke. They turned and 
 looked at me, and Jim seemed to assent to something Tom said, 
 for they both walked towards me ; and I wondered all the way 
 what it could mean. They came up, and James stood still while 
 Tom said, " Eliza, I promised never to speak to you when you 
 was alone, and I brought Jim along to hear me." He had 
 pulled off his old ragged hat while he was speaking, and now 
 stood, awkwardly, twirling and picking it, wishing to say more, 
 but unable to get forward. 
 
 This proceeding perfectly removed my fear, and I said, as I 
 would have spoken to any one who haa never wronged me, " Well, 
 Tom, what do you wish to say to me ?" 
 
 " Why," said he, " if you're not afraid to let Jim go away, 
 I could tell you better." 
 
 " no," I replied,. " I'm not at all afraid ; you don't look as 
 you used to when I was afraid of you. James, you may go to 
 your cows." I waited for Tom to speak, and milked as silently as 
 I could, that he might speak low if he chose that he should in 
 any case feel that I was attending. 
 
 " Why, the fact is, you see, Eliza," he began, squatting down 
 at a little distance from me, " that I I want to tell you that 
 I am very sorry for what I did last summer, and to ask you to 
 forgive me." 
 
 " You said that before, Tom." 
 
 " Yes, but I didn't mean it a bit then. I said it 'cause Rud- 
 ford made me, not 'cause I wanted to myself. But mam has 
 talked a good deal, since, to me, and "
 
 156 MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 " Don't call her so," I said ; I never could endure the name ; 
 " call her mother, Tom." 
 
 " Well, mother, then ; she's talked a good deal to me, and 
 when you came to oar house this afternoon, and looked at me as 
 you came into the gate, I made up my mind to come and speak 
 to you, and ask you to let me help you milk to-night will you ?" 
 " Why, Tom," I replied, a little at a loss what to say to his last 
 request, " I don't feel angry at all for what you did long ago ; 
 and I'm not a bit afraid of you, any more than of Albert or 
 James, if you mean to be good ; but I don't know if you ought 
 to help me milk; I think not." I had a lingering doubt that- he 
 might feel freed from the restraint that I was yet fearful of 
 removing altogether. " I can milk my cows very well, and I 
 think I ought not to say that you may help me ; not," I said, 
 noticing his disappointed look, " because I haven't entirely for- 
 given you, but because I am a little afraid that you may not 
 always be as good as you seem to be now." 
 
 " I'll try, if you'll let me upon my word, I will, Eliza 1" he 
 said ; " and I'll promise not to speak to you any more than I 
 have, if you'd rather I wouldn't." 
 
 I could not resist this, and I said, " Well, you may milk half my 
 cows, if you wish to so much ; and if you are always as good as 
 you are now, you can speak to me just as anybody else does, 
 that I have never been afraid of." 
 
 " Thank you," said Tom ; and he took up my empty pail, and 
 moved off with alacrity to the hardest milking cow among my 
 uurflber. lie knew them all as well as I did ; and when the 
 milking was over, he carried the full pails to the door of the 
 house for me, and set off for home without saying a word, except 
 to return " Welcome," to my " Thauk you." Thus, everything 
 seemed to conspire in these days to make me happy. I reflected 
 on this circumstance with a gladness of spirit which I could not 
 have expressed. I had in my own secret heart an exalted stand- 
 ard by which to measure all actions of others, and an exalted 
 approval to seek for my own. Most of the people about me
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 157 
 
 were minor circumstances in my present life. There was for me 
 one soul, one mind, one heart, that filled the little sphere of my 
 existence. Unconsciously I referred all to him, and nothing 
 that I could conceive or do, I thought, could be noble and right 
 enough for the measure he would apply to it. I was not troubled 
 by the desire to communicate all to him. It sufficed that my 
 inner consciousness said, " It will please him." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 " With what free growth the elm and plane 
 
 Fling their huge arms across our way, 
 Grey, old, and cumbered with a train 
 Of vines as huge, and old, and grey !" 
 
 MY only misgivings were on the religious difference, and I do 
 not know how that troubled me so little, except that in reference 
 to it, my mind partook of the hardness of the theory it enter- 
 tained, and of those natures from whom I had unconsciously 
 imbibed it. I certainly did wish that I had never heard what 
 had shocked him so much, for then I should never have believed 
 it ; but I was at a loss to know whether I ought to tell him 
 just what I felt or not. I considered it much, and I would have 
 liked to ask anybody to whom I could speak on such a subject ; 
 but there was nobody, and I had to wait to have it decided by 
 circumstances. Henry told me that he was going to ask per- 
 mission, the last Sunday they remained in that camp, to take 
 me to walk, and I was to show him the way down to the large 
 raft, a long section of drift-wood, that bridged the creek per- 
 fectly across, something less thau two miles below our house. I 
 had been there with Mr. Eadford, and it was a delightful walk; 
 much of the way through a dense wood, after leaving the 
 lower meadow. He was very pleasant with aunt in these
 
 158 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 days, treating her always with a deference which gratified 
 her highly, and made her very willing to oblige him. So, when 
 he came in after breakfast was over, and had chatted with her a 
 few minutes, and spoken to me, which he always did, as with a 
 purpose to notice me, he asked if she would permit me to be his 
 cicerone in a walk to the long raft ? I did not understand that 
 word, and it puzzled me so very much, that I only waited for 
 her answer to ask him what it meant. 
 
 She looked thoughtful a moment, and then said, " Yes, she 
 can go, for I suppose she wishes it more than thee does, and if 
 my husband comes in, I should like to go along myself." 
 
 This quite chilled me, for I should never dare to talk to Henry 
 in her presence, and so it would be little pleasure to me to go. 
 But he said, " If he does not come, will you not go with us ? I 
 will do my best as your escort, and I suppose the road is not a 
 difficult one." 
 
 " No," she replied; " but it's rather long, and thee would tire 
 of having an old woman like me, to help along. I am not a 
 good walker, and I don't often try to go out, except to the 
 neighbors, without my husband." 
 
 I was already sufficiently educated in the politeness which I 
 had seen him and his companions practise, to appear perfectly 
 indifferent to this, though I was secretly hoping, with an ear- 
 nestness I could scarcely suppress, that she would not go. 
 
 She told me 'to get ready, and she would finish what I was 
 doing, and when Uncle John came, if he could go, they would 
 come after us. 
 
 But I felt so very grateful for this unusual kindness, that I 
 now almost wished her to go; and felt that I could enjoy having 
 them along, enough to give up the talk I was looking forward 
 to having, and the questions I wished to ask the more, too, 
 that uncle had been so kind when last speaking to me about 
 this, and I said, " Shall I go out and see if I can find him ?" 
 
 " No," was the reply. " I don't think, on the whole, I ought 
 to go, at any rate. It's a long walk, and I should come back
 
 MT EARLY DATS. 159 
 
 very tired; but thee's young, and never tires ; so get ready and 
 go." 
 
 When we had reached the meadow, I showed Henry my favo- 
 rite nut-trees ; the plum thicket, and the chestnut that always 
 stood out so boldly against the clear evening sky, when I looked 
 towards it from the dairy-yard, or house. He agreed in admir- 
 ing it with me, and we chatted along a little further, till I was 
 irresistibly moved to inquire if he really would have liked that 
 aunt should come with us. 
 
 " I should not, perhaps, have been so well pleased as to be 
 without her; but if she had come, I should have tried to make 
 the walk pleasant to her." 
 
 " Why did you ask her ?" 
 
 "Because it would have been rude and discourteous not to 
 have done so, after she expressed a wish to come ; and still 
 ruder, after she had come, not to have treated her with kindness 
 and attention." 
 
 I said, " She is very- good, lately." 
 
 " Is she ?" he asked ; " I am happy indeed, to hear you say 
 so, and I hope she will never be as harsh again as she has been. 
 She should be excused* some sourness and ill temper, Eliza, for I 
 see from what she has told me, that she must have had a hard 
 life ; and she has had no friends near her, who loved her; that 
 might have softened her very much." 
 
 " So it might," I said, promptly, feeling how much happier it 
 might have made her; but in the next moment, I thought, and 
 said, " but uncle loves her I know he does," I said again, 
 feeling that he was going to doubt it, " for he told me so once, 
 when I told him she was unkind and I didn't love her at 
 all." 
 
 " That is quite true, I dare say," replied Henry ; " but she 
 needed many to help her, brothers, sisters, friends, and children. 
 People who are much loved by many persons, Eliza, are not eo 
 apt, I think, to be unkind or wicked, as those who feel them- 
 selves alone."
 
 160 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 11 But," I said, " if they are good and kind, many people will 
 love them ; Mr. Qarland told me so one day, when I came with 
 him and his children down to this raft, from their house; and he 
 said it made very little difference whether one was handsome or 
 not. If you were very good, everybody would love you tho 
 same. Do you think so, Henry ?" 
 
 He did not rep*ly at once, and I said, " The reason why I ask, 
 is, because I am so very homely, and I begin to think I stall 
 never be handsome. Do you think I could be, if I tried ?" 
 
 " No, child," he saifl with a faint smile, " never. God has 
 denied you beauty, Eliza, but he is always just ; and he has 
 given you something of more value than that a good heart, 
 and a mind that will make you useful and beloved. I scarcely 
 know what to say to you, child, in regard to the future, because 
 what you tell me about your aunt's irreligion seems to me to 
 unsettle everything. It is so hard," he added, as if thinking 
 aloud, rather than addressing me, " to make defence against the 
 evil influences of a coarsely irreligious woman. Any error 
 almost any weakness, if joined to some tenderness, and religious 
 sentiment, would be better than that." 
 
 We walked on in a silence which I did not break, till the cool 
 shade of the deep wood had long shut us in. Then the glancing 
 birds the fresh, sparkling wood-flowers, and the clean sprays 
 of the little shrubs which hedged our path, nodding with the 
 slight breeze that sighed through the shadowy spaces of the 
 forest, quite removed the restraint that had kept me silent. I 
 was ready to burst wildly away with the joyous emotions which 
 in my solitary walks, and also in the few that had been taken 
 with companions, I had always been free to indulge. It was 
 toward the last of August and the fruit of the mandrake or May- 
 npple vine was beginning to ripen. I was very fond of it, and 
 it was even more delightful to hunt and pluck, than taste it. 
 Each vine or plant bore from two to five apples, varying in size 
 from a large walnut to a common apple, and they all hung con- 
 cealed beneath the leaves, where one was very pleasantly sur-
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 161 
 
 prised to find them, on bending the stalk back. I plucked some 
 of the fruit, in exactly that state of ripeness which I found most 
 palatable, and offered it to Henry, who stood in the path, wait- 
 ing for me. 
 
 " They are very nice," I said;- "but the greatest pleasure is 
 .in gathering them. Don't you think the woods are glorious ? I 
 should like to have a house right among the trees ; wouldn't 
 you r 
 
 " Yes, for a day or two, or a week, or perhaps, one sum- 
 mer." v* - 
 
 " Why not longer ?" 
 
 " Because by the end of the summer, I should wish to get 
 back among people in the world again. There is nobody here 
 to talk with, or to make books or pictures, or to help me do 
 anything that is worthy a man's life to do. Men must do some- 
 thing else, Eliza, besides live in woods and rest in the shade of 
 trees. You will see how that is when you have lived a few 
 years longer. The trees must be cut down, so that the sun can 
 shine on this rich earth, and make grain and grass grow, to feed 
 men and animals. Do you see ?" 
 
 " Yes," I said, " I see that it ought to be so; but I should not 
 like to cut down, and burn these grand old trees. They are so 
 very old. Do you know that Mr. Eadford says some of them 
 have been two or three hundred years growing. Only think how 
 long ago they were small, like this little one, and what a great 
 many suns, and storms, and winds, have passed over them 1 
 The trees are awful to me when I think of that they seem to 
 know more than I do. I wouldn't cut one down for all tne 
 world. I should be afraid it would speak to me." 
 
 "You believe in the Dryads," said Henry, laughing ; and he 
 explained, in answer to my inquiring look, that a great many 
 hundred years ago, the spirit of a woman dwelt in each tree, 
 and that the people who lived then, occasionally took milk, and 
 fruit, and flowers, and other nice things out to offer them, at the 
 root of the tree.
 
 162 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 "Bat, did they take the things ?" I asked. 
 
 " Nobody ever told me," he replied ; " but I think if a pan of 
 milk and a loaf of bread, or a plate of fruit were set here, for 
 instance, among these huge roots, to-day, there would not be 
 much left of them to-morrow j do you think there would ?" 
 
 " No ; but you wouldn't know if the woman came out of the 
 tree -and took them, unless you watched, because there are so 
 many creatures here that would eat such things." 
 
 Thus we* chatted idly along, through the wood, plucking now 
 and then a flower, or a May-apple, or some little plant, whose 
 tender beauty invited me. I avoided being silent, for I dreaded 
 that Henry would return to the religious question, which now 
 began to be very troublesome to me, because the more I thought 
 of it, the more clearly I saw that I ought to let him know how 
 much I was inclined already to think as she did. And this, I 
 knew, would pain him, very much. 
 
 We reached a little stream, emptying into the large creek, 
 which we were now very near to. There had . been a small tree 
 lying across it when I was last there, on which one could cross, 
 but it was gone. The current had spread put also, I thought, 
 for I had threatened Mr. Radford then to run and leap over it, 
 which now I could not have thought of doing, it was so broad. 
 I was very much puzzled, for I could not think of taking off my 
 shoes and stockings, and wading it, as I should have preferred 
 to do if I had been alone, and Henry, looking above and below, 
 could find nothing to help us over. I began to have a nervous 
 dread that something unpleasant would have to be done. I 
 knew that Mr. Ramsay or Mr. Radford would have picked me 
 up, and set me on the other side, without a word, and I began 
 to feel that this might be proposed, so I said : " I think, Henry, 
 there are some rails just above those two large trees. If we had 
 one, we could walk over on it." 
 
 " Yes," he said, and set off to bring it. The moment ho 
 turned his face away, I denuded my feet, and, before he was out 
 of sight, I was over. Then I wished to save him the trouble of
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 163 
 
 bridging the stream, for he could easily leap it, and so, as I had 
 dragged my stockings on, and one shoe, I called out, laugh- 
 ingly : " Oh, Mr. Henry, you needn't go for one, I'm over." 
 
 He walked back, and seeing me standing as he had left me, 
 said : "Why, Eliza, how could you go over so, and fill your 
 shoes with water ?" 
 
 " I didn't wet them at all," I answered. " I brought them in 
 my hands, and my stockings too." 
 
 " But you have done it so quick," he said, looking incredu- 
 lously at my feet, as he drew near. 
 
 " Because I was afraid you would come back." 
 
 " That was quite right," he said ; but he did not speak 
 another word about it, for which I was very grateful. 
 
 " How far is it to the raft, Eliza ?" 
 
 " Only a very little way ; it's just below the next bend, and 
 the path goes across here in the narrowest part. I like this 
 creek very much," I said, " especially in the woods, but I should 
 be so glad if there was one fall on it. I do so want to see a 
 great waterfall. Did you ever see one ?" 
 
 " No large one," he replied. " I have seen some small ones 
 in the mountains of Virginia and Maryland." 
 
 I told him how very much I was grieved, on our way to this 
 home, when uncle and aunt went to Trenton Falls, that I could 
 not go with them, and how aunt said so little a girl couldn't see 
 the Falls she couldn't look up high enough. But he told me 
 they were not high, like the Falls of Niagara, but low, and 
 several in number, each differing from the other, and all very 
 beautiful. He had seen engravings of them. 
 
 " Here's the raft !" I exclaimed, as we emerged from the tall 
 wood into a small, open space, that bordered the creek just here. 
 " That dead branch you see, that reaches almost into the tops 
 of the trees, was at the upper end two years ago, but the 
 freshets have brought down a great many trees since, and now it 
 reaches a long way this side of it." "We walked on, and, leaving 
 the bank, passed out upon the water, stepping on the large old
 
 164: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 trunks, that had whitened in the storms and sunshines of suc- 
 cessive years. They were wedged so tightly together, that be- 
 tween many of them the little crevices had been filled with soil, 
 on which blades of grass, and sometimes plants of larger growth, 
 had sprung. They had sometimes been driven upon each other, 
 so as to lie three, or even four, deep ; and in some places, where 
 the swollen and turbid current had swept over them for years, 
 its own violence in flood times, and the attrition of the earth's 
 particles the gravel, Sticks, and grasses in the fall, and the ice- 
 cakes in the spring had polished them, so that I could almost 
 see my face in them. 
 
 The raft was a grand mystery to me. It told me of power, 
 which my blood always chilled in thinking of. In the times of 
 freshet, when the otherwise quiet, sluggish-looking stream, 
 raged madly all over the meadows, bearing along great trees, 
 fragments of branches^ rails, belated crops of corn, and yellow 
 pumpkins, that played fantastic tricks at every eddy, and whirl, 
 in the muddy, angry-looking current, I used to watch it by day, 
 and listen to its roar by night, and think of the great crash 
 and madness of all these rushing things, when they should find 
 themselves stopped by this old, solid, immovable raft ; and 
 then, it seemed to me, almost endowed with intelligence, as 
 it lay waiting for them to come on, and pile themselves up 
 against it. 
 
 I showed Henry my well, as I called it. It was an open, tri- 
 angular space, midway in the stream, where, standing on the 
 large trunks that surrounded it, we could look down into the dark 
 water, and hear the peculiar hollow sound made by its light cur- 
 rent bearing against the lower surface of the timber. It was a 
 frightful place ; more interesting to look into, because I felt that 
 one misstep on the smooth round logs that bore me, would plunge 
 me into the unknown world. Neither Mr. Radford nor Mr. 
 Garland, would let me stand alone on its brink ; but I was old 
 enough now, and I did not offer to touch Henry's hand, till I felt 
 a littla affected by the long gaze, and the silence, that permitted
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. " 165 
 
 my thoughts to be drawn in, as with the current, and away along 
 the dark passage, to the world of light and sunshine, near a 
 quarter of a mile below. 
 
 When I put my hand in his, at last, he said : "You ought 
 never to come here alone, Eliza. These logs are very smooth, 
 and if your foot should slip on them, you would never be heard 
 of again." 
 
 " I know it," I replied, " I never do come alone. But if I had 
 fallen in there, just now. what would you have done ?" 
 " I should have plunged in, and brought you out." 
 "How could you?" 
 
 " Oh, I am a duck in the water ; I can swim in any position, 
 and below the surface, for a while, if I wish to, as well as above 
 it. I can do anything in the water. I used to swim in the Po- 
 tomac, and stay down so long, that the boys all called me the 
 diver." 
 
 " Wouldn't you be afraid to go under there now ?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " No, not at all ; but I should want something to help myself 
 out by, when I got ready to come." 
 " Could you go along under the raft !" 
 "Yes, without difficulty; perhaps I'd go up or down, and 
 come out at one end of it. I never boast, but of my swimming, 
 and I am always a little proud of that." 
 
 " But, for all you say, I should be terribly frightened, to see 
 you go down there. A poor little boy went under it, two or 
 three years ago, and he has never been found. Oh, it must be 
 an awful place so dark and breathless. Let us come over to 
 the bank, and sit down."
 
 166 MY EAELT DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " I believe it ! 'tis thou, God, that givest ; tis I, who receive. 
 In the first is the last ; in Thy will is my power to believe." 
 
 WE seated ourselves upon moss cushions, between the roots 
 of a large tree, that bent over the water, and presently Henry 
 said : " Eliza, this will be the last Sunday here, perhaps the last 
 on which we shall ever see each other, and, before we go back, 
 I wish to have a little serious talk with you, about yourself. 
 We have chatted long enough, I think, about' nothing." 
 
 " You never seem to me to talk about nothing," I replied, 
 saddened at once by the mention of the near approach of his 
 departure. " I remember everything you say to me." 
 
 " I am glad you do," he said, " for what I am going to say 
 now, I particularly wish you should never forget. 
 
 " Your position in Mr. Smalley's house, and family, Eliza, is 
 very unfortunate, in many things, but not in all ; and you may, 
 perhaps, study a little more to content yourself, if you sometimes 
 think of what might be worse with you. In the first place, you 
 have plenty of food good food that keeps you healthy, and 
 that is better than if it were poor and scanty ; is it not ?" 
 
 " Yes," I replied ; " but I care nothing for that, Henry." I 
 was not inclined to make much of this circumstance. 
 
 11 In the next place, you are comfortably clothed, though your 
 garments are not handsome, and are sometimes torn. Then, it 
 is very good, that your uncle is always kind to you much bet- 
 ter than if he, too, were cross and unkind, as his wife is. And 
 all the good friends you have here should be remembered ; the 
 Radfords, the Garlands, Mr. Fleming, and others. They havB 
 done you a great deal of good ; have they not ?"
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 167 
 
 " Yes, but " I was confused by this statement of the goods 
 
 of my poor, little, darkened life, but he heeded it not, and went 
 on : 
 
 " You have been able to read some very good books, and Al- 
 bert, who has helped you to them, seems to have been as good 
 as a brother to you. I like that very much very much, indeed, 
 Eliza. You ought to remember it thankfully." 
 
 " I do," I said, scarcely able to speak. 
 
 " You have papers, also, and though what you learn from 
 them is not, perhaps, just that which would be best for a little 
 girl, yet it is better to know that than nothing. Do you not think 
 so?" 
 
 I bowed my head in assent. ( 
 
 " You live in a country, too, which, though it is not the most 
 beautiful, contains a great deal to interest your mind. I see that 
 the creek, and the freshets, you have just told me about ; and the 
 lake, which you hear and dream of, though you never see it ; 
 and the great forests, with their innumerable tenants, have all 
 instructed you. You have learned a great deal. Is it quite right 
 to think, altogether, ill of the life that has given you such op- 
 portunities ?" 
 
 What could I say but No ? So I shook my head in silence ; 
 for my heart was bursting with the case that my best beloved 
 friend seemed to be making out against me. 
 
 " You have been fearful, you tell me, that you were what you 
 have been so often called, a simpleton a fool. Now, let me tell 
 you about that, Eliza. I have thought of it a good deal, since 
 our last talk down by the creek, and I have concluded it was 
 best to tell you just what I think. It may, perhaps, strengthen 
 you, if, at any time, you need to be helped in a difficulty, by 
 remembering that I thought you could overcome it. I think 
 that, in two or three years, you can do almost anything for your- 
 self, that girls in general can when they are sixteen or eighteen. 
 You have so much courage and resolution, that you will be able 
 to get your rights. I mean by that, that if you try to do what
 
 168 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 it is right for your aunt to require of you, and tell her, or let 
 her understand, that you do not wish to do otherwise, nor to 
 
 submit to abuse, she will ^e checked or" He paused. 
 
 "Or, if she should not, you will get away from her. I am 
 quite sure that you will. do that, at any rate, if she doesn't send 
 you to school. I think I had not nearly so strong a desire to 
 learn at your age as you have ; and yet I feel very certain that, 
 if I had been kept from school, as I grew older, I should have 
 run away, even from my own father and mother, to go. But 
 there is no hurry, Eliza. You are very young yet ; and when 
 you get to studying, you will learn so rapidly that, if your health 
 is good, what other scholars are three or four years in doing, you 
 will do in one or two. But while you are here, read all you can. 
 Everything that you can learn will help you a little ; and never 
 mind if people do laugh at you sometimes you are getting what 
 will be valuable to you, and what you have a right to. And you 
 must remember, Eliza, so as not to feel too much hurt, that you 
 cannot expect the same treatment from many other persons that 
 you receive from me. I talk to you as if you were near my own 
 age, because, in some respects, you seem to be. Few people will 
 do that, my dear, because few will take the pains to know you 
 as I know you. But you need not be troubled at this. There 
 is nothing wrong* in any one's treating you, as Mr. Ramsay does, 
 like a very little child. It is not so kind and considerate as it 
 might be, certainly, but most people will do it, for a year or two 
 yet. I speak more of this, because I know that your thoughts 
 and feelings about it make you unhappy often, when you might 
 be otherwise. This ought not to be now. Remember that the 
 people who thus. trifle, or play boisterously with you, think you 
 as much a child in mind as you are in size and years ; and the 
 indignation which shows that you are not, ouly amuses them, and 
 makes them return to it with greater relish than before you 
 showed it." 
 
 I knew this was true in the case of Mr. Ramsay, and some 
 other persons ; and it did me a great deal of good to feel that,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 169 
 
 in submitting to suet familiarities, I should not be tamely giving 
 up to such great outrage as it had seemed to me before. 
 
 " But when you are a little older, Eliza, you cannot be too 
 careful how you suffer persons to approach or speak to you, 
 especially the common men, and boys whom you are likely to 
 have about you here. I like that pretty Mrs. Radford's looks ; 
 and I think she and her husband, who has already shown you 
 so much kindness, will be good friends to you. You can always 
 speak to them of anything unpleasant that happens to you, or 
 that you fear ; and I think they will tell you what is right. Do 
 you think you understand, my dear Eliza, what I have said to 
 you ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And will remember it ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Well, no tears now ; for I am not yet done, and wish your 
 earnest attention a little while longer." 
 
 " I believe," I said, almost choking with my suppressed 
 emotions, "I am afraid you think that I ought to 'be very 
 happy here, and not complain of anything. Do you think so ?" 
 
 " I wish I could, Eliza. Heaven knows I should go away 
 with a much lighter heart, if I were leaving you in a pleasant 
 home, with a kind and loving woman, who would give you books 
 and time to study them, and who would teach you the many 
 things that a little girl ought to be taught by a good woman. 
 I fear you have misunderstood me, Eliza. I recalled to you 
 what was good, and even tolerable, in your life, that you might 
 be comforted in some time of trouble by remembering it. No- 
 body is ever happier for thinking only what they have to suffer. 
 But now, Eliza, I have a few more words to say, and then we 
 will talk of something to make you happier. I know this does 
 not cheer you now, but it will, I hope, by and by, on some of 
 the dark days, before the water gets out into full sunshine. 
 
 " The worst thing in your life here, is what you have told* me 
 of your adopted mother's religion, or rather, irreligion. Eliza, 
 8
 
 170 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I cannot believe that there is a person living who has not some 
 sort of religious belief or hope, though they may deny it in talk. 
 I have great difficulty in saying what I wish to impress on you 
 about this, because you are not old enough to understand me ; 
 but, as well as I can tell you what I mean, it is this : That peo- 
 ple do sometimes try very hard to believe that religion is weak- 
 ness, or foolishness, or superstition, or something as much to be 
 ashamed of as either of these. And perhaps they succeed, by 
 talking a great deal, in making themselves think they do believe 
 this, and that they have none of it about them. This woman, I 
 should think, may have done so. She is so hard, and violent, 
 that I can almost believe it of her, bad as it seems. But, Eliza, 
 I wish you to try not to hear the talk she has about these things. 
 It cannot do you any good ; it will not teach you anything that 
 is true ; it will not make you love truth, or think of God, who 
 is always a good Father to you (not like the one you have in 
 New York), or love persons ; it will not help you, in any way, 
 to be better or wiser than you are. Listen to me now," he said, 
 with increased earnestness, laying his hand on my shoulder. 
 " You think of God sometimes, do you not ?" 
 
 " Yes ; very often, Henry." 
 
 " How do you think of him ?" 
 
 " I do not know. I cannot tell." 
 
 11 No, I suppose not. You could not well have any definite 
 idea of Him when you hear so much that is contradictory, and 
 unreasonable, and false. Hut suppose now, that God made this 
 world, and everything it contains, and placed you in it, what do 
 you think He would wish you to do ?" 
 
 " To be very good," I answered. 
 
 " Yes, to be very good, certainly but what else ?" 
 
 My theology embraced but one cardinal point, and I had 
 stated that. I puzzled myself long, in vain, to think what else 
 could be required of me, and at length said, reluctantly, " I 
 don't know, Henry, what else. I cannot think." 
 
 " Well, listen, and let me see if I can help you. You believe,
 
 MT EAELY DAYS. 171 
 
 now, Eliza, that I love you, and wish very much that you should 
 be a happy and good child, and grow to be a good woman, do 
 you not ?" 
 
 This approach to our personal relation was very dangerous to 
 my firmness ; but I made a great resolution to control myself, 
 and replied that I did. 
 
 " Well, I shall be gone, in a few days, away from you, and it 
 is not probable that I shall ever see you again, or not more than 
 once or twice, if at all. Will you not think of me, after I am 
 gone, and of what I wish in regard to you ?" 
 
 " Yes, a great deal," I whispered. 
 
 " Well, what do you think I shall wish most of all ?" 
 
 " That I should be good." 
 
 11 Yes ; and what besides ?" 
 
 " That I should love you, and do what would please you ?" I 
 asked, venturing upon the expression of what was strongest in 
 my own mind. 
 
 " Yes, I should wish that, certainly ; but, more than that, I 
 should wish you to believe that I was still near to you, by my 
 love for you ; that I am not dead and gone, to you, because my 
 body is far away. Do you understand me ?" 
 
 " I think I do," I said, dimly perceiving the idea of the spirit- 
 life, independent of the body. (I had had a clearer flash of the 
 same light, though from an opposite quarter, on the memorable 
 day of his conversation with aunt, when I felt that he could no 
 longer be himself to me, unless he spoke again for me after she 
 had answered him rudely.) I reflected some time, and then said, 
 " I think I understand you, Henry. You mean that there is 
 something in you, besides your body that I see, and your tongue 
 that talks to me, and that it will be the same to me when they 
 are gone away. Is that it ?" 
 
 " That is just it, my dear child ; and it would grieve and 
 distress me more than anything else, to have you think, when 
 what you see of me, this form, walks or rides away beyond your 
 sight, that I, who love you, am gone with it. And if I, who ana
 
 172 MT EAELT DATS. 
 
 only a man, am not dead to you, or gone from yon, because I 
 am no longer in your sight, how much more must God, who 
 made and loves you better than any man or woman can, live to 
 and be near yon !" 
 
 The illustration was wisely chosen, and much more simply and 
 forcibly expressed from his lips than my pen. It was wise, 
 because it forever convinced me of the great truth of spirit- 
 existence ; but I could not clearly reach further than his indi- 
 viduality with it. He had been proved to my senses. I had 
 seen, and heard, and touched him; and I felt that, however it 
 was, he would never, never die to me. But I did not so know 
 God. My mind was educated to no conception of him. I con- 
 stantly heard the grossest and most conflicting statements of his 
 attributes and character ; and whenever I had attempted to 
 form some idea of him, it was, in consequence of these things, so 
 fragmentary, and incongruous, and shifting, that I soon dismissed 
 it and all thought of it. Then, the hard, exacting, rectangular 
 arguments of the infidel school, fell on my grasping reasoning 
 powers, that were yet too feeble to try them, and prove their 
 intrinsic value and force, and I found a certain satisfaction in 
 receiving them. I said to myself, " Yes, if there were a good 
 God, who could do everything, He would certainly not let good 
 people suffer as they do, nor bad ones always have their way, as 
 aunt and Mr. Rumsey do." 
 
 I thought over these same thoughts, sitting there by the side 
 of my dear friend, but all was cloudy and broken in reference to 
 God. I could not make the illustration, which had convinced 
 me that he was not the form I saw sitting there, reach to the 
 Creator, and I felt sad and oppressed at this, as well as by the 
 impending grief of a separation which grew more terrible to me 
 with every hour of this living communion with him. There was 
 a long silence. At length I said, " Henry, you don't expect me 
 to answer any more about that, do you ?" 
 
 "About the existence and love of God ?" 
 
 I nodded.
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 173 
 
 "No," he replied ; " I do not wish you to tax your mind in 
 trying to do what is impossible, with the unhappy education you 
 have received. I wished to impress upon you, that there is a 
 God who is only a spirit, such as I shall be to you, after I am 
 gone away out of your sight and hearing ; and that you are 
 never to believe that there is not, because you cannpt see or 
 hear Him, any more than you are to believe that I am not, or 
 never was, for the same reason. And now, if I have done that, 
 I will only say beside, that if you have a Bible I wish you some- 
 times to read in the New Testament, especially in the books 
 called Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You can understand 
 nearly everything in them, and they will tell you about Christ 
 and his mother. And sometimes, Eliza, when you feel like doing 
 something especially to please me, read the fifth, sixth and 
 seventh chapters of Matthew. They will teach you all that is 
 most beautiful and sweet to know and to do. Do not think as 
 that hard woman does if you can he'p it. I am certain you will 
 never feel as she does, and I trust in God and your own true 
 nature, to correct any errors you may fall into, before you are 
 old enough to see the truth through all the mist and fog that 
 envelop you at present. May God bless you. I have done, 
 Eliza. It is your turn now." 
 
 The God bless you, sounded so much like last words, that I 
 utterly broke down when they came. I buried my face in my 
 hands, and wept with a violence that shook me, as the midnight 
 tempest shakes the light craft which glides safely over the 
 smooth, morning sea. My sorrow was too old for my life. It 
 was the anguish of the woman, sweeping over and bowing down 
 the young child. It was as if the storms and tempests, which 
 the tall cedar of Lebanon has grown up into and strengthened 
 itself in braving, should be let loose in their utmost rage upon 
 the slender shrubs that only bend and nestle closer at its foot 
 while they pass. 
 
 My unnatural life had forced the faculties, which could not be 
 imprisoned by it, out of the sphere where my physical being yet
 
 174 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 -- 
 
 belonged, and the terrible discord threatened to destroy me. I 
 did not feel such an ebb of the life power as I had on that day, 
 but a keener torture wrung my whole frame. I looked forward 
 to the desolation of the future, for never, never, my heart fore- 
 told me, should I find another such friend, and all the comforting 
 words he had uttered were as wind as the rustling of the 
 leaves above us. What was it to me to be well fed and pro- 
 tected from cold to have health to .experience common-place 
 kindness after this to be able to get books, or even to have 
 liberty to read them ? They all would not replace this living 
 soul. Thus I wept, and did not attempt to speak. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
 The scenery of a fairy dream." 
 
 AT length Henry spoke, and laying his hand verj gently ou 
 my arm, said, " come Eliza, I have indulged you long enough in 
 this, child. You are my sister, you know, and you must try to 
 do what I ask of you. You ought not to weep in this passionate 
 way, any longer. Come, rest your head against me ; so ; now 
 let us see if these rebellious tears will not stay back. There, 
 wipe them away, and they must not come any more." 
 
 His words had a wonderful power over me. They were not 
 mere words ; but whatever they expressed became a necessity, 
 or law to my interior life. My tears were stayed, not by any 
 effort of my own will, but spontaneously, because he wished it. 
 He smiled, and I answered it because it seemed that I must. 
 
 " That is right, little one ; now let us see what you are going 
 to do this fall and winter. You have Mr. Ramsay's book to 
 read, and I think, when all our folks meet down at the Lake, I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 175 
 
 < 
 
 shall be able to find a few more that you will like. I will hunt 
 all the reading fellows up, and few of them will care to take 
 books back with them I know; so that I am quite certain I 
 shall be able to get some for you. If I bring them and give 
 them to your uncle, would you get them ?" 
 
 " They had better be given to Mr. and Mrs. Radford," I said. 
 " Then I shall certainly have them. Uncle would give them to 
 me, but it might make him some trouble." 
 
 " Very well; Mr. Radford it shall be, and I think well of it, 
 too, because I should like to go and see him and his nice little 
 wife about you. Then you say Albert is coming back to live 
 with you this winter, is he ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Can he not teach you a little in arithmetic ?" 
 
 " I suppose he could, if we had any chance; he knows enough 
 of it." 
 
 " Did you not tell me that you rise in winter a long time 
 before daylight ?" 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Radford, and Albert and I used to. I always got 
 their breakfast, and they ate by candlelight." 
 
 " Did your uncle and aunt rise so early too ?" 
 
 " No, not till daylight." 
 
 " Well, now, could you not get an hour or more in the morn- 
 ings with Albert, to teach you how to use figures ? It would be 
 better than all reading, for that time. You will find that you 
 can learn a great deal so in the course of the winter, and it will 
 help you very much when you come to get to school. What do 
 you think of the plan ?" 
 
 " I will try," I said, raising myself and sitting erect, " because 
 I should like to very much, and because you have told me; but 
 I am afraid, if she gets bad again after you arc all gone, that I 
 can't do much. She has so many ways of worrying us, and 
 keeping us all the time in dread, that we used to be almost 
 a-fraid of her when she was asleep. But I will try."
 
 176 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Shall we go home now ?" 
 
 " If you please. Oh, I wonder when I shall come here again, 
 and who will be with me !" 
 
 " Whoever is with you, Eliza, never come alone. It is a very 
 dangerous place for a little child." 
 
 I promised that I never would, and as we were setting off, I 
 said, " Oh, Henry, wouldn't you like to go up on the other side of 
 the creek; there's a path all the way, and then we can get some 
 plums ? I was down at the thicket the other day, and a great 
 many of them are ripe." 
 
 " How can we get back across the creek ?" 
 
 " On a great log that lies just below the plum-trees." 
 
 "Are you sure it is not gone ?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I know it is not. It has stayed there through all the 
 freshets, ever so long. It can't go away, and sometimes other 
 trees have lodged against it, but uncle has them cut, so that 
 they will float off, as soon as the water falls a little, because he 
 doesn't wish to have a raft made there. But the log is a good 
 bridge, so he lets it be." 
 
 We passed the " deep hole," a dark, fearful-looking place, 
 where the bank went precipitously down many feet to the water, 
 that was blacker there than anywhere else. Mr. Radford had 
 told me a fable of its having no bottom, which I still partly be- 
 lieved, and shuddered at; but Henry laughed, and said he would 
 dive there some day, and when he came back tell me all about it. 
 
 At the plum thicket I did the honors with great alacrity. I 
 seated my guest in the coolest and most picturesque of the many 
 little arbors that were shut in by the drooping vines around, and 
 the closely knitted boughs overhead, and brought him fruit from 
 the different trees, and descanted on the merits of each, as a 
 horticulturist discourses on his best grafts, and stocks, and buds. 
 I had no scientific terms to make my meaning lucid; but I had 
 a most intimate knowledge of the place, and its capabilities and 
 doings for three years, for the thicket was my summer palace.
 
 MY KAELT DATS. 177 
 
 The sun never shone through the thick caiiopy of leaves and 
 woven boughs. There was 
 
 " No more sky, for overbranching, 
 At my head than at my foot." 
 
 And where the wild vines shot up from the rank soil, and occa- 
 sionally stretched from one small trunk to another, they formed 
 close walls of verdure to the little apartments between them ; 
 and the slender, broken trunks of the trees seemed not so much 
 a part of the growth as shafts set to support the leafy roof. I 
 was- delighted to perceive in Henry's face the unexpected plea- 
 sure this fairy spot gave him. 
 
 " Do you know, Eliza, what this place reminds me of ? It is 
 like the bowers of the banyan-tree that grows in the East 
 Indies." 
 
 " Yes," I said ; " I thought so when I read a description of 
 that tree last winter. Mr. Garland gave it me in a pamphlet 
 he had, which described many cn~ious things, but that was the 
 most wonderful of them all. How very much I did wish I could 
 see one." 
 
 " This must be very like one, I suppose," said Henry, " except 
 the size, and these bending walls of leaves and vines. I 
 could almost fancy myself under one of them and you a little 
 East Indian girl a small princess, maybe, who would take a 
 fancy to wait on me. Your highness would oblige me," he said, 
 bowing gravely, " by serving a goblet of water." 
 
 My imagination had never been trained to that sort of play, 
 and was not ready enough to serve me. I puzzled myself for a 
 single moment to reply, suitably in character, and not being able 
 to, said, " I should be very happy to offer you some, but I have 
 nothing to bring it in ; if you will come to my spring just under 
 the opposite bank, I'll show yon where you can drink, and it's 
 the most delicious water." 
 
 " I may as well see all the wonders and beauties of this 
 retreat," he said, rising ; and we went back to the other side of
 
 178 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 the creek, and a little way up the precipice, by a winding, bro- 
 ken path, till we came to a slight hollow, scooped oat of the 
 steep face of the high bauk, over which, several feet above us, 
 projected a mass of earth, bound together, and held in its over- 
 hanging position by the small roots of innumerable shrubs, 
 which shot out of it in every direction, and by the greater ones 
 of a larger tree. The tree grew upon the verge, and seemed, 
 with every gust of wind that swept over it, from above, in the 
 very act of crashing down upon us, and the green little world 
 below, and the glassy water, which we could just see shining 
 through its leafy crevices. 
 
 " That tree will fall some day," said Henry. *' I do not see 
 why it doesn't now." 
 
 " It has very large roots on the top of the bank," I said, 
 " on its other side. They go ever so far out in the earth, and 
 one of them is larger than all these together." 
 
 " Do you know why that should be, Eliza ?" 
 
 "No; I often wished to, but I never asked anybody but Mr. 
 Radford, and he said he supposed it happened so." 
 
 " Things do not happen, Eliza, without a cause. The reason 
 why the roots are larger on the other side, is, that as the earth 
 crumbled and washed away from these, they received most 
 nourishment from the soil that was never disturbed around them, 
 and now they will hold the tree till this bank washes away under 
 the trunk, and when that happens, it will come down headlong, 
 Eliza, where you and I are standing; and then, if we were here, 
 I am afraid we should not get home to tea that night. But it 
 will be likely to fall in some heavy storm of rain and wind, when 
 we shall not be out; so I think we need not frighten ourselves 
 now. Bat where is this spring ?" 
 
 " It is a little above, yet ; there where you see that damp 
 spot." 
 
 " It most be very small. I am afraid it will hardly hold 
 enough for as both to drink from." 
 
 " Oh, yes ; it has more than a pailful of water in it; and it is
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 179 
 
 the clearest and coolest you ever drank. Here it is," I said, 
 taking my stand by a young elder bush that was laden with 
 purple berries. 
 
 The spring was on a level with my hands. Its basin had 
 been scooped out by Albert, in some leisure hour, two sum- 
 mers before, and the water dripped into it from a projecting 
 fragment of rock, where it oozed from the bank, three feet or 
 more, above. The dripping was too slow for a stream, but so 
 rapid, that the great, elongated, trembling drops chased each 
 other along- the under surface of the conducting fragment, and 
 leaped off so rapidly, that their quick, successive plunges kept a 
 series of the tiniest wavelets moving to the grassy margin of the 
 little basin below. Albert had thrown two or three handfuls of 
 bright gravel-stones into the bottom of the spring, and through 
 the clear water, every shade of color, and every delicate line 
 upon their surfaces was distinctly visible. If I had been proud 
 of the plum thicket, I was more so of this gem of quick and 
 living beauty. I gathered his appreciation of it from one glance 
 at Henry's face before he put his lips to the water. He took a 
 long draught, and I followed him, before either of us said a 
 word. I did not like to ask his praise, but at length I said, 
 " Isn't it beautiful ?" 
 
 " Why did you never tell me of it, before ?" he asked. " I 
 would walk ten miles to see anything so beautiful. It is per- 
 fect." 
 
 I told him that the spring used to be higher up, but the earth 
 had washed off, and then Albert had made this, and how like 
 a fairy home it seemed to me the first time I had seen it. I 
 had read of fairies in a little book the Edwardses had lent me, 
 and I used to fancy them going to sea in this spring, on a flower 
 leaf, and crossing from one city to another on the different 
 shores of this miniature ocean. 
 
 Henry said I should call it " The Spring of the Fairies," and 
 he dipped his hand in the clear water, and sprinkled the turf 
 around it, by way of christening. I always turned reluctantly
 
 180 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 away from this spot, and I did so now, particularly, for I had 
 never before stood there with anybody who felt its beauty as I 
 did; but I said, mentally, as we returned, " I shall always love 
 it better now, for his having been here, and named it." 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 " Now, long that instrument ha3 ceased to sound 
 Now long that gracious form in earth has lain, 
 Tended by nature only, and unwound 
 
 Are all those mingled threads of Love and Pain ; 
 So let me weep and bend 
 My head, and wait the end ; 
 Knowing that God creates not thus in vain." 
 
 THERE were yet three days before the encampment was to 
 break up. I scarcely knew my own state of mind while they 
 were passing, but when the third came, the removal was put off 
 further till Saturday. On the morning of that day, made 
 memorable through my whole life, the camp was early astir. 
 The wagons came, and the tents were struck before eight o'clock. 
 I was wandering disconsolately about, in the few occasional 
 moments when I was not employed, looking upon all their 
 movements, and feeling that kind of helpless dismay that so 
 paralyzes the life, wheu some great sorrow, which cannot be 
 averted which one feels must be borne is coming upon the 
 soul. I was very wretched, but I buried my pain deep deep* 
 down in the hidden recesses of my heart. I would have died 
 sooner than it should have been suspected. 
 
 The gentlemen walked about, gathering up their boxes of 
 instruments and clothing ; the men loaded the wagons with the 
 tents, chests, and various other articles, and by nine o'clock they 
 drove off. My thoughts my whole being was concentered 
 upon one single moment in that day. All else was mechanical
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 181 
 
 my life beside a vague dream of pain and chilly endurance. 
 That was the moment of parting with my friend. For though 
 he had spoken of returning, I felt that whether I ever saw him 
 again or not, this was the time of anguish to me. 
 
 They came in to take leave of us. Each one had a kindly or 
 jocose word for me, and one, a man of gentle speech, whose hair 
 was thickly sprinkled with grey, said, as I gave him my hand, 
 " What ails our little girl, to look so pale, and have so cold a 
 hand ?" 
 
 I was not pale the next moment, for my face blazed, and the 
 whole surface of my body felt suddenly raised to furnace heat. 
 But he saw nothing in it. He thought a child's life must neces- 
 sarily be vacant, except in the few moments when it might be 
 stirred by external influences or awakened passion. They had 
 all said good bye, but Henry. Last before him was the good- 
 natured Mr. Clarke, whom I had long ago forgiven, for not inter- 
 esting me as much as I had expected him to, before he came. 
 He shook my hand, and chucking me under the chin, by way of 
 a little extra patronage, said, " SI all I give your love to Mr. 
 Ramsay ?" 
 
 I fired, at the act, and still more at the words ; but I 
 remembered instantly that Henry had said I must not be angry 
 at such things, and I said calmly, " No, you needn't give my 
 love to Mr. Ramsay. Since he was so kind to me when he 
 brought the book, I thank him always when I think of him, but 
 I don't love him at all." 
 
 " Hallo 1" he exclaimed, " we are getting very exact in our 
 language, I think." But he was in haste, and passed on, laugh- 
 ing, and saying that he should make Ramsay shout by telling 
 him that. 
 
 They were all gone, one after the other, on horseback, up the 
 road that led towards the lake. It joined that on which the 
 house fronted, at right angles, a short distance eastward from 
 it. They were all gone but Henry, and I was sweeping the 
 floor, slowly enough to have provoked ill temper at another
 
 182 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 time, for my arms seemed to have no power. It was difficult 
 for me to use the broom, even slowly. 
 
 I heard a step at the door a quick, light one. He had 
 been delayed, and hastened to overtake his companions. His 
 leave-taking was brief, but very courteous and respectful to 
 aunt, and while it was taking place, I glided quietly from the 
 room, into the passage. I scarcely knew if I was alive. He 
 stepped out, and with a glistening eye, and flushed face, laid his 
 hand on my head, bent over me, and touched his lips to my 
 forehead ; and I heard the words, " Do not weep. If I can get 
 a horse, I will ride up to-morrow, and see you." And he was 
 gone. I was conscious that he walked quickly out to the gate, 
 mounted, and rode rapidly away. 
 
 By this time it was ten o'clock. The morning tasks were 
 nearly over. I moved mechanically through all that I had to 
 do, without difficulty only with effort my body seemed to be 
 a machine, which kept moving because it was already in motion. 
 The I, which I understood, from Henry's explanation, to be my 
 true, suffering self, was wandering, in frozen desolation, through 
 the past and the future, vainly seeking alleviation of its present 
 anguish. But it found no peak of rest. A level waste of 
 wretchedness was before me, and the past did not avail the heart, 
 that was too young to have any sense of identification in it. I 
 did not see myself there. I must look forward, by a law of my 
 being and my scanty years ; and all the view was only pain. 
 
 " If I can, I will ride up and see you to-morrow? These words 
 began, at length, to take meaning to my paralyzed faculties. 
 Looking to that to-morrow, their waning life came back a little 
 but only a little. I was not clear and strong about it, as if it 
 had been an absolute promise; which I knew he would have 
 kept if it were possible. *' If I can," meant if so many things 
 would permit ; and then I thought, perhaps he said it because I 
 frit so very miserable ; he pitied me, and wished to say some- 
 thing that would comfort me. 
 
 But if he should come? Ah! then, indeed, for a little time.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 183 
 
 at least, I should be happy ! and my child's heart rebounded, as 
 the hope grew in strength. I began to dwell on the details of 
 the visit ; when would he come ? how long would he stay ? what 
 would he have to tell me ? much about the lake, no doubt ; 
 which I thought must be an object of as profound interest to him 
 as to me. I was kindly treated on that day not, I think, from 
 any perception of my great needs; but the parting, at once, with 
 several persons, whose courtesy and social power had, for a time, 
 very much relieved the monotonous weariness of her life, had 
 softened aunt's own feelings. She seemed more human, and far 
 more womanly, in this new manifestation. But noting gave me 
 enduring hope or confidence. Even the buoyancy i. ^pired by the 
 expected visit, lifted me but little above my intense depression, 
 into which I continually sank back, as the days that were to fol- 
 low to-morrow, passed before my desponding thoughts. These 
 fluctuations of feeling were terrible. 
 
 The dinner hour came. I had not tasted food that day, nor 
 could I now. My whole nature refused it ; and thus, the inat- 
 tention with which I was generally treated, became a blessed lib- 
 erty. While they were at table, I walked out under the trees 
 where the tents had been. The day, so far, had been one of the 
 finest and clearest of those endless summer days, when, to the 
 happy child, from sunrise to sunset is an age of delight. Bat 
 the air was sultry now, and the deep shade of the large peach 
 tree, whose leaves wavered in its fitful vibrations, was very wel- 
 come to me. I rested there, though I was neither strengthened 
 nor tranquillized ; I fancied the atmosphere was oppressive, at 
 times, and again hollow and unsatisfying to breathe. It made 
 my feelings waver and change, almost as did the leaves over my 
 head. I felt the approach of the dreadful sinking I had experi- 
 enced on that day not the breathlessness, nor the fear of death, 
 but the chilly, stealing torpor and T made a great effort, and 
 commanded myself into the house. They were still sitting about 
 the table, talking, as people do who have some topic of a little 
 more interest than the every-day events of common life. They
 
 184: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 were discussing those who had just left us ; expressing their pre- 
 ferences, criticising opinions, manners, persons, freely, but respect- 
 fully. Uncle liked, best of all, a Captain McClure, who had been 
 to sea, and could spin a good yarn, he said, and laugh like a 
 man. Aunt thought they were all pleasant, gentlemanly men, 
 but Mr. Capron and Mr. Clarke were most agreeable to her. I 
 did not at all care for their opinions, but I had gone into the 
 house for refuge from myself, and from something that I dreaded 
 without, and so I sat down and heard them. I took a seat in a 
 remote part of the room, wishing to escape observation, for I felt 
 there was no safety for me but in avoiding every possible expres- 
 sion of sympathy, and bearing, stoutly as I might, right on 
 through my trials of spirit. 
 
 Uncle looked at me as I went in, but did not speak until after 
 I had been sometime seated, and a pause came in their talk. 
 Then be turned towards me, and said: " I wonder, now, who, of 
 all the strange gentlemen, our Eliza liked the best ? Was it 
 Mr. Ramsay ?" 
 
 I trembled at the first question, but the second quite relieved 
 me. 
 
 " No, uncle," I replied; "I did not like Mr. Ramsay nearly as 
 well as the others. He teased me, and laughed at me too much." 
 
 " You liked that sober one better, that you were always talk- 
 ing with Mr. Cranstoun. He is a noble fellow not gay enough, 
 though, I should think, for his company. I wonder how he came 
 to be among them ?" 
 
 " He wanted to travel, he told me, and go through this wild 
 country, just as they are going. He said his mother did not 
 consent to let him come till the day they left Washington, and 
 then she felt so grieved, that he had almost a mind to give it up 
 for her sake ; but when he told her he would, if it would please 
 her, she said no; he must go from her sometime, and he was old 
 enough to begin now. And that little bit of a watch that he 
 wears, she took off her own neck and put on his, when he bade 
 her good bye."
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 185 
 
 This speaking of Mm was a great relief to me. I did not 
 betray myself in it, and it unlocked the iron pressure under which 
 I had kept myself so long. It withdrew my thoughts and emo- 
 tions from preying upon myself as they Jbad. I was better at 
 once.' 
 
 Uncle said his mother might well love such a son, and that 
 his father was one of the best men in the United States. 
 
 " He thinks so, too," I said ; " for he told me that he hoped 
 to be as good a man as his father ; and I know he would wish 
 to be better, if he did not think he was very good, indeed." 
 
 " Come, Eliza," said aunt, rising, after we had all been silent 
 a few moments, "it is time we were clearing the table. Isn't 
 thee going to eat any dinner ?" 
 
 The speaking as I had, had lifted the benumbing weight that 
 had destroyed my appetite ; I felt that I could take food ; and 
 I answered, " I will have a piece of pie." 
 
 " Get a knife and help thyself," she said, placing the plate 
 near where I stood. But I was so ne.'vous and fitful, that by the 
 time I had cut a piece and laid it on a plate, I could not taste it. 
 
 1 felt the air again so lifeless. 
 
 Aunt had left the room, and I said, in a low voice, " Uncle, 
 doesn't the air feel as I have heard you say it does at sea before 
 gales, and water-spouts, and such things ?" 
 
 He looked through the open door, and seemed estimating it 
 for a moment, by his own sensations and the external evidences, 
 and then he said : "It is very sultry, Eliza, and I shouldn't 
 wonder if we have a heavy shower this afternoon. I must call 
 the boys, and get the wheat in, if possible, before it comes on." 
 
 He rose, and, as I handed him his broad straw hat, I said : 
 " Do you think there will be a gale with the rain ?" 
 
 " Maybe," he replied ; "but why are you so afraid of a gale, 
 child ? None of us are at sea ; and if we were, and had a good 
 ship under us, we should be safe enough." 
 
 " I am not afraid," I said though my aching knees trembled 
 by this time so that I could hardly stand ; " but Mr. Cranstoun
 
 186 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 told me they were going out in boats this afternoon. Do yop 
 think there will be danger if they do ?" 
 
 "Not if they have good boats ; and Major Kearney is too 
 careful a man, I think, to run any risk, especially when the 
 weather looks threatening." 
 
 The sky and the atmosphere were now changing rapidly, for 
 even in the few moments that we had been speaking, I could feel 
 the deepening shadow in them. I walked out at the door with 
 uncle. There were no clouds yet visible, but the sun had a dull, 
 angry look, as if the impalpable air had thickened before it; and 
 while I- stood and breathed, my sensations were as if vast chasms 
 were alternately opening and closing around me. The sense of 
 impending terror deepened every moment, and uncle, as he looked 
 about, said, indistinctly, " I don't see it yet, but when it comes, 
 it will be a rattler." 
 
 This was the term that always expressed, in his vocabulary, 
 the most complete, the strongest, the most terrible thing it was 
 his highest superlative. I hurried within in dismay, that seemed 
 to overwhelm and sink me. I cleared the things from the table 
 they were very few, and soon dispatched and then I asked per- 
 mission to go to the plum thicket. It was granted, for aunt was 
 BO insensitive to what seemed literally killing me, that she had 
 not been warned of the coming tempest. I wished to be alone 
 while it was passing. For myself, I had no dread of the utmost 
 rage of the elements. I did not even think that in going out 
 I should be exposing myself to their fury.' 11 
 
 Mechanically I took the little basket, in which I always gath- 
 ered fruits, and set off. When I left the house, the air was still 
 wild with the same kind of invisible agitation that had prevailed 
 so long. It had affected me for more than an hour, and yet, 
 there were no clouds in the sky. There was only a darker shade 
 in the atmosphere, under the southwest; and as I drew near the 
 tall black walnut, in the big meadow, with my eyes fixed upon 
 its top, I saw that its highest branches, with their leaves flutter 
 ing wildly, were suddenly pressed down, and as suddenly uplifted-
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 187 
 
 at times, when no wind moved the herbage on the ground at its 
 foot. While I was crossing the meadow, the shadow in the 
 southwest deepened, and before I reached the thicket, became 
 palpable blackness. Short, hollow-sounding gusts now and then 
 swept down upon the earth, and they seemed to have a peculiar 
 force ; they struck against me like something almost material 
 with a pressure that was all on one side, against vacuum on the 
 other giving me thus a sensation as if I were being thrown 
 to the earth. I looked into the black cloud, now moving steadily 
 up the heavens like an irresistible army, for lightning, but as 
 yet it was unbroken by a single flash. I lingered outside 
 the thicket, where I could watch the coming on of this fearful 
 enemy. With my face towards it, I saw it roll up, and up, 
 towards the zenith, with an almost intelligent passion in its 
 march. I heard the sound of thunder, low, apparently, from dis- 
 tance, but heavy and awful in this threatening war. I turned 
 to see whence it could have proceeded, for I knew that lightning 
 must precede thunder, and I had tot seen the faintest flash, 
 though watching with a kind of fascination that riveted my 
 gaze. But I was now appalled to see the whole northeast sky 
 wrapped in a blackness more awful than that of its confronting, 
 enemy. 
 
 My mental distress had been partly forgotten before, in watch- 
 ing the coming convulsion. But this discovery recalled and con- 
 centred my thoughts ; not upon myself, but on those whom, as I 
 thought, this new danger threatened, more imminently than 
 that I had been watching. Terror succeeded the interest I had 
 felt. I knew that, if they were out, they were under that ter- 
 rible cloud. On it came, occasionally rent by light, flickering, 
 veiled streams of flame, that seemed as if they were deep deep 
 in its black depths, and could not reach the surface ; and the 
 heavy, smothered thunder, which succeeded them, I fancied, 
 shook the solid earth. The clouds approached each other, as if 
 they had chosen the highest heavens for their battle-place, and 
 the world beneath was but an unconsidered spectator of the
 
 188 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 great shock. The wind came oftcner, in sharper and more jerk- 
 ing blasts, and I was thinking, in terror, what would become of 
 them if they were out now upon the lake, when a great, blind- 
 ing glare of light, that illuminated the whole black heavens, and 
 shadowed the earth, leaped from the upper border of the eastern 
 cloud, and cleft its way far into the centre of the opposite one. 
 It was followed by a crash, that made me cower to the ground, 
 and before I dared to lift my head, in the deep, and almost in- 
 stantaneous silence which followed, I felt two or three large 
 drops of water penetrate the thin covering of my shoulders ; 
 and so tremendous was the concussion of forces, loosed by that 
 mad stroke, that even while I was rising to my feet, the whole 
 air seemed to become a vast waterfall. In the very act of 
 standing up, I was drenched. 
 
 I had no fear, but a sense of awe a consciousness of the pre- 
 sence of power, bowed me down. I watched the storm, and 
 stood under the beating rain, which, for the first time, seemed to 
 fall with a weight that made it painful to bear, and shut my 
 eyes, when the tremendous flashes came, and the thunder smote 
 me, and did not, for one moment that I recollect, think it would 
 have been better to be in the house. There was, in the deepest 
 depths of my soul, a faint consciousness of danger, to some one 
 else a little inmost kingdom, darkened and heavy, which was 
 reserved from the fearful excitement, that surrounded me. All 
 else was given up to the spirit of the tempest. I lived, out- 
 wardly, in the gloom of the flying clouds iii the glare, in the 
 crash, in the falling torrent, in the wild winds, which tore and 
 rent the leaves and branches of the tall trees, as if angry at 
 being outdone, in this fearful trial of strength, by the elements 
 above them. 
 
 Suddenly, I was recalled to a sense of my place on the earth, 
 and among the things that surrounded me, by an awful crash 
 behind me. The roar of innumerable waterfalls, pouring from 
 the high bank the rush of the rain, and the raging voice of the 
 wind, had made me insensible to individual sounds, but this came
 
 MY EARLY DATS. 189 
 
 so near, and with such sharp, and heavy tones, that I turned to 
 see what it was, and found myself still capable of something 
 like astonishment, when I realized that the thicket yet stood en- 
 tire. Large branches had been twisted off of the great black 
 walnut, and whirled across the open meadow, till it was almost 
 bared of its leaves and boughs, and thrice it had bent altogether, 
 so fearfully, that I expected to see it overthrown, or broken off. 
 The thicket and the trees immediately about me, were protected 
 by the high, perpendicular bank on the opposite side. Only 
 showers of leaves had fallen from them, and the fruit of the 
 plum-trees lay in the water upon the ground, so thickly strewn, 
 that I could scarcely avoid treading on them, as I penetrated 
 the group, to see what had caused the noise that startled me. 
 I waded the little alleys and embowered walks, now every inch 
 submerged, till I came to the margin of the creek, which was 
 low on this side. Already the dark, transparent water was 
 changed to a thick mud-color, and the stream swollen so, that it 
 washed the roots of the low trees where I was used to sit, and 
 lave my burning feet, on dusty summer days. The whole length 
 of the precipice opposite was a continuous waterfall, and oh, 
 fearful sight I sheer down its face, which was seamed by the 
 heavier currents, and looked so unnatural, that I could not have 
 known it, but for remembering where I was, lay the trunk of 
 the tree that Henry had told me, on Sunday, would fall in 
 some storm of wind and rain, when he and I would not be out. 
 The sight appalled me. No trace of the " Spring of the Fairies" 
 was visible. Even the path by which we had ascended to it was 
 washed into the creek. 
 
 I began to recall what he had said, and I thought : " There 
 lies the tree, fallen, and I have been out in the storm that 
 brought it down, and where is he ?" And the dreariness of his 
 possible situation began to so overpower my mind, now, that the 
 fierce excitement which had caused me t to forget it was some- 
 what abated, that I felt myself siuk at the bare thought, to a 
 state of almost helpless feebleness. The lack of food, the ter-
 
 190 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 rible tension to which I had been held by the scene, that now 
 overcame and depressed, instead of elevating and sustaining me ; 
 the drenching, and the chilling, in the rain and wind ; the kind 
 of superstitious terror, that crept into my blood, at fiight of the 
 fallen tree, well-nigh overpowered me. When I remembered that 
 I was a long walk from the house ; that till I reached the high 
 laud, on which it stood, I should have to wade all the way ; that 
 I was drenched, and faint, and cold, and that the rain was still 
 falling, and the wind still blowing, though no longer dangerously, 
 I wished that some one would come to help me home. I was 
 afraid of myself. 
 
 I stooped, and picked a few plums out of the water, which I 
 wiped on my frock, and ate. They relieved one troublesome 
 sensation the sinking one so that I felt better able to walk, 
 and, having gathered a few more, I set off on my dreary way 
 home. The rain had subsided to a heavy drizzle ; the air was 
 chill, and occasional slight gusts of exhausted wind, pressed my 
 wet garments to my shivering form and limbs ; and, the increas- 
 ing darkness terrified me, for I had no conception that any time 
 had passed. I believed it was still midday, and, as the storm 
 subsided, I expected the cheering light and warmth to surround 
 me again. 
 
 But there was growing into my heart, at every step of that 
 walk, a leaden sense of a terror I could not define. I was in- 
 expressibly oppressed by it, and, by the time I had left the wet 
 meadow, and climbed the soft, slippery hill, to the dairy-yard^ I 
 was so overcome, that it was with extreme difficulty I moved 
 forward at all. There were no cows driven up yet nobody in 
 sight. And the chill, grey desolation of the scene, as I looked 
 around myself, from the height, seemed to confirm my heaviest 
 apprehensions. I went over the stile. As I stood upon the top- 
 most step, I heard the swift tread of a horse. People were not 
 accustomed to ride fast there, unless urged by something im- 
 portant. The sound, therefore, was a new alarm. I looked m 
 the direction whence it came, and saw, through the misty dusk,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 191 
 
 a man dashing, at full speed, down the road from the lake. I 
 dropped, rather than sat down, upon the last step, when I 
 reached the ground, to recover a little the shock it gave me ; for, 
 1 was as certain then, that he was coming with bad news to our 
 house, as after he had uttered it. He came on swiftly, and 
 turned the corner. Here the road was lower, and so wet, that 
 he was obliged to slacken his speed. I rose, and walked forward, 
 for I knew I had to hear it, and already I had suffered so much, 
 that I felt I could bear it the better from my previous pain, as 
 a person of slender energies is often safer, amid pestilential or 
 violent diseases, than one in whom there are overflowing life 
 and health. 
 
 As I drew near the house, he alighted, and passed in at the 
 gate, where he, had gone out a few hours before. How different 
 was all now. The external desolation harmonized with that of 
 my spirit, and helped me to bear the terrible message which I 
 waited to hear him deliver to uncle. They met midway between 
 the gate and the door. 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Smalley," said the man, touching his hat, 
 and looking very sad. He was one of the chain carriers. 
 
 " Good evening," was the reply ; and, after an instant, " we 
 have had a terrible storm to-day." 
 
 " Yes, sir. It has been a terrible day with us, altogether. 
 We have had a dreadful accident, down there, and Mr. McClure, 
 and Mr. Ramsay, wanted me to come up, and let you know that 
 he is to be buried to-morrow evening, at half-past three." 
 
 " He ! Who ?" exclaimed uncle. 
 
 " Mr. Cranstoun, sir. He was drowned about three o'clock 
 this afternoon." 
 
 " My God 1" exclaimed uncle. " Poor fellow ! Come in, and 
 tell us how it happened." 
 
 They entered the house, and I followed, but remained in the 
 entry, that I might hear every word. My going in would have 
 necessitated my absence, to change my clothes. 
 
 " Why, you see/' said the man, sitting down, and holding his
 
 192 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 hat between bis knees (I recall now every word, and look, and 
 movement of his, as if they had passed before me but an hour 
 ago,) "you see, the major, and five other gentlemen, with two 
 of the men to row, went out about twelve o'clock, in a boat, to 
 take soundings all around the mouth of the creek. The boat 
 wasn't good, but it was the best they could get, and they couldn't 
 know the storm was coming on, you know, sir. Well, they 
 rowed slowly about, stopping here and there, to use their lines, 
 and so on, and the first thing they knew, the wind began to 
 blow, and the clouds to look ugly, and they were a mile or 
 more from shore. They pulled in as fast as possible, but, in 
 that shallow water, you know, sir, the waves rise very quick, and 
 the boat being old, and not tight, nor well trimmed, she began 
 to fill directly. They were not half way in yet, and to lighten 
 her, somebody had to jump overboard. Well, Mr. Cranstoun 
 was always reckoned the best swimmer of them all, and he was 
 the first to go. He pulled off his boots and coat, and put a lit- 
 tle watch, he always wore, into his mouth, and plunged into the 
 water. Mr. Ramsay went next, and, in a few minutes, they all 
 had to follow, for the boat filled. When they got on the 
 beach, which they thought they all did, very near together, 
 Major Kearney called out, ' Are we all here, gentlemen,' and then 
 they missed Mr. Cranstoun." 
 
 " ' my God,' said Mr. Ramsay, ' Cranstoun is not here,' and 
 he plunged in again at the same mpment. Two of us followed 
 him, for we knew he was tired, and we thought we might help 
 them both. He went on and we followed, and when I came 
 close up to him and asked if he knew at all where to go, he said 
 'yes,' but nothing more then, and we went so far that I began to 
 be afraid for Mr. Ramsay, for he's a heavy man, you know sir, 
 when all at once he went under. The water was very rough, 
 and I was terribly frightened for fear of cramp or something 
 getting him, when he came up and said, 'Here he is, boys; take 
 him up as quick as you can go.' We took him between us 
 me aud the other man and Mr. Ramsay kept close to us, and
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 193 
 
 as soon as we got him ashore they went to work with hot stones, 
 and bottles of warm water, and blankets, and blowing into his 
 mouth, and they kept it up till a few minutes before I started. 
 But he was clean gone, sir, and there was no chance at all. 
 Mr. Ramsay cried over him, and said, ' How his mother would 
 feel.' And then, sir, in spite of J em all he went out again to 
 dive for his watch. He said he should be so glad to get it for 
 his mother." 
 
 " Did he find it ?" 
 
 " Oh, no, sir; it was a little bit of a thing, not bigger than half 
 a dollar. Of course he couldn't find it. They all feel pretty 
 sober, ma'am," said the man in answer to an inquiry from 
 aunt. 
 
 "Xaturally, ma'am, they feel very sober. You see it might 
 as well have been one of them that's left as he, and they all 
 thought a deal of him too, and he deserved it." 
 
 Comments had no interest for me, and when I had heard so 
 much I stepped into the room. 
 
 " Why, Eliza," exclaimed aunt, as if she had forgotten me, 
 " where was thee in all the storm, and why didn't thee come 
 before ?" 
 
 " I was at the thicket," I replied, " and I got so wet, and 
 there was so much water in the meadow that I could hardly get 
 back." 
 
 "Well, get off thy wet things, right away. Thee looks 
 enough to scare anybody." 
 
 "Ah," said the man, looking at me, " that is the little girl he 
 thought so much of. There's bad news for you, little one, from 
 your friend at the lake. Get on your dry clothes, and come 
 here, and I'll tell it to you." 
 
 " I've heard it all," I said, " and I knew it before I came up 
 from the meadow." 
 
 " Is the child going out of her wifs ?" exclaimed aunt, looking 
 more excited than displeased. I was lighting a candle, for it 
 was now too dark to dress myself without one, and she gazed
 
 194: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 sharply into my face, as the light shone upon it, and said, " Doi/t 
 talk such foolishness any more. Go and dress." 
 
 I was no more than the ordinary time changing my garments. 
 -Not a tear came into my eyes, though I "thought of only one 
 thing, almost of one word while I was doing it, "He was clean 
 gone, sir, and there was no chance at all." This said clearly that 
 there was a possibility he might have been brought back to life. 
 It would be impossible to express the agony of earnestness with 
 which the words inspired me. They had tried but a few hours ; 
 I would have toiled till the stars paled in the full light of the 
 coming day. I would have wearied the eternal forces of nature. 
 I would have desired, and willed, so strongly, that if life hovered 
 near its deserted tenement, the great power of my love should 
 have recalled it. 
 
 This one thought was the source of my keenest suffering. 
 But for it I should have been comparatively tranquil that night. 
 I remember the evening but dimly. Once I was moved to be- 
 seech that I might go down, with a wild kind of hope, that if I 
 could touch him, life would yet return. I recollect only one fact 
 that impressed me, as relieving my immediate suffering. The 
 cows were not to be driven up, as I had first feared they might 
 be, and milked after dark ; and this seemed to lift the burden, 
 which was now fast becoming too heavy for me. I was under 
 that kind of mechanical rigor, that never permitted me to think 
 of evading an exaction, or getting rid of a task. Whatever 
 affected iny strength, or spirits, or, to whatever extent they de- 
 clined, I looked for no favor. I never thought of illness, or the 
 exemption it would afford, from what seemed to be fast becoming 
 impossibilities, but I moved about the house, cleared the supper- 
 table after a vain attempt to take a morsel of bread and in 
 due time we all retired 
 
 The clouds had all vanished before we went to bed, and the 
 hull' moon rode as tranquilly in -the dark, blue sky, as if all 
 nature had In-en as placid, since she last shone there, as at that 
 moment as if a terrible and treacherous deed had not been
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 195 
 
 done in her absence. I had found opportunity to ask the man, 
 in the course of the evening, privately, " if he thought Henry 
 had suffered much ;" and he then told me, what he had not said 
 before : " That Mr. Ramsay, in passing him, saw him swimming, 
 as he thought, on his back, and he wondered at it at the time ; 
 but, as he was accustomed to all sorts of exercises in the 
 water, and as, with the rest of them, who were not as good 
 swimmers, it was rather an earnest struggle to reach the shore, 
 he did not pause ; but that as soon as he was missed, Mr. Ram- 
 say was appalled to think, that at that very moment he, perhaps, 
 needed help, and might have been saved. That led to his plung- 
 ing in after him, so instantly, and striking directly for the spot 
 where be found him. They thought," he said, "it was the 
 watch that had caused his death, by strangling, or in some 
 other way." 
 
 How I passed that awful night I do not in the least know. 
 I was not conscious of sleeping at all ; but my utter exhaustion 
 must have produced a mental conditip-J, corresponding to it, at 
 times, for I stood with him again on the raft, and by the 
 " Spring of the Fairies," and heard again, as distinctly as I had 
 in the morning, his last words. Then I was hand in hand with 
 him, above the black clouds and the raging winds, floating 
 smoothly along, in a region so exquisitely beautiful, and pure, 
 and bright, that the memory of the storm, which I seemed to have 
 been in, and to have risen from instantaneously, was like what 
 I had heard of hell. Again, I was conscious of being very 
 cold and full of pain, and when the morning came, I believed 
 that all I had enjoyed was a dream, and my sufferings only a 
 reality, for I could scarcely stand, when I rose to my feet, and 
 from the top of my head, downwards, I was one great agony. 
 Every motion produced a strange worrying sensation, as if I 
 had been overstretched and could not contract to my natural 
 dimensions.
 
 196 MY KAKLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " High among the dead, who give 
 Better life to those who live." 
 
 44 The wounded heart rests in the body's pain." 
 
 UNCLE and aunt were going down to the funeral. I did not 
 know whether I wished to go or not. I doubted myself. I had 
 never seen death since I stood by my mother's coffin, and I 
 doubted if I should be able to bear the sight of him, lying, as 
 I remembered her, silent, and cold, and insensible, to my great 
 Anguish, without doing, or saying, or looking something that I 
 must not. I felt so much pain, too, in my head and all over 
 my body, that I shrunk from the rough road and the hard 
 wagon. 
 
 I did not doubt they would take me, if I asked them to ; or 
 they, perhaps, would expect me to go, though uncle remarked 
 upon my looking so ill, and aunt said, I had taken cold, from 
 being out in the storm yesterday. It was not considered neces- 
 sary to notice my condition further. I ate an early sweet apple, 
 and drank a cup of milk, for my breakfast, and, when all was 
 done for the morning and they were preparing to start, I said to 
 aunt : " Am I to stay here alone to-day ?" 
 
 " It wouldn't hurt thee, I suppose," was the answer ; " but," 
 she added, a moment after, with a little more kindness, " J'll 
 stop, as we go by, and ask Betsey to couie down and stay with 
 thee. Shall I ?" 
 
 What a shock the bare suggestion gave me I Betsey ! I had for- 
 gotten, it seemed to me, for years, that such an individual lived. 
 I was older, by a whole life experience, than she was and such 
 an experience so grand, so sweet, so elevating, so entirely
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 197 
 
 separating me from common life and natures, like hers. She 
 would never be again, to me. I would not have chained my suf- 
 fering soul to her presence for all the earth contained. 
 
 I replied to aunt, that " I would rather she would not send 
 her, for I should not feel lonesome, and if I did, I could go and 
 see the Edwardses." So I said, but meant nothing of the kind. 
 
 " Or thee can ride up with us, and get out at the woods road, 
 and walk up to Jacob Radford's, if thee'd like to." 
 
 I scarcely knew what to say to this suggestion. At one mo- 
 ment I felt such a shrinking from myself, and, at the next, from 
 everybody else. At one moment I desired to nestle close to 
 some full-grown heart, that could feel I had a sorrow, and help 
 me to bear it ; and at the next I felt it belonged to me, alone, 
 and that I should be unworthy of it, if I sought to throw it 
 upon another. I was rather glad, than otherwise, that she had 
 not, at the first question, suggested my going with them. If she 
 had, I thought it would have been weak, and cowardly to say, I 
 did not wish to go ; but now, it was not left to me to decide. 
 Finally, I was determined upon staying at home, alone ; and I 
 did, all the long day, till the sun drew low in the west. A part 
 of the time I spent in bed, and a part walking, as in a dream, 
 from place to place, where I had sat or stood with him. I re- 
 member only one wish that I earnestly entertained on that day. 
 It was, that he had said, " that his spirit would as certainly be 
 near me, if he died,, as if he went away, and remained on earth." 
 I believed, that if he had said so, I should not have doubted 
 it ; for I thought, if he were alive, and warm, and thinking to- 
 day, I would never never again, grieve at his absence. 
 
 When they came home, uncle said I looked pale, and, as if I 
 had lost flesh in the last two days ; and, I think, a vague per- 
 ception of my great need of compassion must have dawned 
 upon him, for he folded me, a moment, in his warm arms, and 
 said: "You have been very lonesome, I am afraid, to-day, 
 Eliza, but it was better to stay here, than to go down and seo 
 him. looking so badly. He was so dark, and swollen."
 
 10 S MV EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Ob, don't, don't, uncle !" I almost shrieked, laying my hand 
 quickly on his mouth. " Don't tell me of that." 
 
 " What ails the child !" he exclaimed ; for I could not restrain 
 myself from shaking with convulsive violence, as the dream, 
 which I had unconsciously cherished, of his grave and solemn 
 beauty, such as it had grown to me, being laid away, never to 
 be seen again, had been rudely swept into nothingness by these 
 thoughtless words. "What ails you, Eliza? It doesn't hurt 
 you, does it, to know that ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, uncle ; it makes me feel such an aching here, in my 
 heart. I am so sorry you told me !" 
 
 " Well, child, I am sorry, too ; but I thought you would like 
 to hear about it." 
 
 " No, not that anything else." 
 
 " Well, then, Mr. Ramsay told me he was going to dive again 
 for the watch, some time before they go back, when the lake is 
 quite smooth. He wishes very much to find it, to take to his 
 mother." 
 
 " I hope he will," I said. But I felt, at this moment, that 
 except the watch had been his mother's, and she had given 
 it him, it belonged more to me. No one could suffer as I did ; 
 and I, to whom no word would ever be spoken, felt a right to 
 demand consclation I, the depth of whose sorrow no soul would 
 ever know. This perception of my own desolation, compared 
 with that of those who would be thought of, comforted, and 
 talked to about him ; who would have, carefully restored to 
 them, every little memento of his leaving ; who would be at 
 liberty to say how much they loved him, and how much more he 
 deserved than they could give penetrated me with so bitter a 
 sense of the hardness of my lot, that I laid down my head and 
 wept. I had not shed a tear before, and I was torn to pieces by 
 the violence of my grief. And that aching at my heart was so 
 suffocating, so fearful, nothing ever described it but words which 
 I met will), years after, when death had taken another of my 
 beloved ; and then they portrayed the agony of that unforgot-
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 9U 
 
 ten moment, as well as of the later one : " And the iron had 
 entered into his soul." 
 
 I wept long, and was at length only stopped by the call to my 
 nightly task "The cows are here, Eliza." It was as irresistible 
 to me, almost, as death. I do not recollect that I had ever got 
 so far as to wish for, or think of, the possibility of being released 
 from this performance, now so dreadfully repugnant to my feel- 
 ings so severe a tax upon my little strength. But I was 
 released, in a very unexpected and painful manner, that night. 
 Turning quickly about, in the dairy-yard, as I stood near a small 
 trough that lay upon the ground, I fell across it, in such a way 
 that, when I rose, I could not raise my right foot. To my inex- 
 perience, the new sensation was frightful ; for I seemed to have 
 a leaden foot, instead of the living one I had stood and moved 
 upon a moment before. I was much alarmed ; and, in making 
 another great effort to learn if I had still my own natural foot, 
 I fell again, because I could not lift, it seemed to me, the weight 
 of a feather. It would not move, however earnestly I willed 
 that it should. 
 
 There was no one near me ; but I succeeded in calling the boy 
 from the other side of the grain-house, and sent him to tell 
 uncle to come out. He looked a little surprised, and began to 
 speak, but I said, " Don't stop a minute. I have hurt my ankle, 
 and I want him to come and help me into the house." He was 
 the same boy who had asked Mr. Dole of his married life ; and 
 he now did as I requested, without a syllable more. When uncle 
 came, which he did quickly, he helped me up, and I tried, hold- 
 ing by him, to walk ; but it was impossible, and the effort pro- 
 duced, almost instantly, an intolerable pain, from which I had 
 until that moment been free. 
 
 He took me in his arms, and, when he got in the house, placed 
 me in a chair, with another before me, on which he carefully bid 
 the disabled foot. The pain, by this time, was excruciating. It 
 seemed to attack like something that would destroy me. He 
 called aunt, and she came, looking not pleased or tender at
 
 200 MY EARLY PAYS. 
 
 finding me helpless ; and together they proceeded to remove the 
 shoe and stocking, every touch giving me added torture. My 
 ankle was already very much swollen ; and when it had been 
 pronounced a very bad sprain, and bandaged, with an applica- 
 tion of salt and vinegar, I was soundly lectured upon the impro- 
 priety of falling down in such a manner as to injure myself, and 
 left to bear my suffering as well as I might. Uncle brought 'a 
 pillow, after she left the room, and placed it tenderly under my 
 foot, and told me that he had had many sprains, but they always 
 got well, and so this would in a few days, and that the pain 
 would be nearly gone by to-morrow morning. 
 
 " To-morrow morning, uncle I" I said. " You don't know what 
 it is, if you think I can bear it till then, and it grows worse all 
 the time." How it seemed to spread around and shut in my life, 
 taking me wholly captive. I had soon to be undressed and car- 
 ried to bed, which I shrunk from, because of the solitary close- 
 ness of my room. In summer, I slept in a small, hot bedroom ; 
 in winter, in a large, cold one ; and I dreaded now the imprison- 
 ment of those walls, when I wanted so much larger space and 
 more air. Tears, that were wrung from me by the intense 
 agony I was in, .rained down my face, otherwise perfectly calm ; 
 and as uncle laid me down, he said, " Now, try to be a woman, 
 Eliza, and bear it as well as you can. It won't last long, and, 
 by and by, I'll come to you again. Shall I leave the door 
 open?" 
 
 ' Oh, yes," I replied ; " and don't put the window down, 
 please. I can hardly breathe now." He had turned the button, 
 to close it, but he left it open, and went out. 
 
 "What a fearful enemy to the young soul is physical pain ! 
 How exultingly it seems to seize upon every atom and fibre of 
 the being, where strong life and energy alone confer the pleasure 
 which is the conscious birthright of that season. Oh, deal com- 
 passionately and lovingly with the young child that suffers bodily 
 pain ! Let no impatient word or hasty movement of yours 
 increase it ; for never, never, can your humanity take on so
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 201 
 
 revolting a form, as in acts of negligence or cruelty to such a 
 sufferer. 
 
 All that night, I lay in a torture which only grew a little less 
 keen as the delicate life of my sensibilities gave way before its 
 unremitting pressure. Before going to bed, they came and wet 
 the bandages afresh. Aunt was very ungracious, and the more 
 so the more she became convinced of the extent of my injury. 
 I begged that the bandage might be loosened ; and when it was 
 done, and the frightful swelling exposed, she said, sourly, I 
 wouldn't be able to step on my foot for three weeks. She esti- 
 mated the misfortune so purely by her own share in it, that, in 
 my disgust, I forgot, for one single instant, my agony. I was 
 about to speak, but uncle gave me a look of compassion and 
 entreaty that silenced me ; and they left me to darkness, soli- 
 tude, and my bitter suffering. / 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " What love we about those we love the best, 
 Better than their dear voices ?" 
 
 I WAS so much exhausted, from the agitation and grief that 
 had preceded my injury, as well as the pain, and the two long, 
 sleepless nights I had passed, that it required an effort to open 
 my eyes when uncle entered the room next morning. And he 
 was stepping silently back, thinking me asleep, when I spoke : 
 
 " Oh, do come, uncle ! I am not asleep at all, but I am so 
 tired 1" 
 
 " How is the ankle, ray dear child ?" 
 
 " I believe," I said, " it's as bad as ever, only I can't feel the 
 pain so hard as it has been." 
 
 " Let me see," he said. And, throwing the clothes back, he 
 attempted to raise my foot, and bring it forward ; but the sharp 
 9*
 
 202 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 pain made me shriek so that he desisted ; and, on loosing the 
 bandage, the expression of his face assured me that the worst 
 fears of the evening were justified by the indications of the 
 morning. I could not move my foot ; it was as incapable of the 
 slightest motion above the toes, as if it had been of cast iron. 
 
 " Raise, my head, uncle, a little, and let me see it." 
 
 " It won't feel any better for your looking at it, nor for 
 anything else, I am afraid, for a good while. It is a very bad 
 ankle, my dear, see." , 
 
 It was so dreadfully swollen and discolored, that the glance I 
 got at it sickened me ; and 1 dropped my head, with a feeling 
 that was partly faintness, partly dismay. " Uncle," I asked, 
 " shall I ever be able to walk again ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; don't be afraid of that, Eliza ; but it will be a 
 good while first, and you will have to keep very still." 
 
 He replaced the bandage, and applied the lotion. 
 
 "Will you come and wet it, and see to it, sometimes?" I asked. 
 
 " Yes, when I am about the house, I will ; and you mustn't 
 fret if aunt does scold a little. You know she is not patient at 
 any time, and now she misses you, and has a great deal more to 
 do, she will be less so, maybe, than usual." 
 
 That day I slept a good deal. Sleep was very sweet. My 
 pain was very much lessened. If I did not attempt to move I 
 scarcely felt it ; and the peace of Heaven seemed to pervade 
 my worn-out being. The exhaustion favored my mental tran- 
 quillity, for nature could not again receive the guest she had 
 expelled, till she had refreshed herself by rest. With the repose 
 came a little appetite, and uncle at each meal brought me some- 
 thing, the nicest there was on the table. At tea, he made a 
 piece of toast, with his own hand, for me, which so appealed to 
 my gratitude that I could have eaten it without appetite. That 
 night I slept too, but old Tom had to go elsewhere, for when be 
 jumped on the bed, he gave me such a pang that the wliole 
 house rung with my outcry. 
 
 Next day I begged uncle to send James up to Mrs. Radford,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 203 
 
 for I began to feel the loneliness, when I could not sleep, and the 
 old burden began to settle heavily and wearily on my heart. 
 The still, slow hours gave me back all that my pain had, for the 
 time, displaced, and more they restored to me words and looks, 
 and tones, that in busy life would, perhaps, have forever 
 escaped me. Then came the bitterness of anguish for my loss, 
 and the fearful inquiry, " where is now the spirit, the being, the 
 man, the friend, whose presence had so blessed me ?" This was 
 a question which my faculties could not grasp. I could see 
 nothing clearly when I thought about it. Dim, vague, confused 
 hopes on the one hand; on the other, hard, scouting, con- 
 temptuous rejection, consumed my earnest desire-for light. He 
 had only assured me that God lived beyond this life, and my 
 best hope for him, was so shadowy, and broken, that it barely 
 served to keep alive my yearnings it did not in any measure 
 satisfy them. 
 
 When Mrs. Radford came, I got her to conceal Mr. Ramsay's 
 book, and take it home, for in my helpless condition I dreaded 
 it might be found in my trunk, and so be lost to me, or be the 
 cause of some ill-temper. She sat by me most of the afternoon, 
 and talked in a low, soothing voice, about her own life, which 
 had been eventful, too, for she had had three stepmothers. 
 
 Her nature, though not deep, was sweet and hopeful, and she 
 helped me greatly, by filling up my picture of the future with 
 many of its lesser details. Young as I was, I had the long and 
 rugged road of the years in full view and the towering height 
 beyond, which I could never lose sight of for any long time. 
 She saw, and brought to my notice what I was too prone to 
 overlook the little wayside flowers that sparkled along its 
 borders thejirooks that glanced in gladness the birds that 
 cheered its solitary places. 
 
 How sweetly the influence of such meek, loving, and thankful 
 spirits, falls upon the earnest soul. How much she uncon- 
 sciously suggested to me of comfort, that in my anguish, I 
 had forgotten, that in the struggle for which I was preparing, I
 
 204 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 had ignored the love of brothers and sisters ; the world full of 
 people, waiting to be made friends, to replace the one who was 
 gone. I dared not let her know what I had lost in Mr. Cran- 
 stoun, bat she understood that it was enough to cause me great 
 grief. 
 
 She told me I should be able to be on my feet after a few 
 days, and that her husband thought the pigeons would come 
 again, this fall, there were such great quantities of beech-nuts ; 
 and then she was going to beg aunt to let me stay with them a 
 week, so that she and I could go sometimes together to the top 
 of a little cleared hill, back of their house, where we could see 
 miles of them flying, every morning and evening. J did not much 
 believe I should go, but it was pleasant to think of it, while I 
 was obliged to lie so still. It made me very melancholy to see 
 her prepare to go home, and I said, " Julianna, won't you ask 
 aunt to let me have a book, while I have to lie here ?" 
 
 " Yes. Does she know what this book is, you asked me to 
 take home for you ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well, then, I can tell her I will give you one, and she will 
 never know where it came from." 
 
 " But it has Mr. Ramsay's name in it," I suggested. 
 
 " It is on a fly leaf. Shall I tear it out ?" she asked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " There, now, I'll go with it in my hand, and she'll never 
 dream but I brought it for you." 
 
 When she returned, she came with a bright, pleasant face, 
 aud gave me the book, with a message, that I might read ten a 
 day, if I could get them, as long as I couldn't stand, or do any- 
 thing else. 
 
 llow much I wished for those Henry was to have got for me ; 
 how much I wished that he could come in and speak to me. 
 The more I thought, the more I felt that it would be dreadful 
 to be long confined, and have nothing to do bat think. 
 
 I read Mackenzie's Narrative three times over, while I lay
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 205 
 
 * 
 
 there. It had the most absorbing interest for me, because it 
 introduced me to a new race of men, and gratified my intense 
 curiosity with respect to different human conditions, as well as 
 the products and character of the earth in those regions so far 
 away so wintry, and strange to us. -I wished very much that 
 I could taste the pemmican, and see the Esquimaux eat seals 
 and whale blubber. 
 
 I sat up in a few days, and then spent a fortnight more in a 
 chair with my disabled limb on a pillow ; then several days 
 crawling about the house and door-yard. Aunt had been 
 cautioned about driving me to the use of my foot, by an old phy- 
 sican who called one day in passing, and who was sober enough 
 to express the opinion, on examining my ankle, that it was one 
 of the worst sprains he had ever seen ; and that a little inju- 
 dicious use of it, might lame me for life. And then he turned 
 full upon me his large, black eyes they had flabby, puffy, lids, 
 that were so, I suppose, in consequence of his excessive use of 
 liquor, and said, " Now, young one, mind what I say ; and if 
 you don't want to be a crippled ol& woman, don't attempt to 
 stand on that foot at all, as long as you feel a little sharp pain, 
 away in here, deep," laying his finger on the joint rather 
 heavily. 
 
 I shrunk, for it was yet very painful to the touch. 
 
 " Never mind that," he said ; " I knew it would hurt you to 
 bear on a little, and I did it to make you remember what I say. 
 Now, remember it," and he bore on lightly, again, but so as to 
 hurt still. I threw his hand off as quick as thought. " Don't 
 do that again," I said, looking full at him. " I shall not forget 
 what you say. I shouldn't if you had not hurt me at all, and I 
 don't like it." 
 
 " No," he said; " I suppose not ; but I like to try little folks, 
 sometimes, and see if they are like big folks. Pretty much all 
 of a piece, ma'am," he said, turning towards aunt, and speaking 
 in a moralizing tone. " They all seem to come out of one mill." 
 Aud presently they fell into talk upon religion, a subject on
 
 206 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 which they were fully agreed, and were so uninteresting to me 
 that my disability became a very severe imprisonment, while it 
 was going on. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 " By the holy instinct of my heart, 
 By the hope that bears me on, 
 I have still my own undying part 
 In the deep affection gone." 
 
 I LONGED intensely for my usual activity before I recovered it, 
 yet, often in my utmost impatience, I felt that it bad been good 
 for me to be quiet a while it was good that it came so soon 
 upon my grief ; so quickly after the experience that gave me a 
 past. Until this time I had had only the future the present 
 was nothing to me. My life had now, like the tree that was 
 fallen into the creek, a soil on the side which had before been 
 waste, in which to strike roots for nurture and strength. The 
 happiness had awakened, and the suffering elevated and 
 strengthened me. In those still days, the light reflected from 
 the past, upon my inner self and the future, showed me more 
 clearly than years of less deep experience would, what I had to 
 struggle for, the strength I could bring to the conflict, and the 
 difficulties I had to meet. My doubts as to his immortality 
 
 i were the great pain of that time, but finding myself always 
 feeble and confused, in thinking of it, I came at last to dwell 
 less and less upon it, and to fall back with a greater sense of 
 
 ' rest upon what had been. The one fact of that existence, was 
 nearly all that time then contained for me. It was also the 
 root of my henceforth; for, whenever, or whatever, he now was, 
 he had been ; and his, the larger, had embraced and become a 
 law to my lesser life, whose loyalty neither absence nor death 
 could destroy. His remembered words and tones his expressed
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 207 
 
 wishes, and the loftiness of his nature, seemed to me scarcely 
 separable from my own inmost being and purposes. They were 
 so much added strength, so much clearness and light, where be- 
 fore had been cloud and darkness. All that I knew he would 
 wish, I resolved to be, and to do; and that resolution filled to 
 the brim the little measure I was intrusted to bear into the 
 coming years. I could not know that he was, but it was very 
 sufficing that he had been. Thenceforward I looked through 
 clearer eyes upon the world. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " Thou hast all seasons for thine own, Death !" 
 
 " Day is for mortal care 
 Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth ; 
 Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer ; 
 But all for thee, thou mightiest of the Earth." 
 
 THREE weeks between summer and autumn change the face 
 of nature greatly, in the temperate climates. In truth, we were 
 both much changed when we met again. I had bleached, in my 
 confinement, nearly to the color of my race, and grown something 
 slighter than even my former self, which was certainly needless. 
 The cornfields were russet ; and in the sunnier exposures, even 
 golden. Faint tints of orange and scarlet, the preludes of glo- 
 rious death, were visible upon the great forest, beyond the field 
 in which the harvest-wagons stood, and the thinned foliage of 
 the orchard trees showed the burden of the bending branches 
 very distinctly. I longed so very much to get abroad and 
 breathe the tranquil air, and renew my loving acquaintance with 
 the dear old mother, who had so often comforted me, that when 
 a wagon-load of corn was drawn to the granary one day, and 
 they were going for another, I begged that I might be allowed to 
 get in and ride out to the field. It was not yet safe for me
 
 208 MY EARLY DAY*. 
 
 to walk or stand, for any considerable time, but I could sit by 
 the piles of Corn, and fill the baskets with the ears. 
 
 Oh! it was heavenly peace there, under the misty autumn sun- 
 shine, amid the rustle of the uncut harvest, with thoughts of the 
 plenty and comparative rest of winter before me. While there, 
 I saw -several small flocks of birds fly towards the lake, which 
 uncle said were pigeons forerunners messengers sent to see 
 if the beech-nuts were ripe, and falling ; and as soon as they found 
 them down in abundance, they would give notice, and then there 
 would come a million for every one of those two or three dozen ; 
 and a few days showed me, in fact, what he foretold. Mr. 
 Radford had said there were miles of these birds, flying so 
 closely together that they darkened the day, and that you might 
 watch steadily for a long time and not see a piece of sky big 
 enough to make a pair of gloves ; but though I had great confi- 
 dence in what he said, I thought this could not be literally true; 
 and it astonished me, more than anything I now remember, to 
 find that it was. 
 
 They commenced, with daylight, moving northward, and, with 
 occasional breaks in one part or another of the heavens, their 
 spread wings curtained them till towards noon. Then there were a 
 few hours as well as 1 can remember, about three when we 
 saw only occasional parties, the smallest of which would have 
 before been considered a very large flock ; and, this time past, the 
 return flight commenced. Uncle said they did not like to stay in 
 the forest bordering the lake, and it was very evident that they 
 did not, for they flew incessantly till nightfall, and often till long 
 after. It was a sublime mystery, to which I loved to give myself 
 up ; and while I was in the field for I contrived to make myself 
 so useful there, that uncle, at my request, asked for me every 
 morning I used to pick up the corn, and watch them, with a 
 dreamy, delicious rambling of my thoughts, and a curiosity that 
 could never be satisfied, as to their habits and places of living 
 when they were not here. Uncle told me that their constant 
 eating of the sharp, angular little nuts, produced irritation and
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 209 
 
 inflammation of the throat and craw, of which a great many 
 died in the woods. I wondered at this, for I had found by 
 observation and much thinking, and talking with Henry, and 
 other persons, that animals living by their own instincts, were 
 never sick. I could not then think that it might be a benevolent 
 means of reducing their excessive numbers, after they had enjoyed 
 a vigorous life of health and plenty. 
 
 The autumn advanced very rapidly. Dark, gusty clouds flew 
 swiftly over the landscape, and short, chilly rains fell during the 
 nights, making the earth look dreary in the gray, cloudy morn- 
 ings, or glitter with frost when the sun rose in the clear sky. 
 The apples were gathered, and the harvests of the garden and 
 fields nearly completed, when a heavy rain set in one afternoon, 
 and continued falling, in increasing volume, until dark. We had 
 not been long asleep, when I was awakened by a noise of heavy 
 blows upon the outside of the house. I listened in a freezing 
 sort of terror, for the rain literally roared upon the. roof and 
 walls, and what, I thought, could have sent any one out on such 
 a night? Only something fearful^ certainly! The knocking 
 remitted for a moment, but no one anwered from within ; and 
 though my blood curdled at the thought of rising to call uncle, 
 I determined to do so, if he should not be roused by the next 
 effort of the applicant. This time, however, his blows fell so 
 heavily and fast, that they would have broken any slumber but 
 the last one. I grew more alarmed every moment, but presently 
 I heard, or rather felt, a heavy footstep on the floor, and uncle 
 passed into the passage, inquiring, in a loud voice, who was 
 there ? I could not hear the reply, but he said, in answer to it : 
 " Good God I don't tell me that!" 
 
 There w % as, indeed, something terrible. But the man had come 
 inside now, dripping as he was, and I recognized the voice. It 
 w;;s a nephew of uncle's, who lived very near the Petersons. I 
 had hardly thought of Mrs. Peterson since I last saw her, but I 
 knew that an event was then approaching that might endanger 
 her life, and the first tones of his voice alarmed me for her. I
 
 210 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 heard him say : " If Aunt Phebc will go up, I'll wait for her, and 
 you needn't go out, uncle. Priscilla wanted her at first very 
 much, but they didn't think she would live till I got back." 
 
 Aunt Phcbe declined going, notwithstanding the urgency of , 
 the message ; and one could scarcely wonder at it, considering 
 the dreadful night, and that, though active and hardy, she was 
 no longer young. She would go up early in the morning, but 
 he was to come with a message, if there were worse news before 
 she got there. 
 
 I slept no more that night, and we were up with the first grey 
 of dawn. When I looked out to the beech-woods, the sky seemed 
 to be resting upon their tops. Their few scattered leaver, bathed 
 themselves in the clouds, and the boughs bent and strained dis- 
 mally in the angry wind. I was intensely anxious to hear of 
 Mrs. Peterson, and resolved upon seeing her again, if she were 
 still living. A horse was brought for aunt to ride, and an early 
 breakfast prepared, that she might start at once. It was a milo 
 and a half or more, and a dreadful road, of course, through the 
 forest, that was now flooded. When breakfast was over, and 
 she had gone into the little bedroom to prepare (we were now in 
 our respective winter quarters), I followed her having first 
 hastily cleared and set the table back, and brushed the crumbs 
 from the floor and asked her if I might ride behind her, to sec 
 Mrs. Peterson. I must have made the request very earnestly, 
 for she looked at me some time without speaking. Then she 
 said: "Thee could go, if thee wants to so much, but the road is 
 very wet, and I don't know how the horse could carry us both." 
 
 " I am very light," I pleaded, " and I'll walk all tin- way 
 except where I can't get along on foot I want so very much to 
 M-C her." It was a foolish request as it appeared upon tbo surf;uv, 
 and the granting it scarcely less so, for if the sufferer still lived, 
 my presence could not be more ill-timed in the small house, which 
 was already full ; and if not, I could not be expected either to 
 help or comfort the bereaved. 
 
 We set out, however. I was to ride through the cleared la;ul,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS, 211 
 
 and walk in the dryest part* of the forest. The rain bad rery 
 much abated, and ancle warranted tu a clear sky before one 
 o'clock. When we reached the woods-road, an it wan called, I 
 got down, for, by leaving the cleared track, and walking among 
 the trees, I trod upon a substantial carpet of sere beech and 
 maple leaves, clean and gay with the bright frost colors of the 
 season. When we came to a low, watery spot, I stepped upou 
 one of the many stumps at the roadside, and aunt took me up 
 again. Mr. Radford's boose was the only one we passed, and we 
 saw no one moving, nor was any smoke coming from the 
 chimney. 
 
 " Jnlianna mnst have gone up to PrlscillaV said aunt. 
 
 " And do you think it likely that she's living, because she 
 stays to late V I asked. 
 
 " I can't tell at all by that," she said ; " but we shall soon 
 know.* 
 
 I got down once more, and up again, before we reached the 
 house. The rain had then ceased, and patches of blue sky were 
 visible between the walls of partaa clouds in the northwest. 
 This was a new bouse a cabin in the woods to which they had 
 removed but a short time before, and where I had never jet 
 The tall trees seemed to envelop the low, small but. 
 They grew up to its very walls, and green stumps stood close to 
 the door. There was not even a garden spot yet cleared. It 
 was mud to the very threshold. On a stump, at the left hand of 
 the door, sat Tom, holding one of his little twin-brothers ; and 
 all around, wherever a safe place of deposit conld be found for 
 them, were strewn a bed, pillows, bedding, and other things, that 
 might have been used about a sick person, who had no further 
 nt-<:<\ of them. I had never seen any such array about the house 
 of <l';ath, but I felt at once what it indicated. Aunt rode np 
 
 '.f the great stumps, and I alighted and held t '.. 
 while she dismounted. She went in, and sent Tom to take care 
 of the 1 
 
 As he drew near, I saw traces of tears on his cheeks, and
 
 212 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I said, " Tom, I am very sorry for you. Couldn't your father 
 get a doctor here, to save her ?" 
 
 " He got here after she was dead^ an hour or more after. He 
 said it was just as well, for he couldn't have done anything to 
 help her. She had worked too hard when we moved!" His 
 tears flowed afresh as he told me. 
 
 I entered the house very softly. Mr. Peterson sat by the fire, 
 looking grieved and helpless. The other twin-child stood at his 
 knee, begging to go to mammy ; and one or two of the older 
 ones sat about, silent, in different parts of the room. White 
 curtains draped the bed, and concealed whatever lay upon it 
 from our sight. Aunt stood near its head, talking in a low tone 
 to Mrs. Peterson's mother and Mrs. Radford, who sat near, with 
 a bundle of something on her lap, which she regarded with great 
 care and tenderness. I looked for Rhoda, for I did not like to 
 stand without speaking to some one, and I could not approach 
 any of the grown persons. She was not in the house ; and I 
 stepped towards the back door, which opened from without as I 
 approached it, and she entered, leading two children next older 
 to the twins. She came in with a quick, impatient, noisy move- 
 ment, that made me involuntarily lift my hand in token of 
 silence. 
 
 "I can't help it !" she said, in an irritable tone ; " they won't 
 mind me. They want to play out there, in the mud, and pretty 
 soon they'll be so dirty, they can't come into the house any more 
 than the pigs. And I'm sure I don't know who's going to wash 
 oil their clothes, now," she added, bursting into tears, that 
 seemed to me as much of vexation as grief. 
 
 I could not respect her. I could not say to her what I had to 
 Tom ; but feeling that I must do something, I took the two 
 children and drew them aside in the corner, opposite their father, 
 and began to talk to them. The elder one knew me very well, 
 and the other did not seem to feel me a stranger ; so they suf- 
 fered me to interest thorn, and listened very gravely to what I 
 said. I told them of my ride and walk up, and how, when I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 213 
 
 went away from the road among the trees, the dried leaves 
 covered the ground, and a great, great many dead pigeons lay 
 among them so many, that sometimes I had to look for a place 
 to set my foot without treading upon them and how very sorry 
 it made me to see them there. 
 
 " Have you seen mammy, Lizzy ?" said the elder of my 
 auditors. 
 
 " No," I replied, softly; " don't speak of her now." 
 
 "She's in the curtains there," whispered the child; "and 
 Rhoda says she'll be put in the ground to-morrow, and then 
 she's goin' to take care of us ; but I don't want her to. She 
 strikes me, and mammy never did, unless I was very ugly." 
 
 " Well, you must be good, and not get yourself dirty, and 
 then Rhoda won't do it either." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! I know she will now," insisted the child. *' She 
 always does when she has a chance." 
 
 It distressed me to hear this, for I pitied the little children, 
 partly from my natural tenderness, and partly from my own 
 experience ; but I encouraged and amused them with my best 
 efforts till Mrs. Radford called me to her. 
 
 " Do you want to see the baby ?" she said, removing the 
 folds of blanket in which it was enveloped. 
 
 " Yes ; but is it alive ?" I asked, in astonishment, as I saw 
 her lay aside one thickness after another, from its face. 
 
 " Yes, indeed !" she said, with a woman's tender pride and 
 interest in it ; "it is alive, and strong, for such a very little 
 thing : look at it." 
 
 " Oh, how very small !" I exclaimed, shrinking back as I 
 looked on the red, spotted, downy face. " How does it breathe 
 in all that cloth ? I should think you would kill it, wrapping it 
 so very much. How old is it ?" 
 
 She looked at the shadow of the sun in the door. " About 
 1cn hours." 
 
 " How long has she been di-sul ''" 
 
 "She died about two o'clock this morning."
 
 
 214 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Did she know the baby or any of the other children ?" 
 
 " No ; she had fits, and didn't know anything at all after I 
 came into the house. They said she had till a little while 
 before." 
 
 " Can I see her ?" 
 
 " Yes ;" and she drew aside the white drapery, and I gazed 
 with awe upon the placid form and face, thinking much upon 
 the fearful mystery of life which they, and the little fragile atom 
 in Mrs. Radford's hands, revealed to me. Mrs. Peterson's coun- 
 tenance had never looked so handsome. The color was not at 
 all ghastly, only a little more delicate than the ruddy brown I 
 Lad always seen upon it. Her lips were yet red, and all her 
 features wore their most motherly and tender expression. Her 
 heart was all maternal, and the spirit, doubtless, concerned for 
 the little flock from which she had been so suddenly separated, 
 hovered yet near them and its deserted tenement, with the ten- 
 derness that had so often clothed her honest countenance with 
 this sweet look. I took the curtain in my own hand and stood 
 a long time, studying the face, which only by its silence and 
 immobility, represented death to me. The full hues and life 
 tints were not at all like what I had imagined death to be, or 
 like the dim vision I had of my poor mother in her coffin, after a 
 year's wasting illness ; and yet it was death, the grand repose, 
 which no outcry of child or friend could disturb the rest which 
 life had never permitted to that ardent, helpful spirit the calm 
 after the long effort. 
 
 It was beautiful and comforting to me to see her so. Very 
 reverently and shrinking!.? I laid my fingers on her cheek. I 
 expected a touch of icy coldness, but either there yet lingered a 
 little vital warmth, or the great blazing fire exactly opposite, 
 helped the illusion. It seemed to me little different from life. I 
 spoke to Mrs. Kmlford, and she said perhaps she was not yet 
 quite cold, or I was mistaken. Whatever it was, it removed 
 my last horror of death. She, lying there in that sweet rest, 
 did uot seem to me a victim, but one to whom some great good
 
 MY EARLY DATS. 215 
 
 had come. I felt compassion for those who were deprived of 
 her ever-ready help and care, but no grief for her. 
 
 As I turned away at length, after having, in some measure, 
 satisfied my intense interest, Mrs. Kadford said: "You and 
 Mrs. Peterson were such great friends, I expected you would feel 
 very badly when you saw her." 
 
 " I don't feel badly at all," I said, " for her ; except that I 
 shall wish sometimes, I know, that I could see her; but she looks 
 so happy that I believe she cannot be sorry she has died. But 
 the poor little children, who will take care of them now ?" 
 
 " Their grandmother, I suppose," said Julianna, " and their 
 father, and sister Rhoda, and Tom. Grandmother will have to 
 take this little one, I think," she said, with a brooding, tender 
 movement over it. " It's too small to be trusted to anybody 
 else so it is, poor little one." 
 
 And grandmother did take it, and in the winter she brought 
 it to our house for three days the brightest, most beautiful, 
 and irresistible little creature, I thought, that ever was born. I 
 had never before been with a baby, twenty-four hours together. 
 It was one of the common blessings which I had always been 
 denied. 
 
 I thought much upon Mrs. Peterson's death. The family was 
 often alluded to, and herself often spoken of, always with as 
 near an approach to affection as I ever heard aunt express for 
 anybody, besides her own brothers and sisters. I thought much 
 upon the two deaths, and my life seemed to grow larger while I 
 remembered, sometimes with a dreadfully achiug heart, " I have 
 lost two this year whom I loved."
 
 216 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " Alas ! what kind of grief should thy heart know : 
 Thy brow and check are smooth aa waters be 
 When no breath troubles them." 
 
 BUT the year was destined to be marked by another event 
 scarcely less painful to me. Some weeks after Mrs. Peterson's 
 death, on one of the few fine warm days that preceded the 
 setting in of winter* I was looking; along the road one morning, 
 standing near the front door, when a light wagon, drawn by one 
 horse, was driven up to the gate, and the two persons who were 
 in it, alighted and walked into the yard. One was a common- 
 looking man, whom I recognized at once. The other was a 
 stranger, whose elegance of person, manner and dress, attracted 
 my attention instantly. His movement and bearing were like 
 those of the few gentlemen I had seen, but even more graceful 
 and pleasing. His dress was the perfection of neatness and 
 elegance ; black pantaloons, a dress coat of very dark wiu^p 
 color, enlivened by gilt buttons of moderate size, and a vest of 
 the deepest mazarine blue velvet, showing the smallest stripe of 
 its color between the breast of the coat, and the snowy linen, 
 un which was gathered in full plaits, a ruffle of such exceeding 
 fineness, that when I came afterwards to see it more closely, I 
 wondered how it had ever been spun and woven. 
 
 I did not take in all these details in the time that he was 
 reaching the door. They were befflre me long enough after- 
 wards to permit me to become fully acquainted with them. A 
 cloak of black cloth, with rich velvet facings, and ample collar 
 ; -ing over the shoulders, depended to the knee and cora- 
 the most elegant costume I had ever seen upon a man.
 
 MY EABLY DAYS. 217 
 
 The face of this person disturbed me from the first glance. It 
 was remarkable, and I should have liked looking at it, but every 
 time I did so, I found the eyes, which were deep blue, and clear 
 and keen as an eagle's, looking at me so piercingly that I could 
 not meet them for a single instant. It confused me, and as he 
 came closer, a sort of vague, shadowy likeness of him began to 
 take shape in my memory. I looked at the neighbor for expia- 
 tion, and his smile of delight, directed also to me, confused me 
 6till more. What had I to do with them, that they looked 
 so at me ? The tall man stopped at the door, from which I had 
 stepped aside, without speaking, to permit them to pass in; and 
 when I lifted my eyes to his face, it was deeply flushed, and his 
 own were glistening with tears. 
 
 " It is my father I" I exclaimed, 
 
 " Yes, Eliza," he said, tears falling as he stooped to kiss me. 
 " I thought you were not going to know me." 
 
 " I should if I had come into the house and looked at you," I 
 said, feeling glad and proud in his presence. I took him into 
 the house where aunt was sitting,' and exclaimed exultingly, 
 " Aunt, here is my father come to see me," 
 
 How instantly and darkly her face colored. It seemed to 
 swell out, as she gazed at him a moment, without being able to 
 speak. At length she said, rising and stepping forward, " How 
 does thee do, friend Woodson ?" He returned her salutation 
 with such courtly ease and grace, that while I looked on, I did 
 not wonder so much at Mary's having forgiven him all. I waa 
 already half won over. He threw his cloak upon a cluiir, and 
 removed his hat. If I had first seen him thus, I should have 
 recognized him instantly, for at once there rushed over my 
 heart the old childish delight and pride I used W feel, when, 
 on military days, he was dressed in the trappings of his .rank, 
 and rode away on a magnificent horse the horse and rider 
 both figures which every eye would turn to look upon. In my 
 memory, the portrait of those days was daguerreotyped instantly 
 and perfectly by the presence of the original. 
 10
 
 218 MY EABLY DAYS. 
 
 I think my father was a model of physical beauty. He 
 impressed me as very tall (I think he most have exceeded six 
 feet), and so admirably made, that I remember distinctly the 
 greater pleasure it gave me to see him standing, that I might 
 the more perfectly take in the elegant outlines of his figure the 
 well-spread shoulders, square enough to give an idea of 
 strength, but without ruggedness the curved lines fulling 
 from them towards the hips, and the well-formed limbs, straight 
 and full, and expressing strength, freedom, and grace in every 
 motion. His forehead was high, aud completed the severe oval 
 of his countenance. It was white and smooth as marble, and 
 surrounded by redundant masses of wavy, dark, chestnut hair, 
 glossy and fine, which he occasionally adjusted, with a hand 
 scrupulously clean and white. When I first noticed it, I invo- 
 luntarily hid my own little, black, thin paws beneath my ragged 
 apron. His teeth were as perfect as nature (or art, to which 
 she seems in these days to be second) ever made, and they were 
 concealed, when his face was in repose, by lips that just closed 
 upon them in a peculiar way, as if at every moment they would 
 part ; not that they were short, but quick and mobile light, 
 living lips, that I looked at a great deal, because I could not 
 help it. Every other feature of his face was entirely satisfac- 
 tory to me, altogether beautiful indeed ; but the mouth lacked 
 something which I could not find in any expression of it, either 
 in motion or at rest. Gradually, as I studied it, I came to com- 
 pare it with another, which had not pleased me at first, but 
 which grew, to represent perfect beauty to my mind. It differed 
 from that, in all wherein that was most beautiful. I could see 
 that the lips were too straight, and though well chiselled, their 
 lines were not curved, so as to give the finer expressions of the 
 generous sentiments. 
 
 But at first I did not allow myself any lasting dissatisfaction 
 with them. All else was so complete, that I was not disposed 
 to be over-nice in judging this simple defect. I had a natural 
 eye for beautiful forms, and outlines, and I had never before 
 sei-n a person who gratified it so much as my father.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 219 
 
 I was silent at first, partly from the great pleasure I had in 
 studying these details, and partly from confusion in my thoughts, 
 memories, and emotions. It did not yet amount to conflict. A 
 child who loves the beautiful, will forgive a great deal in the 
 person who possesses so much of it ; and I found myself, while 
 contemplating him, in his first few sentences with aunt, inclined 
 to be altogether satisfied in my relation to him. 
 
 As soon as decency would permit, I was called into my own 
 room, and my torn frock and apron taken off, to be replaced by 
 my best clothes. I had been, unfortunately, in my very worst 
 before. Aunt dressed me hastily, smoothed my hair, and dis- 
 missed me with a few words, the kindest she had spoken for a 
 long time. 
 
 " Now, go out, and don't act so as to make thy father think 
 thee is growing up a little savage." His fine presence had 
 evidently startled her, and if I did not shock him, it was not be- 
 cause any training or painstaking of hers saved me from it. 
 
 When I returned, he seemed pleased" with the change in my 
 appearance, and calling me to him, placed me between his 
 knees, and said, " Do you always wear such dreadful frocks as 
 you had on before, Eliza ?" 
 
 " No, that is the worst one I have. I hardly ever put 
 it on." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it," he said; " I don't know what 
 your sisters would say to see you so ragged." 
 
 Now I began to have a curious feeling, which can only be 
 understood by remembering, that I was always clear in the con- 
 viction that, at the very worst, I could not go home to him. 
 Ilenry had not encouraged my doing so, after I had told him 
 all, nor had he ever attempted to overcome ray repugnance to 
 the association which such a return would necessitate. I felt, 
 therefore, quite clear that I was right in it, and I became rock 
 about it, when he spoke of the woman as my mother. I hardly 
 knew what to say. I wished not to be rude, but my spirit was 
 so strong and self-reliant, that I could not suffer myself to be
 
 220 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 supposed to assent to this. I therefore heard all that he said, 
 after the reference to her, in silence, and waited when he had 
 closed, for a full minute, at least. Then I said, looking full in 
 his eyes, which were regarding me very kindly, " Please don't 
 call her my mother." 
 
 " Why not ?" he asked, flushing slightly. 
 
 " Because my mother is dead," I said, after a pause, which 
 I came very near filling up with the words, " was a good 
 woman." 
 
 " Well, but you know, Eliza, children have two or three 
 mothers, sometimes." 
 
 " They are not mothers, though, if they don't love them." 
 
 " But she does love you, my dear Eliza, better, she says, than 
 any of the others. She always did when you were at home." 
 
 " But, father, I don't love her." 
 
 " You don't know her," he persisted. 
 
 " She made my mother unhappy, and I don't want to know her. 
 Please let us talk of somebody else," I said, for I felt a painful deli- 
 cacy on this subject, and his urging it, made me aware of a slight 
 change in my feelings towards him. I talked fast, that I might 
 not feel it ; of my brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins ; of 
 the old home, which I perfectly remembered, and the play- 
 fellows I had had in it. I was more a child again than I had 
 been since I left it. 
 
 My mother came back to me ; the tender, saddened, care-worn 
 face, with a lofty, yet subdued earnestness in its dark look, such 
 as I remembered having had once before me when she ministered 
 to my wants, before she laid down to die. It was on a summer 
 evening of my third year. I had returned from school, and 
 taken some playmates with me, for a game of hide-and-seek, in 
 the corn that grew in the garden. Before we went to play, we 
 Bat down in a row upon the clean kitchen floor, and my mother 
 stood at the table before us, and cut bread and butter for us. I could 
 remember but one other act of her life ; that was walking to Friends' 
 meeting with me, one still, bright Sabbath morning in the same
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 221 
 
 summer. But the walk had not left her portrait so vividly on 
 my memory, as the former occasion had. Then, the setting sun 
 had shone through the opposite window, and, falling on the white 
 wall near her, the strong light impressed her whole figure and 
 face upon me, so that they have never been forgotten an un- 
 fading, imperishable daguerreotype. As I stood now near my 
 father, her tender looks, and gentle words and tones came back 
 to me so clearly, that I seemed to be seeing and hearing them 
 again in reality, not in fancy. 
 
 Then came the death-bed that was so terrible to me, because, 
 while I was cruelly lifted in somebody's arms, to take a last look 
 at her breathing, she lay before me so unnatural, so fearfully 
 changed, that I was glad when they set me down, and I was 
 able to run out of the crowded room, where it seemed to me 
 that I should die myself. As I thought of this, I said to my 
 father : " I remember you sitting by the head of the bed when 
 my mother lay dying. Do you remember it too ?" 
 
 " Certainly, child," he replied, "you were all there. I should 
 not be likely to forget it," he added, alter a few moments' silence ; 
 " but I would rather not talk of it, Eliza ; it is painful to 
 me to recall it." Then we spoke again of things more 
 general. 
 
 I was not called upon to do anything, for already he had said 
 that his visit must be very short, and I was given up to him. 
 He asked about my reading and studies, and I told him many 
 things that seemed quite to astonish and please him. I talked 
 more lhan was natural to me, in this broken way, partly because 
 I felt the time was short, and he would be a long way off very 
 soon, and partly and this was the more urgent and painful 
 motive because I was afraid to let myself be silent. I dreaded 
 to think, in his presence, of all I had thought of in his absence. 
 His handsome person and winning grace, made the thought of 
 imputing evil to him, seem cruel, and I determined to resist it to 
 the utmost. 
 
 Dinner was preparing, and I laid the table, moving with a
 
 223 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 quick step, that was not so much an indication of my happiness 
 as of the state of my excited nerves. When it was over, he 
 asked me to show him the orchard, and while we were walking 
 in it, questioned me closely respecting the treatment I experienced 
 from aunt. I was never so much at a loss what I ought to say. 
 I wished to tell the full truth, but I feared that if I did I should 
 be taken immediately home with him. I was obliged, therefore, 
 to conceal all the worst, and leave him to suppose that there was 
 little to be complained of, but ragged clothes, and sometimes 
 hard scolding. And I did not tell him that the little I had 
 learned, that he was so much pleased to hear of, I had gathered 
 in spite of her. 
 
 As I talked in this way, and felt myself virtually lying, I 
 could not altogether close ray heart against the painful feelings 
 that arose in it, when I considered the cause of my constraint, 
 and its cruel character. Of all that I desired on earth, there 
 was nothing that could give me so much joy as to know that 
 I could go home and go to school, as he said ray sisters were 
 doing. To leave this place, so detested both for what it was 
 and for what it was not, and never could become ; to get among 
 those whom I could love and be loved by ; and, above all, to 
 get to studying. Oh ! the possibility of such an event was in- 
 toxicating. And yet, while my veins tingled with the thought 
 that I could go, if I would say I wished to, I deliberately, word 
 by word, put it beyond my reach. For when my father asked 
 me, if uncle and aunt talked of sending me to school, I said : 
 " Oh, yes ; uncle told me, the last time he spoke to me about it, 
 not to be afraid, for I should certainly go by and by." 
 
 " I wish he was home," said my father, " I should like to talk 
 with him myself ; because, if I were not satisfied that he would 
 do it, I should take you with me now." 
 
 It is impossible for any soul, who has not been similarly tried 
 in those years, when the present is so much to us when we de- 
 mand that whatever good is to come, shall come now, or not long 
 hence, to understand the mighty effort with which I said:
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 223 
 
 " Uncle is very good. He is a great deal better than aunt, and 
 he will do everything he says he will, if he can." 
 
 " Does she see the letters you write us ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Then you cannot write anything that does not please her ? 
 When I get home how shall I know but you wish to come, or 
 that you are not very unhappy, for though you wish now to re- 
 main, which I cannot understand, I think that when I am gone 
 you may perhaps feel very differently." 
 
 He was diminishing at every word the ground that, with the 
 barest regard to truth, I could occupy ; and the narrower it 
 grew, the more I felt that I must remain, for I began to have 
 a sort of shuddering dread of that which drove me to refuse 
 what I desired almost as much as life itself which compelled 
 me to a kind of meanness only less in degree, than open false- 
 hood, and which constrained me to impose on myself the bitter 
 lot from which any friendly hand of man or woman, who would 
 receive and care for me, could have won me. I walked in 
 silence, thinking of these things, after his last words. Ah 1 what 
 a difference between him and that other by whose side I had 
 walked, whose soul had overflowed my young life with light, and 
 hope, and courage ; had taught me reverence and love for man, 
 because he was a man himself, and worthy of both. 
 
 At last he spoke again : " I am afraid, Eliza, you are growing 
 a strange little thing, in this place, away from children, living 
 alone with these old people. You don't talk to me as Mary 
 would, if I went to visit her." 
 
 " Mary is older than I am," I said ; " and she ought to talk 
 more. She knows more to say." 
 
 " Little children don't wait to know much, before they talk to 
 those they love and are glad to see." 
 
 "I talk more sometimes," I replied, " but not always, to peo- 
 ple I love. I don't love many." 
 
 " Who are they ?" he asked.
 
 224 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Radford and his wife ; and I did love Mrs. Peter- 
 son, but she is dead." 
 
 " Have you no playmates ?' ; 
 
 "I see the Edwards girls once in a while." 
 
 " You talk like an old woman," he said, impatiently, but very 
 kindly, as if he were more tried with the fact, than with me. 
 
 The self-control, which I had been making a great effort to 
 sustain in this bitter trial, was very near failing me here. I 
 would not shed a tear, if they could be kept back ; and when 
 we came to different trees, where now and then an apple could 
 be seen hanging, I climbed into it, if it were low ; or if high, 
 fetched the pole which they used in gathering them, to knock it 
 down. In these ways, I had two or three times dissipated the 
 gathering emotions which threatened me ; and I longed for him 
 to turn towards the house, for the presence of others would 
 reh'eve me. 
 
 The visit and the walk were much more painful than they 
 would have been before I knew Henry, for I continually referred 
 in my mind to him, and, as well by comparison of the two per- 
 sons, as by remembering that he had never even faintly discour- 
 aged my determination not to go to my father, felt that I must 
 not suffer myself to fail in my purpose. 
 
 At length, to my great relief, it was said, " Shall we go back 
 to the house now ?" and my willing feet turned quickly so 
 quickly that my father, who had studied human emotions too long 
 and keenly, to be easily baffled by a child, said instantly, " Why, 
 Eliza, you start as if you would be glad not to be with me any 
 longer. Are you afraid of me ?" 
 
 It was so near a reading of my inmost thought for I could 
 not then discriminate between my growing moral repugnance 
 (which seemed, at least, to amount to a dread of him) and fear 
 that I lifted my eyes to his face. If he understood me, pain 
 and anguish would be written there ; but there was only a puz- 
 zled, curious, almost an amused expression, as if he could not
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 225 
 
 make me out, and was as much inclined to laugh as wonder at 
 me. 
 
 " Is my little daughter afraid of me ?" he repeated. 
 
 " Oh, no!" I replied ; " I should never think of being afraid 
 of anybody so kind and handsome as you are ; but " 
 
 " Well, but what does the but mean ?" 
 
 It was extremely difficult for me to answer. I was violating 
 my innate love of truth, in every look and tone that indicated 
 confidence. I trembled with the internal conflicts of my emo- 
 tions and thoughts, and could not see how, without open false- 
 hood, I could longer keep my position. I felt disposed to say 
 something that would disclose not harshly my feelings 
 towards him, and my doubts ; and, after a moment's balancing 
 in my mind, I answered : " It only means that you seem almost 
 a stranger to me, it's so long since I saw you ; and I didn't 
 remember you, father, as I did my mother. I don't remember 
 anything you ever did to me, when I was living at home, but 
 whipping me once, because I was afraid to go into the little 
 barn when your black horse was in it, and giving me two shil- 
 lings for ' learning by heart ' a poem out of the English Reader, 
 one morning before breakfast." 
 
 " Is that all you remember of me ?" he asked. " I thought 
 you remembered everything." 
 
 " So I do," I said, quickly; " and I think if you had 
 ever " 
 
 " Well, ever what, Eliza ?" 
 
 "Done anything else," I concluded, very slowly, for I saw 
 now what I was coming to, "I shouldn't have forgotten it." 
 
 " My dear child 1" he said, standing still at once, and with a 
 slight pressure on my shoulder,' moving me a step backward, that 
 we might the more easily see each other's face ; "my dear 
 child, do you think so poorly of me as that ? It is not a good 
 heart that forgets kindness, Eliza." 
 
 11 But, father, I never, never do forget it I remember so 
 many people who have been kind to me." 
 10*
 
 226 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 Tears flowed at this injustice, which I felt the more keenly 
 because gratitude was the source of my pleasantest and most 
 loving recollections of persons. Henry had talked to me about 
 gratitude and ingratitude ; and I understood very well, there- 
 fore, that to be ungrateful, was to be unworthy the love of good 
 persons ; and my own warm emotions towards those who had 
 ever been kind to me, made me feel more keenly, than any 
 instruction could have, the pain of being supposed ungrateful. I 
 had said what was perfectly true in explaining why I was not 
 free and affectionate with my father. It was only a part of the 
 truth, certainly, but it was that ; and now I felt myself in a still 
 more difficult position than before I said it. He looked at 
 me as I stood, weeping, and, after a moment's silence, said : 
 "Well, Eliza, I am sorry you remember so little of your 
 father." 
 
 " Oh ! I recollect a great deal about you," I replied ; " I 
 recollect your going away and coming back very often ; and your 
 dressing in blue and red clothes, with a sword on, and a cap 
 with a white feather in it ; and I remember hearing you talk to 
 people, and seeing you do a great many things, but not to me ; 
 and so that was the reason why I said I did not feel so well 
 acquainted with you, as I should with my mother, if she came 
 back to see me ; or with grandmother, who was always so very 
 good to us." 
 
 " You are a strange little girl, Eliza," he said; " and I believe 
 I had better leave you where you are. If you think so little of 
 your father, and those you ought to love, you had better not be 
 with them." 
 
 This was terrible. There was no feeling in my heart but love 
 and tenderness towards one of them all, but himself and " that 
 woman " whom he had called my mother. But it would not do to 
 say so ; so I walked in silence the rest of the way, my pouring, 
 bitter tears concealed by the bonnet that covered my face.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 " Thy path is not as mine ; where them art blest, 
 My spirit would but wither." 
 
 As we drew near the door, I loosed the hold I had kept of his 
 hand, and went around through the yard, and down to the 
 spring, where I bathed my face, and endeavored to banish all 
 traces of my distress. And when I walked up and entered the 
 back door, the cheerful appearance of the room, which aunt had 
 busied herself to make as pleasant and inviting as possible, helped 
 my purpose greatly. With all my depth of emotion, and capa- 
 city of suffering, I had, happily, much of the child's readiness to be 
 impressed or pleased with newness, or change in the externals of 
 my life ; and when I found the clean washed floors so much 
 whiter than I could make them the table spread with a fine 
 dainask cloth, which only saw the light on two or three other 
 occasions while I was in the family ; the large tea-tray, laid with 
 a fine napkin, on which was spread the small china tea-set, that 
 had a very fine vine of the most delicate wood color for its only 
 ornament ; the silver spoons and the ivory handled knives, 
 brightened as I had never been able to do them ; the whole 
 effect was so cheerful, that my spirits rose at once. And I 
 was the more pleased because I wished that the home I chose to 
 remain in, should seem pleasant and attractive to him. 
 
 When I entered, they were speaking of the orchard and fruit, 
 and some new grafts that uncle had had set the year before. I 
 busied myself in whatever I saw, that I could do, till he was 
 invited to the table. The supper was, indeed, very nice and 
 plentiful, but it was one of my peculiarities to be quite indirier- 
 ent to my food. There were a few things which I never willingly 
 tasted ; but I was little more tempted by delicacies than by our
 
 228 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 common fare, which was always palatable and wholesome. The 
 sapper interested me, therefore, less than the style of it. 
 
 My father served the broiled chicken, with such determined 
 deference to aunt's choice of parts, and such delicacy of pro- 
 ceeding, altogether, as would have amused me at any other time, 
 by contrast with our common off-hand ways in such matters. 
 But I was not amused now. Their conversation and movements 
 floated upon, rather than impressed my mind, till, when the slow, 
 long meal was nearly over, as I thought, my father, looking at 
 me, asked aunt if his little girl was always so still. 
 
 " No, indeed," was the reply, in a good-natured tone. " She 
 sometimes is as much too talkative as she is now too still ;" and, 
 looking at me, she said, " Why doesn't thee talk to thy father, 
 Eliza, as thee does often to other people ?" 
 
 " I have talked a great deal to him, when we were out 
 walking." 
 
 " That was right," she said, encouragingly. "Thee's a chat- 
 tering little thing enough, generally. Thee oughtn't to make thy 
 father think thee's kept a dummy." 
 
 I did not like the tone of this remark. I was so used to her, 
 that I felt when her pleasantest words and looks concealed a 
 disagreeable meaning, which I was sure they did now ; and my 
 perplexity was returning, when ray father said, " I am glad to 
 hear from Eliza, ma'am, that she likes yourself and her uncle 
 well enough to wish to remain with you, in preference to going 
 home with me." 
 
 She looked at me, on hearing this, with an expression I shall 
 never forget. I think it, for the first time, suggested to her that 
 there was a concealed purpose in my quiet, insignificant life. 
 There was one piercing flash of her bluish-grey eyes, that seemed 
 to say, " What can she mean ?" But all her mental operations 
 were as rapid as her temper, and she instantly replied, with 
 great sweetness, to him, " I am very glad thee finds her so well 
 contented. I suppose thco has enough to do to take care of the 
 others."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 229 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I have no wish to take her away, since I 
 find her so happy here, but I shall wish her to go to school, by 
 and by. My other girls are both at school, and their brothers 
 also." 
 
 " Oh, we intend to send Eliza, after a while. She is learning 
 very well here now ; and while I can teach her, I'd rather keep 
 her at home, than send her to the common schools about us." 
 
 Never had I felt such towering rage, as at these words, the 
 glaring falsehood of which, my cruel position with regard to my 
 father, enabled her to utter before my face I I looked at one 
 and then at the other, and rose from the table. She relied on 
 my having concealed all from him, and went on, while I stood at 
 the window, looking over the desolate landscape, under the grey 
 light of the autumn evening, to enlarge upon her doings in the 
 past, and her purposes for the future, quite as unscrupulously as 
 those words had been spoken. 
 
 My father received her professions with the utmost suavity, 
 and apparent confidence in them. He said smooth and polite 
 things in return ; and they grew ve*'y pleasant together. She 
 spoke as she was but little used to speaking to me, and asked 
 me to clear and lay the table for the men, who would soon be 
 in ; and I did so, glad of something to do for the time. But I 
 had detected that in her face and tones that troubled me. 
 Glancing at the future, I was like one who stands upon the sea- 
 shore, under a cloudy sky the near waters are bathed in sun- 
 shine, while afar off they heave and toss, in black and frowning 
 agitation. I foresaw this cloudy sky and shadowed water. I 
 felt that she would understand, and might use, the power I had 
 given her, in making this choice to be silent, when I had so much 
 to complain of. It filled me with that old chilling dismay I had 
 so often experienced ; and, as I stood upon the bank of the 
 creek, alone and silent, just as the great, dull, round moon came 
 struggling through the tree-tops, where Ileury and I had watched 
 it one night, when it was just as big and round, but much 
 brighter than this evening, I thought, the stream is in deep
 
 230 MY EARLY DAY8. 
 
 shadow now ; but he said it would reach the light, by 
 and by. 
 
 And then I was, for the first time that I can recollect, clearly 
 conscious of what I have often, alas 1 very often, experienced 
 s j nce what every earnest, resolute soul must, who sees the bat- 
 tle of life before it, and knows that endurance is, for the time, 
 its only weapon. I settled back, as it were, into my own 
 strength ; and a thrill of pleasure that was almost pain, ran 
 along the currents of my life at the thought, / ccm bear all. I 
 did not reason to the ultimate of escape, or release, in any man- 
 ner. I knew it was right, and I felt I could do it. In that was 
 my triumph. 
 
 Around this thought which was, for the time, as a keen, 
 flashing blade in the hand of my spirit, wherewith I could have 
 cleft my way through any obstacles gathered soon, in bright 
 array, a host of lesser consolations and aids : holy remem- 
 brances of the past ; the sanctified and sustaining affection of 
 the dead ; anticipated joys with the living ; the triumphs of the 
 time to come, when I should be able to free my mind to its 
 chosen pleasures. This last, always the highest and strongest 
 purpose I could know. It was as if, having raised the standard 
 of victory in my own heart, friendly and helpful powers came to 
 cheer me by their presence, and suggestive hopefulness. I went 
 in, at length, feeling queen of my own being. The little con- 
 flicts, the petty distractions of the day, were gone. I sat down 
 and talked with my father, and with aunt ; and when it was 
 time to retire, I was directed to light him to my bed, which she 
 had prepared for him. "And thee can sleep with me," she 
 added. This was a deadly thrust at my internal tranquillity, but 
 I bore it famously. I felt the color leave my face with the 
 quickness of lightning ; but I turned it from them, as he was 
 bidding her good night, and walked slowly towards the door of 
 my room. We entered. The bed was dressed in the elegant 
 white needlework quilt which always lay folded in a large trunk, 
 and was as rarely displayed as the tablecloth. The pillows were
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 231 
 
 in fine, snowy linen cases ; and the room, unfinished and rude as 
 it was, had a tidy, cheerful look, very different to the dismal one 
 it usually wore to me. I placed the candle on the table, and, as 
 I turned to say " good night," I extended my hand, and raised 
 my face for a kiss. 
 
 " Eliza," said my father, " will you not come here and sleep 
 in this bed ? I am going away from you in the morning, and 
 perhaps I may never see you again. You used to sleep with me 
 sometimes, when you were not much smaller than you are now, 
 for you haven't grown much in these five years," he added, look- 
 ing thoughtfully and sadly down upon me. " Do you know how 
 old you are ?" 
 
 " I shall be eleven," I replied, " next week, on Friday. I 
 looked it out in the almanac, yesterday." Something in my 
 father's memory, as he looked thus upon my raised face, caused 
 several large, silent tears to fall from his eyes. His countenance 
 was unmoved, and he did not speak, but they fell, drop by drop, 
 heavily and slowly; one upon my hand as it rested in his. This 
 was woi'se to me than all my own pain. This large, strong, 
 placid, handsome man it must hurt him more, to weep, than a 
 child like me, and I longed to fold my arms about his neck, and 
 say something to take away the pain I had given him. 
 
 " You are very much like your mother, Eliza," he said, at last, 
 in a low, husky voice; "you look so much older than you are, 
 that you make me think of her when she was a young girl, fts 
 she was when I first knew her." 
 
 How my heart beat with the hope that he would go on to 
 speak of her; but he did not. I waited in silence till his tears 
 ceased, and then I asked timidly, " Was my mother as homely 
 as I am, father ?" He smiled a faint, painful sort of smile, that 
 flickered over his features, without lighting them, as winter sun- 
 shine falls upon an icy rock, but does not warm it ; or as heat 
 lightning plays over the surface of a cloud, but does not pene- 
 trate it.
 
 232 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " As homely as you are, dear Eliza ? Who told you you 
 were homely ?" 
 
 " Oh, everybody says so, and I know it myself. I look a 
 little better now," I said, " than I used to, because I haven't 
 grown quite so dark since I sprained my ankle, and had to stay 
 in the house so long." He didn't answer my question, and I 
 was anxious to have an answer; so, after waiting a little, I 
 repeated it as delicately as possible. 
 
 " Your mother, Eliza," he replied, " was dark like you not so 
 dark as you are now and you are very much like her; but I did 
 not think her homely." 
 
 " One more question." I felt nervous and fearful, as if I had 
 taken a razor in my unskillful hand to shave his throat, " but I 
 must ask it. She was very good, was she not, father ?" 
 
 His blue eyes opened full upon me, with a look of pain, as if I 
 had wounded him, but he remained silent. 
 
 " I asked," I said, when I was no longer able to bear the 
 look and the silence, " because nobody here can tell me any- 
 thing about her ; and and she was my mother and I want to 
 know." 
 
 He replied with a slowness that was agonizing to me, as it 
 proved the pain with which he spoke. "Yes, Eliza, your 
 mother was one of the noblest and best women that God ever 
 made." 
 
 " That is enough, father," I said, not willing to take another 
 of those costly words from him, precious as they were to me. 
 " That is enough. I hope you will not be displeased with me 
 for asking you. I wished to know so very much, and I would 
 rather have had you tell me than everybody else. Good night, 
 denr father; I will be up very early in the morning, to see you." 
 He had seated himself upon a chair while we were talking and 
 I put my arms about his neck and kissed him with real affection. 
 In that moment I had forgiven him everything. His acknow- 
 ledgment of my mother's worth, and a dim sense I had that
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 233 
 
 he was suffering from the memory of pain he had inflicted on 
 her, touched my deepest tenderness and compassion. 
 
 If I could have been assured that the woman at home had 
 died at that moment, I should have clung to him and whispered 
 all my trials and sorrows in his ear and begged to go with him. 
 But now it would not do, and I left him to go to a room, the 
 very air of which was made offensive to me with an unconquer- 
 able loathing. 
 
 I had stayed so long that she was asleep. I undressed myself 
 at the foot of the bed, and crawled stealthily up on the extreme 
 border from her. It was so large that after I had covered 
 myself, I reached my hand cautiously out, and to my great 
 relief, found that I could not touch her. It was late before I 
 slept, but I resolutely withheld myself from reviewing all the 
 cruelty of my position. Nature had given me an extraordinary 
 power of reserving my strongest feelings from outward expres- 
 sion, while it was necessary to do so, and I felt that while my 
 father remained with me, I must not disclose, by signs or speech, 
 the distress I experienced in staying where I was. I was glad 
 he had so spoken of my mother. It lifted an oppressive burden 
 from my spirit it softened me towards him ; it enabled me to 
 forgive, and to feel an affection for him which cost me no self- 
 reproach. It removed my pain in thinking on my sister's great 
 love for him. Altogether his words, and those great, slow-drop- 
 ping tears, had comforted and strengthened me, so that I felt 
 much less keenly than I should have, otherwise, the hardness 
 of my lot.
 
 234 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 " There's not a chord in all thy being can 
 Respond to mine. Try not the search." 
 
 MY grief at the parting next morning, was profound. It 
 partook of self-reproach for not having trusted my father ; for 
 having thought ill, of so noble and kind a parent as he seemed 
 to me, when I had watched him out of sight ; and of deep dis- 
 couragement that spread itself over my whole future. I had 
 rejected the only chance of escape visible from that point, and 
 where, I asked myself, would the next come from, and when? I 
 wondered at my own persistency, not without a certain 
 approval of it, when I thought of the woman, but still I did won- 
 der, recalling his grace and elegance, his patient kindness with 
 what I felt to have been almost rudeness in me, and with my 
 innumerable defects, which I constantly magnified by comparing 
 them with his perfections I did wonder that I had not softened 
 and asked him to take me with him. If he had by any acci- 
 dent returned to the house, I fear I should have repented my 
 decision, and gone at the first offer. I looked up the road two 
 or three times during the first weary hour, half expecting, half 
 hoping to see the wagon returning. It seemed almost like the 
 change death can make, that he should have been with me at 
 breakfast, and now be gone altogether beyond recall. 
 
 I did not weep as I should have wept had my feeling been 
 one of simple grief at parting with him, but I suffered far more. 
 This was not at all understood, and because my tears soon ceased 
 to flow, and I addressed myself unbidden to my tasks, as a re- 
 fuge from the war in my soul, aunt said : " Thy father needn't 
 shed any tears for thy grief, I am sure. I think thee cares as 
 little for him as any child could."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 235 
 
 " No, I love him very much," I said. 
 
 " Well, then, I can't make out why thee should say thee 
 didn't want to go home with him. Thee has always seemed so 
 so discontented, that I expected when he came thy fir^t word 
 would be to ask him to take thee back with him." 
 
 " I could love him and yet not wish to go home with him. 
 Could I not ?" I asked. 
 
 " Children don't generally love people in that way," she 
 said. 
 
 It vexed and wearied me to talk with her when I was troubled, 
 because I felt neither heart nor help in her, or her words, and I 
 answered, perhaps a little petulantly : " Well, aunt, I almost 
 think I am not a child at all." 
 
 " Thee's not far wrong in that, I guess, for I never did know 
 another child that would have done what thee has. It fairly 
 beats me to understand thee. Why didn't thee want to go home 
 with thy father ?" 
 
 I could not tell the truth, and I would not tell a lie ; so I re- 
 mained silent till she repeated the question more sharply. 
 
 Then I said : " Because I had rather stay here." 
 
 She looked upon me with a baffled, angry look, that seemed 
 to threaten me for sauciness, and I felt myself so much more in 
 her power than I had before, that I was more solicitous to ap- 
 pease her wrath, so I added, after a moment : " I would rather 
 stay here, aunt, because if my sisters are at school, maybe I 
 should have to be home alone with with that woman who is my 
 father's wife, and I am afraid I might not like her." 
 
 " Does thee know her ?" 
 
 " I remember her a very little ; but, aunt, I don't like to speak 
 of her." 
 
 I remained silent and she said no more for some time, but 
 occasionally, when I turned my eyes to her face, I found her 
 studying me, with a look so keen, and curious, and dissatistied, 
 yet exulting, that it made me uneasy, and I got away from it as 
 soon as I found an excuse for leaving the room. She did not
 
 236 MY EABLT DAYS. 
 
 refer to it again until uncle's ruturu, when she related the circum- 
 stance of the visit to him, and ray refusing to go home with my 
 father. Uncle seemed grateful and pleased, and commended me 
 in her presence as a good girl not to wish to go away from 
 them ; and then she said, in a tone of attempted pleasantry, 
 very rarely used in referring to or addressing me : " So I sup- 
 pose there is no prospect of our getting rid of her very soon ?" 
 
 There was no allusion to the school question, and these last 
 words dismissed the subject apparently from the thoughts as 
 well as the tongues of my adopted parents. 
 
 I heard no more of my father. I could not speak of him, 
 because she only had seen him, and in a few weeks his visit 
 seemed like a dream in my existence. It was unsubstantial com- 
 pared with the events that had preceded it, and I seemed to 
 have derived but two sources of lasting satisfaction from it 
 the one the reconciliation to my father, on behalf of my mother's 
 memory ; the other, the self-approval flowing from the firmness 
 I had exercised in self-denial. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " The soul lies voiceless." 
 
 THUS the winter came on, and wore away its weary dullness, 
 unbroken by any event that could interest me, after the stirring 
 experience of the past year. There were times when it seemed 
 as if all the action of my life were past, and I was doomed 
 henceforth to perpetual stagnation. I had read again and again 
 all the books within ray reach. I had exhausted all the personal 
 resources that were accessible. I had no longer the simple 
 child-heart that, when denied entertainment or life in one direc- 
 tion, seeks them as readily iu another; and thus I began to
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 237 
 
 realize what I had not yet suffered, a lack of interest in every- 
 thing that surrounded me. 
 
 The phenomena of nature no longer caused me wonder or 
 delight. The spring freshet, the migration of wild fowl, the 
 vernal growth of buds and leaves, the nest-building in the maple 
 and cherry-trees, were not what they had been in former days. 
 I had reached one of those periods when the spirit seems to lie 
 bound, and still, because no external challenge comes to it. I 
 could not take a single step towards my own progress, and it re- 
 quired sometimes deep search into my inner life to prove that 
 any purpose of self-emancipation and culture still existed there. 
 I was unable to follow Henry's advice in studying of arithmetic, 
 for Albert did not come to us that winter. It was a season 
 of painful memories of half-sullen brooding and resolving. 
 
 Towards the spring came a letter with a black seal, which in- 
 formed me of my father's death. It seems strange now, how lit- 
 tle it affected me, for I had a wholly kind feeling towards him 
 after that conversation in my room, but I believe that when I 
 parted with him next morning, I gave him up altogether, feeling 
 that we were separated beyond the possibility of helping or 
 comforting each other. I do not recollect ever thinking of him 
 afterwards as one to whom I could look for aid, and that was 
 what I now demanded more than love. My nature was too per- 
 sistent, and my sacred recollections yet too dearly cherished, to 
 permit any life to become large or strong to me which could give 
 me only love. Thus, while I thought often of my father, and 
 dwelt upon his last words and looks, I mourned but little and 
 without bitterness for him. His death neither aided nor hindered 
 me, that I could then see. 
 
 In the blooming weeks of the spring-time two events occurred 
 that helped to break up the external monotony, and lift me a 
 little out of the apathy in which I was sunk. There came into 
 the neighborhood two English families, veritable weavers of the 
 better sort. One consisted of a young man, his wife, and one 
 child. I saw but little of them, but the oilier family numbered
 
 238 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 nine souls, and lived in the very next house to us for several 
 months. The wife was a lace-maker, and, as well as I can judge, 
 she must have been a very fair specimen of her class. When I 
 had a little leisure, I used to sit by her, while she held a pillow, 
 on her knees and twisted her bobbins through and through, and 
 in and out, among each other, in a manner so incomprehensible 
 to me that I never attempted to follow them, or to get the 
 faintest idea of the work in which she felt the pride and satis- 
 tion of an artist. She was very communicative, and from her I 
 learned a great deal in confirmation of what Mr. Fleming had 
 told me, as well as of the other side of the picture, for she loved 
 " old Hingland," she said, "and always would let what would 'ap- 
 pen." The clothing of this family excited my wonder, it was so 
 heavy, so substantial, and strongly made. It seemed designed 
 never to wear out. It had such extraordinary seams, such 
 astonishing borders, stoutly stitched upon capes to be worn upon 
 the shoulders, where no possible strain could come ; such huge 
 pockets, made strong like our grain sacks ; such utter abandon- 
 ment, throughout, of the beautiful to the durable, that I was 
 sometimes scarcely able to conceal how much I was amused at 
 it all. When I spoke to Mrs. Murray about it she told me, 
 very gravely, that " the Hamericans didn't know 'ow to 'ave 
 hany think at all" 
 
 Iler husband was a large, dark-looking man, whom I always 
 avoided instinctively ; but he was very laborious, and the next 
 year he took his family to a little cabin of his own, which he had 
 built upon a small lot of land, which Mrs. Murray informed me, 
 with great delight, was " hall paid for but fifty dollars." 
 
 This family was a considerable resource to me while it 
 remained near us, but my listless, apathetic state must have 
 been quite manifest to them ; for I remember Mrs. Murray tell- 
 ing me, several times, that I was " more like a hold woman who 
 'ad cares, than a youug girl, who nought to be gay as a lark."
 
 MY EAKLT DATS. 23S 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 "We live together, years and years, 
 
 And leave unsounded still 
 Each other's springs of hopes and fears, 
 Each other's depth of will." 
 
 ONE evening, when uncle came into the house, he said, with 
 an excited look and voice, that he was afraid something had 
 happened to Squire Edwards. 
 
 " How ?" asked aunt. 
 
 " Why, he went, more than a week ago, to Wellsville," was 
 the reply, " and was to have been home the third or fourth day ; 
 but he hasn't come yet." 
 
 " Oh, if that's all, he's very comibrtable somewhere, I'll be 
 bound," was her contemptuous remark. 
 
 " But that is not all," said uncle. " His wife got his brother 
 William to go, day before yesterday, to look for him ; and he 
 has just come back, and says that he left Wellsville, the third 
 day, for home, and he can hear nothing of him on the way." 
 
 " What do they think ?" asked aunt, a little more respectfully 
 than she had spoken before. 
 
 " They are afraid of foul play on the road ; for he had several 
 hundred dollars with him. We are going to turn out and 
 search ; and I think you had better go down and see his wife. 
 William says she is dreadfully alarmed, and he is afraid to have 
 her left alone. He has gone to fetch his mother and wife down, 
 but they won't get here till late in the evening." 
 
 This occurrence quite aroused my torpid feelings. I pitied 
 Mrs. Edwards intensely ; and I thought at once, " 1 hope she 
 has plenty of tea ;" for that seemed to me, after what Marcia
 
 240 MY KAELY DAIS. 
 
 had long ago told me, a specific for all her trials. Aunt had 
 been less grim and repulsive for a few days, just at that time ; 
 and, as she was preparing to go, and I brought her Quaker bon- 
 net, (the second best) and shawl, she astonished me by asking if 
 I would like to go along. I had no wish to. I was so entirely 
 separated from the young people by the last year, that I felt 
 unable to approach them, and their mother I never talked with. 
 I only pitied, but felt no power to help her. All I could do was, 
 to wish that she might be comforted ; and I asked aunt if she 
 would not like to take her a little tea, for fear she might not 
 have any ; and when she said, " Yes, that's well thought of," I 
 felt pleased with the approval, and put two handfuls, the largest 
 I could grasp, into a bit of clean cloth, and gave it her. She 
 did not return that night, and we understood from this that Mrs. 
 Edwards must require attention. Uncle said that men were out 
 searching, and he had let two horses go, but was not going him- 
 self till morning. 
 
 He and I sat by the low, smouldering fire alone, the evenings 
 being yet a little chilly. I was sewing hemming some fine 
 linen shirts which aunt was making for a brother of hers, who 
 was expected soon to visit them. She had not seen him since 
 she returned to her home, when I came with her ; but letters 
 were constantly exchanged between them, and nearly every 
 month brought from him a bundle of atheistic tracts, journals, 
 and pamphlets, which, of late, I had been reading at first, for 
 want of something more acceptable, and, at last, from interest 
 in their contents. They did not make me happy or more loving, 
 but they stimulated my thought a little, and that was better 
 than the long slumber I should have suffered without them. 
 
 As I sat sewing, we talked, and uncle asked me if I did not 
 wish to go with aunt to see the girls. 
 
 I answered, " No." 
 
 " Why, how is that, Eliza ?" 
 
 It was difficult for me to explain how it was. " I am very 
 sorry for them," I said, " if they have lost their father ; but
 
 MT EAELT DATS. 241 
 
 but I am afraid 1 couldn't talk with them much, if I had goue, 
 and then it would do no good." 
 
 There was a silence of some minutes, and then uncle said, 
 taking his pipe from his lips, " Eliza, you have never seemed to 
 me to grieve about your father's death ; and now that we are 
 alone, I should like you to tell me about it." 
 
 " About what, uncle ?" 
 
 " Why you have been so indifferent to it. Did you not love 
 your father as well as you did Mr. Cranstoun, for whom you 
 grieved so much ?" 
 
 " I loved my father, uncle ; but when I heard of his death, I 
 felt so discouraged about myself, that I did not think of it as I 
 should if I had been happier." 
 
 " Discouraged about yourself, child I" he repeated, in astonish- 
 ment. " What in the world does that mean ?" 
 
 "About my learning anything, uncle, or getting to school. I 
 am in my twelfth year, and I don't seem any nearer to it now, 
 than I was two years ago, and that makes me feel very sad and 
 careless about everything." 
 
 As a very great treat something that would have quite 
 turned my head in any comfortable mood uncle had presented 
 me with a dress, when he came home from the last little jour- 
 ney a black silk one. I had been very grateful, more because 
 I knew he intended it as a great pleasure, than because it really 
 was. And it came into my mind, at once, that this sort of com- 
 plaint was not an acknowledgment of his kindness ; but I could 
 not help it, and so I added, after a moment, " I would rather go 
 to school, uncle, than have my room full of silk frocks." My 
 very soul spoke in my eyes, as I said it, looking into his. 
 
 " Well, child, you shall ! you shall ! I always meant to have 
 you go, but, somehow or other, aunt isn't yet ready ; and if you 
 were as much of a child as most girls of your age are, there 
 would be time enough yet. But I soe you are growing old fast. 
 But tell me now, Eliza, why, as you are so very anxious about 
 this, you let your father go home without you ?" 
 11
 
 212 MY EABLT DATS. 
 
 11 Uncle," I said, very decidedly, " I wonld tell you if I would 
 any one, but I never shall. And, please, don't let aunt know- 
 that I said so ; for then she might try to make me tell, and I 
 wish nobody to know it but myself." 
 
 Uncle was silent, and he looked perplexed, but not displeased. 
 At length he said, very quietly, " Would you not have told Mr. 
 Cranstoun, if he had lived and seen your father ?" 
 
 " I did tell him, and he thought it was quite right." 
 
 " But, my dear child, Mr. Cranstoun was dead before your 
 father came here." 
 
 How well I knew that, and I said with swelling heart, " I 
 know he was, uncle, but I told him." 
 
 " Did you expect your father, then ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " How came you to be talking to him about it ?" 
 
 If it had been aunt questioning me thus, I should have been 
 alarmed; but he was so reasonable and kind that I was not at 
 all frightened, and I answered, " I was telling him how very 
 much I wished to get to school, and then he asked me about my 
 relations and friends." Uncle seemed troubled by what I said, 
 and I thought, "I shall never have a better chance; I may as 
 well tell him now, all I mean." I turned it over hastily in my 
 mind, and at length said quietly, but very firmly, " Uncle, I am 
 determined to go to school sometime. I know," I added, 
 " that you mean me to, but I believe aunt doesn't; and when I 
 get a little older, I shall go myself. I can work a part of the 
 time for somebody who will teach me and give me clothes." 
 
 "Eliza," he said, with suffused eyes, " you shall go if I live; but 
 don't talk in that way, child; a little girl ought not to say what 
 sin 1 is determined to do. It sounds too much like a woman." 
 
 I was about to reply when we heard a hurried step at the 
 door, and uncle walked hastily to it. There was news that a 
 party of four men who had ridden rapidly out on the road Mr. 
 K hvards was expected to come by, had found, as they thought, 
 Mime tidings or trace of him, and one of them had returned to
 
 MY EAELT DAYS. 243 
 
 question his wife, and wished to see uncle as soon as he could 
 go down. I immediately went to bed, fastening myself into my 
 room, and when I rose next morning, early as it was, I found 
 the house all astir with preparations to turn out in the search. 
 The alarm or hope, whichever it was, of the previous evening, 
 had proved groundless, and people gathered from far and near, 
 to join the hunt. Mr. Eadford was among them, and he 
 asked aunt to let me go up and stay with Julia Anna till his 
 return, for she did not like to be left alone with the baby. The 
 permission was granted, for it was no time to be ungracious, or 
 ill-humored, and I went, thankful for the escape, but not till I 
 had heard two or three times repeated, to different persons, 
 that Mrs. Edwards was very dangerously ill and almost frantic; 
 and that she reproached herself for having said to him, just as 
 he turned his horse from the gate, " Don't come back without 
 you bring me some of the best tea in the town." 
 
 " The old story, yet," I thought ; and the next time it was 
 added, " and she had none in the house till I took her some 
 last night." 
 
 The search was continued for five or six days, and then all 
 hope of finding the lost man was abandoned, but the general 
 opinion was, not that he had been murdered, as was first feared, 
 but that he had absconded. 
 
 Mrs. Edwards looked more miserable than ever, as she gradu- 
 ally fell from one slender hope after another, and settled down 
 to the conviction that she was a widow, or worse a deserted 
 wife. Marcia and Rosanna, whom I sometimes saw, told me of 
 her wretchedness, and pining, and fretfuluess, and I saw very 
 clearly that their happiness was quite gone. The distillery of 
 course was stopped. There was no more money, and the miser- 
 able family at last broke up, and scattered among the paternal 
 relations. I did not like to pass the house and distillery after- 
 wards. I had a troublesome fancy that I might sec him sud- 
 denly appear at one of the doors, and ask me where they all 
 were. Late in the summer, when speculation about him had
 
 244 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 almost ceased, came a letter, or rather parcel to his wife from 
 New Orleans. It proved to be a letter from the keeper of 
 a hospital there, inclosed with three or four sheets in his own 
 handwriting. The letter informed her that her husband had 
 died in the institution a few days before it was written ; and 
 after he was told he could not live, he had requested the writer 
 to forward these sheets to her address, and to inform her of his 
 death. There was a curious incredulity in the minds of most 
 people about the whole affair, at which I wondered a little, but 
 very soon we ceased to hear of it; and Mrs. Edwards's trials and 
 sorrows commanded no more active interest or sympathy from 
 the people among whom she suffered. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 " Came in those weary days unfolding mysteries 
 Of thought ; with sad deliverance offered 
 From the barrenness that reigned. But not 
 Thus might the imprisoned soul escape 
 Its bondage." 
 
 MY own condition now absorbed my entire thought. It 
 seemed to be becoming each month more wretched. My life 
 was a stagnant pool which no agel descended to disturb, for 
 the healing of my soul. I was unmoved by love ; indifferent 
 to hatred or passion ; my resolve slept sullenly, as it were, 
 within me, under my outward restraints, as iron shackles when 
 long worn, produce a callous condition of the parts first fretted 
 and quickened by them. While I was in this state, the brother 
 whom aunt had expected came. He was younger than herself, 
 good-looking, very pleasant, and quick-spoken. She was more 
 delighted to see him than I had thought possible to such a 
 nature, and her great joy at once reminded me of Henry's words,
 
 MY EAKLT DAY8. 245 
 
 " She needed the love of many brothers, sisters, and children." 
 He had a small box of books with him, which he had brought 
 her infidel publications, and some others ; among the rest, 
 " The Age of Reason," " Volney's Ruins," and a translation of 
 the "Lettres Philosophiques" of Voltaire, and numerous kindred 
 works of less distinguished authors. I remember well, his hand- 
 ing me, when I sat down on the first evening, a small volume in 
 large print, on thick paper, with the words, " There, Eliza, is a 
 little book that I thought might amuse thee, but I expected to 
 find thee a large girl. What has thee done to her, Phebe ?" 
 turn-ing to his sister, " that she hasn't grown any more since I 
 saw her ?" 
 
 She made no reply, but went on turning the leaves of a book 
 she had in her hand. I looked at the title page of mine, and 
 found the words, " Tale of the Three Wise Men of Gotham," 
 and for its motto : 
 
 " Three wise of Gotham 
 Went to sea in a bowl, 
 If the bowl had been stronger, 
 My tale had been longer." 
 
 I puzzled myself much over this, knowing it must have some 
 meaning deeper than appeared in those silly words, but I would 
 not ask Mr. Strong to explain it, and presently I gave it up and 
 went to reading. I was soon pleased and amused by the 
 sprightly dialogue, and the humor, which, though I could not 
 guess what it was levelled at, was apparent even to me. I read 
 the tale of the first wise man, sitting there, and of the other two 
 before I went to sleep. But I understood only one the bur- 
 lesque of Parry's search for the North Pole. Of Phrenology 
 and the Symmes Theory I had never heard, and could not, thre- 
 fore, understand the satire that was levelled at them. 
 
 The next evening, Mr. Strong asked if I had read any part of 
 my book. 
 
 " I have read it through," was my reply.
 
 216 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Read it through!" he exclaimed; " thee reads too fast. It does 
 thee no good to go through a book in that way. Thee knows 
 nothing about it after thee is done." 
 
 I said, " I know all about one of the wise men's stories, but I 
 don't understand what the other two mean." 
 
 " I knew thee couldn't understand it if thee had read it so 
 fast." 
 
 " But, Mr. Strong," I said, " I do understand one very well 
 the one about Captain Parry and I can tell nearly all there is in 
 the others ; but I don't know what the writer is making 
 fun of." 
 
 " Well, tell me," he said. And I went on to relate the chief 
 points, and often the exact language of the book. 
 
 He listened, apparently in great pleasure, and occasionally 
 gave aunt an indescribable look out of his twinkling black eyes. 
 When I had finished, he said, with a rather pompous decisive- 
 ness, " Phebe, what is this child reading ?" 
 
 " Anything she can get." 
 
 "That's wrong 1 Such a child ought to have the right sort 
 of books. Pll give thee some, Eliza, before I go away, and I 
 shall wish thee to read them carefully, many times. I'll give 
 thee one now ;" and rising, he walked to a shelf by the chimney, 
 and took thence a small volume, which he handed to me. 
 
 It was the "Age of Reason." I read it, and all the others he 
 selected also some of them three or four times. But I need not 
 detail the weary stages by which I waded through this turbid 
 stream of infidelity. The details of the books do not remain on 
 my memory; I have never since opened them; but I well remember 
 the painful giving up of one tender sentiment after another, to 
 their hard, exacting, unspiritual statements and proofs. The 
 irreverence of the "Age of Reason," which was the book I could 
 most easily comprehend the coarse assaults upon the character 
 and life of Jesus, and his mother, hurt me most keenly. I re- 
 called the beautiful Madonna, and the reverent words he. had 
 spoken of her, and her son ; but gradually, day by day, as I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 24:7 
 
 read and thought, 1 came to consider that even he might have 
 been mistaken ; that this whole book, which I heard praised in 
 such unmeasured terms, must be greater proof than his words ; 
 and so to adopt in my talk, and more external mind, its language 
 and belief. But it never thoroughly penetrated my inmost being. 
 For there, still lay cherished, when I was most ready in the flip- 
 pant coarseness of this school, deep reverence for the Power, 
 Love and Wisdom, which Henry had shown me in so many 
 ways ; and my perception of the exceeding beauty and elevation 
 of the character of Jesus, could have been kindled into a con- 
 trite acknowledgment, at almost any hour, by an earnest appeal 
 from any loving spirit. I had read the Sermon on the Mount 
 till it was unnecessary for me to go to the book for it; yet, I 
 always did go, even in the midst of my stoutest protestations, 
 with a religious regard for his wish. Thus there remained in me 
 the germ of a true spiritual life, quite untouched by the virulence 
 of these books ; but it was less matured than my intellect, which 
 demanded food, action, growth and sought them anywhere. 
 The young and vigorous mind, like, the strong, growing plant, 
 will urn in any direction to reach light and sustenance. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 " I never did repent for doing good, 
 Nor shall not now." 
 
 THE next year was one of great suffering. My reading, which 
 continued the same in kind, and the thoughts which were its na- 
 tural product, afforded me no consolation. There was no love 
 about or within me; no soul came to mine; and it lay, as it were, 
 caged in the heavy, chilling imprisonments of my unnatural posi- 
 tion, rny false theories, my hopeless future. My nature, expand- 
 ing without freedom, and without true attraction, fretted and
 
 248 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 chafed against its narrow limitations. Faith and loyalty were 
 strong elements of my life. I demanded heroes for my worship, 
 and if I could, I should have chosen them from among the good, 
 as well as the intellectually great. But my knowledge, limited 
 in all departments, was particularly so in respect to those who 
 had loved and served humanity. I think I had never heard of 
 such a phenomenon as a philanthropist, except in John Howard 
 and Elizabeth Fry, whom I had read of in a Quaker journal. I 
 had wished to be like them, but the sketches I had seen had not 
 satisfied the demand made for the sublime in such a life. 
 
 Thus I was near completing my thirteenth year, and no way 
 of escape was yet open to me. In my immediate personal rela- 
 tions there was not only no change, but no improvement. True 
 I was not beaten as I had been when smaller (I grew more in 
 this year, I think, than in the two preceding ones), but there 
 was no more rational recognition of my rights. I was permitted 
 freer use of books, but that was because the brother had requested 
 it ; and they were always such as he chose. I read newspapers 
 and pamphlets, and became well informed on political subjects, 
 with Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster for my leaders. But this was 
 , all so external and unsatisfying ; it cherished no aspiration, it 
 kindled no faith. I could not rise, as I had in the better days, 
 to a clear recognition of what before me was good, and what 
 evil. I lived in a cloud. In only one respect was I clearer or 
 stronger than I had been that was, in the determination to 
 make an effort for myself before I should be fourteen. I was 
 quite settled that I ought not to wait any longer. But how to 
 begin ? 
 
 This was the question which, after I had commenced deliber- 
 ating upon it, dwelt continually in my mind. I was working 
 very hard, for uncle had bought, late in the fall before, thirty 
 cows; and so I had my old tasks again, with increased cares in 
 the cheese and butter-making ; and every one was a substantial 
 hindrance to me for how was I to get away from so much ? 
 how could I be spared ?
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 249 
 
 The summer wore away in this kind of indecision. I took no 
 walks. I spoke freely to no one. Albert was not on the farm, 
 and so I lost my association with that good family. Mr. Kad- 
 ford and his wife had their second baby, and were too much 
 taken up at home to think of me. I had no one to look to for 
 counsel or help, and I seemed to be waiting for them, when a 
 young woman came to the neighborhood, on a visit to her sister 
 the sad, black-eyed woman, whom I have before spoken of as 
 visiting at our house. The sister was much more of a person 
 than herself, about twenty-five years of age, large and well made, 
 with a dignified carriage dark, grave, decided face, which it 
 seemed one would rather depend on, than love. On their first 
 visit to us, she walked with me into the little peach orchard, to 
 gather fruit for tea ; and before I knew it, she had the secret 
 of my discontent and cherished purposes fully laid out before 
 her. 
 
 " How old are you ?" she asked. 
 
 " Almost thirteen." 
 
 " Thirteen I Are you sure it isn't fourteen ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " You look much older, but that is old enough. You ought 
 to be at school now if you are ever going. Has Mrs. Sraalley 
 no conscience I wonder ?" 
 
 Her interest and decisiveness quite roused and assured me. I 
 had not heard such a sound in a long time. " I am going" I 
 said, " at any rate, before I am fourteen." 
 
 " Have they promised ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; they are always ready to promise, but I do not 
 mean to wait much longer for them." 
 
 " What do you think of doing then?" she asked, thoughtfully, 
 looking down. 
 
 " I am going away." 
 
 " Where will you go to, and how will your doing that bring 
 you to school ?" 
 
 This was rather straight forward and practical for my dream- 
 11*
 
 250 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 ings. It showed me their unsubstantial character. In truth, I 
 suspect I was not at all practical then. It was my great de- 
 fect, I think, that, while I saw before me what I ought and 
 wished to do, I was inclined rather to dwell upon the thought 
 of it done, or actually doing, than upon any detailed manner of 
 accomplishing it. v 
 
 Miss Miller's questions were, therefore, home-thrusts at the 
 shadowy fabric in which I was wont to take refuge. I felt 
 ashamed and perplexed, and at last was obliged to say, very re- 
 luctantly, "I don't know. But," I added, the next moment, 
 with more spirit, " I am determined to go somewhere, and after- 
 wards I'll find a way to get to school." 
 
 My new friend made many inquiries respecting my family, 
 what I had read, what I most strongly inclined to, and so on. 
 She had been many years a teacher, and seemed capable of 
 a very discriminating and generous interest in young persons. 
 She advised me to stick to my resolution, but told me, at the 
 same time, that there was an old adage I would do well to heed : 
 " ' Look before you leap.' You want some older person than 
 yourself, my dear, to plan for and advise you." 
 
 " Will not you ?" I asked, feeling as if the Providence I had 
 long scouted, had sent her to me, for that express purpose. 
 
 " I wouldn't a bit mind doing it," she replied ; " but I might 
 make my poor sister some trouble, for, of course, they will be 
 very angry with any one who counsels or encourages you." 
 
 " They need not then," I said, " for I shall go all the same if 
 nobody does it, and I should feel so much happier, and maybe, 
 do so much better, if somebody like you would advise me." 
 
 " Well, we will see," she said. 
 
 I felt certain that Miss Miller would help me, and was quite 
 as certain that she had a way of looking into things, and possi- 
 bilities, that was almost inspiration. She did me inestimable 
 service in that short time that we were together, by renewing my 
 faith and hope, and enkindling my long-smothered aspirations. 
 I felt a warmer life in my soul at once. Before they left us, I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 251 
 
 begged so earnestly to see her soon again, that she promised, as 
 I was never allowed to go to her sister's house, to come down in 
 a few days. I was to let her know, if possible, when I would 
 be alone. I waited a long time. It seemed as if the Fates kept 
 aunt at home ; but she did go to spend the* day, at length, at a 
 neighbor's, and she was only well out of sight on the old white 
 horse, when I ran over to Mrs. Rumsey's (her husband was dead, 
 and she was back again on the little farm), and Johnny was dis- 
 patched with my message. 
 
 Miss Miller came, attended by a sister of uncle's, a lovely 
 woman, sensitive, tender-hearted, and religious, who had re- 
 cently come to the country, and who was therefore almost a 
 stranger to me ; but, the result of the long conference was, to 
 assure me of the earnest sympathy of these and many other 
 good persons, and to crystallize, as it were, more finely, the 
 crude elements of resolution and action that filled my mind. It 
 was finally determined that I should remain as I was, till I heard 
 from home again, as my father's death might have wrought im- 
 portant changes in the affairs of tho family, but that whatever 
 tidings came, I should not wait very much longer before making 
 some demonstration in my own behalf. It seemed an easy thing 
 to do, with such strong, soulful people to sustain me in it. 
 
 The summer was quite gone before the long-expected letter 
 came, and then it gave me no help, except in provoking aunt 
 openly to scout the oft-repeated and troublesome inquiry, when 
 was I going to school ? 
 
 She expressed, in some contemptuous words, as she read it, 
 her belief that my sister was a pert, saucy girl, who had better 
 mind her own business, and that I was much better off than 
 any of the rest of them ! She always spoke of my brothers 
 and sisters in this way, as if they were not human individualities, 
 but so many sheep, to be lumped together as the rest of the 
 flock ; and it chafed and stung me to hear her. She had used 
 the same words to my father, sitting at the supper-table that 
 night. It seemed as if their not havhig the benefit of her
 
 252 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 care, raised a presumption in her mind against their worthi- 
 ness. 
 
 I was not allowed to answer the letter for a long time, and 
 when I did, she added a few lines in her own hand, not of com- 
 mendation, for the quiet, laborious life I was leading with her 
 doing the labor of a strong woman but of herself for what I 
 was learning from her brother's books, for the proficiency she 
 said I was making in writing and figures, because she had lately 
 discovered that it would pay her to let me acquire skill enough 
 to help uncle in his post-office business. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 " Fearful hearts light storms o'erwhelm, 
 Timid ones ne'er reach the land ; 
 Keep thine eye undimmed by fear, 
 Thou shalt safe to harbor steer." 
 
 THE last autumn month passed, and I had entered on my 
 fourteenth year. Now, I thought, the time for action is coming. 
 Before another birthday something must be done. Mr. Strong 
 came again in the winter, but neither he nor his books were any 
 longer new to me. The life and interest I had in other persons 
 and things, made me comparatively, indifferent to him and his 
 triumphant arguments. I cared much more for Miss Miller's de- 
 cision to spend the season with her sister, instead of returning 
 home as had been her purpose all the autumn. 
 
 In the latter part of January came the answer to my letter, 
 which we had waited for in the hope that it would bring me 
 some news of an uncle, for whose interposition I had strongly 
 hoped. 
 
 Then it was nearly a month before I could show it to my ad
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 253 
 
 viser, owing to the weather and the almost impassable winter 
 roads of that wild country. 
 
 " I don't see that we are much wiser, Eliza, for having waited 
 for this," she said, after reading it. "What do you learn 
 from it ?" 
 
 " Nothing about my uncle that helps me. You see, Miss Mil- 
 ler, I couldn't write and ask as plainly as I would have liked to, 
 because she. had to see the letter, and Mary doesn't think of my 
 wanting to go home." 
 
 " Well, what do you wish to do now ?" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Will you come to us ? I know my sister and her husband 
 would give you a home." 
 
 " You are all very kind," I replied, feeling the hot tears fill 
 my eyes ; " but I do not wish to stop in this country, Miss Miller. 
 If I had money I would go home as soon as the roads are 
 better." 
 
 Miss Miller sat a long time silent, in profound thought, as it 
 appeared. We were in Mrs. Rumsay's house, in the very room, 
 and by the very window where he had been sitting when I spoke 
 to him the last time, and when he said the dreadful words I then 
 heard him utter. Somehow or other, while I was waiting for my 
 friend to speak, that scene came into my mind the man's look 
 of degradation and rage ; then the deserted house, and his death 
 soon aftei^ and my own experience since. I was beginning to 
 feel myself in danger of breaking down, -under the review of all 
 these painful things, when she lifted her large, dark eyes to my 
 face, with an earnest, searching expression that arrested my 
 thoughts at once, and brought them back to her. She regarded 
 me a moment, in this silent way, and then said, " Eliza, could 
 you do a very brave thing, do you think ?" 
 
 I felt the blood leave my face and extremities instantly ; for 
 the look and words, conjoined, indicated that she was going to 
 require of me something that would test my ability to ad, as 
 well as to think and resolve.
 
 254: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " What is it ?" I asked, faintly ; for I felt myself growing a 
 coward at once. But my fearfulness was not weakness, so much 
 as the product of two feelings my love for uncle, and my dread 
 of aunt. The consciousness that he always fully meant me right, 
 was a restraint upon me when I thought of doing anything that 
 would pain him ; and I was never free from a haunting dread of 
 her, whenever I thought, in my weakness, of trying to get away 
 from her. With this explanation of my feelings, one can under- 
 stand the breathlessness with which I heard Miss Miller begin to 
 tell me what the brave thing was. Her first words were, " You 
 must have some money, Eliza, to go to your friends with." 
 
 "Yes," I replied, quickly, very much relieved. "I can work 
 for somebody, to get it. I can do a great deal of work as 
 much as a woman." 
 
 " My dear child, it would take you a very long time to earn 
 money enough to get home with, at anything that you can do 
 so long that, if you want to get an education, I am afraid it 
 wouldn't do to wait for that." 
 
 " How can I get it, then ?" I asked, feeling very helpless. 
 
 " Did you never earn any money ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 I was thinking then, not of wages in the broad sense, but of 
 stipulated sums, to be paid when work was done, as I had seen 
 uncle pay men on the farm. " No, they were never to pay me 
 anything, you know, for what I did. I was very small, and 
 couldn't do much for a.long time after I came here." 
 
 " What were they to do for you, in return for the labor you 
 did perform ? They were to take care of you, send you to 
 school, and treat you in all respects as if you were a child of 
 their own. Was it not so ?" 
 
 "Yes" 
 
 " Well, they have never dono either, have they ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " But you have done a great deal of work. My sister has 
 told me, and other persons in the neighborhood. You have
 
 MT EARLY DAYS. 255 
 
 milked eight or ten. cows, night and morning, have you not, 
 every summer, since you were ten years old ?" 
 
 " Every summer but one, since I was nine, Miss Miller," 
 beginning to feel that I had a righteous claim to something. 
 But I added, by way of balancing what seemed the selfishness 
 of that thought, " I have generally had those that were easiest 
 to milk, and, very often, somebody carried my pails in for me." 
 
 Miss Miller smiled ; but she noticed what I had said in no 
 other way, and went on 
 
 " You have worked very hard for the last two years. Every- 
 body says you have earned a woman's pay. But have you ever 
 had it ? You have not been sent to school ; and, fortunately, 
 no money has been expended on you for clothing. There is a 
 large debt due you, Eliza ; but we suppose it would not be 
 acknowledged and paid, if yoif asked for it. Do you think it 
 would ?" 
 
 " Oh, no." 
 
 " Well, then, we think that is, I, and some other friends of 
 yours to whom I have spoken that you are entitled to take 
 your pay, as other people do sometimes, wherever you can find 
 it. Your uncle, as you call him, has money, has he not ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And you know where it is ?" 
 
 "Yes, but" 
 
 " But what ?" 
 
 " I shouldn't like to take his money without telling him of it. 
 It would be dishonest, would it not ?" 
 
 I could not utter the more disgraceful word. My spirit 
 revolted at it. 
 
 " Under any circumstances but such as yours, it would be 
 dishonest, Eliza, and a thing which no friend would suggest to 
 you ; but I have thought a great deal over your position, and I 
 feel quite clear in advising you to do it." 
 
 " I am afraid I can't," I said, in a low voice, that but faintly 
 expressed my discouragement. " I never took anything in my
 
 256 MT EARLY DATS. 
 
 life that was not given to me, but once ; and I was so very 
 unhappy about that, that I should be afraid to do this, for fear 
 I should feel so again. When I was coming here, with uncle and 
 aunt, we stopped, one day, at a house where there were three or 
 four little girls, and one of them had a string of amber-colored 
 beads, such as my sister and I had had, at home. She broke 
 the string they were on, while we were there ; and there was 
 one smooth one, larger than the others, which sparkled and 
 looked so beautiful in the sunshine, that I wanted it very much. 
 But I dared not ask her for it ; so, when I had a chance, I 
 picked it up, slily, and slipped it into the neck of my frock. 
 And I was so very miserable, after we got away, because I could 
 neither carry nor send it back, that I wouldn't suffer so agaiii 
 for the whole world." 
 
 " That was stealing," said Miss Miller, quietly, unmindful of 
 my burning cheeks and flushed brow. " It was very wrong; but, 
 in a little child of six years, I suppose not so very extraordinary. 
 At any rate, your having suffered so, would be the best assurance 
 that you would not be likely to do such a thing again. But, 
 Eliza, I do not call this stealing, nor dishonesty either ; and, if 
 you were not so very ignorant of many things, I ought to be 
 offended with yon, and give you up, for supposing that I could 
 advise you to anything wrong or disgraceful. It would be a 
 poor way to help you. No, Eliza, you are wholly mistaken in 
 thinking me capable of anything like that. It is quite right and 
 natural in you, though, to shrink from taking such a step ; but 
 you must look on all sides of your case, before you decide." 
 
 And ,she proceeded to lay down its outlines in that clear, 
 practical way, that I had never found used by any one but her- 
 self. 
 
 How very ^miserable I was, when I parted from her, to go 
 home ! Her arguments and representations had wrought upon 
 my belief fully; but, though I perceived, intellectually, the right 
 of what she said, my heart did not feel it. One last thing that 
 bhe told me, as we came down-stairs, relieved me somewhat. I
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 257 
 
 asked if any one besides herself, had advised this, and she told 
 me, "Yes ; three or four of those who wish to aid you. But," 
 she said, smiling, " they are not all as courageous as I am. They 
 are unwilling to have their names mentioned, lest it might cause 
 them some difficulty. But I am not afraid, when I see a thing is 
 right ; and then, too, I am only a visitor here, and when I go 
 home, I shall escape any annoyance that might come from 
 offending that bad woman. If I can help deliver you out of 
 her hands, I don't care what she thinks of me." 
 
 With all my self-reliance, it did comfort my tried soul to know 
 that if, finally, I should have to resort to what Miss Miller pro- 
 posed, good persons would approve of it. My first thought, 
 when I was alone, was, "What would Henry say to it, if he 
 were here ?" I had never yet done anything that I could think 
 he would be grieved at, except reading the infidel books, and 
 falling in with them ; and for this I did not accuse myself, 
 because it seemed unavoidable a necessity of my being and 
 condition. And then that little seed of Faith, and secret wor- 
 ship of something unknown, which I cherished in my heart, as 
 only an immature child could, while talking such arrant infidelity 
 as I sometimes did, seemed to be so much reserved for his sake 
 so much held sacred to the memory of his affectionate interest 
 in me : of his earnest words, and my great love for him. 
 
 I wished much to see Mr. Garland and his wife, but the bad 
 walking forbade it ; besides that, I was under very close restric- 
 tions, nearly all the time. Whether aunt had a suspicion of 
 some purpose in me adverse to her own, or not, I could not 
 guess ; but she was grim, and ungracious, and harsh, to a degree 
 that would have tried me deeply, but for the preoccupation of 
 my thoughts. 
 
 About this time it was the last of sleighing some young 
 persons in the neighborhood came to our house, one evening, to 
 invite me to ride with them to a spelling-school. I had often 
 beard Betsey and the Edwards girls speak of these schools, and 
 I knew that they were exercises in orthographical skill. The
 
 258 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 spelling faculty seems to be a natural gift to some. It was to 
 me. I could not remember ever having learned to spell, and I 
 had been repeatedly warranted a brilliant victory if I could 
 appear on one of these occasions. It was an ambition I had 
 cherished for three or four years, but never had an opportunity 
 of gratifying ; and, on this occasion, I asked aunt's permission 
 to go, with a pre-determination to feel myself oppressed and 
 wronged, if she refused. I was denied, in no very gentle terms, 
 and I felt it keenly. 
 
 That night, I thought much upon Miss Miller's statement of 
 my case, not without bitterness ; and, as I lay, tortured between 
 the desire to be free, and the sense of inability to accomplish so 
 great a thing for myself ; and, as always before, thinking that if 
 the money I wanted were aunt's, I should feel no difficulty in 
 doing what Miss Miller advised, it seemed to come clearly to my 
 mind that I ought first to appeal to uncle, in my distress. A 
 moment's reflection on this idea, determined me to try it im- 
 mediately. But, at breakfast, next morning, he informed us 
 that he was going away, for four or five days, to the county 
 town ; and he set off, without my having an opportunity to 
 speak to him alone. I stationed myself at the gate; and, as he 
 was getting on his horse, said, " I was thinking, last night, uncle, 
 that I would like to talk with you again about my going to 
 school." 
 
 " When I come back will do, won't it ?" he asked, in a half 
 bantering tone, as if he were amused at the idea of my having 
 business which demanded immediate attention.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 259 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 We shape ourselves the joy or fear, 
 
 Of which the coming life is made ; 
 And fill our Future's atmosphere 
 
 With sunshine or with shade." 
 
 How little true thought there is of the crises in the life of 
 children and young persons 1 This business, of which he made a 
 pleasant joke, had already been put off six years. It was to me 
 larger than life, or death, or love, or hope, or any other thing I 
 could think of. It was literally " the be fill and the end all," for 
 of late I had thought of nothing beyond it. The glorious dreams 
 of doing, which I had cherished years before, when a very little 
 child, had fled from the fierce struggle of my later thoughts, 
 and quickening purposes. 
 
 For the first time uncle's words embittered and hardened me 
 towards him ; and, as I walked back into the house, hear- 
 ing his horse's hoofs crunch the dirty mixture of snow and ice 
 along the road, I felt cold and desolated, and defiled, as the 
 world around me seemed to be. 
 
 The house had never been more dreary. An evil spirit 
 appeared to reign over it, and look out upon me from every 
 dark corner and cheerless room. I grew reckless and hard, and 
 almost despised myself for having yielded to the restraints that 
 kept me there so long, in a condition so hateful and unworthy. 
 Uncle's last words rankled like a thorn in my soul. In all my 
 wretchedness I had felt sure of a certain sympathy from him. I 
 did not always demand expression of it, not even by a glance of 
 his eye, or a gesture of his hand. That it was there, had suf- 
 ficed to comfort and strengthen me greatly, in the times when 
 my spirit was near failing. Now ray blood boiled rebelliously
 
 260 MY EAELT DAY8. 
 
 at the thought that my great aud growing want was becoming 
 a joke to him. 
 
 Only the gentleness and patience of my nature saved me from 
 cursing, my lot, and being altogether reckless in that period of 
 waiting. But nothing could ever carry me past a certain line 
 of self-restraint, and this was my salvation. I know not where 
 I should have ended, had I given myself up to the violent feel- 
 ings that seized me at different times in those days. I thought 
 but little, during their lapse, of the special difficulty that had 
 before weighed heavily upon me. A broader sense of wrong 
 than I had ever before felt, seemed now to overflow the present, 
 and make not only justifiable, but imperative, some step, how- 
 ever desperate. 
 
 I learned in this conflict, how much I had before unconsciously 
 hoped from uncle's good nature ; and how little it had ever 
 availed me, or was likely to. I remember distinctly, that while 
 my thoughts were keenly concentered on myself, to the exclusion 
 of facts, books, persons, objects all that in general so inter- 
 ested me I had the most sublime, shadowy purposes of rescuing 
 myself by some gigantic effort of my own. The one which most 
 frequently returned to me, was that of walking, when the snow 
 should be gone, and the roads become dry, to some distant town 
 or city, and seeking some rich, and benevolent person for a 
 patron, who would educate me and wait till I could repay the 
 kindness, by the fruits of my knowledge and labor or if I failed 
 to find such a person, which I could scarcely think possible, 
 believing there were a great many of them everywhere, but in 
 that prison-house to which I was confined, then I could cer- 
 tainly find somebody who would hire me to work, and so I could 
 get money of my own. My satisfaction in this plan, however, 
 was abated by the continually recurring recollection of Miss 
 Miller's condemnation of one something like it, as totally imprac- 
 ticable for my main purpose. It is curious that I scarcely 
 thought of her suggestions or counsels in those memorable days, 
 except in this or some similar connection. I had the highest
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 261 
 
 respect for her practical ability. What she commended or con- 
 demned, I was inclined to consider as settled; but the proposition 
 thus to furnish myself with money, scarcely entered my mind at 
 all, in debating the future from this point. I had now a larger 
 battle to do, I thought, and my defences must be of correspond- 
 ing dignity. 
 
 Aunt was reading some of her brother's books, so that when 
 she had exhausted her ingenuity in ways to keep me on my feet, 
 I was left a good deal to my own thoughts. I never spoke to 
 her when it was not absolutely necessary. A treaty of non- 
 intercourse had been tacitly agreed to between us, which I 
 scrupulously adhered to, as the only security for any degree of 
 the gentleness and freedom that were so necessary to save me 
 from positive outbreak. 
 
 During uncle's absence there was a heavy snow-storm. Thus 
 the roads which were before bad, became worse, and I felt my- 
 self more closely imprisoned by the weather than by my ill- 
 tempered jailer. At length, he returned. They had seemed a 
 very long four days, but he came at the end of them, though 
 the snow was very deep, and the roads scarcely broken at all. 
 " Everybody," he said, " seemed to be sleeping through the 
 storm." He was disposed to be a little jocose with me, but I 
 repelled it with a solemnity that I intended should warn him, 
 and as he stood without the door, after supper, I said to him, 
 " Uncle, now I want to talk with you alone, about what I spoke 
 of when you were going away." 
 
 " It is too cold and snowy, out of doors, Eliza," he replied, 
 " and I don't see how we are to get the fire to ourselves." 
 
 " I think aunt may go to bed early this evening," I said, 
 " she has ever since you have been gone, and then we can be 
 alone there." 
 
 " Very well, then, I will hear what you have to say, child." 
 
 He seemed to be growing unjust too. Hear what I had to 
 say; as if it were a condescension to do so ; or as if the subject 
 were new to him. I had little to say nothing that had not
 
 262 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 been said often enough before. It was I who wished to hear 
 what he had to say. 
 
 Aunt did not retire early, as I had hoped, but I made a hypo- 
 critical pretence of being very anxious to do a certain task at 
 sewing, before I went to bed, and so was permitted to sit till 
 after she retired. Uncle also remained, and as she went, filled 
 his second pipe. As usual, she left her bedroom door open, and 
 neither of us spoke until the deep breathing of sleep assured us 
 we had no auditor. Meanwhile, I was growing breathless and 
 trembling. I waited for uncle to begin, but it seemed as if he 
 would never do so. At length he said, " Well, Eliza, we are 
 alone now ; what is it, child ?" 
 
 I was strangely agitated and could not, for a moment, get 
 breath to reply. Then I said, " I wish to know, uncle, about 
 my goiug to school." 
 
 It seemed as if Satan tempted him to challenge me to the 
 worst, for a smile, commencing at his eyes, flickered over his 
 features. Then he took the pipe from his lips and said, " You 
 will wait till the storm is over before you start, won't you 
 Eliza. It snows a little yet." 
 
 I had laid down my sewing, and was looking steadily at him, 
 as calm, now that the first words were over, as I had ever 
 been. I felt a certain sarcasm in his smile and language, and 
 answered it. 
 
 " Uncle," I said, " I have waited six years already, and I am 
 not so impatient but that I can wait a few days, or weeks 
 longer ; but if I could get to school by going out now and 
 walking all night, the storm wouldn't keep me here." My left 
 hand rested on the edge of the little table before me, and 
 though I sat in front of a blazing fire, it was deathly cold. 
 This was one of the physical indications of an intense agitation 
 with me. Answering to my earnestness, uncle laid his large, 
 warm hand upon mine, and the contact seemed to shock him 
 like an electric touch. lie drew back, exclaiming, "Why, 
 Eliza, are you ill ? Your hand feels like ice."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 263 
 
 " No, uncle," I said, " I am not ill, but I am very unhappy 
 so unhappy that I am determined not to bear it any longer 
 without doing something for myself, if you do nothing for me." 
 He looked at me in astonishment. 
 
 " Do nothing for you 1" he repeated ; " what do you mean, 
 child ? Do I not clothe you ? and haven't I promised you you 
 should go to school ?" 
 
 " Yes, uncle, but when ?" There was a long silence. At 
 length I said, growing more bold in the assertion of my rights, 
 from a conviction that he was doing me injustice in his thoughts: 
 " As to the clothing, uncle I don't wish to find fault, for I 
 care but little about it but you couldn't very well keep me 
 without clothing, and I have hardly ever had an unnecessary 
 thing, except that silk frock, which I would give to anybody for 
 two or three good books, and the privilege of studying 
 them." 
 
 " Eliza," he said, slowly, " I am sorry to hear you confess 
 that you are so ungrateful." 
 
 My father had accused me of this, m one of the bitterest trials 
 of my life, when I was submitting to gross wrong, in order to 
 spare myself a greater one, of his inflicting. Then it grieved me ; 
 now it roused all the latent anger of my soul, and I answered, 
 with eyes that flashed more than words could utter and they 
 came sharply and saucily enough after a minute of indignant, 
 scornful gazing at him : 
 
 " I have been clothed in rags ever since I came here. My 
 father was ashamed and shocked at the sight of me, and aunt 
 got me away, and put on my best frock, as quick as she could. 
 My clothes have always been the worst that any child in all 
 the country wore. And now, because I have one good frock, 
 and am not contented, to dress in it sometimes, and be a fool, I 
 am accused of being ungrateful ! I am not ungrateful. But I 
 wouldn't thank anybody for gowns of gold, if I hud to stay 
 here to wear them I" 
 
 Uncle looked at me a short time in silence. Then he laid his
 
 264 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 hand on mine again, and said : " This is not right, Eliza. It is 
 very saucy in you to speak so to me ; and if I were like some 
 people, I should box your ears soundly." 
 
 " But you won't do it, uncle, because you know what I say is 
 true ; and because you never mean to do wrong to anybody. If 
 I had thought you did, I shouldn't have spoken to you at all." 
 
 " What would you have done then, Eliza ?" 
 
 " I should have gone away without asking anything of 
 you." 
 
 " Gone away !" he repeated ; " have you thought of such a 
 thing, my dear child ?" 
 
 "Yes, I have ; and I mean to do it!" determining not to be 
 moved by his remonstrative, tender tone. " I mean to go, uncle, 
 unless unless you will tell me that you will certainly send me to 
 school before I am fourteen." 
 
 " When will that be ?" he asked. 
 
 " In about eight months." 
 
 " Time enough yet." 
 
 " There is not time for me to wait, though, dear uncle, with- 
 out knowing something for certain." 
 
 His silence, after this, conveyed to me a deeper sense of his 
 difficulty in the case, than words could have, and so confirmed 
 my belief that I had nothing to hope from him. 
 
 " Uncle," I said, " is it because it would cost a good deal of 
 money to send me to school, that I am kept here ?" 
 
 " No, ElizA," he answered ; and I believed him, for there was 
 no touch of the miser in him. 
 
 " What then ?" 
 
 " Why, child, you know your aunt doesn't wish to spare you 
 from the house." 
 
 " But can she do it better when I am older ?" 
 
 " I don't see that she can," he replied ; " but she always says, 
 ' By and by next year will be time enough,' and so on. I dd* 
 think, though, Eliza, that you shall go in another year. It 
 really will not do to put it off any longer."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 265 
 
 " Uncle," I said, " that doesn't satisfy me ; and nothing will, 
 but your promising me, as you would promise a man with whom 
 you were doing business, that if we both live till the haying and 
 harvesting are over, next summer, I shall go to school, whether 
 aunt is willing or not." 
 
 " I cannot promise you that, child, because I might not be 
 able to do it." 
 
 " Would it be aunt's unwillingness only, that would hinder 
 your doing it ?" I asked. 
 
 " That might hinder me, if it were very great, but other things 
 might, also ; though I don't know of anything that would." 
 
 This settled my mind at once. It cut off all hope from them, 
 and threw me upon my own energies and decision, as effectually 
 as if they had died at that moment. They were dead to me, and 
 my future. 
 
 I resumed my sewing. The argument was over. It was now 
 with myself alone that I had to debate. Uncle relighted his 
 pipe, and seemed much relieved by my return to my work. I 
 can scarcely understand that lack of penetration in a person of 
 so much worth, and such a degree of earnestness ; but he seemed 
 to think I was set at rest, and therefore to be pleased himself. 
 He made a remark on some subject quite foreign to the late one, 
 and I replied to it ; but then, I said : " Forgive me, dear uncle, 
 if I say a few words more about the school business. They will 
 be the last. How much money would it cost to send me to school 
 a year ?" 
 
 " I suppose two or three hundred dollars where you will go. 
 You see it is very dear but I don't think of that. It isn't the 
 want of money that hinders your going, as I said before." 
 
 " And you would pay that for me, if I went ?" I asked, quite 
 breathless at the idea. I had so little notion of money, or its 
 value, that I was astounded. The only amount I had ever 
 thought of longer than while I was counting it, was what Miss 
 Miller had told me I should want to get home with and it was 
 scarcely more than an eighth of the smallest sum he had named.
 
 266 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Yes," he said ; " I should pay that for you ; and you would 
 have a good deal more for clothing and pocket money. When 
 you go, you shall be as handsomely provided as any girl you'll 
 find there. I won't have it asked, ' Whose child is that, so shabby, 
 and without money ?' " 
 
 The blood mounted by successive whirls into my head at these 
 words. I was almost blinded by the mist that floated before my 
 eyes for a moment ; but I hardened myself resolutely, and by a 
 great effort, said : " Thank you, uncle ; I know you would be 
 very kind to me, if you could, and we could be very happy if 
 if you were really my father," I said at last, not able to say, " if 
 aunt were gone." 
 
 " I am all the father you have now, my dear," he said, with 
 swimming eyes, passing his hand over my head. " You never 
 were much better for the one you had, while he lived, and I will 
 be a better fother to you than he ever was." 
 
 How bitterly I thought, at that moment, that my lot had 
 never been much better for anybody's living then I corrected 
 myself, and thought, with reverential tenderness any but 
 one I" 
 
 I wished now to be alone, to think. I had decided that there 
 was nothing to wait for further that I had only to do whatever 
 was to be done, as early as possible. But when I lay down in 
 my icy bed, which had never seemed so cold and desolate as that 
 night, because my courage was not at heat point, some good 
 spirit seemed to suggest the thought : " Ask him for the money 
 to go home with, and tell him that you are determined to go ; 
 and then, if he refuses, you can have no more doubt." I slept 
 upon this, and next morning, while aunt was occupied a few 
 moments elsewhere, I said, as if our conversation had not been 
 liroken off : " Uncle, will you give me money enough to go home 
 with, to my own uncle, and my brothers and sisters ?" 
 
 " Good God, child ! how can you ask me that ?" he exclaimed, 
 in a tone and with a look that quite frightened me. "No I I 
 have you go for anything." And after a moment, he
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 267 
 
 added : " My dear Eliza, what in the world are you so torment- 
 ing yourself and me for ? Have you anything new in your 
 head ?" 
 
 " No," I replied ; " nothing but what I have thought of a 
 great while, and spoken often to you about." 
 
 It was strange. He seemed to regard all my earnest talk as 
 childish dreams or idle words. He soon learned it was not. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 " The true soul holdeth its own law." 
 
 THAT afternoon a nephew of his came to our house a youth 
 named Porter whom I had often seen, but rarely spoken to. I 
 looked hard into his face, while he sat talking, to see if he could 
 be trusted, and finally made up my mind to speak to him. I 
 watched for him outside, standing many inches deep in the snow, 
 in a place where we could not be seen from the windows, and 
 when he came out I said, addressing him by his Christian name : 
 " Would you carry a message for me to Miss Miller ?" 
 
 " Yes ; what is it ?" 
 
 " I am going to their house to stay." 
 
 He started and looked immeasurably astonished. 
 
 " Don't speak of it td any one," I said, " till I am gone not 
 any one and ask her when I shall come, and who will take my 
 trunk for me ?" 
 
 " I'll take it myself," he said, enthusiastically. " Don't ask 
 anybody else. I should like to help you away from here. I'll 
 up now, and ask Miss Miller, and bring you word." 
 
 " You need not return to-night," I said ; " I might not get an 
 opportunity of speaking to you. It will do in the morning, and, 
 if Miss Miller says so, I will go to-morrow night, after they are 
 all in bed here."
 
 268 MY EAELT DATS. 
 
 " It will be very bad walking," he said, " and it wouldn't do, 
 I suppose, to come for you." 
 
 " Never mind the walking, I can do it, and could if it were a 
 great deal worse. I don't care for such little things at all." 
 
 I -went into the house, feeling that I had taken a great step 
 towards passing the barrier that shut me in. All the evening I 
 was conscious at times of appearing abstracted, and had to re- 
 call myself frequently, to my immediate occupations, and the 
 thoughts and words suitable to them. 
 
 In the morning the message came from Miss Miller, that I was 
 to go to her that night, if I thought best. The messenger would 
 take my trunk and accompany me, at any time that I would ap- 
 point. I said half-past nine, and if anything happened that 
 would prevent my going, I was to give him a signal, by a light at 
 a certain window, in a room that was usually dark. 
 
 What an age of emotion I lived through on that day I Sad- 
 ness and joy, apprehension and expectation, occupied me alter- 
 nately. I was burning and freezing by turns, according to the 
 character of my predominant feelings. The taking my money 
 had become a trifling event amid the ultimate purposes and 
 thoughts that divided me, but when I stood at the drawer count- 
 ing it, I wished I could know if Miss Miller had told me what 
 was sufficient to purchase meals on my journey, as well as to pay 
 the people for carrying me, because in that case I could take a 
 few dollars less, and do without food or work for it. Indiffer- 
 ence in this was one of my strongest characteristics. I thought 
 I could live many days without eating more than a bit of bread 
 with water, or something equally simple. I was only difficult in 
 the cleanliness of what I ate, and could never overcome au in- 
 tense disgust I had felt on two or three occasions when, as a little 
 child, some grown person's half-filled plate had been placed before 
 me to take a meal from. I could have fasted a whole day easier 
 than have tasted a morsel from it. 
 
 At this time I balanced in my mind the probability of having 
 something offered to me thus offensively if I were not quite hide-
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 269 
 
 pendent, and I held a three-dollar note some moments in my 
 hand before I could decide whether to take it, or risk the charities 
 of the long road. It just made, in addition to those I already 
 held, the sum specified, but I dropped it back into the drawer, 
 as a strong wave of self-reliance swept over my soul. " I shall 
 at any rate get near enough home without that," I said, "to get 
 on the remainder of the way somehow or other." 
 
 I took the money early in the morning, because I had a kind 
 of satisfaction in giving them an opportunity of missing it before 
 I should leave the house ; but this did not happen, though I was 
 made very nervous between the hope and fear that it might 
 once especially when a man came to receive some money which 
 uncle was to pay him that day. When he left my room, with 
 the notes in his hand, I looked into his face, but saw nothing 
 there different from the careless expression of easy good-nature 
 with which he always paid money that he owed. It seemed to 
 be one of his great pleasures, and it increased my respect for 
 him immensely now, when, for the first time, I had some notion 
 of the value of money and the importance it must give one. 
 For I had balanced in my mind the having plenty or being a 
 beggar on the road, till I saw that a few dollars more or less 
 would make a vast difference in one's feelings. 
 
 I felt such an absence of all meanness in uncle, as I pondered 
 these things after the man was gone, that I believe I should 
 have gone to him and told him that I was going home, and how, 
 but for the thought of what he had said when I asked him to 
 give me money for that purpose. I knew he would never wil- 
 lingly consent to my leaving in any way, and so I had to bury 
 my thoughts, and endeavor to appear as natural and uncon- 
 strained as possible.
 
 270 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 " Courage was cast about her like a dress 
 Of solemn comeliness ; 
 A gathered mind and an untroubled face 
 Did give her danger's grace." 
 
 THE short winter day, which had been sunny and warm, with 
 occasional flocks of fleecy clouds leaning against the high, blue 
 heavens, came to a close. Just before sunset a grey mist spread 
 itself over the earth, threatening storm, and the bland air and 
 softened, damp snow indicated that it would be rain. This 
 parting of the seasons had always been particularly delightful 
 to me. A warm rain late in winter, when I knew the spring 
 was near at hand, had a peculiar charm. It seemed to put 
 away the past and open the beautiful future. I hated the winter. 
 My love of the beautiful was not pure and strong enough, per- 
 haps, to enable me to rejoice in its magnificent sternness, its fan- 
 tastic traceries, its wide-spread silence, and vast, pure monotony 
 of white. 
 
 The late dinner was over, and I stood long in the snow where 
 the tents had been, thinking. I did not grieve, for now the bat 
 tie had commenced in which he had foretold I should be victor. 
 It was no time for idle lamentation or mourning. I rather 
 wished, under the new circumstances, to renew the by-gone to 
 burnish to a brighter lustre, the golden links that bound me at 
 once to that spot in the past, and to the highest possible in the 
 future. I was healthy, and therefore I felt myself equal to any 
 exertion. I was enthusiastic, and therefore entirely hopeful. I 
 was aspiring and earnest, and therefore as resolute as the lion- 
 hunter, who penetrates the jungle while it is yet vibrating to the
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 271 
 
 roar and march of his enemy. Nothing, I then resolved, should 
 turn me back not even my concern for uncle, which was the 
 ouly vulnerable point in the whole view. I was repairing and 
 steeling this all the evening. Quite unconscious, quite unwarned 
 by any work, or look,, or act, though I felt as if heaven and 
 earth must witness all, he sat and read, and talked, and smoked 
 till nine o'clock. Then he rose to retire, and after he had 
 entered his sleeping-room called to tell me, that he wished me 
 to be up wry early next morning ; he had to go from home, and 
 wanted an early breakfast. This was a new difficulty. I could 
 not utter the falsehood of a promise, yet I must reply. 
 
 " Do you hear me, child ?" he asked, after waiting for my 
 answer. 
 
 " Yes, uncle. Will you have hot corn-cakes for your break- 
 fast ? I have learned how to make them very nicely now." 
 
 " Yes, make me some ; and fry some ham and eggs." 
 
 I could not answer I will ; but he said no more, and in a few 
 minutes was asleep. Aunt followed him directly, after bidding 
 me go to bed at once, which ^promised to do, rising at the 
 same time. It was so strange, at that moment, to feel the dif- 
 ference between them. I cared nothing about saying to her 
 what was true or untrue. Falsehood seemed to lose its real 
 character when uttered to her for any furtherance of my plans. 
 I felt her evil presence so broadly and viciously, that the ne- 
 cessity to escape it became a clear instinct ; and she, as creating 
 it, sunk quite below the line of moral relation to me. I spoke 
 to her without concern or feeling, except a secret joy that I 
 should see her no more. 
 
 As soon as she retired I went to my room. I had previously 
 packed my very small wardrobe into my trunk, and now I put 
 on the little green hood that had been made for me three or 
 four years before, and which was consequently a great deal too 
 small ; my only shawl, which was a cotton one I had brought 
 from the home I was going back to, and my woollen mittens. I 
 lifted the trunk and placed it in the front passage, and, having
 
 272 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 extinguished the candle, opened the door carefully and passed 
 out. It was not more than ten minutes from the time I left the fire- 
 side till I left the hateful threshold, as I hoped and believed, 
 for the last time. My escort had not yet come, and while I was 
 waiting for him my soul was filled with strength and content- 
 ment, the first fruits of the great step I was taking. I had for- 
 gotten where I was, and how I came there, when a low voice 
 close to me said : " You are before the time, I guess, but never 
 mind." And then to my astonishment he added, that the rain 
 had made the walking more sloppy than ever. 
 
 " Has it rained," I asked, " since dark ?" 
 
 "Why, it's raining now, I should say," he replied. "Turn 
 your face towards the sky, and you'll feel it, I guess." 
 
 " It is very strange," I said ; " my face is already wet, because 
 my hood doesn't cover it, but I did not know it till you spoke." 
 
 " I hope you are not going crazy for joy," he said. 
 
 " Oh, no !" I replied, quietly; v there is no danger of that." 
 
 By this time we were several rods from the house, and through 
 the dark, I thought I saw a horse standing beside the fence. It 
 startled me, and I inquired, in a whisper, what it meant. 
 
 " It is one that I rode down to take this up on," said young 
 Porter, lodging the trunk, at the same moment, on the fence, at 
 the animal's head. " I couldn't carry it through the snow and 
 water a mile or more. You must help to get it up before me, 
 and then you can ride behind, if you like ; he is gentle 
 enough." 
 
 " No, I thank you. I'll help you with the trunk, but I would 
 rather walk." 
 
 " You'll find it very wet," he said ; " and I think it's foolish to 
 walk, when you can ride. But you always are odd." 
 
 " I expect," I said, with a thought he was not very likely to 
 understand, " to have to walk all my life, and I may as well 
 begin at once." 
 
 " Well, suit yourself," he replied, in an indifferent tone ; " I 
 am glad I am not going all the way with you, though."
 
 MY EAELT DATS. 273 
 
 When we reached the house, which I had never before entered, 
 my garments were wet through above my knees, and the rain, 
 though very light, and falling gently, had dampened my upper 
 clothing very much. But I was warm without being heated, and 
 so calm, that my friends looked at me in astonishment. I told 
 Miss Miller, in a few words, what I had done, and wished to do, 
 all which she and her sister warmly approved. I did not see 
 the husband. He had retired. We sat by the fire, and talked till 
 my garments were dry, and then my friend took me up to share 
 her bed. No one alluded to what was likely to happen in the 
 morning, when I should be missed, and I said nothing about it ; 
 though before I slept, it began to occupy and disturb my mind 
 not a little. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 " The trust I have is in mine innocence ; 
 And therefore, I am bold and resolute." 
 
 I WAS awakened early by a noise at the outside door; and, as 
 my faculties came slowly and reluctantly out of the blessed un- 
 consciousness of sleep, I found myself sitting up in a bed, alone, 
 listening to a voice which, I thought, uttered my name. Some 
 quiet words followed, which I could not make out ; and, by and 
 by, I heard footsteps ascending the stairs. I was already half 
 dressed, when my friend entered the room, with an excited and 
 defiant face. I knew there was something to be heard. 
 
 " What is it, Miss Miller ?" I asked. 
 
 "Nothing to be alarmed at," she replied, kindly. "Mrs. 
 Smalley is down-stairs." 
 
 " Has she come here ? I thought she never would, for any- 
 thing." 
 
 " For nothing but you, I think. She wants to take you 
 back." 
 
 12*
 
 274 MY EAELT DATS. 
 
 " Bat I am not going ! You may tell her so." 
 
 " Will you come down and speak to her ? you need not be 
 afraid of her here. I think she is more disturbed than angry at 
 your leaving her." 
 
 " I won't speak to her," I said, " if yon will tell her, for me, 
 that I am going home, and how much money I have here it is; 
 you can show it to her and, that if she would give me a 
 hundred tunes as much, I would not go back to her 
 house!" 
 
 Miss Miller took the little roll of notes there were twenty- 
 five dollars, and she had told me I should want twenty-eight. 
 She did not open them then, but stood, looking thoughtfully 
 down, till I became alarmed, and said : "Is there any new 
 trouble, Miss Miller, that makes you think so long?" 
 
 "No," she replied, slowly, looking up; "nothing but what I 
 ought to have foreseen, but did not. It is very odd, certainly. 
 But don't make yourself uneasy," she added, lightly, after a 
 moment, going towards the stairs. " I'll manage it." She went 
 down two or three steps, and then, suddenly returning, said : 
 " Come down, and stop on the last stair, if you will not go into 
 the room, and you can hear all that passes. You will know bet- 
 ter, then, than if I relate it to you." 
 
 I went, more to comply with her request, thau from any inter- 
 est in what was likely to be said. When she entered the room, 
 the first words were from aunt : " Where is that foolish, obsti- 
 nate girl ?" 
 
 I was quite bewildered at the gentleness of the speech, as well 
 as the tone in which it was spoken. I expected to hear railing 
 and abuse of the sharpest kind. 
 
 "She refuses *to see you, madam," said Miss Miller. 
 
 " \Vlmt is she going to do ?" 
 
 " She wishes to go home to her friends." 
 
 " She shall not go in this way, though, if I can help it. Who 
 is going to help her there ? Has thee got money to give her ?" 
 she asked, with an unmistakable sneer.
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 275 
 
 " If I had," replied my friend, warmly, " you may rest assured 
 she would have it." 
 
 " Why didn't she ask me for money, and wait till she could 
 travel." 
 
 " Would you, then, have given it her ?" asked Miss Miller. 
 
 " Yes, and think myself well rid of her. She has been the 
 plague of my life, ever since I had her." 
 
 " Excuse me, madam, if I help your memory," said Miss Mil- 
 ler. " Report does you great injustice, if you have not had 
 several, besides her, nearly as bad. We hear that your relations 
 to every one are most unhappy, and people naturally feel inter- 
 ested for an orphan child, who is unprotected and friendless 
 among people that are violent and unjust. I do not accuse your 
 husband, madam ; my words are intended to apply to yourself 
 alone." 
 
 There was a silence. Presently Miss Miller said, in an earnest, 
 impressive tone : " I have no wish, Mrs. Smalley, to injure your 
 feelings, or rouse your anger against myself, or any one else. 
 I said what I did, because I love to speak my thoughts honestly, 
 and because I believe that you must yourself be capable of feel- 
 ing, in some measure, the truth of what I said. Think calmly, 
 for one moment, if you can, how you have treated Eliza these 
 six years, and I am sure you will feel that, if she were your 
 daughter, deprived of father and mother, and so situated, you 
 would wish her to find friendly help somewhere." 
 
 " What does she want now ?" asked aunt, abruptly, after a 
 moment's pause, refusing to admit any degree of conviction. 
 
 " She wants, as I have told you, to go home." 
 
 " She told my husband she wanted to go to school." 
 
 " Yes, she does ; but it is impossible she should do so, till 
 she gets among her friends." 
 
 " Friends! She has no friends! They are beggars, from first 
 to last ! Her father, I believe, was something worse than 
 that!" 
 
 " She is more unfortunate, then, than I thought," said Miss
 
 276 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 Miller, " and more entitled to help and sympathy from 
 strangers." 
 
 "But thee is a woman of common sense," said annt, impa- 
 tiently, " and thee knows nobody can travel five or six hundred 
 miles without money. Where is Eliza to get enough to go 
 with ?" 
 
 " That has been thought of," said my friend, " before you 
 asked the question." 
 
 I was astonished and vexed at her indirectness. Why didn't 
 she tell her, and show her the money, at once. For, since my 
 talk with uncle, I had come to regard it as a very small part of 
 what he had acknowledged, in effect, to be mine, which no one 
 would question my right to. 
 
 " It is thought," she added, after a minute's pause, " that 
 you owe her many times the sum required to pay her way to her 
 friends." 
 
 " If we do," was the answer, " I'm thinking it'll be hard work 
 to get it. My husband shall never give her a dollar, unless she 
 comes back, and behaves as she ought to." 
 
 " Suppose we already had it ?" said Miss Miller. 
 
 II What does thee mean ?" 
 
 " Suppose we already had enough of what you justly owe her, 
 to carry her home ?" 
 
 "Has John been fool enough?" she began, passion- 
 ately. 
 
 " No, no," said Miss Miller ; " he has done nothing of the 
 sort." 
 
 " How did she get it, then ?" 
 
 11 She took it for herself." 
 
 " Stole it ?" 
 
 "No," replied my friend, in a full, strong utterance; "we, 
 Eliza's friends, call it giving you a large debt, for the payment 
 of a very small portion of it. Here is the money. I don't know 
 how much ten, fifteen, twenty-five twenty-five dollars! Ex- 
 cuse me," she said, apparently in answer to an offer or attempt
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 277 
 
 to take it from her hand ; " excuse me it was put in my keep- 
 ing, and I shall return it to the owner." 
 
 " I'll put you both in prison," was the passionate exclamation, 
 when she next spoke. 
 
 " You will hardly put me in prison," said Miss Miller, " and 
 therefore it is not worth my while to answer your threat, for 
 myself. But if Eliza could be sent, I should deserve to go with 
 her, for I first advised her taking this money, and had a great 
 deal of difficulty to persuade her that it would be right. But I 
 told her to get more than she has here. This is not enough." 
 
 " Are you all grown mad or fools ?" exclaimed aunt, almost 
 unable, between rage and astonishment, to speak. " You talk 
 to her about stealing money, as if" 
 
 " As if," said Mrs. Miller, coming to her help, " we were not 
 at all ashamed or sorry; and we are not, I assure you. You 
 are able to call the act by a disgraceful name, but its real char- 
 acter depends on the circumstances and motives which justify it, 
 and those are so entirely right, and so generally acknowledged, 
 that if they are made more public than they already are, yon 
 will be the disgraced party. I have not spoken to a man or 
 woman since I have been in the country, who does not feel and 
 talk as I do, about it, and if you should attempt to prosecute or 
 injure the child, friends would rise up for her everywhere, and 
 you would be scorned, while she would be protected and aided 
 in spite of you." 
 
 "The little wretch 1" were the next words; and as they were 
 hissed, rather than spoken, I entered the room. I could bear 
 my position no longer, for though I had not been agitated by 
 what I had heard, I did not like being witness to a conver- 
 sation which one party was ignorant of my hearing ; and I 
 wished also to explain why I had brought but twenty-five 
 instead of twenty-eight dollars. I looked full into the face of my 
 old tormentor, but did not speak a word that she could consider 
 as addressed to her, but went on to tell Miss Miller of my talk 
 with uncle, and of the expense he said he was ready to incur to
 
 278 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 send me to school, if his wife were willing ; and that this had 
 made me anxious to get along with the least amount that was 
 possible; and I added, " I thought if I got as far as the twenty- 
 five dollars would carry me, I should certainly be able to get 
 home from there somehow or other." By the time I had finished 
 speaking, aunt's anger appeared to have subsided. I do not 
 know if some slenderest vein of human tenderness, at that 
 moment, poured its softening current into her heart, or if it were 
 a great effort at dissimulation, of which, under certain circum- 
 stances, she was capable to a profound degree; but Miss Miller 
 had no chance to reply to my words, before she said, " Eliza, 
 come home with me. Thy uncle feels very bad at thy con- 
 duct." 
 
 " Why didn't he come and see me, then ?" I asked. 
 
 " Because he doesn't like to come to this house," she said; " I 
 didn't myself; but one of us had to." 
 
 " I should like to see uncle," I said, " and tell him about the 
 money ; for it seems to me a little different since it has been 
 talked over ; but I can't go there to see him." 
 
 " I want thee to come back," she said, " and stay." 
 
 " But I never shall do it; I want to go home." 
 
 " Why didn't thee go with thy father when he was here, and 
 not wait to act so like like a little bad girl ?" 
 
 The last words she uttered with a very ill grace, and I knew 
 just as well as if she had uttered them, that the worst she could 
 have spoken would have suited her much better. They did not 
 deceive me at all. 
 
 " I can't tell you," I replied, " why I did not go with my 
 father. I wanted to very much ; but that is more than two years 
 ago, and I am a great deal worse off now than I was then, be- 
 cause I am so much older." 
 
 " If thee will go home with me now, thee shall go to school 
 next snmmer." 
 
 " You have said so many times," I said, " but I have never 
 gone."
 
 MT EARLY DATS. 279 
 
 " But thee shall now ; I will promise it in presence of thy 
 friend, here." 
 
 " I don't know that the promise would be more binding on 
 that account," said Miss Miller, severely. 
 
 It would be tedious to relate the long conversation which fol- 
 lowed. Let it suffice that I at last acceded to her wish, after 
 she had been strongly hedged in with promises, which, as Miss 
 Miller said, if she did not keep, with tolerable faithfulness, 
 would be a sufficient reason, on her own showing, for my leaving 
 her at any time. What was of the greatest importance to me, I 
 bound her to most strongly, the privilege of books, reading, and 
 study. I did not care so very much for another six months 
 there, if I could be helping myself in these ways; and so I went 
 back with comparative indifference, and a sense, on the whole, 
 of partial victory. I had asserted myself to the extent of 
 making my position much less oppressive, and I felt that having 
 taken this step, it would be easier, if it were necessary, to take a 
 second and final one, when the right time should come. 
 
 Miss Miller left me to decide f or myself, but when I had 
 done so, she encouraged and advised me very faithfully. " One 
 of two things you will see done now," she said, " either they 
 will treat you better, or they will keep the money-drawer locked 
 from you. If that is done you will soon see that you are no 
 better off. But I am more reconciled to your going back, be- 
 cause if she could get her husband to charge you with stealing 
 this money don't flush so painfully, child, it would prevent yon 
 from going home, at present, for then you would hare to wait 
 till you are fourteen, and choose a guardian, who might possibly 
 get something from them for your services. The lawyers tell 
 me it might be done, but it would take forever, and cost a deal 
 of money too. I am better content as it is with you, and you 
 will be able to right yourself in future, I think."
 
 280 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 1 Thou strivest nobly, 
 
 When hearts of sterner stuff perhaps had sunk." 
 
 UNCLE was very glad to see me back in his house again, and I 
 did not conceal from him that his pleasure was the only positive 
 satisfaction I found in being there. I took my usual tasks, with 
 more than my former alacrity ; for I felt a conscientious obliga- 
 tion, as well as an ardent wish, to put nothing in the way of my 
 stipulated privileges. The common discomforts and petty annoy- 
 ances of my position were trifles which I should have despised 
 myself for complaining of now. But this consuming desire to 
 know ; this iron purpose, that would bend to nothing that I 
 could not fold away, to slumber, by any effort of my will this, 
 I felt I could now satisfy, in a degree, with the dignity that my 
 new liberty gave me ; and I would make it as large and perfect 
 as my efforts could. 
 
 Thus I enlarged my knowledge of arithmetic enough to have 
 a notion of the difference between the four fundamental pro- 
 cesses, and to be able to perform addition and multiplication 
 with tolerable facility. Books were very scarce among those 
 rude people ; but being free to seek them, as I never had been 
 before, I found here and there a volume which helped me essen- 
 tially. I was permitted to practise writing ; occasionally re- 
 quired to assist in making up accounts, and the post-office 
 rutnrus ; and left to examine and close the mail, which, this 
 year, came to us tri-weekly. After a little training, I was able 
 to be quite useful in this way ; and uncle used to call me his 
 clerk, and give me orders, with immense satisfaction. 
 
 I was very seldom now told that I was a fool. I was never
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 281 
 
 personally abused, and only had to take my share of a violence 
 that flowed out, at times, upon everybody within its reach. I 
 did not, therefore, feel degraded by it. The increased respect 
 with which I was treated, was like sunshine to a growing plant. 
 I no longer was driven to those wild speculations which had, 
 except in times of calm resolution, so shadowed my inner life 
 with distrust of the possible. I felt myself, slowly, indeed, but 
 actually, growing into something like the reality of my long- 
 cherished dreams. 
 
 I gave Miss Miller accounts of my going on, when I saw her 
 occasionally, at a neighbor's (for she came no more to our 
 house) ; and they seemed so satisfactory to her, that I was more 
 strengthened in my hope that all would yet be right, than I 
 could be by any conclusions of my own mind. I had a great 
 respect for Miss Miller. Without loving her, as I thought I 
 should have, two years before, had she shown me the same kind- 
 ness, I felt a clearness and courage in her, which edged my own 
 up to their highest efficiency. I relied very much on her. 
 
 " Their not keeping the money locked from yon," she said, one 
 day, " is the most encouraging thing you tell me. I think they 
 mean right, or they would do that." 
 
 "But," I said, "if all were wrong, and I meant to go away, I 
 should never touch that again. I should try some other plan. 
 I feel much better since I have gone back, and more as if I 
 could do something for myself ; and, besides, uncle's trusting 
 and treating me so kindly, would make it impossible for me to 
 do anything again that would seem a wrong to him. If I don't 
 go to school this summer or fall, at the latest, I shall write home 
 to my own uncle, to come for me. I can do it now, whenever I 
 like to.
 
 282 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 " Long have I sighed for a calm ; 
 God grant I may find it at last !" 
 
 THE summer tasks the heavy dairying, and the large family 
 always seemed to have a bad effect on aunt's temper. She grew 
 more irritable, and exacting, aud impatient, till they were done. 
 I could not then understand, what I now do, that her aggravated 
 tempers, in those times, were due to her over-tasked condition, 
 and ought, therefore, to excite the feeling nearest akiu to sym- 
 pathy, that could be exercised towards her. But, even at the 
 worst, this season, she treated me with a fuller recognition of 
 my human life than ever before ; and I bore whatever came in 
 times when she seemed to forget this, with a patient self-respect, 
 because I believed that the time of my reward was at hand. 
 
 When the haying and grain harvest were over, I looked, daily, 
 for some broaching of the great change which I thought I stood 
 on the verge of. Whenever we then were by ourselves, I was 
 thinking the first words would be about my leaving home. 
 AY hen uncle began to speak to me alone, I felt a glow of expec- 
 tation steal over me. When aunt sat down, in the afternoons, 
 and called me to comb her hair which, though small, I was 
 now able to do without the footstool I listened at every word 
 for those which my ears ached to hear. Thus, week after week 
 of the fall season went by, and I was fast growing into a proud, 
 bitter sense of being wronged, in the face of every sort of 
 deserving that I had been able to exercise and settling into a 
 state of despair, which always preceded desperate resolving with 
 me, when a calamity came upon us which caused me to forget, 
 for many weeks, myself and my wishes.
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 283 
 
 Aunt was seized with a violent illness. A malignant fever 
 prevailed, in the late fall and through the winter ; and she was 
 one of many who suffered from it. I was then nurse and house- 
 keeper, with the help of uncle in the former capacity, and the 
 boy in some of the coarser offices of the latter. It was a very 
 heavy season to me. The mysterious phenomena of a violent 
 illness, which, for many days, darkened the infirm soul, oppressed 
 me fearfully. I had never witnessed it before. My labor, too, 
 was ceaseless. It involved, often, the loss of rest, and destroyed 
 my appetite. For many days, we expected death ; and that 
 banished, from hour to hour, every possibility of repose. She 
 had often boasted her belief that death was the end of all ; and 
 my soul recoiled from its approach now, with an inconceivable 
 horror. Yet I could not restrain myself from speculating upon 
 what, if it were not this, it would be to her a spirit so trailed 
 in the dust of passion and madness ; so defiant and unloving. I 
 was very miserable with all these thoughts, and this never-ending 
 toil and care ; so that, at last, when what the doctor called the 
 crisis, was past, and I saw her took better than ever before, 
 because subdued and dependent, I was obliged to ask uncle to get 
 somebody for a few days, for I really was incapable of going on. 
 
 " Yes, to be sure," he said, " I ought to have thought of that 
 before ; I hope you are not going to have the fever too. Let 
 me see your tongue." 
 
 " No," I said, " I don't mean to have it, however my tongue 
 looks ; I am only very tired." And I did not have it, chiefly, I 
 believe, as the doctor, who was impudent, coarse, and thoroughly 
 detestable to me, said, ' because I had such a devilish will, and 
 wouldn't let it come on.' But I lagged about in a very miser- 
 able condition for several days, without appetite or sleep ; sec- 
 ing the winter come on, and ray last hope of getting away, die 
 out utterly, before the flying snows of December, and aunt's still 
 prostrate condition. I had completed my fourteenth year, dur- 
 ing that season of wretchedness, and now I was thoroughly de- 
 spondent. There was at least no hope till another spring.
 
 284 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 Before she was recovered sufficiently to leave her bed, a man, 
 a laborer on the farm, was taken down of the same illness ; and 
 he had to be nursed many weeks, which uncle used kindly to try 
 to cheer me through, by praising my courage in resisting the dis- 
 ease, and saying jocose, pleasant things about our common house- 
 keeping. But I could not be cheered. A great, and final dis- 
 appoiutment seemed settling down upon me, which it took all 
 my philosophy to bear, without open rebellion. That winter 
 was a very severe one the coldest and most snowy I could 
 remember ever to have seen. It seemed as I used to look out 
 upon the grim acres of huge snow-banks, and see fresh supplies 
 falling upon them from the grey, sullen clouds, that nature, too, 
 was in the conspiracy against me. For I felt every adverse cir- 
 cumstance, as an unfriendly act from some remote, vague per- 
 sonality somewhere, which I should probably have called my 
 fate, or fortune, or destiny, or by some name that would give me 
 a right to expect better things of it. 
 
 At length the snow began sensibly to diminish ; bare spots 
 appeared in the fields and meadows, and one night a warm rain 
 commenced falling after I went to bed, and when I rose in the 
 morning, the first pulsation of joy I had known for many months 
 stirred my heart, at sight of the naked, brown earth. It 
 unlocked the prison doors of my spirit. Already I felt more 
 free, and when, in a few days, the wild-fowl were heard, I was 
 for a short season again happy. The spring marched on with 
 rapid and unbroken pace. It was like those magical days I had 
 read of, which come in that season, in the high northern latitudes. 
 From morning to night I fancied I could see a visible change in 
 the vegetation along the sunny bank of the creek, which had 
 raged in its maddest height when the snow was carried off so 
 suddenly. And in sheltered places in the orchard and meadows, 
 I had buds and unfolding leaves of ground-plants by which I 
 measured the advance of the season. 
 
 With all this return of life came back my resolution. I 
 thought and felt no longer as a child. I would have no more
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 285 
 
 experiments like those of the last year nor be any longer pal- 
 tered with by promises. Miss Miller had returned to her home 
 in a neighboring State, with the first possible travelling, and so 
 I had no longer any confidential friend. Of the other good 
 people who had befriended me, there was not more than one or 
 two, whoin I could understand, now that I was reasonably well 
 treated in the family, why I should not be content ; and I thus 
 felt that my strength and help must come from my own soul. 
 One circumstance that was pleasant to me at this season, I 
 have omitted to mention. Mr. Kadford came with his wife and 
 their two little children to live in" a part of our house, a large, 
 new part, as yet in a very rude, unfinished state. I had not 
 seen much of them since that event, which, four years before, 
 had introduced a new era into my life. Whatever happened to 
 me, I reckoned from that after or before, as we date from the 
 time of Christ. 
 
 Mr. Eadford was the same good friend he had ever been, to 
 the extent that was possible with his enlarged personal interests. 
 His wife was much more than she had been when I was the 
 strange, selfish-looking child of those past years. She had grown 
 in her character of mother, and I in years and nature, till we 
 were separated but by a small distance now, measured by that 
 which had divided us on the night when we compared ages the 
 night that closed that day so memorable to me. Her children 
 were a delight to uncle and me. They were beautiful and 
 sweet as the flower-buds which come between the desolation of 
 the past, and the full glory of the future. I had but once before 
 enjoyed the delight of being with babies, but for a rare hour or 
 two. They were a new revelation to me, and gave me many 
 hours of the most exquisite happiness. 
 
 The mouth of April came, and brought with it no indications 
 of a change in my fortunes, nor any tidings from my sisters, 
 which I had expected all winter. I was at this time intrusted 
 with most of the ordinary post-office business, and the books 
 were seldom examined after me, so that I determined about the
 
 286 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 tenth of that month to write to my uncle in New York, a letter 
 so decided that it would bring him to me at once. I followed it 
 the next week by a second, fearing the first might miscarry, in 
 both which, I engaged to wait where I was, the requisite time 
 for the letter to go and the journey to be performed and one 
 week beside. After that, if nobody came, I informed him I 
 should leave my present home, and do what was possible for 
 myself, but I could not at all conjecture where or what that 
 would be. No one knew of my writing but Mrs. Eadford, and 
 she was very desponding as to the result. To myself I am not 
 aware that there seemed at that time much choice. I was full 
 of health and resolution; life had flowed into my soul from the 
 gorgeous season which sat enthroned in glory among the bloom- 
 ing orchard trees, and in the great forests and tender meadows. 
 The beautiful children had touched a new and full fountain of 
 love aud strength in my heart, and existence was a larger and 
 clearer thing to me by all that most Divine instinct to which 
 they appealed, which had before slumbered. There was more 
 to live and struggle for, and my strength seemed proportionably 
 increased. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 " Fare thee well, old world ! Fare thee well, old world !" 
 
 I HAD engaged to wait seven weeks from the time of my last 
 writing. They had passed and no letter or person came to me. 
 It was Tuesday evening, the last day of my waiting. Aunt had 
 visitors, and Mrs. Radford was at tea with them. The stage 
 came late, and the mail was tumbled into the office with a surly 
 request, by the driver, to have it ready before he " could say 
 Jack Robinson." I could be very quick when I chose, for my 
 head was clear and my hands supple, and as I expected this
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 287 
 
 would be the last time I should ever send the mail that way 
 for I determined to be gone before forty-eight hours should pass 
 I chose to use my utmost powers, and I locked the bag and 
 threw it out of the door before he had his pipe lighted ; a feat 
 which so astonished him that he stood gazing at me in mute 
 wonder, with one eye closed and the other opened to its widest 
 capacity, till I said : " I thought you were in a hurry ?" 
 
 " So I am," he said ; "in the biggest hurry you ever saw, but 
 I didn't expect to get off so soon as this. You better look in 
 there again, young one ; you couldn't sort them all so soon, I 
 know." 
 
 " They are all right," I replied, and I turned away and opened 
 a paper to read till I should be called. I walked with it in my 
 hand to the door, and when the stage rattled away from the 
 gate, with a great clatter, I glanced up and saw a one-horse 
 wagon, occupied by a quiet, respectable-looking, middle-aged 
 man, driven into its place. He made his horse fast, and as he 
 walked up to the door I retreated into the passage and sat down, 
 still 'reading. 
 
 " Does Mr. Smalley live here ?" he inquired, tapping lightly 
 on the door-post with his whip. 
 
 I looked up and replied : " Yes, sir ; Mr. John Smalley lives 
 here." 
 
 " Is he at home ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, he is with the carpenters in the new house. If 
 you step along a little in front of it you will be able to go in on 
 the boards, and you'll find him there." 
 
 By this time I was flushing under the steady gaze of this stranger, 
 who, whenever I lifted my eyes to his face, was regarding me so 
 closely that I was troubled. He also stood still, instead of 
 going to look for uncle, as I expected and wished him to. 
 
 I pu.-hed a chair towards him, and said : " Will you sit down, 
 sir, and I will call uncle ?" 
 
 I approached the door to pass out, uud at the same moment 
 he entered, and said : " Eliza, don't you know me ?"
 
 288 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I gave him one piercing look, and plain as he was I could re- 
 call enough of my father, and my own ve"ry dim recollection of 
 himself, to know that it was my liberator, and I called his name 
 aloud, and clung to his neck in such a delirium of sudden joy, 
 as summoned the people from both sides to see what had hap- 
 pened. The first face I saw clearly was aunt's, spotted, livid, 
 distorted with anger and astonishment. She knew that name. 
 The sight of her restored me instantly to self-possession, and 
 loosing my hold of my uncle, I said : "Aunt, this is my uncle 
 William, come for me. I wrote to him seven weeks ago." 
 
 The expression of countenance which these words called up, 
 was such a one as I had not seen for many months. Uncle, 
 who had also come in, in time to hear the introduction, came for- 
 ward and greeted my relative, and invited him into the room 
 where the tea-table was yet standing. Everybody seemed as 
 breathless as myself, and I remember distinctly a feeling of thank- 
 fulness that at last, for once, it was my turn to be the glad and 
 happy one in a group where I had been so long and steadily 
 overlooked and put down. The table was fresh laid, and I sat 
 down with my two uncles, and hugged the sparkling, gleeful 
 baby who was very fond of me ; all the while, at little intervals, 
 dashing my intense joy with the thought of parting so soon from 
 him. His mother hovered about, waiting on us, and occasion- 
 ally giving me a silent pressure of the shoulder or arm, as she 
 had a pretext for laying her hand upon me. 
 
 Aunt sat at the tea-tray, utterly dispossessed of her usual self. 
 She looked like a person who is suddenly quite overturned, by 
 finding everything go wrong when she had thought all was right. 
 She scarcely spoke, and when she did, it was in a manner that 
 showed how closely her mind was preoccupied. Once or twice, 
 while we sat, I found uncle's eyes fixed on me, with a suffused, 
 appealing look, that I felt it dangerous in that time of keen ex- 
 citement to meet. We had had so much in common during the 
 sickness of the previous winter, so many joint cares and sympa- 
 thies, that, but for the dreadful state of apathy in me which fol-
 
 MY EAELY DAY8. 289 
 
 lowed them, and but for a lurking bitterness, growing out of the 
 sense of wrong which mingled with my best feelings towards 
 him, I should have become from that period more inseparably 
 attached to him than to any person living. If he had done me 
 justice thn, by courageously following his own convictions of 
 right, nothing could have separated my heart from him. 
 
 There was enough in the talk at table, following my open 
 avowal of what had brought my uncle there, to convey his inten- 
 tion of returning without delay. He asked me : " If I still wished 
 to go, and when I could be ready ?" 
 
 " To-morrow morning," was my reply. 
 
 " Isn't that rather soon, Eliza ?" said my adopted father. 
 
 " No ; not if Uncle William is in a hurry." 
 
 " I think thee is in a hurry, too," said aunt. 
 
 " Yes, I am ; I have been wanting to go a long time." 
 
 When we left the table, uncle and aunt walked with my own 
 uncle into the new part which the workmen had left. I busied 
 myself, bet wen short ecstasies with the children and snatches of 
 talk with their mother, in getting together my small chattels 
 personal now, indeed, for the last time in that house. 
 
 I had finished, and Mrs. Radford and I sat talking, till they 
 returned, when I asked my uncle what time he wished to start 
 for home. 
 
 He replied : " I must go in the morning ; but are you quite 
 sure, Eliza, that it is best for you to go ? Your uncle and aunt 
 tell me " 
 
 " Don't say it, please, Uncle William ; I must go with you." 
 
 " Remember," he said, " that you are a young girl, and don't 
 know as well perhaps as older people what will be best for you." 
 
 We left the room as he was saying : 
 
 " I have come to take you back, and though you have no 
 father, and I don't clearly see how you are to be taken care of, 
 I shall not leave you now, if you wish to go ; I only wanted to 
 tell you what Mr. and Mrs. Smalley offer, because I said I 
 would ; but I am not going to leave you unless you wish it." 
 13
 
 290 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Then it is settled," I said, very determinedly, " for if you leave 
 me here, I shall go away myself somewhere, to-morrow, and no- 
 thing shall bring me back." 
 
 " Are you ready ?" he asked. 
 
 " Yes, all ready." 
 
 " Well, go to bed, then, and rest yourself, for you will have 
 to ride all day and all night, after we start. And, Eliza, I want 
 you to learn to speak more like a young girl. You are not a 
 woman, remember ; and young girls ought not to say what they 
 will, and won't do, so freely as you do. Now, go to bed, 
 child." 
 
 I was deeply vexed by this treatment. " Am I to be forever 
 misjudged and misunderstood ?" I asked myself, passionately, as 
 I stood in my room, never thinking of undressing, though the 
 clock struck twelve while I walked and pondered. " My father 
 found fault with me, too," I thought ; " uobody has ever been 
 kind and just to me, but Henry !" 
 
 My uncle's remonstrance clouded my joy, darkly. "Why," I 
 thought, " am I to be reproved, for saying what is asked of me, 
 and what is true ? Uncle William is wrong," I said to myself, 
 sitting down again upon my trunk, from which I had just risen 
 but a moment before. " He is wrong, I am certain, and I don't 
 see how we are to get on at all, if he asks me to say what I 
 want, and then reproves me for doing it." I was so untrained, 
 that I could not see that his objection was to my manner, which, 
 after all I had suffered, I thought could not be-decided enough 
 to express my state of mind. 
 
 It was the first of June, and what a glorious morning shone 
 down upon the smiling earthl I was dressed and out before it 
 was full dawn, for I wished to pay a farewell visit to the spring; 
 to Sunny-bank, and the tent-grove ; and to run down to the nut- 
 trees and plum-thicket, before I should be wanted at. break- 
 fast. 
 
 These partings saddened me not with regret, but with pain- 
 ful recollections of my few and peculiar joys so that when I
 
 MY EABLY DAYS. 291 
 
 presented myself at table, I was in no danger of offending my 
 uncle's respect for the conventional restraints suitable to my age. 
 My clothes were dabbled with dew, and my shoes quite satu- 
 rated. Aunt remarked upon these appearances, and I explained 
 where I had been. I sat down, but ate no breakfast, and 
 Uncle John took as little. It was a heavy morning to him, but 
 he could not speak to me of remaining, for he understood too 
 well how small was his right to hint at such a thing. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 " The thickly-peopled and the vast Before !" 
 
 WHKN breakfast was over, aunt drew my uncle aside, and for- 
 mally asked him if I would consent to be left; and when he told 
 her I would not, she said, in a warning, sympathetic tone : "I 
 am afraid thee'll find her a very headstrong girl. I've done my 
 best to break her, but I know I have only half succeeded." 
 
 I took little Alfred, and carried him away to the bank of the 
 creek, where he was very fond of going with me, and remained 
 there until I was called. I saw Uncle John walking among the 
 trees, where the tents had been, but I did not dare approach 
 him, for he had forgotten his after-breakfast pipe,, and was 
 making occasional use of his pocket-handkerchief, so that I un- 
 derstood it would not do for me to see him alone. When I 
 went to the house, I found my uncle standing at the door, 
 whip in hand, waiting: 
 
 "Come, Eliza," he said, "it is time we were going. Get 
 yourself ready, and let me have your trunk." 
 
 " I'll take that out," said Mr. Radford, who had not left the 
 house. 
 
 As I passed into my little room with him, he said, in a tone
 
 292 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 he would have me believe jocose : "Now, Dolly, you're off, eh ? 
 No more Dolly, nor Tonewanda, but Miss, now, is it ?" 
 
 Something shot, with a scalding heat, into my eyes, as I 
 looked at him saying these old, long-forgotten words. He had 
 grown older since I had examined his features before at least, 
 it seemed to my dimmed eyes that he had. Perhaps, also, his old 
 names for me brought back his picture, as he used to look long 
 ago, when calling me by them. He stooped over to raise the 
 trunk, and I offered him my hand in silence. When he grasped 
 it in his, he said : " It's larger now than it was when you used 
 to tuck it into mine, to get me away somewhere with you. 
 Don't forget me, Dolly, when you get among finer people, and go 
 to school, and become a wise woman." 
 
 I could only shake my head, and he walked out. Thus our 
 parting was over, for when he had placed the trunk in the 
 wagon, he went away out of sight. I kissed his good wife and 
 the sweet children over and over again, with many tears ; but 
 when, at last, I stepped away from them, and found aunt stand- 
 ing near, apparently waiting for her share of the leave- 
 taking, my feelings underwent a change, as instantaneous as the 
 lightning-flash. 
 
 " Good bye, aunt," I said, and was passing towards the door, 
 when she extended her hand. I gave her mine, because I felt 
 amiable in the good fortune, which fronting her had reminded me 
 of. She had never kissed me in the seven long years I had been 
 " her daughter," and I had no mind she should do it now. So 
 we parted at arms' length, and I darted away to the gate. 
 There I found the two uncles, in conversation, tears showering 
 down the face of one, and the other looking puzzled and half 
 distressed. 
 
 " Get in, Eliza;, don't keep your uncle waiting," were the first 
 words; " and I'll walk along with you a little way." 
 
 We drove slowly away, and when we reached the turn, he laid 
 his hand on the side of the wagon, and, with broken utterance, 
 said : " Good bye, my child ; I am sorry to part with you.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 293 
 
 I always meant to make you happy, and do right by 
 you!" " * 
 
 " I know you did uncle; and I have always loved you, and always 
 shall. Good bye!" and I knelt down from off the seat, and kissed 
 him, with a keenness of pain I had not felt in parting with my 
 own father. When I looked up, the magnificent crab-apple trees, in 
 full flower, and redolent of a fragrance sweet as ever freighted the 
 gales of Araby, were on my left, and Mrs. Rumsey, in her door- 
 way, on my right. I bowed her good bye and we drove on 
 into the wide, unknown world. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 " I would enjoy the present, I would live 
 Like one new born." 
 
 THAT was a day of Polar length. It was the first of fourteen 
 or fifteen days' steady travel, which uncle said it would take us 
 to reach his home. Looking forward to them, they seemed to 
 me sufficient for a lifetime. I fancied that I might be an old 
 woman by the time they came to an end ; ready to die, almost. 
 
 We had to pass the place on the lake-shore where Henry 
 was buried, and I wished very much to go to his grave ; 
 but I did not know where it was, and dared not men- 
 tion my desire to my uncle, though I rode through what 
 I knew was the neighborhood, with an intense yearning for a 
 sight of it for one refreshing emotion of nearness to what had 
 been so bright and grand in the dark life I was leaving behind. 
 We rode long within sound of the lake before we saw it, and I 
 was looking eagerly, and, at last, impatiently, for the sight, 
 when we ascended a cleared hill, and there lay the broad world of 
 light blue water before my eyes. I have since spent months on 
 the ocean, but never again was the emotional experience of 
 that hour mine I
 
 294 MY EARLY DAY8. 
 
 I was a strange, and not altogether a comfortable travelling 
 companion to my quiet relative. The incongruities of my ap- 
 pearance worried him my dark, strong face my extraordinary 
 dress, and my singular manners. If I spoke to a stranger, he 
 was quite certain to check me, and many times each day he 
 found it necessary to beg that I would be as quiet, and attract 
 as little attention as possible, till he could get me home, where I 
 could be, at least outwardly, Christianized. 
 
 My uncle was a most respectable, regular-looking person. 
 He was well dressed, without being noticeable. He had the look 
 of a substantial man, who did all by rule and line, and had 
 never gone to leeward- of a vagabond in his life. He had been 
 for a great many years a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, 
 which he took his family three miles to attend, every Sabbath, as 
 regularly as its sun rose. You would not dream in looking at 
 him, that an erratic thought or an unlawful impulse had ever 
 disturbed him. And thus my gipsy ways and looks were a sore 
 trial of his good nature. 
 
 And as I slowly made out from one day to another, that what 
 he called good manners and wished me to cultivate, meant never 
 inquiring about anything I did not know; never telling anything 
 I did know to persons older than myself ; never doing any- 
 thing but sitting still and being dumb, I began to understand 
 that there was likely to be a wide difference between his views 
 for me and mine for myself. And nothing could have prevented 
 this difference from becoming serious and painful, but one quality 
 of mind that was common to us both, but which I had scarcely 
 found in myself, in the sombre life which had so " cribbed and 
 cabined " my nature in the wilderness. This was a keen sense 
 of the ludicrous. Sometimes in his gravest remonstrances at my 
 outlandish doings and sayings, the tones of his voice would sud- 
 denly change, and on looking up I would find an ill-suppressed 
 smile lurking about his eyelids and the corners of his mouth. I 
 did not in the first days understand this so well as after we hnd 
 travelled some time together. And I came to it at last, less by
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 295 
 
 the aid of its repetition, than by comparing myself with other 
 females whom I met of near my own age ; but while I was 
 pained by the extreme personal disadvantage of such a compari- 
 son with the plainest, I was often irresistibly amused when, 
 alone, I reviewed their blank astonishment at something I had 
 done or said, that was entirely earnest or unconscious at the 
 time. 
 
 Here is one of many similar incidents that will illustrate my 
 position and its difficulties in that memorable travel : 
 
 We were tired of the canal boat, and had taken the stage in 
 the afternoon of a fine day, as we were approaching the town 
 of Palmyra. The country was in its greatest beauty, and my 
 uncle, when he had placed me on the back seat, which was before 
 vacant, asked me if I were quite willing he should ride with the 
 driver ? I could scarcely understand why he should ask me 
 so simple a question, but assented without expressing myself 
 further, and he took his seat. 1 was delighted with the country 
 and the beautiful evening, and scarcely noticed those who occu- 
 pied the stage with me, till I heard them iu hot dispute. There 
 were five gentlemen, three in front and two on the middle seat. 
 When their debate first arrested my attention I found they were 
 talking about the history of some measure connected with the 
 improvement of the navy, and the defence of the seaboard. Two 
 attributed the origin of it to one set of men, and the other 
 three disputed them, and neither party was quite right. I cared 
 nothing about it at first, but they got very warm, and I was be- 
 ginning to consider the propriety of stating its true history to 
 them, when the stage stopped at a little village post-office. This 
 broke off the argument for the time, but it was resumed with still 
 more warmth after we started. Indeed they grew quite noisy, 
 and uttered some oaths by way of attesting their correctness. 
 When it came to this I could no longer keep silence, but look- 
 ing at one of those facing me he was the last one who had ' 
 spoken I said, at a moment when they were all still : " I 
 believe, sir, you are a little wrong as well as the other gentle-
 
 296 MY EAKLY DATS. 
 
 man. The bill you talk of was introduced into the Senate by 
 
 Mr. J , of Virginia, and when it went down to the House of 
 
 Representatives it was supported by Messrs. A. B. and C. (I 
 had their names then at my fingers' ends) and opposed by 
 Messrs. D. E. and P., and it finally passed after Mr. G. had 
 made his great speech on it." 
 
 I remember the open-mouthed astonishment with which the 
 two next me turned quite around to look, and the others sat 
 mute, till I had finished a considerably longer history than I can 
 now give, of what they were speaking of; verifying it by minute 
 statements of details which I was the better able to furnish as 
 the measure had been a prominent one, and had interested uncle, 
 as an " old seaman," so much that we had watched it very 
 closely, and read everything relating to it, with unusual care and 
 attention. 
 
 When I had said all, an elderly gentleman, grey-headed 
 and respectable the best man among them as I thought 
 said: 
 
 " Where did you get all that history, my girl ?" 
 
 "From the Globe and the National Intelligencer sir." 
 
 " Do you read those papers ?" he asked with a smile. 
 
 " I have always read them where I have been living, but I 
 don't see them now." It seemed to me that I had been from 
 home a long time. 
 
 The debate closed with my speech, for one of the men re- 
 marked, laughing : 
 
 " Don't ask me to talk politics after that ; my memory is not 
 infallible, and I have no relish for making myself ridiculous be- 
 fore a judge." 
 
 I was looking out again quite indifferent to what they thought 
 or said, but occasionally as I swept my eyes over them I found 
 the white-headed gentleman regarding me with a most kindly 
 and interested look ; and this finally led me to notice that he 
 had broad crape on his hat, and gave my thoughts and recollec- 
 tions a tinge of sadness as the golden evening darkened around
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 297 
 
 us, on the beautiful meadows, and grain-fields, and orchards that 
 bordered our road. 
 
 A little after dark, we reached the town, and, when we 
 alighted, for supper, the old gentleman came up to my uncle, 
 and introduced himself, asking, in turn, to be introduced to his 
 charge. My uncle looked a moment at him, in astonishment 
 and doubt ; but the thorough goodness and purity of his face, 
 and the character which the whole presence of the man attested, 
 removed his scruples, apparently, and they walked forward to 
 where I was seated, on the edge of a chair, in the large, com- 
 fortable-looking parlor. We shook hands, as uncle said, "Eliza, 
 
 this is Mr. , who wished to be introduced to you. This is 
 
 my niece, Eliza Woodson, sir a wild girl, whom I have just 
 caught in the forests of the West." 
 
 " Wild or tame," said my new friend, in a pleasant tone, " she 
 has a good deal of the real stuff in her. Take care you don't 
 drive it out, in taming her ; though, I think, it wouldn't be easy 
 to do that ; would it, Miss Eliza ?" 
 
 " I can hardly tell, sir," I replied. " I don't know exactly 
 what they are going to do to tame me." 
 
 " Well, whatever they attempt, don't let them stop you from 
 reading to know something; for I see that is what you have read 
 for." 
 
 " What I read, I always know afterwards," I said. " I never 
 forget it." 
 
 " Well, take care of that gift, my dear. It is invaluable ; 
 but you have others equally so. The reason of my feeling so 
 much interested in you," he said, in answer to my questioning 
 look, " is, that you remind me of my little daughter, that I lost, 
 last winter. How old are you ?" 
 
 " Past fourteen, sir." 
 
 " Dear me 1 you are very small." 
 
 "I have worked very hard, sir, and couldn't grow fast, on 
 that account." 
 
 " Been to school ?" he asked. 
 
 13*
 
 298 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Not since I was six years old ; but I am going now." 
 
 " That is right," he said. " Be a good girl, and study as hard 
 as you can, and you'll be worth something some day." 
 
 I heard all he said, with a keen attention ; for I thought he 
 understood me better than anybody ever had since Henry's 
 death. But I could not talk much to him ; for I felt a little 
 fearful and confused, between his praises and my sense of uncle's 
 dissent from them. At length I said, "Are you going to ride 
 with us to-night ?" 
 
 " No. I live only a few miles" from this town, and stop here." 
 
 "I am very sorry," I said ; "for I should like very much to 
 talk with you, by and by. At first, I feel a little afraid of a 
 stranger ; but I should get over that now, and there's nobody 
 else in the stage I like to speak to." 
 
 I had eaten my little supper, and he took a biscuit from the 
 table, buttered it, and laid a thin slice of cold ham between its 
 halves. Then he wrapped it in one of the tiny napkins that lay 
 in the plate next him, and, giving it to me, said, " Put that in 
 your pocket, my dear. You'll be very hungry before you get 
 breakfast." 
 
 He parted from us, at the stage door, with many kind and 
 encouraging words, for which I felt so grateful that I could not 
 prevent tears from filling my eyes, as we drove away. But, it 
 was dark, and nobody saw them, which I was glad of ; for I did 
 not wish uncle to feel that I could care so much for a few kind, 
 appreciative words. 
 
 I did not meet another such person, but I was having queer 
 passages, like this, all the way. When we arrived within forty 
 miles, uncle was obliged to leave me with a lady of his acquaint- 
 ance, and go on horseback himself, some important business 
 demanding his presence at home the next day. This lady had 
 spoken to him of wishing to take a young girl, and he said, pri- 
 vately, to me, before he went, " Eliza, I hope yon will be as 
 good a child as possible, and not do anything very wonderful 
 while you stay here ; and consider a little, in these two days, if
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 299 
 
 you would like to live with Mrs. S . She wants a girl, 
 
 about your age ; and here is an excellent school, that you could 
 go into immediately." 
 
 I had not liked Mrs. S , so far, but the thought of the 
 
 school encouraged me, and I said, "I will do my best, uncle, to 
 please you ; but I don't believe I shall like to live here." 
 
 "Well, you can think about it, and, after you have been 
 home, we will see what is to be done." 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 "Enter a broad hall thereby, 
 
 Walled with cloudy whiteness; 
 Tis a blue place of the sky, 
 
 Wind-worked into brightness ; 
 Whence such corridors sublime, 
 
 Stretch with winding stairs, 
 Praying children wish to climb 
 
 After their own prayers." 
 
 I SPENT two days at this house. It was the first stand-point 
 whence I began to view' the new life before me. Until then, my 
 free days had been passed as in a panorama. I had seen many 
 pictures, and entertained many new guests, in the vague, shad- 
 owy realm of my mind, but I had become familiar with none. 
 They had succeeded each other, as the beautiful shadows of an 
 April day fleet over a landscape, whose life and loveliness are 
 but half developed. Always in the foreground, however, of my 
 dreamings, there was one object, one embodied purpose, which, 
 quickened by a projection of my own inner life, seemed to smile 
 down upon me, from a figure otherwise grave and thoughtful, 
 even to severity. The Genius of Study stood there one baud 
 pointing outward, to the vast world that lay beyond, and the
 
 300 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 other hanging at her side, waiting to clasp mine, and lead me 
 onward to it. The freshest breezes played in her robes, and 
 lifted the soft locks that lay upon her glorious brow ; the stars 
 of heaven shone about her majestic head ; the great, awful 
 secrets of the globe lay scattered and half opened at her feet. 
 
 I burned to rush forward and take my place at her side to 
 lose, in this sublime life, my own individual one. How deeply I 
 pondered, how wildly I dreamed, how far I roamed over the 
 earth, and traversed space, in those two days ! Already the 
 past was falling from me, as an old garment ; its few roses 
 bloomed upon thornless bushes ; its one transcendent flower, 
 which death had taken from me, seemed closer to my soul, in a 
 more radiant splendor than ever before. He stood separated 
 from the low. world where I had known him. He belonged to 
 that whither I was going. 
 
 I did not trouble myself, at this time, nor had I for a good 
 while before, with the question of immortality. The tenderness 
 and wisdom of that spirit were immortal to my ardent life 
 they had become a part of itself ; and the future, into which I 
 was drifting, was eternity to the keen faculties with which I was 
 exploring it. All power, all greatness, all capacity to realize the 
 dreams of the past, lay beyond the sweep of that shadowy hand. 
 What was death, or eternity, in those moments, to a soul so 
 hungry as mine for the actual and possible for the glorious 
 ideal, which I felt would become the real, could I once place my 
 hand in the clasp of that inviting one ? 
 
 With a constitution unimpaired by all the hardships I had 
 suffered ; with a nature not deadened, but sharpened and kindled 
 into burning intensity by the long denial of its keenest desires ; 
 with a love of liberty that had outlived the bondages, material 
 and spiritual, of l|^Jading past, I stood, as it were for the first 
 time, ou the open tnceshold of my true life, held there still by 
 the rein of outward circumstance, and only curbing by hard 
 necessity my impatience to break over and plant my footsteps on 
 the sacred ground.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 301 
 
 I took little heed of the place, or the people who surronnded 
 me. I slept in a small room at the top of the house, which was 
 a hotel, the windows of which overlooked an indifferent land- 
 scape of unsightly hills and cramped fields. Poor, small houses 
 were scattered thinly over them, whence issued before the full 
 light of the long June day had come, the smoke of household 
 care and toil. Patched and bare-footed little boys and girls 
 came from them three or four hours later, to the little school- 
 house in the village. 
 
 I took my meals with Mrs. S and two young ladies who 
 
 were living in the house. The servant girls sat at the same 
 
 time at the other end of the table. The first day Mrs. S 
 
 was absent, and I entirely forgot that I was to consider her and 
 her home with any reference to my own future. I spoke to no 
 one that day, except to ask for what I wanted. When called 
 for at dinner, I was reported to be in my room, but I was in 
 reality half way to the antipodes among the serfs of frozen 
 Russia, and I must have had, I think, rather a grand look on 
 my face when the boy came to call me, for he accosted me hesi- 
 tatingly, with wide open eyes, as Miss Woodson a sound which 
 I had never heard before. 
 
 At the tea-table I found Mrs. S-* ; regal with flounces, 
 lace, and jewelry. My eyes had never beheld a woman so well 
 dressed. Her face was glowing, too, with the pleasure and ex- 
 hilaration of a drive, and, flushed as it was with the warm sun- 
 set, she was beautiful, to me. I had before thought her too 
 stout and full-faced % to be pleasing, but, under these happy cir- 
 cumstances, she looked quite another woman. She sat between 
 the two young persons, and motioned me to a seat opposite 
 her. 
 
 " So, Miss Eliza," she said with a sprightly good-nature, " the 
 girls tell me you have been up-stairs all day?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," I replied, hesitating a little, for despite the 
 good nature, I felt that in the tone, which said that she won- 
 dered at it, and would have thought better of something else.
 
 302 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Have you been sewing ?" 
 
 " No, ma'am ; I I have no sewing to do." 
 
 " Reading, then, I suppose ? Your uncle said you were a 
 great reader." 
 
 " No. I have no books but one, which I have read many 
 times already." . 
 
 " Have you been sleeping, then ?" she asked, apparently 
 unable, with her active habits and temperament, to compre- 
 hend voluntary imprisonment, with idle hands, for a whole day. 
 
 " No, I have not been asleep," I answered, already feeling 
 the difficulty of explaining myself here ; " I have been think- 
 ing." 
 
 " Thinking 1" she exclaimed. " What can a young girl like 
 you have to think of so long ?" 
 
 " Of going to school," I replied " and going home." 
 
 " Oh, yes," she said, at once accepting the skeleton of that 
 day's life, for its warm, palpitating, expanding whole. " You want 
 very much to go to school, I suppose ; and to see your brothers 
 and sisters. I don't wonder, child. But after you've been and 
 seen them, don't you think you'd like to come back and live with 
 me ? You could go to school here. This is the teacher," 
 and she motioned to the stout, healthy young woman on her 
 right. 
 
 I involuntarily sent a quick, inquiring glance over her face. 
 It was expressionless and cold, narrow and complacent. I did 
 not wish to question her in words, but I knew it was expected 
 of me to say something, and I was taking my first lesson in the 
 insincerities. So, after a pause, I said : " Do you teach astro- 
 nomy ?" 
 
 "Whatl" 
 
 " Astronomy." 
 
 She looked a moment at me, then at the landlady, and back 
 at me ; by which time her face had expanded into something 
 that would have been a smile but for the wonder that so- 
 bered it.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 303 
 
 " Astronomy ! No. That's about the stars, isn't it ?" 
 
 I was too confused to reply myself ; but our hostess said hur- 
 riedly : 
 
 " Yes, the stars and the other heavenly bodies. I learned it at 
 the seminary." 
 
 " I never studied it," said the teacher frankly. " And there's 
 no child in my school that would want to learn it if I had. 
 Would you ?" looking at mo. 
 
 " Yes, I mean to learn it," I replied, " when I go to school ; 
 but I asked you because I wished to know the name of that large 
 reddish star that I see almost every evening over our heads." 
 
 " It is the planet Mars, I suppose, if it is large and red," 
 
 said Mrs. S . " I have not observed it. But," she added 
 
 after a moment, " astronomy is of no use to a girl." 
 
 "It would be a great pleasure," I said, "to know the stars, 
 and all about the earth and the moon." 
 
 " I never care anything about it since I left school," she re- 
 plied, " and you won't when you are a woman. Women think 
 of other things ; it's enough for them to know how to read and 
 write well, and speak correctly, and understand arithmetic and 
 geography. You don't expect to learn any more, do you ?" 
 
 " I hope so," I answered courageously, and indeed it required 
 some courage to talk to this large, strange woman, who was very 
 imposing in her ornaments and full dress, which she wore very 
 well, besides having the faculty of uttering what she said in an 
 easy, authoritative way that seemed to express the impossibility 
 of your differing from her. When the meal was over, she rose 
 and asked me to accompany me to her room, which I did with a 
 disturbed anticipation of her purpose ; for already I felt clear 
 about returning no more to this place ; and already I began to 
 feel somewhat of the pain it has always cost me to decide firmly 
 against the wishes of others. Her room and its furniture as 
 much exceeded what I had ever before seen as her dress. In it 
 a young girl was sitting beside a cradle, where lay a beautiful 
 fat baby fast asleep, wrapped in the white cloak it had worn in
 
 304 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 the carriage. The girl rose and went out as we drew near the 
 cradle, and the proud mother pushed the moist golden curls 
 from the baby's brow softly, and said hi a whisper, " How warm 
 he is !" 
 
 " How handsome he is," was my word. " He is the hand- 
 somest baby I ever saw." 
 
 " Is he ? Wouldn't you like to come and live with me and 
 take care of him ?" 
 
 " I must go to school." 
 
 " So you could a part of the time." We moved away to the 
 other side of the apartment and sat down. " You could go to 
 school three months a year for two or three years if you wished; 
 or," looking into my face " even four, if you stayed so long ; 
 but then I could not dress you so well if you did that." 
 
 Heaven ! what a divorce from my heart's inmost love I 
 \ What a peddling of spiritual life for tinker's rubbish 1 Her 
 flounces lay spread out before me ; her laces were perfect, at 
 least to my uneducated eyes ; and her jewels glittered ; but they 
 were shreds and dross made such in the moment of that utter- 
 ance. Should I exchange the great future for such as those, or 
 something inferior to them ? Should I crib my soul in such 
 gilded bars mere trumpery ? I did not debate with myself thus, 
 but my indignant spirit was holding some such scornful argu- 
 ment silently with the world at large, while she awaited my 
 further audible speaking. At last I said, firmly: " I cannot come 
 
 and live with you, Mrs. S , because I am determined to get 
 
 an education, and that will take me two or three whole years 
 instead of the time you talk of." 
 
 A momentary look of disappointment passed over her features, 
 and then she said, dismissing the subject : " Well, child, I am a 
 little sorry, for, to say the truth, I rather like your looks, though 
 you are a little a little 
 
 " Homely," I said, with a bitter smile, " homely and rude." 
 
 " No, no, I did not mean to say exactly that a little dark 
 and neglected-looking, yon know. Your uncle has told me how
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 305 
 
 you have been treated, and I thought I should like to take you 
 and dress you up and have you look nicely, like other young 
 girls. I should not expect you to be a servant, you know." 
 
 I expressed my thanks, broken by mingled emotions which I 
 could scarcely stifle, till I got to my own room, where it was a 
 luxury to sit down and weep silently those tears, rare and pre- 
 cious as diamonds, which are the baptismal and sanctifying 
 waters of the young, aspiring soul. When they ceased, I felt 
 that I had won at least one of the many battles I saw be- 
 fore me. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 " My very heart is filled with tears ! I seem 
 As I were struggling under some dark dream, 
 Which roughly bore me down life's troubled stream." 
 
 WHEN I reached my uncle's house on the afternoon of the 
 second day, I found the family assembled in the yard before it, 
 beneath some heavily-laden cherry-trees, waiting the slow 
 approach of the stage, as it climbed the long hill which sepa- 
 rated the house from the little village in which I had been born. 
 I remembered every face on which I looked, as the vehicle 
 stopped, except one, which had been added to the circle since I 
 last saw it. My uncle was absent, but I was kindly received by 
 my good aunt a handsome, compact, active little woman, in 
 whom a large fund of native kindness and tenderness was 
 held in subjugation by an overgrown love of order and neatness. 
 This was disclosed to me before I entered the house, by three 
 things : first, a hint to my cousin, after the greetings were over, 
 to take my trunk around to the back door, and brush it very 
 carefully before taking it in ; second, a pause at the door, 
 to rub her own shoes on the mat, and another while she stood
 
 306 . MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 upon the threshold, for me to do the same, though we had just 
 walked across the cleanest, and most velvety of June swards, 
 and there had been a heavy shower that morning, so that not a 
 particle of dust had risen during my whole ride. 
 
 I knew that my young brother was at home here, and I 
 started at every sound of steps, expecting to see him ; but at last, 
 when I gathered nerve enough to inquire where he was, I was 
 told that he had gone away to stay until night, up in the 
 woods. I observed my aunt smile in answering my question, as 
 if there were something else besides the plain fact of absence in 
 the case ; and I learned what it was when at last he came, and, 
 after staring at me with great suffused eyes, stepped slowly up, 
 kissed me, and darted out of the door, as if I had been some 
 fearful witch, instead of his sister in years almost as much a 
 child as himself, and longing for some real, close heart love, 
 that I could take freely, and feel I had a full right to. 
 
 I followed him, and, without his intending it, heard his first 
 words after seeing me. They were spoken to my uncle who was 
 
 1 standing outside. " Oh, Uncle William, if I had thought she 
 was so black, I'd have stayed till it was quite dark. What will 
 Anna and Mary say ?" 
 
 " She'll be whiter before they come," was the reply. " She 
 is tanned by the journey; but you must not speak to her 
 about it." 
 
 I turned and walked silently away, through the house out at 
 another door, and away up the hill in the field, among the trees, 
 whose leaves, hanging motionless in the fast glooming twilight, 
 showed me the glimmer of the June stars, as they came faintly 
 out, one by one, in the blue air. 
 
 " How very ugly I must be !" I thought, " that my brother 
 the companion of my childhood, cannot look at me with the day- 
 light." How deeply I was stung, humiliated, overwhelmed, by 
 the consciousness of this terrible disadvantage. It was not the 
 common desire of the young for beauty, that pleases and com- 
 mands not the craving for love, in that out-door sense (if I
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 307 
 
 may be permitted so to characterize the deepest and most uni- 
 versal passion of the human heart), which makes beauty or 
 comeliness a source of rejoicing before all creatures ; but it was 
 the humblest and meekest demand of my nature the call for 
 household affections ; for tenderness from those who bore my 
 mother's blood in their veins, and with whose life I had looked 
 to have my own mingle as freely and smoothly, as the waters 
 of the little runnel flowing by my feet, did with those of the 
 great stream below, into which they fell. 
 
 In my despair I cried to heaven. " Is there no affection for 
 me ? When all persons and children, that I see, have some- 
 body to love and be loved by, am I to be set aside ? Is there 
 no circle that wants me to complete it ?" I began to doubt the 
 worth of life. What would study be ; all the knowledge of the 
 world, if I had no love ? Knowledge would only crown a higher 
 wretchedness than ignorance could know. There was Mars 
 beaming down upon me. What would it be to know all about 
 that shining sphere if nobody rejoiced in my knowing but my- 
 self ?" Thus I thought, and wept, faster and more bitterly, as 
 I became more central in the desolation that surrounded me. 
 
 If my brother, who was in the mid-age of boyhood, was so 
 shocked by my appearance, what would my sisters and my elder 
 brother say to it ? I had been told, repeatedly, that they were 
 all handsome, and admired wherever they went. " Then cer- 
 tainly," I thought, fully realizing now, for the first time, since 
 the great gift of freedom had been mine, the tremendous weight 
 of my misfortunes, " then certainly, I can never be one of them. 
 Yet, I am to live as well as they; and I will live," I said, 
 strongly, to myself, " as large and good a life as as such a per- 
 son can. There must be something somewhere in the world that 
 I can find and do, for which I shall be respected, perhaps even 
 loved ; and people will get used to me, as Henry did, and Mr. 
 Kadford, and Mr. Garland." I was thus obliged to strengthen 
 myself for this battle by marshalling the very slender company 
 of my friends, and reviewing them on this field. I did not pass
 
 308 MY EAELT DAYS. 
 
 by the first one. " If such a person," I thought " a true gen- 
 tleman, accustomed to the presence of the noblest and most 
 beautiful, could get accustomed to me so as to pity and love me, 
 I do not care for all the world, besides. I am good enough for 
 other people to love." I became strong in this thought, and 
 rose up, and dried the tears of that second baptism, resolutely 
 determined never again to suffer so deep a wound as I had that 
 first evening, in the home of my childhood. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 "Oh! a sister's heart is deep, 
 And her spirit strong to keep 
 Each light link of early hours 
 All sweet scents of childhood's flowers I" 
 
 WEEKS went by, each one full of interest and instruction. I 
 was living in a new world. My brother had become reconciled 
 to me ; I found myself constantly in the presence of new people, 
 and no longer a mere slave, but an object of more or less interest 
 to all. To some a wonder to others, perhaps, in some limited 
 sense, a heroine to my friends, I believe, alternately a puzzle 
 and a pride. To me, every character was a study, and, as my 
 aunt and uncle had a large acquaintance, and were very social, I 
 had a sufficient variety to occupy me, so that I was not restless. 
 
 I took my place, which was not a hard one, in the household 
 machine ; I read, visited, and talked much with my elder cousin; 
 who, if he did not help me greatly to new ideas and facts, had 
 one predominant attribute, that was invaluable to my experience 
 at that time a broad, genial, pure, humane humor. He was 
 tender with the depravities of mankind, and merry with their 
 follies. He attacked the one without cruelty the other with- 
 out irreverence ; but never did the kindly summer lightning
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 309 
 
 of this humor play around a character, but it searched out some 
 little foible, or eccentricity, or weakness, to amuse itself withal. 
 
 We never had visitors, or were entertained, but I hastened to 
 hear the verdict of this spirit; and it educated my analytical 
 faculties, and sharpened the little native wit I had, to an edge 
 that often delighted my teacher highly. In this play of thought 
 and humor, I rested somewhat from my painful longings. The 
 present was more sufficing than it had ever been, since the few 
 happy years of my early childhood ; and though I never, for a 
 single hour, abandoned the one purpose of my life, I was con- 
 tent to nourish it, without struggle, for the time. 
 
 My first letters from my sisters were congratulatory and re- 
 joicingfilled with anticipations of our early meeting which, 
 however, was postponed from one time to another, till I began 
 to fear that they were yet as far from me as they had been in my 
 exile. 
 
 But at last they came, taking me by surprise, one still after- 
 noon, in August. A carriage stood suddenly at the gate, and, 
 as I looked from the window, I saw a tall, elegant young woman 
 alight, with a countenance, figure and movement so like those 
 of my father, that I said, involuntarily, " That must be Anna 1" 
 A heat-flush passed over my person, at the mingled recollections 
 which instantaneously crowded my mind, called up by that re- 
 semblance. I did not move till I saw another person, very un- 
 like the first, but, as I thought, both graceful and beautiful; 
 somewhat lower, considerably slighter, with a dark countenance, 
 in which, handsome though it was, I could see a resemblance to 
 that I looked at daily in the glass. I had crossed the yard in 
 less time than I have written the last three words, and was 
 alternately clasped in the arms of these women; whose tears fell 
 upon my brown face. " Thank God I" I said ; and with devout 
 gratitude, too, as I walked in behind them ; they were not 
 shocked at my looks. I had, indeed, as my uncle foretold, improved 
 somewhat in complexion ; and I hud received from my aunt, and 
 other relatives, numerous little womanly touches of something,
 
 310 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 amounting almost to taste and grace, in my dress; my hair had 
 been more carefully tended, but it was not yet so well dressed, 
 but that a pair of strange hands were tutoring it that afternoon. 
 How grateful and proud I was of the attention 1 It was not 
 the white, taper, faultless hands of my fairest sister. She re- 
 clined upon my bed, meanwhile, and did her share of the ques- 
 tioning and answering. That first afternoon told the story of the 
 two lives. One put her generous and loving hand to the work 
 at once, with infinite tenderness and delicacy ; apparently doing 
 all for her own pleasure not once suggesting, by speech, look, 
 or deed, that she found, in my outr6 appearance, any motive. 
 The other rested, approving, disapproving, or suggesting, but 
 doing no more. The history of the two futures was shadowed 
 out in those few hours of transcendent happiness. Aye, even to 
 the close, for the working hand rested peacefully, at evening, in 
 mine the heart steeped in a contentment which came not to the 
 other. 
 
 " Isn't Anna well ?" I asked, after she had left us alone, " that 
 she complains so much ?" 
 
 "I believe she is quite well," said Mary, "but dear Anna 
 lets herself complain sometimes, if she is a little more weary 
 than usual, or is worried about anything. She is more sensitive 
 than I am, or, I suppose I must say now, than we are, since we 
 are so much alike. How very glad I am, dear Eliza, to find you 
 so much like me." 
 
 " Oh ! Mary, don't say that 1" and I felt my eyes filling. 
 " You are handsome, and I am so very homely 1 Yet, I believe 
 I should have known yon anywhere, by your looking so much 
 like my face in the glass. How can we be alike, and so very 
 different, too, I wonder ?" 
 
 " We are not so very different, dear sister, as you imagine. 
 You have been neglected, abused, and stifled so long, that you 
 do not lodk as well as you will by and by, when you have been 
 longer with those who love you." 
 
 These, and other like words, comforted me, because I knew
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 311 
 
 they came from a heart, whose affection made them seem truth 
 to itself ; but they did not much stir my hopes ; which seemed 
 to have received a more fatal, though less painful blow, from the 
 great personal advantages of my sisters, than from the boyish 
 thoughtlessness that had wounded me so deeply on my arrival. 
 
 Mary and I found ourselves, naturally, a great deal together, 
 during this visit; a fact which was always explained when referred 
 to, by the small difference in our ages. But I knew, from the 
 first time it was mentioned in my presence, that there was as 
 much in complexion as in age, and more in moral similarities and 
 differences, than either ; it was a long time, however, before I 
 dared to say so. In Mary, I acknowledged a leader in all our 
 early conversations. She had, what seemed to me, a vast store 
 of learning facts of history and science, that were unknown in 
 the little by-ways where I had gleaned my few leaves of know- 
 ledge poetry of men and women I had never heard of in the 
 forest passages of eloquence and beauty, that, when recited by 
 her, seemed of more than mortal power, to lift my mind out of 
 its imprisonment. 
 
 I unconsciously withheld myself, and drew upon her. 
 I had, indeed, little to talk of besides myself, for I learned 
 the first evening, when I saw her on her knees by my bedside, 
 how widely different were our opinions and feelings in regard to 
 religion, and I loved and reverenced her so deeply, that it was, 
 from that moment, a forbidden subject to me. Understand, my 
 dear friend, that the irreligion, which I refrained, out of tender- 
 ness for my sister, from expressing, was not of my nature, but of 
 education. I had but few opinions, on subjects not personal, 
 which I could support by arguments, that seemed worthy of my 
 use, and this was one. 
 
 Of my very limited reading, a considerable portion, as you 
 know, had been the writings of Paine, Voltaire, Volney, and 
 infidel tracts of later date. My system, and its defences, were 
 taken from these ; and if I admired, as I did daily and hourly, 
 the enthusiasm of my sister, purified and elevated, as it was, by
 
 312 MY EARLF DATS. 
 
 a clear, religions sentiment, and an expressed belief in the faith 
 which we call orthodox, I still could not bring myself, for a 
 moment, to think of leaving my citadel to join her. In truth, I 
 felt no attraction to the dogmas, which I well understood to 
 constitute so large a part of that faith the religious sentiment 
 which I really possessed being purely and truly natural. For a 
 long time, therefore, the subject was never named between us, 
 though I more than suspected she was, by some means, informed 
 of my sad condition. 
 
 Then, she had no interest in politics, and, after brief and grate- 
 ful mention of my few living friends in the land I had left, there 
 were but two persons whom I cared to speak of, and both these 
 were, to me, forbidden between us one by my own feelings, the 
 other by hers. I could not speak freely of the one soul, that had 
 come to me in my forlornness something always restrained me, 
 when, perhaps, I had deliberately purposed to tell her what he 
 had been ; and every such failure buried the sacred theme more 
 deeply in my own bosom. 
 
 To our father I never dared allude, with any real expression 
 of my feelings ; for an almost idolatrous affection for him was 
 conveyed in every word of hers respecting him ; so that even my 
 secret thoughts shocked me, and I not only suppressed them, but 
 all inquiry that could have led us on in that direction. I had, 
 therefore, to lop off all this large branch of my life-tree. The 
 words of love and reverence which I longed to speak of my 
 mother, I could not. Those of sorrow and indignation, which 
 would have overflowed, had I ventured upon more than yes aud 
 no, in answer to the fervent outpourings of her heart, I felt con- 
 strained to suppress at any cost ; and I used, sometimes, in 
 hearing the history of her life which had been eventful and 
 bitter, in some passages, as well as mine to break violently 
 away, and walk or sit alone, till I could be assured of my per- 
 fect self-control. "What can it mean?" I asked myself, one 
 day, when one of the most painful of these dark pages had been 
 opened, and I had bnrned with ill-suppressed anger, listening till
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 313 
 
 I could no longer trust myself to hear, and bad fled to the shel- 
 ter of a great hedge of currant-bushes, behind the house " what 
 can it mean, so good, so loving, so religious, as she is, that she 
 does not see how terrible all this was ? Is it because he was so 
 handsome ? Does that command such blind love ? Then I shall 
 never know it. Thank God ! I shall have to be good, if any- 
 body ever loves me." 
 
 I loved and admired my sister. I was proud of her. I felt 
 rich when I thought of her. The world seemed larger and more 
 beautiful for containing her, and I was stronger and more 
 courageous for knowing that it did ; but, nevertheless, our com- 
 munion was sadly narrowed by these widely-divorced sources of 
 thought and feeling. I endeavored, at last, to avoid them, 
 making no allusion to the past, and as little as possible to the 
 future, that involved them. I withdrew from both, to enjoy the 
 present as heo,rtily,as I might ; for it was to be of short dura- 
 tion. My brother was to come, in a few days, from New York, 
 and they were all to return together Anna, to meet her hus- 
 band, who was expected home from sea very soon, aud Mary, to 
 the toilsome labor by which she earned her livelihood, and from 
 which the loss of even a week's income could be ill afforded. 
 
 I was not taken much, into the counsels regarding myself. I 
 knew that several were informally held; and I saw, by the faces, 
 more than once, when my sudden appearance interrupted them, 
 that there were divided opinions, but I had no clear notion of 
 the different views that were entertained. 
 
 One evening, Mary and I had come to an open argument on 
 the religious question, in which I, at last, with a kind of childish 
 pride and delight in shocking her, had taken up the furthest out- 
 post of infidelity such a position as I have often since, with 
 wonder and pain, seen many sensible men, and a few thank 
 God ! only a very few good women claim. I had been able, 
 by this means, to loose the pent-up floods that had been accumu- 
 lating within my bosom since our first meeting. I had swept 
 wildly hither and thither, upon the dark sea of unbelief, like
 
 314 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 what I was a frail, presumptuous little rudderless cjrg-sholl, 
 vainly assuming to be a great ship, fit to sail boldly among the 
 dangerous straits and crushing icebergs of the broad waters 
 around us. I said there could be no God, or, if there were, he 
 was unworthy of my respect when he permitted the best persons 
 to suffer such awful cruelties from the worst to be killed, indeed, 
 by them, while they lived to enjoy the love and service of others 
 as good as those they had destroyed. I referred to my own his- 
 tory, and the career of my adapted mother, and asked, if God 
 had been the father of the fatherless, why did he not cause her 
 to treat me more justly. Why had He brought me here, now, 
 almost a woman in years, but so ignorant, wild, and ill-looking, 
 that everybody in the house was frightened wheu I rose to do 
 anything, or opened my mouth to speak. 
 
 More insane talk, of this sort, which it were foolish waste of 
 time to repeat more almost blasphemous denunciation of the 
 Great Father, for the evil deeds of His misguided children and 
 then, leaving my sister, with a mournful, half-terrified gaze pour- 
 ing itself from her large, clear, sorrowful eyes, over my flushed 
 face, I fled to my own room, and, burying myself in my pillows, 
 drenched them with scalding tears of self-accusation. They 
 were the bitterest I had ever shed ; for no good angel descended 
 to dry them, or to still the tumultuous heart from whose very 
 centre they seemed to force their burning way. These were not 
 baptismal waters, that brightened and strengthened my soul 
 they were dark, merciless floods, that threatened to ingulf it 
 rather. Alas 1 so soon hud grief followed upon the footsteps of 
 my great joy. I looked buck upon the years that were gone 
 forward over the future ; but there was no light anywhere. For 
 the first time in one of my mental crises, I got neither help nor 
 strength from the one grand and sacred memory of my past. I 
 could not see, nor feel, scarce could I recall, but as a vague, 
 unreal shadow, that sweet life, against which my own had leaned 
 in so many seasons of sorrow, as well as hopefulness. 
 
 How long I wept, I know not, but I was awakened with the
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 315 
 
 pain still at my heart no loving wing bad been unfolded to fan 
 it away and there stood my dear Mary, holding a light above 
 me, and brushing the disordered hair back from my temples. 
 It pained my eyes, and while I hastily raised one hand to 
 shade them, endeavoring, in the same moment, to frame some 
 broken words of petition, adequate to the great sin I had com- 
 mitted against her feelings, I heard a man's footsteps enter the 
 little room, and my quickly lifted bead was folded instantly in a 
 pair of arms. A voice of indescribable tenderness and depth, 
 whispered in my ear, " My poor sister 1" Then, in a moment, 
 feeling my warm tears spring against his cheek, " We will have no 
 more tears or grief to-night. Come, dress your hair, and bathe 
 your face, and come down-stairs with rue. I want to see you." 
 
 I pushed him back, to look at him. I had no recollection of 
 seeing him but once since I was four years old, and his counte- 
 nance did not dwell in my memory at all. But I felt that he was 
 handsome I felt it in his voice ; and while Mary perversely 
 held the light so as to throw his face in shadow, I remembered 
 that she and Anna had told me so. But they had not told me 
 another thing, which I discovered almost before I bad turned 
 him about, facing the light, that he was, on a lesser scale, the 
 very image of a face it was inexpressibly painful to my heart, at 
 that moment, to have reproduced. He read the disappointment 
 which I felt settling upon my features, and said, " What ! you 
 do not like me ?" 
 
 " I shall love you," I replied ; " but I don't think you are BO 
 handsome as as Mary does." 
 
 He laughed, and, pushing me gently towards the glass, with a 
 band on each shoulder, said, in a bantering tone, " Well, don't 
 be discouraged, little one. I may improve upon acquaintance, 
 Now brush these elf-locks of yours, and cool that honest brown 
 face in a basin of water, and come down-stairs. I want to talk 
 with you, and I have only this evening and to-morrow morning 
 to get your whole story ; for, at noon, the girls and I are to 
 start for New York."
 
 316 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I asked Mary to go down with him, and leave me. I wished 
 to be quite alone for a few miuntes, to gather up and replace 
 my scattered faculties. I deluged my head plentifully with cold 
 water, and pressed hard upon my eye-balls, which seemed start- 
 ing from their places. I brushed my " elf-locks," put a fresh 
 collar of plain lawn about my throat it was the best in my 
 wardrobe, and one that Mary had given me from her little 
 store and set opt to go down. 
 
 I walked to the door of my room, and took one step beyond 
 its threshold. Then I turned square around and walked back ; 
 closed it behind me, placed the candle on my little table, and 
 kuelt down. It was all chaos within ; not of passion, for that 
 was past, but I had been blinded, and as yet it was not giveu 
 me to see clearly, a thing I felt I must do before going into the 
 presence that awaited me. I was not yet a part of the new life 
 around. me and I felt this the more keenly for the shock I had 
 given it that night and I must, by a moment's calm endeavor, 
 reunite myself to the old. I must, at least, touch its border, if 
 I could not fortify myself in a central position therein. With all 
 the love there was for me, I was burdened and bowed down 
 with a desolation which my own hot, wicked words had brought 
 upon my soul, and I had to take them back and, as a child, ac- 
 knowledge the All-Father before I could again be tranquil or 
 self-possessed. I prayed, I scarcely knew then, nor at this mo- 
 ment, how, for in my intellect I still denied God, though seeking 
 Him in an unutterable agony of soul ; but I prayed, and I re- 
 member especially for one thing the blessed presence that had 
 so often anchored my spirit. If he came near I could feel my- 
 self strong and calm again, and I was conscious, as I knelt and 
 yearned fur good and loving influences, of an influx into my soul 
 that lifted it above the level of suffering and pain. Light and 
 self-trust came back to me faintly indeed, but enough to show 
 me my own individuality and encourage my self-respect in main- 
 taining it. 
 
 When I joined the circle below, my brother, reproving my
 
 MY EABLY DAYS. 317 
 
 ardy steps, gave me no opportunity to sit down, but putting 
 * light shawl of Mary's which lay across his knee over my 
 ;houlders, and bidding me get a bonnet if I wanted anything on 
 ny head, said he wished me to go out with him where we could 
 alk alone. 
 
 I did not yield for a single moment to a certain shyness which 
 I felt about doing this (I was so unused to everything like this 
 -ort of personal attention from any one till I had received it 
 ? rom Mary), but throwing off the shawl, and refusing the bon- 
 net, I placed my hand upon his offered arm and we walked into 
 the yard. It was already late, and the waning moon paled into 
 a glimmering cloudlet, over against the slowly opening gates of 
 the summer day, before the last words were said. 
 
 " I have kept you too long, sister, I know, but I had to learn 
 all before I could see what is best to be done with you. Come 
 in now and let us sum up. It will soon be day, and after that I 
 shall have to run about to see everybody before we start." 
 
 We entered the house softly. There was a lamp burning 
 feebly, with a great sheet glowing in the flickering flame, which 
 went out with the mere breath of the opened door. I took it in 
 my hand and stepped back to place it outside. 
 
 " Where are you going ?" he asked. 
 
 " To put the lamp outside. I can't endure the smoke." 
 
 " Good 1 Neither can I. Now come and sit down here if 
 you can find me. Never mind about another light. We can 
 talk in the dark. 
 
 I went to the voice and sat down. " Now," he began, laying 
 his hand upon my shoulder, " let us recapitulate. In the first 
 place, here you are well on in your fourteenth year, and as igno- 
 rant of everything, except geography, and politics, which you 
 ought to know nothing about, being a girl, as the horse I rode 
 up here." 
 
 I winced a little at this comparison, but he tightened the clasp 
 with which he held me silent, and went on : 
 
 " But you wish so much to learn, and they tell me you are so
 
 318 MY KAELY DAYS. 
 
 smart (it was the first hint, by the way, I had ever got of the 
 estimate in which I was held), that I shall send you to school if 
 I live." 
 
 I would have interrupted him, but he held me with the press- 
 ure of his hand, which was very powerful for so slight and deli- 
 cate a one. 
 
 " Mind, I am yet but a poor clerk. I sell my time for six 
 hundred dollars a year (it seemed an immense sum to me), and 
 when all my expenses are paid, and a few presents made to poor 
 Molly, who has to work very hard, there is not much left, but 
 you shall go to school for all that. 
 
 " You want to ask when, now ; I know you do. I can feel 
 the question coming out of you." 
 
 And, indeed, he seemed to have a sense by which, if he touched 
 me, he could read my inmost thoughts. In the whole night's 
 walking and sitting beneath the stars, he had held my hand 
 upon his arm or had his upon me, and he had often, in the pro- 
 gress of our talk, startled me by declaring that I was thinking 
 certain thoughts or feeling certain emotions, which I supposed 
 the shrewdest person could not have guessed at. Nevertheless, 
 he bad not penetrated to the inmost heart of the past. The 
 real help I had had in those trials, which called down his exe- 
 crations upon my oppressor and kindled his sympathy for me, 
 he heard no hint of, and, though sometimes in his searching 
 question and keen analysis I trembled lest he should divine it, the 
 whole inquiry passed without an allusion to it. 
 
 Some spirit may ask why I withheld it ; and I can only an- 
 swer, that I did it from an Instinct awakened by some quality in 
 him which made me feel that he could not, or would not, under- 
 stand what it had really been to me. A blaze of raillery had 
 broken out two or three times in our conversation from which I 
 shrunk with a sensitiveness he immediately detected, and when 
 once I asked, in connection with my prolonged stay in the woods, 
 if they were disappointed at my not returning with our father, 
 he had replied in such a way as to convince me that the reasons
 
 MY EARLY^DAYS. 319 
 
 that were potent with me, would have been chaff to him, if it had 
 suited him otherwise, to come. This again pained me, and I 
 learned then never to look more for sympathy or understanding 
 in that great trial of my exile. 
 
 When I had ventured upon asking him where he had lived 
 since our father's death, his reply " in a boarding-house, where 
 I did before " both pained and pleased me. I was glad that 
 lie had done so, and sorry that there was reason for my glad- 
 ness. 
 
 After this long parenthesis I must beg you to go back to the 
 school topic, which we left at its commencement. 
 
 " I cannot," said my brother, " tell you just when this shall 
 come about ; but it shall, and while you are waiting I wish you 
 to be as docile as a lamb. Do whatever is asked of you, and do 
 not dissent from any proposition about disposing of your time or 
 yourself, for the next year. Maybe I shall not be able to take 
 you in charge for all that time. Whatever opportunities you 
 have you had better improve in reading or study, and a year 
 hence, if we cannot do it sooner, you will yet be young enough 
 to enter school. 
 
 " You may as well say nothing about it," he added, " unless 
 to Molly. She will understand it, but there are a great many 
 people who would think it a very foolish use to make of money, 
 and some, who feel they have a right to direct us, would per- 
 haps scold." 
 
 So ! it was still conflict. In the wilderness I had fancied that 
 the wide, open world, which I should some day reach, was 
 checkered with smooth, flowery paths of freedom and ease, 
 wherein I could walk, after my just inclinations, joyously and un- 
 blamed. But here was still struggle, and how hardly, if at all, 
 should I reach the long-sought road to the kingdom of thought. 
 I sat silent, saddened by these words scarcely at that time 
 strengthened by the great promise they contained. Life, as I 
 looked forward to it from that dark room, seemed to be 
 losing its beautiful and cheering aspect, and resolving itself
 
 320 MY EAELY DATS. 
 
 into one continuous battle. Even the anticipated and pro- 
 mised good was far off, and the road by which alone I 
 could approach it, acknowledged to be most difficult. How 
 my heart cried out for rest. How I wished, in the physical 
 and spiritual weariness of the hour, that I had never been. 
 
 Already faint day-streaks were visible from the window near 
 which we sat. I could see my brother's figure but not his fea- 
 tures, and I remembered that even yet he was personally a 
 stranger to me. It would perhaps have been possible for me to 
 meet and pass, without recognizing him. I wished to be alone 
 and rest awhile before the day commenced, so I rose to my feet, 
 and kissing the forehead, which I felt warm and smooth beneath 
 my hand I knew how white and symmetrical it was ; what a 
 contrast to my dark, angular, uneven front I said : " I aqa 
 going to rest, and think of what we have said. I am glad we 
 have talked so long alone. I shall not thank you now for what 
 you have promised me, but I will try to deserve your kindness 
 and afterwards to repay it." 
 
 He did not speak ; some stealing tenderness, which either had 
 not come to him before or had been suppressed, shook him 
 slightly, and, when I laid my cheek against his, it brushed 
 away a warm tear-drop. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 " Even now I hear, with inward strife 
 A motion toiling in the gloom 
 The spirit of the years to come 
 Yearning to mix itself with life." 
 
 IN the morning the house was early astir, with the note of 
 preparation for their departure, which, it was fortunately recol- 
 lected, would have to be two hours earlier than the usual time* 
 In order to meet some change of arrangement in running the
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 321 
 
 stage. My cousin, of whom I had seen but little during these 
 visits, was to drive them three or four miles to the next village-, 
 through which the stage passed. I saw no more of my brother 
 until three minutes before starting, when he beckoned me into 
 the yard. It was the first time I had been near him by day- 
 light, and we both examined each other very closely; but while 
 he was doing it, and I was more especially considering the in- 
 tense clearness and sharpness of his dark grey eye, which I 
 thought the evening before was blue, he was hurriedly saying 
 to me, " I have been away all the morning, making calls on our 
 relations ; and their united wisdom has decided to make a 
 Milliner of you ! Don't object do anything they ask, till I can 
 come or send for you. Do you think you could ever learn to 
 make a bonnet ?" 
 
 " Oh, no," I exclaimed, " I know it would be impossible. I 
 can't even put a ribbon over one without making it look ridicu- 
 lous. I know I never could learn to make a bonnet that people 
 wouldn't laugh at." 
 
 " I know it too," he said, " you never shall ; but just be as 
 meek as a discharged deacon ; that's all. A milliner, indeed 1" 
 he muttered, scanning my face ; " that don't look much like the 
 stuff they are made of." 
 
 " It ought to be handsome," I said. 
 
 " Yes, it ought to be handsomer than it ever will be, for that; 
 but that is no reason that something else good can't be made of 
 it;" and with the word he darted into the house, to take leave 
 of the. family. My sisters stood ready to get into the carriage. 
 We had had much pleasant talk in the morning, and Mary, to 
 whom I had confided the secret of our long interview, had en- 
 couraged me greatly. When I kissed them, they both said they 
 should see me soon again ; and I believed it, as they doubtless 
 did ; but it was nearly seven years before my eyes were again 
 gladdened with the sight of Mary's countenance; and then it 
 was in a land far away from where we stood that morning. 
 
 Many days of utter dreariness passed over after this parting. 
 14*
 
 322 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I took again my appointed share in the exact household tasks. 
 The bright, painted floors of the common rooms, were to be 
 washed daily with milk, and the cloth used therefor was not 
 only clean enough, but white enough to have been used about 
 the neatest table. Every small spot where the paint had been 
 removed, was to be scoured twice a week, with small particles 
 of sand, used upon a cloth, strained over the tip of the finger. 
 It was an especial triumph of skill, not to exceed the bounds of 
 the bared spot, and at the same time, to bring that to a state 
 of the' utmost whiteness, possible to pine wood. On every 
 Saturday there was general cleaning, from the lumber room in 
 the garret to the remotest dark corner of the cellar. Doors 
 were opened which had not swung on their hinges since the last 
 sweeping-day, and every inch of superficies carefully cleaned 
 down, with broom, brush, and duster. At first, these household 
 revolutions were very tedious to me, because I saw that, in fact, 
 nothing was done with all the ado they caused ; but I soon 
 learned to take part in them mechanically, and to sweep and 
 dust, and rub floors, walls and furniture over and over, without 
 being able to detect the slightest difference between the ante 
 and post conditions of those hardly used articles. My aunt pro- 
 phesied all manner of good from my docility and neatness, and 
 one day came near disclosing the awful fact that I had at first, 
 been considered hopeless. 
 
 " We shall be able, I do believe, to make a woman of you, 
 after all," she said. 
 
 I did not ask what were the difficulties that had been rec- 
 koned so near impossibilities, but in my own mind I said, pre- 
 sumptuously, " I shall make a woman of myself not a sweeping 
 and scouring machine." I think I was not amiable in those 
 days. I felt myself detained, and I stayed there as quietly as I 
 could, my whole nature in hourly protest. I had looked for. 
 ward to this position, but it was, I thought, almost as fruitless 
 of good as the previous one. Here I was not in any way 
 oppressed but no spiritual life in all the circle that surrounded
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 323 
 
 me was related to mine. I lived in my own shell, thirsting and 
 hungering as before. This naturally discouraged me. I had 
 no experiences of any sort in this negative life, and could, I be- 
 lieve, have been grateful for a downright, honest misery, if it 
 had come with power to stir me out of my level apathy. In the 
 universe there can be flothing containing life and sensation, so 
 tiresome as a sea of glassy smoothness, reflecting the sunshine 
 of successive days, and the unbroken starbeams of still nights. 
 No rage of the elements but would be welcome to us, rushing 
 over and stirring the inert waters. 
 
 A little breath of change came to my calm after a while. 
 " Eliza," said my aunt, one morning, after an early breakfast, 
 " I wish you to prepare to go over to King's Hollow with me 
 this morning ; I am going to Miss Burt, to see if she will take 
 you to learn the trade." 
 
 I do not know if she thought I had already been apprised of 
 this intention, that she named it so abruptly, but I let it pass, 
 3nd simply said, " What time, aunt ?" 
 
 " As soon as we can get ready. We will walk over in the 
 cool of the morning." 
 
 King's Hollow was a small village about three miles distant. 
 I had come through it on my way home, and never seen it 
 since. I remembered it, a neat, smart-looking place fresh 
 painted, with rows of poplars, straight, solemn, and exact, 
 wherever they could be placed never by any chance an odd 
 one and a great, brawling, mountain stream, rushing, and foam- 
 ing along its rocky bed, through the very centre of the village. 
 It was the same that ran through our village, and the road lay 
 bmde it all the way, except in the little short curves the water 
 made occasionally, iu hunting its channel among the rooks that 
 opposed it. The valley of the stream was very narrow, and on 
 either hand rose the Catskills, clothed, at that time, to their 
 summits, with hemlock and pine, whose sombre, heavy green 
 was enlivened by an occasional maple, strutting in scarlet, or a 
 beech flaunting its pale orange robes in boastful gaiety.
 
 324 ^ MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 My heart gladdened at thought of the walk. It seemed as if 
 nature suddenly presented herself to me, as a neglected friend, 
 who might have helped me before, had I sought her aid. It 
 was a glorious autumn morning, and the liquid dew yet glistened 
 upon the short, scant, herbage of the roadside, when we set out. 
 I had no time to loiter, or dream by the way, much as I wished 
 for an hour alone, by the water and the woods, for my good 
 aunt walked, as she did everything else, with all her might. 
 We had little conversation, and I did not once inquire what 
 sort of a person Miss Burt was, how I was to live, how long to 
 stay, or anything else. It seemed of no consequence to know 
 either the one or the other, for as I watched the yellow leaves, 
 hurrying down the stream, sometimes madly, and again appa- 
 rently thrown aside, to lie still in some pool till the frost should 
 lock them up there for the winter, so it seemed to me, was I 
 making a random voyage down the stream of time. I only 
 hoped there might not be too much stagnant water by the way. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 "Thy feet shall walk in other paths than these." 
 " She hath a low, sweet voice." 
 
 JUST as we entered the village of King's Hollow, a sturdy 
 Dutchwoman joined us from a comfortable-looking house by the 
 roadside. She was walking down the street, she said, and 
 would " co mit us." She eyed me sharply, and said something 
 in her vernacular, to my aunt, which, being responded to in the 
 same, brought me another good, long, scrutinizing gaze. 
 
 " And so you vants to pe a meelener, eh child ?" she said, ad- 
 dressing me.
 
 MY EARLY DAY8. 325 
 
 " No," I replied, " I don't care to be. My friends wish it, 
 and so I shall try." 
 
 " Ah, vat den you likes te pe ? Tailor ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Dressmaker ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " York in te house, may pe den ?" 
 
 " No," I said, persisting, as I was answering to my likes and 
 dislikes, in doing so honestly, though I afterwards discovered 
 that every one of my replies were turned against me, in a way 
 that might have been most disastrous, had my sole chances of 
 success in life, depended upon acquiring and pursuing any one 
 of these useful trades in the village of King's Hollow. For my 
 catechiser was the town gossip a notable Dutch housewife, 
 whose religion was labor, and who believed that without such 
 work as she did, or required to have done, there was no salva- 
 tion of body or soul. We parted at the door of the milliner's 
 shop, where <we lingered a moment, rubbing our shoes, and pre- 
 liminarily adjusting our shawls and bonnets. My aunt told me in 
 a tone of displeasure that I ought not to have answered as I 
 did ; and that I must not say again I did not wish to learn a 
 trade, nor do housework either, unless I wished to get a bad name 
 through the whole country. "It won't be fifteen minutes," 
 she added, " before the tailor and dressmaker will hear all about 
 you ; and by noon the whole village will know that you have 
 come here to learn a trade, and are so lazy that you don't want 
 to do anything." 
 
 I was quite dismayed at these results of a few honestly-spoken 
 words; but I had no time to reply, for I was immediately ushered 
 into the shop, and introduced to Miss Burt as " My niece, the 
 girl I spoke to you about." 
 
 Miss Burt's face and manner took a great burden from my 
 spirit at once. God be praised for every such pure, tender and 
 Bweet face, with which he has adorned this abused world! Such 
 gentleness and goodness were expressed there, that I felt not only
 
 326 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 willing, but anxious, to stay with her. If anything could have 
 won me to a love of the fripperies imd nothings of so unsubstan- 
 tial an art, it would have been that face ; and her voice doubled 
 the welcome assurance. The alacrity with which, upon her invi- 
 tation, 1 laid aside my bonnet, which looked ruder and poorer 
 than it ever had before, surprised and pleased my aunt, who 
 went on talking over my position (there), and her wishes in re- 
 gard to me ; so that I then first learned that I was now upon 
 trial, for a week or fortnight, as she might feel disposed at the 
 end of which, if I continued, I was to euter upon my year of 
 apprenticeship. I was to live with herself and her mother, who 
 kept the house, and was to make myself generally useful, in the 
 times when I was not employed in the shop. 
 
 I assented to all, so far as I was required to, with a cheerful- 
 ness which evidently pleased my good, thrifty, care-burdened" 
 aunt very much, and after resting an hour or so, and seeing me 
 seated behind the counter at the back end of the shop, needle 
 and work in hand, she took her leave, saying she should expect 
 to see me home on Saturday for a change of clothes, and to 
 spend the Sabbath, if Miss Burt was willing. 
 
 There was a long silence after the door closed. I had the frill of 
 a brown battiste bonnet, which I was trying to hem with a blind 
 stitch, that, alas! hardly ever would be blind, unless to eyes in 
 the same condition. While I sat, nervously driving the needle 
 into my finger, and looking carefully at every stitch on the right 
 side, as I drew the thread through, I was mentally wondering 
 over two unsolved questions, which I had to wait for time lo 
 answer. " What sort of old lady," I thought, " is the mother?'-' 
 who was, at the time, moving quietly about the adjoining back 
 room ; " and what shall be the first words we shall say ?" The 
 longer we sat still, the more nervous I grew ; and at length, iu 
 sheer desperation, I determined to break the silence. 
 
 " Will those stitches do, Miss Burt ?" I asked, reaching my 
 work forward for inspection. 
 
 "Pretty well for a beginning," was the gentle reply.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 327 
 
 " Perhaps you are a little tired from your walk, and would bet- 
 ter rest till after dinner. Would you like to go out in the 
 kitchen, and see my mother ?" 
 
 " Yes, if you please ;" for I did want to get up and feel the 
 strangeness of my position relieved, by seeing at once all that I 
 had to see. 
 
 Miss Burt rose, and I followed her. She seemed younger in 
 figure and movement, than when I had only seen her face ; and 
 this made me feel, with a sort of reverence, that she must have 
 suffered some great sorrow, which had saddened her countenance 
 prematurely. She opened the door, and said, " Mother, this 
 is Eliza Woodson, the young girl, you remember, that our frfend, 
 Mrs. Page, spoke about. She has come to stay awhile with 
 us." 
 
 They were clearly mother and daughter. The same purity of 
 countenance was in both; the same subdued sensibility, the same 
 gentleness. The old lady courteously placed a chair for me in 
 her neat little kitchen, in which there was already a savory 
 smell of dinner ; and, after a few words between them, which I 
 avoided hearing, the daughter left us. She was called Theresa. 
 I answered the mother's questions, and, when the cloth was 
 spread, begged permission to lay the table, anxious to get upon 
 my feet, and feel the constraint of ceremony removed. They 
 were very social at dinner, with, occasionally, a pleasant word 
 or question to me ; and by tea-time, I seemed, without any 
 effort of my own, or theirs, to be incorporated into the 
 family. 
 
 I admired these women very much, and almost envied them 
 their harmonious, beautiful lives. " It would have been easier," 
 I thought, " to give up going to school, for such a home as this, 
 and the ability to maintain it, than for anything I had ever 
 seen." 
 
 I was wiping the tea-things, and Mrs. Burt and Theresa were 
 sitting in their little parlor, which opened into the kitchen and 
 shop both, when there came a rap at the front door (the cur-
 
 328 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 tains having been let fall at dark, made the house a private one), 
 and Miss Burt, opening it, let in the stout woman the roadside 
 gossip of the morning. Her Dutch accent, hard voice, and 
 heavy person and features, seemed all exaggerated, by contrast 
 with her entertainers. I suspected, from the first sight of her, 
 that she had come to enlighten these ladies with regard to my 
 delinquent tastes; and I was convinced of it when, after a few 
 commonplaces about the weather and neighborhood affairs, she 
 rose, and, walking to the door that led into the kitchen, 
 closed it. 
 
 In a few moments Miss Burt reopened it, with a quiet smile 
 upon her face, and said : "When you are done, Eliza, come and 
 sit down with us." 
 
 "Thank you," I said ; and I must have looked grateful, I 
 know, for I felt how very good it was in her to pay no heed to 
 the tale she had heard, and to invite me to silence my own tra- 
 ducer. She did not stay long, after I joined them ; and when 
 she left, Miss Burt courteously excused herself from attending 
 her to the door. She sat and talked with me her inquiries evi- 
 dently shaped by what she had heard, but her mind wholly un- 
 prejudiced. 
 
 The good mother reclined upon a stiff, high-backed sofa, and 
 dozed after the first few minutes. I answered many questions, 
 among others, why I did not wish to be a milliner, or tradeswo- 
 man of any sort ? why I had determined, notwithstanding, upon 
 trying to please my relatives ? and why I had come hither, with- 
 out a word of explanation to my aunt ? 
 
 " I know Mrs. Page very well," said Miss Burt, " and you were 
 right, I think, not to attempt to argue the point with her. She is a 
 most worthy and excellent woman, but she would scarcely feel the 
 weight of the reasons you have stated to me. Of course, with 
 these views and feelings, it would be useless for you to remain 
 here ; but not to displease your friends, you shall, if you like, 
 stay with us until Saturday, and then, I think, I can write your 
 aunt a note, which will settle her mind about it.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 329 
 
 I thanked her, as I felt, very gratefully, and we were friends 
 at once. And though I never saw her after the day I left her 
 house, to go home, I have still her face, figure and voice pre- 
 served in my memory, as perfectly as if I had seen them yester- 
 day. I was crude, and ill qualified to appreciate a noble w jman 
 in that day; but her virtues and loveliness left an impression on 
 my heart, which I shall carry undiminished, through the long 
 picture gallery of life." 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 "Of the aims in life that bound us, 
 
 Few there are too high to reach ; 
 And there's nothing that's around us, 
 But has yet a song to teach." 
 
 PASS over a year. An autumn, winter, spring and summer 
 have successively clothed and unclothed the earth, and at last I 
 have overtaken that hunted future, beyond which I care not to 
 look. I have slipped the leash that held me back, and here I 
 stand, side by side with that mighty spirit, whose image, clear 
 and perfect, has been so long daguerreotyped upon my soul. I 
 am at school I The gates that were so inexorably closed, have 
 opened at last, and I stand upon consecrated ground. 
 
 Somewhat has gone before this, however, that it were well 
 to refer to. A long and rigorous winter, endless nights, and . 
 clear days of unbroken frost, for weeks together close housing, 
 but little labor, and great indulgence in books, fires and lights. 
 Well and thankfully, on many days of the eventful years that 
 have since passed, have I remembered that indulgence the 
 luxury of enjoying, undisturbed, the lengthened evenings, sitting 
 near the great, roaring farmhouse fire, a little aside from the 
 bustle and chat of the family circle ; which lessened with the
 
 330 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 advancing hours, and was, finally, reduced to myself and the 
 kind, generous household father; who, having caused an ample 
 pile of wood to be deposited at the chimney corner, and inspected 
 the careful closing of the doors, departed last, with injunctions 
 not to sit too late, and, above all, not to let the fire go down, so 
 as to take cold. 
 
 Here I first learned what a novel was, and sat more than one 
 night from dark till broad daylight too much absorbed, some- 
 times, to remember the mortal necessity of sleep too much 
 wrought upon, at others, by the horrors of my book, to dare a 
 single step in the silent house, much less a journey through its 
 low, wide rooms, and zig-zag passages, to my sleeping-chamber. 
 
 The books of those days, though they are but twenty-five 
 years past, were very different from ours 'of this time. They 
 were very much more expensive, consequently scarcer. They 
 were all bound in heavy boards or leather. No stacks of cheap 
 novels and bewitching monthlies accumulated then in spare 
 chambers, or were huddled upon misses' tables, mixed up with 
 class-books, bibles and psalmodies. A book was a book then ; 
 a distinct and endurable creation which the whole household 
 respected. They were property, and came at rare intervals like 
 other expensive purchases. Variety was of course out of the 
 question, except to the wealthy ; and I found afterwards that I 
 had been particularly fortunate in enjoying two histories Rol- 
 lins' and Robinson's " Charles Fifth ;" three novels terrible ; one 
 ditto heroic ; one sentimental, and one amorous, of which the 
 whole catalogue stands thus:" Of the class terrible there 
 was, first (shade of Mrs. Radcliffe pardon the precedence) : 
 "The Three Spaniards," "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and 
 "The Secrets of the Castle of Otranto." The representative 
 hero came to me iu the person of Rinaldo Rinaldini ; I wept 
 duly over the tender sorrows -of Amanda Malvina and Lord 
 Mortimer ; and wearied my well-developed pectoral muscles over 
 the highly-wrought ludicrous distresses of Dorcasina Sheldon. 
 
 Each and all of these creations, were, for the time, as real to
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 331 
 
 me as Mithridates, or Alexander, or Charles. The words 
 "founded on fact" were a substantial indorsement which I took 
 as unquestioningly as your banker accepts the name of Mr. 
 Cresus, and having once given the weight of verity to one tale, 
 I could not withhold it from auoth er equally well told. The 
 only evidence which I could have received against it, would have 
 been poverty of imagination in the author, or feebleness in 
 bringing out the figures of his piece, and in graving their lines 
 sharply enough to secure them instant recognition. 
 
 For the broken and serious hours, I had Cowper and Burns; 
 and committed to memory innumerable gems of song and poesy 
 from the latter, which have dwelt with me in all the changes of 
 after life, and which are always irresistibly associated with the 
 idea of a pure, starry light, which was then coming, with steadily 
 increasing lustre, into my soul. I passed hastily, sometimes 
 shudderingly, over his irreligious poems, epistles and satires. 
 They seemed a desecration of his sacred gifts ; and, incapable 
 as I then was of understanding how they could come from the 
 same soul whence had flowed the holy lines of the " Cotter's 
 Saturday Night," and the tearful verses to " Mary in Heaven," 
 I used to wish that the book was mine, that I might seal up the 
 pages containing the unworthy satires, and never see them more 
 forget if possible that they were.
 
 332 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 " Bring a shadow green and still 
 
 From the chestnut forest, 
 Bring a purple from the hill, 
 
 When the heat is sorest, 
 Spread them out from wall to wall, 
 
 Carpet-wove around,- 
 Whereupon the foot shall fall 
 
 In light instead of sound." 
 
 THUS the winter grew with me into spring, and how happy 
 I was then, carrying my own enlarged life abroad into the Gelds 
 and forests of growing beauty. There was a bank of daffodils, 
 on which, and on the still lake beside them, the vernal sunshine 
 poured itself, from early morning till the shadows of the low 
 western hills stretched thither nursing their green and golden 
 splendor with a lavish, yet careful hand. The leaves had not 
 come out on the arms of the great overshadowing trees. It was 
 the very spot Wordsworth might have seen the same flowers, 
 water, trees, and hills ; and came back like a painted picture 
 before me, years after, when first I read those exquisite lines of 
 his. And the shadows of the spring clouds lay on the brown 
 slopes, in little shifting patches, upon whose lines I used to de- 
 light to walk, and fancy myself treading the islands of the 
 sweet air. 
 
 I revelled in my own growth as well as in that of the season. 
 How much I knew which I had never before known 1 How 
 were my circles of thought enlarged and multiplied. They began 
 to approach, and I fancied, to touch each other. I could see 
 shadowy points of contact between my historical and my political 
 spheres ; between my poetry and my fiction, and it seemed to
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 333 
 
 me that I could almost, at a step, pass from one to the other, 
 without descending to the external and negative world; as I 
 sometimes could, at a great leap, spring from one cloud shadow 
 to another. So I grew with the growing year, happy secure 
 that no more seasons of wintry death or sterility awaited me. 
 I had reached up and seized upon the eudnring pillars of thought, 
 and I felt I had a hold which could not again be loosed. It 
 was more like that memorable time when I had proved, against 
 my fearful doubts, the proud possession of mental sanity, than 
 any other experience I had ever had. I was rich, therefore, in 
 those days, though in worldly gear little better than a pauper. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 " There's buxom health, of rosy hue ; 
 Wild wit, invention ever uew ; 
 
 And lively cheer of vigor born ; 
 The thoughtless day, the easy night, 
 The spirits pure, the slumbers light 
 That fly the approach of morn." 
 
 IN June came a letter for me, from my brother (postage was 
 higher then, and letters fewer than at this time), of which the 
 last paragraph ran thus : 
 
 41 So you see that with my own economy, and poor Molly's refusing to 
 take a little marriage present from me, I am now nearly ready to put you 
 on the course. Excuse the figure, but I expect you to run famously. You 
 will have to work hard, and be a very poor scholar, which will not per- 
 haps injure your chances of success, after all. I shall be up in August to 
 plant you for a year or two in some schoolmaster's garden. Till then 
 good bye. " Your affectionate brother, 
 
 " JOHN E. WOODSON." 
 
 " p. S. Consult the Goodies thereabouts and see if you can make choice 
 of a school before I come."
 
 834 MT EARLY DATS. 
 
 I sat long alone that night, beside the brook in the meadow 
 dreaming, hoping, resolving ; grasping as it were, with the untried 
 sinews of my half-developed thoughts, to prove their power, and 
 measure them for the labor before me. I did not on the whole dis- 
 trust myself, but the heart-strokes seemed to reach to my finger- 
 ends when I remembered what he would expect of me, and 
 what I should demand of myself. And there came to me then, 
 with a strange and kindling influence, that vivified every faculty 
 of my nature, those words, spoken long ago down by the great 
 raft, " when you get to school you will learn so rapidly, that if 
 your health is good, what other scholars are three or four years 
 in doing, you will do in one or two." I accepted them as o. 
 prophecy, and thus they became an inspiration. I was full of 
 health and strength, and I would do all this. 
 
 Before John came, a school was selected, subject to his ap- 
 proval, for I had no choice, knowing literally nothing of any, 
 and feeling that to get entrance to any one, was blessing suffi- 
 cient for this life. It was a Friend's boarding-school, an old in- 
 stitution enjoying high credit with those staid, quiet people, and 
 much patronized by others. 
 
 That sect had recently undergone the famous agitation which 
 divided it into Orthodox and Hicksite branches ; and these dis- 
 tinctions were carefully kept up in discussing the respective 
 merits of their several schools, but to me it was all one, and 
 would have been though one had borne the name of Mahomet 
 and the other of Budha. In due time all was arranged. The 
 clothes that I had not on, were put into the least of all possible 
 trunks and yet there was room and with nothing but that 
 small chattel, I was set down at the gate of the Temple, on the 
 aftc>ruoon of the 9th of August, 183-. My brother had been 
 unable to come, as he promised, and I was taken along by a 
 visitor at our house au elderly gentleman who had to pass the 
 school on his return home, and who, esteeming the ceremony of 
 introduction a vanity of the world, placed my little box upon 
 the wagon-block beside me, aiid drove on his way.
 
 MY EAELT DATS. 335 
 
 " I am not to stand here," was the first conclusion of my mind 
 in answer to the mental question, " What shall I do next ?" I 
 stepped down to the ground. I had not yet seen any one, and 
 I hoped no one had seen me, for I was ashamed and indignant, 
 and, little as I knew of the world, felt that I had a right to be 
 so, at being thus rudely left to make my own way among people 
 I had never seen. On looking about me, I observed with real 
 thankfulness that the windows of a building on my right, whence 
 a certain drowsy sound of voices issued, were covered all over 
 the lower sashes with the clambering vines of the May 
 rose ; and that the house-blinds on my left were closed. I 
 hesitated for a moment which to go first to, but luckily de- 
 cided upon the dwelling, and walking straight up to the door, I 
 knocked as resolutely as my trepidation would let me, upon its 
 dark painted panels. It was promptly opened by a middle- 
 aged woman, with a cold, grey eye, which seemed to be all 
 surface. 
 
 She held it (the door) in her hand, and hammered me with 
 the stony eye, while I hesitatingly accosted her in the politest 
 form I could remember, and told her I had come to school, ac- 
 cording to the letter of my brother, Mr. Woodson, had written 
 Mr. Barton, from New York. Upon this I was invited within ; 
 my b'ounet removed I had no such superfluities as gloves, or 
 shawl, my shoulders being simply covered with a small round 
 cape of white muslin, which was a gift from Mary and myself 
 seated upon a broad-bottomed, straight-backed settee of board, 
 painted yellow. I trembled all over, but could not rest myself 
 against the back, nof touch my feet to the floor ; so I sat up- 
 right, bathed in the vapor of an intense excitement, and 
 answered the questions which were put to me. They were 
 spoken in a voice which was low, not from fashion or feeling, 
 but from an educated stiffness which mechanized the speaker's 
 1 frame, and made every voluntary muscle, aye, and the involun- 
 tary ones, too, as far as could be done, the instruments of an 
 irrepealable code of propriety.
 
 236 MY EAELT DATS. 
 
 In my turn, I ventured upon a few questions touching the 
 school the number of scholars, the number of girls, and, above 
 all, how long it took one to go through the school. I knew that 
 a college course was four years, and that there were other 
 schools where scholars accomplished the course of study, or 
 were expected to, in a given time, and I thought it might be so 
 here. But I was told that there were scholars there who had 
 been in the school seven years, nearly all the time, and were not 
 yet ready to leave it. These, she said, were lazy, dull students ; 
 and she thought a bright boy or girl, beginning with a tolerable 
 elementary education, ought to go as far as they taught, in two 
 years, or two and a half, at the most. 
 
 " Had I brought a trunk with me ?" 
 
 " Yes ; it was on the wagon block." 
 
 "At recess," she said, "I will have some of the large boys 
 bring it in." 
 
 " Oh, no," I said, hastily, feeling terribly the discrepancy 
 between the strength of two of the large boys, and the mere 
 toy-box that contained my possessions " oh, no ; it is small ; 
 I can bring it in myself." And I darted away, to capture and 
 conceal the thing, before any one should see it, I literally flew 
 out and back, lest the recess should come suddenly, and I be 
 surprised with it in my hand. 
 
 " This way," she said, when I entered, leading me up a lead- 
 colored painted stairway, and into a room containing three beds. 
 " Thee will sleep here, and this is thy bed. Put thy trunk down 
 at the foot of it." 
 
 I did so, with a keen sense of relief when it was partly 
 concealed by the foot-curtain, or the fall of the bed-cover. 
 
 While I was being instructed in the rules of the lodging- 
 rooms not a loud word to be spoken after nine o'clock ; no 
 jumping or running ever to be done there ; beds to be made 
 immediately after the morning school, before breakfast ; no ' 
 soiled garments ever to be left out of the dirty-linen basket, 
 which stood in a deep angle of the passage outside a great
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 337 
 
 outburst of noise came across the yard the sound of running 
 feet and girls' voices ; and I trembled, as if an insurrection had 
 suddenly broken out, and these were the dangerous insurgents, 
 marching up to take my life. They dashed into the house, up 
 the stairs, and into all the rooms, like so many embodiments of 
 a modified whirlwind ; but those who entered the apartment 
 where we were, became suddenly as motionless and silent, when 
 they saw us, as if they had repeated, there and then, the experi- 
 ence of Lot's wife. 
 
 My sense of the ludicrous was irresistibly touched by this 
 sudden transformation, which, I instantly saw, was due solely to 
 the unexpected and surprising presence of my companion. I 
 could have laughed most heartily, and came very near doing so, 
 in spite of the pinchings of propriety ; for I felt a fellowship in 
 these young spirits, very different to that I should have experi- 
 enced in private life. One, the most brisk and mischievous-look- 
 ing of them a very dark brunette, with glittering black eyes 
 was the first to speak. 
 
 " Oh, excuse us, Huldah, please. We didn't know you were 
 here." 
 
 " It ought to make no difference whether I am here or not," 
 was the reply. " It isn't becoming in girls to make so much 
 noise anywhere. Here," she said, turning to me, "is Eliza 
 Woodson, a new scholar ; and she ought not to see such rude 
 behavior the first day she is here." 
 
 That was a time when I wished to speak ; for I did not think 
 it rude at all. It was just as I liked to do myself, sometimes, 
 after sitting still. I was introduced to the girls in a body; for, 
 by the time we had reached that point in the proceedings, they 
 had gathered in from all the other rooms, to see what had pro- 
 duced the sudden silence in ours. Mrs. Barton, or Huldab, as 
 they called her, passed out from among us, with a parting 
 injunction to quietness the saving virtue of her sect ; and half 
 a dozen of the rebuked gathered about me, instantly, and, with- 
 out any rudeness, asked again my name, which they had not 
 15
 
 338 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 distinctly heard where I came from, and if I was going into 
 school that afternoon. 
 
 I thought not. I should like to see the teacher first. So I 
 seated myself at the window, after they had all gone down, to 
 the sound of the bell, and endeavored to realize the glory of my 
 position. 
 
 In a few moments, there was another great outbreak below 
 shouting and tramping of feet. It was the boys' recess. My 
 window was at the opposite end of the house from the school, 
 but I heard steps on the flagged walk below, and, putting my 
 head out, I saw three or four boys walking quietly, as if secretly, 
 around, to enter the kitchen door. They presently returned, 
 and were followed half way up the broad stone steps, by a fat, 
 good-looking, almost handsome woman, who was laughingly 
 driving them before her, each with a hunch of bread in his hand. 
 It was evidently a secret expedition ; for they spoke in sup- 
 pressed voices, which I could not have heard but for my window 
 being directly above them. 
 
 " You are first-rate, Elizabeth," said one of them, munching 
 his crust. " I like you, and always shall." 
 
 " Go along !" she replied, " and don't talk about always liking 
 me. You won't remember me round the corner of the house. 
 Only keep that bread out of sight, I tell you. If you don't, it'll 
 be the last you'll get from me." 
 
 They went quietly away, and I drew back, feeling that I was 
 making tolerable progress in what the lawyers call the animus of 
 the case.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 339 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 " I have a will shall master all and each, 
 As you who may, shall see in time." 
 
 AT supper, I was seated somewhere among the sixteen girls ; 
 and the thirty or forty boys were ranged on each side of the long 
 table, below us. Mr. Barton whom we were expected always 
 to address by his Christian name of Benjamin sat at the lower 
 end ; the larger boys nearest him, and the little ones fell off, by 
 regular gradation, up to where they joined the rows of girls. I 
 was too far off to see the principal's face with any satisfaction, 
 so I looked at those near about me, and kept very silent. That 
 was the rule of the table, unless we were addressed by one of 
 the figures at either end. Our supper consisted of tea, with 
 bread, and bad butter, which I only tasted ; for I had a consti- 
 tutional abhorrence of any oleaginous substance that was not 
 sweet and pure. 
 
 After supper, we were at liberty to retire to the dormitories ; 
 but I was soon sent for, to come to the sitting-room the one 
 where I had first been received to see Benjamin. Though 
 glad of this summons, I went, to answer it, with some trepida- 
 tion, which, however, was much relieved by one of the girls say- 
 ing to me, as I was going out, " You needn't be afraid of him. 
 He's as good as sunshine. You'll like him, right away." 
 
 I went down-stairs, and found myself in presence of a man 
 past middle life, as I thought, with dark, well-preserved hair, 
 rather large features, which were not the least gross, however ; 
 and a mouth, and eye, and forehead so unmistakably kind and 
 good, that I felt my self-possession return at once. He motioned 
 me to a seat beside him, and said, " I want to have a little talk
 
 340 MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 with thee, my dear, before we go into school in the morning. 
 Thy brother wrote me that thou hadst not been to school since 
 thou wert very small." 
 
 " No, sir," I replied. 
 
 " Thou hast no need of 'sir,' in addressing me, my dear." 
 
 I corrected myself, and said that I had not been permitted to 
 attend school since I was five years old. 
 
 " Hast thou not studied since ?" 
 
 " A very little. I have read some books all that I could 
 get." 
 
 "Ahl I see thou art self-instructed. That is better than 
 ignorance, my dear. But what dost thou want to study now ?" 
 he said, smiling very kindly on me, and speaking as if the ques- 
 tion were intended rather to draw me out, than to call for an 
 answer which he would trust in directing my course. 
 
 "I should like to study everything," I said, feeling the 
 impossibility of choosing for myself. 
 
 " Not all at once, my dear ; not all at once." 
 
 " No ; but as fast as I can." 
 
 " Yes, yes. We will see. But if thou wilt take my advice, 
 thou wilt begin moderately at first. Nothing is gained by over- 
 doing at the start. Thou wilt read, write, cipher, study geogra- 
 phy, and spell. Those I think will do to begin with. Dost, thou 
 
 " Yes, sir," and then hastily omitting the superfluous particle, 
 " yes, I agree until we see that I can do more," which I knew 
 would be shown the first day. For already I was pronounced a 
 very good reader, my spelling was faultless, and the geography 
 as familiar to me as the letters of my own name, so that iu fact 
 I had only the writing (very much needed) and the figures, left 
 for real work. 
 
 In the morning, after a sleepless night, I rose before the early 
 bell, leaving the girl who shared my bed, fast asleep, and walked 
 down-staira. I longed to hear the signal that should call me to 
 my work. Nobody was moving without, yet, and I took several
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 341 
 
 turns up and down in the arbor that ran from the house to the 
 school, while I was mentally engaged in taking soundings of my 
 position. Presently I heard a heavy footstep in the school 
 building, and a moment after, the first wavering stroke of the 
 bell, which was rung long and loudly. Before it stopped, both 
 houses seemed to have received a flood of life, as the dry earth 
 receives the tumultuous ram of a sudden thunder-storm. Fifty 
 or sixty bodies, each apparently furnished with a nimble tongue, 
 had been brought into perpendicularity and motion by those 
 sounds. It was very inspiriting, and I took in courage and im- 
 patience with every breath. Eetreating to the sitting-room, I 
 met Benjamin, who, after a good-natured word of congratulation 
 on my early rising, told me that he should be absent that morn- 
 ing, but the teacher would give me the books I wanted, and in 
 the afternoon he should be in the school himself. 
 
 I sat still through the ante-breakfast session at an empty 
 form sustaining, with what coolness I could, the fire of all the 
 eyes that belonged to the bodies aforementioned. Lazy scholars 
 took it easily, and eyed me over without the pains of disguising 
 their occupation. Studious ones read, alternately, their lessons 
 and my face. I heard the recitations and readings, scrutinized the 
 teacher, and felt, when we were dismissed, very much as I imagine 
 one does who has been plunged into a stream, and on rising and 
 shaking the water from his person, congratulates himself that it 
 was not nearly so bad as he had dreaded it would be. 
 
 I had seen nothing that I did not feel myself able to do with 
 a little preparation ; much that had occupied them I could have 
 done at a moment's warning. One feeling, therefore, which had 
 undeniably qualified my satisfaction in being there, the dread of 
 finding myself absurdly and ridiculously deficient in something 
 that I should be expected to know, was almost removed by this 
 hour's observation, so that when the signal was given for the 
 girls to retire, I walked out, carrying with me a stock of com- 
 placency which, alas, like many other suddenly acquired riches, 
 was destined soon to melt away, and leave me in a poverty
 
 342 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 all the more humiliating aud painful for the condition it suc- 
 ceeded. 
 
 Breakfast was over coffee, bread, and more of the bad but- 
 ter, with a morsel of salt fish. The bell rang for the forenoon 
 session. Now the battle was to commence no longer a spec- 
 tator the weapons were to be in my own hands. I had a seat 
 assigned me, books brought, a slate, writing-book, pens, etc. I 
 was at last fairly on the road where I was expected " to run 
 famously." The first class in grammar was called and took their 
 places, five of the largest girls and seven boys, three of them 
 young men. I was watching rather than studying, and the 
 teacher, seeing me pick up the book they were called upon to 
 bring, looked a moment at me and called me to come to the 
 class. He was a heavy-featured man, with an easy, dull, good- 
 natured face, whom we had also to call by his Christian name of 
 Noah. It was not many minutes before if I had been capable 
 of a rational wish I should have wished that he had been the 
 Noah, and had never been able to descend from Ararat. 
 
 I obeyed his summons, thinking that it must be right, but 
 without the remotest idea what grammar related to, or what 
 manner of exercise this class was to go through. As I ap- 
 proached the seats, room was made for me next one of the girls, 
 and I sat down considerably bewildered, but very resolute. I re- 
 lied much upon a downright power I was conscious of, as I sup- 
 pose men used to of old, going into the field with battle-axe or 
 broadsword in hand. 
 
 The recitation commenced ; I listened, all ear and nerve, but 
 the mystery was utterly inexplicable a proposition in conic 
 sections could not have been more so. The questions were ap- 
 proaching me adverbs, relatives, nominatives ; transitives and 
 intransitives ; objects and subjects ; subjectivcs and compara- 
 tives ; participles and infinitives ; all bearing dowiumercilessly 
 upon my confused brain. I made a wild endeavor to catch some 
 gleam, as the storm came on, by which I might shun the horror 
 of the betrayal I saw before me, but it was in vain. The last
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 34:3 
 
 question was put and answered. At the next word I should be 
 called upon. My sight was dimmed, so that the letters ran to- 
 gether in a black mass upon the page before me, and I held my 
 breath in expectation of the tones that should summon me to 
 speak, when some good spirit suggested to me : " Tell him you 
 cannot recite, and leave the class." 
 
 I rose and said, bluntly : " I have never studied grammar, 
 and I can't answer these questions. Will you let me take my 
 seat ?" 
 
 He nodded, good-naturedly, and I moved off without looking 
 at any face, though I felt the smile on several as I passed 
 them. 
 
 When I sat down and had recovered myself, so as to cast my 
 eyes back to the class-seats, I saw a girl, whose manner and bearing 
 had before offended my taste, laughing, tossing her head in my 
 direction, and whispering to those near her ; all which showed 
 plainly that my case was under no very respectful discussion at 
 that moment. How my blood boiled I and how I resolved, look- 
 ing at that shallow face, which was poorly pretty, well laid out, 
 and colored merely, but with not a ray of earnestness or real 
 character in it, that I would leave its owner out of sight behind 
 me in six months. 
 
 " Who is she ?" I asked of a little girl sitting near me, whose 
 elder sister, a brilliant brunette of about my own age, was also 
 in the class. 
 
 " She is Jane Tyuedale, from New York. You needn't feel 
 badly," added my little neighbor, considerately, "for anything 
 she does. She is the most disagreeable girl in the school. Sister 
 can't bear her, nor I either." 
 
 With all my pride and resolution, I was not above accepting 
 this little morsel of sweet to modify the bitter of this, my first 
 draught from the sacred cup. I turned over my books with a 
 firm purpose not to leave my seat again till the Principal was 
 there to tell me what to do. 
 
 At noon, there was a knot of girls gathered under the quince-
 
 344 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 trees in our yard, listening to Jane Tynedale's account of how I 
 parsed in the first class, and how near she came to dying of 
 suppressed laughter when I got up and told Noah, like a fool, 
 that I had never studied grammar. My face, she said, was " as 
 purple as the queer-looking frock I had on, and I acted as if I 
 might have lived all my life in the woods, which she believed I 
 had." 
 
 There was some laughing at her story, but not enough to 
 hinder me from walking that way and presenting myself before 
 her audience. It is probable that I was braver for remembering 
 the words I had heard about her in the morning. It requires so 
 little effort to face an unpopular foe. I looked straight at her, 
 my eyes telling her plainly, " I have heard all you have been say- 
 ing," and she showed her lack of courage instantly in the changed 
 color and expression of her face. 
 
 " How long have you studied grammar ?" I asked. 
 
 " Six or seven years," was her reply. 
 
 " Very well," I said ; " you laugh at me to-day because I 
 have never had one lesson in it ; but mind now, I shall not study 
 it seven months before I shall be able to teach you." 
 
 She laughed loudly, and exclaimed : " That's a likely boast, 
 when I am the best grammarian in school. Why, Benjamin 
 sometimes has me hear the lower classes for him, when he is 
 hurried." 
 
 " Never mind that," I replied, doggedly ; "you may hear the 
 lower classes, and yet I shall be able to teach you before I have 
 studied grammar as many months as you have years. You all 
 take notice, girls, and see if it isn't true by and by." 
 
 I felt that I could count most of them on my side at that mo- 
 ment, and that if the boast seemed vain and idle to them, they 
 would still enjoy seeing it accomplished.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 345 
 
 CHAPTER LIT. 
 
 " Sow thy seed, and reap in gladness ! 
 
 Man himself is all a seed ; 
 Hope and hardship, joy and sadness, 
 Slow the plant to ripeness lead." 
 
 I DID not get fairly launched upon the waters of the Pierian foun- 
 tain for a whole week. I was very impatient, but it took all that 
 time to convince the kind and careful Benjamin that it would be 
 safe to let me add grammar, astronomy, and natural philosophy to 
 the studies he had first prescribed for me. When I had gained 
 these points, and, feeling that I had enough to do, wrapped myself 
 in the mail of resolution, to do it, I went on with a steadiness 
 and rapidity which nothing could interrupt or disturb. I soon 
 found the advantage of being solus ia my studies. I did not have 
 to measure my own progress by the capacity of others. 
 
 Early in the winter, I took my place in the first grammar 
 class, and was not unfrequently consulted about the analysis of 
 sentences, and passages in the old poets, whose involved periods 
 afforded a fine opportunity for the exercise of thought and skill 
 in the study. I had passed by all the mere technicalities and 
 forms long be/ore. Miss Tynedale was below me ; for the dear, 
 good, fatherly Benjamin, with a certain pride in the article he 
 had so nearly made from the raw material, used generally to 
 sign me to the first seat on his right, and often exchange 
 opinions with me, on questions that fell to other pupils. 
 
 "It is not yet seven months," I said to her, one day, as we 
 
 rose to go to our seats, after a question, on which she and I dif- 
 
 Jered, had been decided with me. " Next month I shall only go 
 
 in the class occasionally, when there is something difficult enough 
 
 to be worthy of my attention. It will be exercise enough, Beu- 
 
 15*
 
 346 MY EAKLT DATS. 
 
 jamin thinks, for me to hear you sometimes, and once in a while 
 parse with you." It was her turn to color now, so darkly, that 
 she scarcely looked, for a moment, whiter than I did. 
 
 My career at this school was an uninterrupted triumph, over 
 the only obstacles that I recognized the difficulties of study. I 
 marched through the mathematical course, as Benjamin would 
 sometimes declare, with a humorous expression of alarm upon 
 his face, " without let or hindrance." He thought it was all very 
 easy to me, because I did it rapidly ; but, in fact, I had a deal 
 of very hard work with the different branches of these studies. 
 I had one rule, however, which I never allowed myself to break, 
 and I think it would be as serviceable to young pupils in these 
 days, as it was to me. It was, never to advance a step with any 
 kind of solution, till I fully understood the principle by which it 
 was attained. Thus I often came to a stand-still for days, while 
 my class-mates were moving on with great satisfaction in advance 
 of me ; but this was more than compensated by and by, when, 
 armed with the master-key, I overtook and left them behind, 
 having no more questions or delays, and being entirely able, often, 
 to supply the place of the teacher, in helping them on. 
 
 "You are the strangest creature," said an intelligent and 
 hard-working girl, one day, " that ever I saw. When we began 
 this book (it was some of the more advanced ones of algebra), 
 you seemed to be stuck fast, while the rest of us went on ; and 
 now, here you are, after a week of delving, ready to teach us all. 
 What is the reason of it ?" 
 
 "It is because," I said, " I will know the law first. While I 
 am learning that, you think you are beating me famously, but 
 when I have once got it, I have no more study to do, while you 
 have to guess, and try, and puzzle yourself all the way through. 
 Tin- law opens all the secrets to me, which you are trying, till 
 the last day, to find out, one by one." 
 
 How vastly a student economizes time by this faithfulness, is 
 not, I think, sufficiently appreciated. But for this method, it 
 would have required, I have no doubt, two years for me to ac-
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 34:7 
 
 complish the course of study, which the good Principal wrote to 
 my brother might be considered as completed, at the end of the 
 first. 
 
 John had visited me once in the time a very short, flying 
 visit it was, but a happy one to me, since it not only satisfied, 
 in a measure, my grateful love for him, but lessened my social 
 difficulties sensibly. Nobody had a more personable brother, 
 father, uncle or cousin. I could well be proud of him, and that 
 was what I needed much at that time. My capacity as a scholar 
 was established. It was next requisite to procure a recognition 
 of some social position for me ; and this handsome, easy, fluent 
 brother, was the best possible ambassador to a tribe of wild, 
 thoughtless young girls. 
 
 The visit, however, had its sad, as well as its joyful aspects. 
 He was going away to the far West to the Mississippi further 
 off in those days, than the uttermost border of the continent is now. 
 And before my year was completed, he was there ; and in an- 
 swer to my own and Benjamin's letter, he asked, if I had no more 
 studying to do, could I not assist in teaching till his return ? 
 This I did, pursuing, meanwhile, such branches that were not 
 taught in the school, as I could get books for; and, for the rest, 
 giving myself up to the luxury of almost unlimited reading. 
 
 Benjamin had a large library, of which he gave me the keys. 
 Histories, travels, biographies, works of science, metaphysics, 
 religion and poetry, were gathered, in one vast store of wealth, in 
 those cases, whereof I had the charge. I had, during the prose- 
 cution of my studies, read modern history pretty thoroughly, for 
 a young girl who was guided by no wisdom superior to her own; 
 and now I addressed myself chiefly to travels and biographies, as 
 furnishing a knowledge of human character, which I found no- 
 where else. My most intense desire was to know persons the 
 inmost experiences of those lives whose outward deeds had 
 arrested the attention of mankind. How scantily was it grati- 
 fied in the best books ! History was only a record of deeds 
 rarely, if ever, penetrating the great laboratory of purpose and
 
 34:8 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 almost never offering a glimpse of the heart. Biography furnished 
 no analysis of its subject it, at best, only attempted to reflect 
 his external life, as a mirror shows us the gestures and actions of 
 the figure before it. We had not then Carlyle, with the infalli- 
 ble touchstone of his humor, trying every quality, and turning 
 the man inside out, for our inspection ; nor Emerson, with his 
 deep sea-line, sounding the nethermost depths ; nor the phrenol- 
 ogists, axe and blade in hand, hewing broad and clear the paths 
 of progress, and letting light into the darkened places ; nor the 
 analytical and progressive poets ; nor the rational novelists ; 
 nor the thousand other clear-seeing sonls and trumpet-voices, 
 which now glorify and make smooth our onward ways. 
 
 Looking back from the standpoint which any young, growing 
 soul can plant itself upon at this time, I seem to have been in 
 darkness ; but it was light to me, and I drank it in at every 
 pore of my life. Some books I read, more from respect to the 
 world's verdict upon them than from sympathy with, or apprecia- 
 tion of their greatness. One of these, I was long ashamed to 
 confess, was " Paradise Lost." I was disgusted with the descrip- 
 tion of Sin shocked at the possibility of such deeds and thoughts 
 anywhere in the universe, as were assigned to Heaven and 
 its contiguous territories ; and only reconciled to Milton or his 
 poem, by the wonderful beauty and sweetness of some of its 
 descriptive passages. For a long time I thought it possible that 
 this might be the penalty of my unlawful self-indulgence in read- 
 ing this poem clandestinely, in the hours set apart for religious 
 meditation and instruction in the meeting-house. I used to con- 
 ceal the miniature copy under a corner of my shawl, or in the 
 folds of my dress, and when the meeting was " settled," bring 
 it carefully before my eyes, behind the girl who sat in front of 
 me, and very shortly I was in a happy state of unconsciousness 
 to all the miseries of the hour and place, whether they resulted 
 from the silence of the company assembled, or were aggravated 
 by the whining utterance of endless commonplaces and truisms, 
 a vocal exercise which, by courtesy, was called preaching.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 349 
 
 The necessity of submitting to this hebdomadal infliction was 
 indeed a severe one to me, as well as to most of us scholars. I 
 was not iu the remotest degree susceptible to the sort of spirit- 
 ual life that was corked up and kept calm in these reverend 
 bottles. So far as I saw and felt it, it was formal, ungenial and 
 soulless. Even our good Benjamin, whom I loved and delighted 
 to talk with, in his normal state, became stiff, forbidding and 
 mechanical at the meeting-house. He entered for the time into 
 the form, and to all intents and purposes the spirit was not, till 
 he was again without those walls. A horrible kind of asphyxia 
 seemed to seize upon us, as if we had been thrust into a cavern 
 filled with fixed air, and could no more breathe, speak or move 
 till the period of our sentence was passed over. I acknowledged 
 the worth, purity and excellence of the people. I respected 
 their secular lives, because I knew how blameless they generally 
 were, and I had a kind of theoretical reverence for the religious 
 influences, remote or near, which had produced so good and 
 worthy a body ; but practically I was so unfortunate, and it was 
 a real misfortune, as to be wholly unable to catch the faintest 
 gleam of the chilling inspiration that seemed to freeze and 
 stiffen them into such comfortable repose and quietness. I could 
 not meditate in that unnatural stillness ; and the fullness of the 
 life within would make itself manifest, at times, and these per- 
 haps, not rare, in ways less reverent and staid than the worthy 
 elders could approve. Thus I not unfrequently incurred censure, 
 which, if the rules of the school and meeting were one with the 
 laws of true personal freedom, was deserved. I was fain to be- 
 lieve, intellectually, that this was so, but, practically, in the real 
 heart of my conviction, I could never get it to stick ; and so 
 before the long silence was over, or the sermon doled out in the 
 set phraseology, which I soon learned by heart, I was sure to be 
 caught in some act or gesture of involuntary protest, which 
 brought me under displeasure for the rest of the day. In the 
 preaching we heard, except when some gifted stranger was pre- 
 sent, no ideas ever surprised us. There was an invisible peck
 
 350 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 measure of musty moralities ; a yard-string of religious saws 
 and ancient truisms ; and, by comparison, a bushel of Scripture 
 phrases ; and these constituted the stock and staple of our reli- 
 gions instruction. They were alternately aired, in dolorous 
 sing-song tones, for the edification of an assemblage, generally 
 numbering from a hundred and fifty upward. No wonder that 
 this starved sect was shivered and broken into fragments, when 
 a man with a living soul and a heart of fire, smote upon it. In 
 the antagonism between spirit and form, the first had been well 
 nigh smothered by the overlaid crusts of more than two cen- 
 turies ; the only healthy sign of life it could give was to upheave, 
 as it did, and leave the fragments to recollect themselves as they 
 have by the laws of true affinity. 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 " Then I grew into thought, and with inward ascensions 
 Touched the bounds of my being." 
 
 I REMAINED three months in the school, half-scholar, half- 
 teacher, and whole librarian. At this time I believe I had not 
 an enemy among the scholars, but I had also few friends. Ab- 
 sorbed in study as I was, I scarcely knew the demands of my 
 own heart in that direction, as I should have felt them under 
 other circumstances. Nature rarely produces one instrument of 
 which all the keys play in simultaneous accord, and at this time 
 the grand harmonies of thought were more attractive to me than 
 any melodies of the affections. Humanity appealed to me in 
 masses more than by individuals. True, I was seeking repre- 
 sentative souls everywhere, in all heroes and heroines, living and 
 dead, real and fictitious. 
 
 Josephine and Helen Mar were my late ideals, one seeming 
 nearly as real to me as the other, and both lifted by the out-
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 35- 
 
 ward glory and fortune of life immeasurably above my approach. 
 Of all the practical, working women whom history had 
 brought within my small circle, Elizabeth Fry held my highest 
 reverence. I had but a slender memoir of her, but she had 
 come to me years before in the wilderness, and her deeds had 
 appealed so keenly to the strong spontaneous sympathies of my 
 heart in that untutored time, that she became ever afterward 
 set apart from our sex, in a glory of her own. I could not learn, 
 however, that she had been moved by any motive but that of ten- 
 der compassion for those who were the recipients of her goodness, 
 while I was conscious of another, myself, often quite as strong in 
 its action as this an intense curiosity to penetrate the inner- 
 most centre of the stained soul, and observe the mysterious 
 working of that machinery by which so fatal a result was pro- 
 duced. Regarding legal criminality as only one form of uni- 
 versal sin, and all as at war with the supremacy of good, which 
 I felt ought to be ever the great fact, as well as law, I earnestly 
 wished to penetrate to where the awful secret could be disclosed 
 to me. It was one of the subjects to which my thoughts natu- 
 rally turned, when left free, and which thus inevitably stamped 
 itself upon the future. 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 " If thou art staunch, without a stain, 
 
 Like the unchanging blue, man ; 
 This was a kinsman of thy ain, 
 For Matthew was a true man." 
 
 MY three months were drawing to a close, and there was no 
 news from John. His latest letter had been dated from New 
 Orleans, and came unpaid. It took the last quarter of a dollar 
 I possessed, to get it from the office. And all my courage to 
 face its contents, for I knew that this unusual fact betokened
 
 352 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 something it would make me unhappy to hear. Even so. He 
 had lost everything that he started with ; had been very ill, 
 barely escaping with life, and was able to write "just these few- 
 lines," to let me know the facts. Could I not teach school, and 
 provide for myself till he could get on his feet again ? 
 
 Certainly I could, and at once communicated my sad news to 
 the good Benjamin. With a real, fatherly tenderness he told me 
 not to be discouraged ; that I was well able to do it, and he 
 had frequent applications from persons wishing to employ teach- 
 ers in their family for the winter. If I wished it he would 
 name me for the first good place of that kind he had the chance 
 to fill. 
 
 Yes, I wished 1 it, and would be very grateful, too, for there 
 was pressing need of my having other resources than my bed 
 and food, and that very soon, too. 
 
 My best dress at this time, for the cold season, was coarse 
 stuff, of a dark, dirty, nut color (I wonder if colors are cheap in 
 proportion to their power to offend the eye), and I had utterly 
 worn out everything in the form of ornamental garments, that I 
 had ever owned. They had been few and simple enough, but a 
 neat white collar or cape, however plain, is a great aid to an 
 indifferent dress. ^ 
 
 I now began to prepare myself mentally, for, it will be seen, I 
 had little other preparation to make, to leave this spot, which 
 had been the happiest home I had known since a very young 
 child. Of the little community I was leaving, there were but 
 two besides Mr. Barton, from whom I separated with any real 
 I mm ; these were Miss Hill, the teacher of French, and Miss 
 Barnes, her best pupil. The former had but little advantage of 
 us in age, and perhaps more in general culture. She was a 
 young Quakeress the daughter of a man who preached some- 
 times, but only when he had something to say ; and who trusted 
 so much to the nature God had given him, both in his public 
 ministrations and private life, that, although himself the son of an 
 old and well accepted preacher, and a man of blameless life, he
 
 MY EARLY DAYfl. 353 
 
 lived under the shadow of a cloud during his whole manhood. 
 Original, witty, genial, impulsive; keenly alive to the innocent 
 enjoyments of social life, and eminently natural in speech and ac- 
 tion, he was the delight of the young and progressive souls about 
 him, and the dread of the stagnant ones, who shrunk from hav- 
 ing the mantle, in which time and custom had folded their 
 shrivelling natures, drawn aside. 
 
 His daughter was like himself, in many of those qualities which 
 make a young girl attractive and lovable. Without being beau- 
 tiful of feature, she had a countenance which piqued and led you 
 on, to see, with interest, all its variety of expression. She was 
 very fair and tall, and her well-set head was crowned with a mass 
 of brown hair, that fell to her feet when loosed from the comb, 
 and that lay folded and coiled about it, when dressed, with a 
 richness and profusion, which I must have been more than mor- 
 tal, not sometimes to have envied. Miss Hill was my first and 
 dearest friend. I liked her wit, which was so pure and unstudied, 
 that it surprised as much as it delighted one ; and her genuine- 
 ness, which, without a particle of bitterness in it, quietly rent into 
 shreds the little shams and artifices that bad their home among 
 us. I was sure of a purity in her, which'imputed to others no- 
 thing worse than itself of a generosity which accorded to each 
 nature the fullest measure it could fill. She had a full, individual, 
 life, which having once known, it was impossible to lose sight of. 
 It stood by itself, and made its own position in the elements 
 which surrounded it ; as identical always, and under all circum- 
 stances, as the garden rose or dahlia, which cannot become other 
 than they are, yet, being themselves, are always grateful and wel- 
 come to us. 
 
 Our common friend, Miss Barnes, was younger than either of 
 us the daughter of a wealthy physician ; an aristocratic, spirited, 
 resolute girl, lacking the spiritual freedom of an idealist and as- 
 pirant, bat full of ambition, which blazed from her black eyes, 
 and mantled her delicate cheek, occasionally, with a deeper 
 color than belonged to the undisturbed currents that flowed be-
 
 354: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 neath it. Less in stature than Miss Hill, she was well formed, 
 with a neck and shoulders that might have been a model for 
 sculptor or painter, so exquisite was the fall, from the fine, white 
 throat to the shoulder-point. Miss Barnes was also witty, but 
 her wit had an edge of satire, that made it sting where the'other 
 tickled. Her ambition made her lofty and distant to those she 
 did not particularly like, and she was capable of an occasional 
 thrust against even her friends, which surprised and pained them. 
 I liked her for the sweep of purpose there was in her, and the steely 
 flash'l sometimes saw, which foretold that if ever she came hand 
 to hand with a real foe in the battle of life, the grapple would 
 not be fruitless. We were not particularly affectionate or de- 
 monstrative towards each other, but when we parted, we were 
 not separated. 
 
 Thus I stood, and this was almost the sum of my social rela- 
 tions at this time. I waited anxiously, almost impatiently, for 
 the call that should open the door of productive labor to me. 
 More than one, I knew, was made, to which I was not nominated; 
 but this, my good friend said, was because the places were not 
 good enough for me. 
 
 At last, I was sent for one morning, about ten o'clock, to the 
 sitting-room. Benjamin was absent from the school for the 
 moment, and I was in charge. I called upon a grave young 
 man, of about twenty-five, whom I had just been " doing a ques- 
 tion" for, in surveying, to take my place, and went into the 
 house. 
 
 There I found a person, in conversation with Benjamin, before 
 the sitting-room fire. It was one of the frosty days of November, 
 and the keen air penetrated my thin garments so uncomfortably, 
 that I was glad to walk quickly forward and place myself near 
 them, when Benjamin laid his hand upon my shoulder, and 
 said : " My dear, this is friend Henry Carpenter. He is in 
 want of a teacher in his family, and I have told him I could not 
 recommend a better one than thou art." " 
 
 " I am very much obliged to you," I said, in a voice that was
 
 MY EAELY DAYS. 355 
 
 husky from sudden joy and gratitude ; " and I will try to deserve 
 your kindness." 
 
 " I know thou wilt, I know thou wilt," be repeated ; " only 
 keep up good courage for a day or two, and all will be right 
 with thee. Canst thou get ready by dinner? Henry wishes 
 to return immediately after." 
 
 "Yes," I said; " I can be ready in half an hour." 
 
 " Shall I make a bargain for thee, my dear ? I think thou 
 art not over wise in worldly matters." 
 
 " I shall be very glad if you will," I replied, closing the door 
 hastily behind me, to hide from them what I could not longer 
 conceal. 
 
 My need was very great, and my thankfulness and sense 
 of relief commensurate thereto. I flew up-stairs, and, half- 
 blinded by my tears, hurried my few scattered possessions into 
 the same little trunk, and then sat down upon it. In the midst 
 of the shower that followed this little performance, one of the 
 girls, a good-hearted, simple creature, who had got leave for me 
 to accompany her home more than once, during her stay at the 
 school, and who had manifested a warm and trusting attachment 
 to me from the first, came in, to see what my absence 
 meant. 
 
 " So you are going at last ?" she said. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " Where ?" 
 
 " I don't know. It is fourteen miles from here." 
 
 " Whose family ?" 
 
 " It is a Mr. Carpenter Henry Carpenter." 
 
 " I hope they are good people." 
 
 " Yes, they are ; because Benjamin wouldn't let me go, if they 
 were not." 
 
 " Well, good bye, then," she said, approaching me. " I sup- 
 pose I shall never see you again." 
 
 I stood up, and she took me in her arms, very tightly, and 
 kissed both my cheeks. I am ashamed to say that I did not re-
 
 356 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 turn this demonstration, for I re ai cm be red, at the moment, a let- 
 ter she had written me, during her absence in one of our vacations, 
 every single word of which, except the place, date and signature, 
 had been copied from a paltry little book that was about the 
 school, containing the forms of all sorts of letters. I did not 
 detect it, for I was unacquainted with the " Complete Letter- 
 Writer;" but a girl, to whom I showed the epistle, produced me 
 the original, word for word, mark for mark, and I had never 
 been magnanimous enough wholly to forgive the harmless little 
 vanity. 
 
 When the parting was over, she returned to the school-room, 
 and I, somewhat diverted, by the scene, from my tearful intent, 
 went down-stairs, where I found my employer, sitting alone. I 
 would have retreated, but he detained me with some questions, 
 and led me to ask some myself, on matters to which he must 
 have thought me very indifferent, seeing that I was about to be- 
 come a member of his family, in the responsible post of teacher 
 to his children. I learned that I should have four pupils of his; 
 that his household numbered twelve persons ; that the school- 
 room was a few yards from the house, pleasantly situated, light 
 and warm ; and that, in all probability, as he had learned that 
 I was very capable in arithmetic and mathematics, I should have 
 several young persons from the neighborhood, among my scholars; 
 and that I was to be paid a dollar per week for my services. 
 
 All this I was glad to learn without asking, for I felt an un- 
 conquerable reluctance to approach these subjects myself. He 
 considerately added, after a moment, pitying, I suppose, my 
 childlike confusion, that if I needed money in advance, he would 
 pay me the first month's wages whenever I wanted it. This was 
 such substantial kindness, so timely and unlooked for, that it 
 nearly took me off the feet of my self-control again ; but I 
 gathered up my dignity resolutely, and, with averted face, told 
 him that, after a little while, I should be very glad to avail my- 
 self of his goodness, as I was dependent on my brother, from 
 whom I had not heard in a long time, and who was very ill when
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 357 
 
 he last wrote, besides having been unfortunate enough to lose 
 everything he had. 
 
 When I had made this speech, I felt that my side was fully 
 stated. There was no need for him to know more, if I stayed a 
 year with him ; and I went ont, to join Benjamin, and give him 
 a last hour's assistance in the dear, old, abused, school-room. 
 While I sat by him, or occupied my customary position, in hear- 
 ing classes at the other side of the room, there were all sorts of 
 telegraphic leave-takings going on ; for it had already got 
 abroad that I was preparing to go away, after dinner. Gro- 
 tesque and absurd performances, with mouths, eyes, and hands, 
 or serious and kindly looks, greeted me wherever I turned my 
 eyes. Only Jane Tynedale who was still there, and still study- 
 ing grammar seemed altogether indifferent to my departure. 
 Every other face, even to that of the sturdy little fellow of six 
 years, who had indignantly refused to love me, because I laughed 
 so immoderately at one of his mistakes in reading, one day, had 
 some look of regard, or some kindly merriment, mocking senti- 
 ment, upon it. 
 
 School was over, and the scholars gone. Benjamin and I 
 lingered a moment at the desk. I was mechanically explaining 
 to him certain parts of my duty, condition of classes, where- 
 about of books, library keys, and so forth, when he said, " Come 
 with me in the French room, my dear, and bring the keys of 
 those book-cases. I should like to see how thou hast performed 
 thy duty there." 
 
 In those cases was. kept the library for the use of the school, 
 comprising many valuable books. The more select one, in which 
 he had especial delight, was kept in the dwelling-house. I took 
 the keys, and we walked in. The girls were gathered there, 
 about the stove. There were now, I think, twenty-four or five 
 of them, though several were absent, among whom were both 
 my especial friends, Miss Hill and Miss Barnes. 
 
 " What hast thou been reading last, my dear ?" he inquired. 
 
 " Watson's ' History of the Reign of the Philips,' " I replied.
 
 358 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " I think thou hast not finished it, hast thou 1" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then thou wilt take the two volumes as a present from me," 
 he said, taking them down, and putting them into my hands. 
 "And I think thou art fond of Thomson's 'Seasons,' too, as well 
 as myself. Take that with them." 
 
 It seemed as if there were a conspiracy of benevolence against 
 me ; for while I was endeavoring to frame some utterance of 
 thanks, a staid, thoughtful young woman, whose sore calamity it 
 was to have but half of a right hand just the palm, with nails 
 growing out of the metacarpals came up, quietly, and, raising 
 with that infirm member the cover of one of the volumes, laid 
 beneath it a clean, neatly-folded collar. And another one brought 
 me a little ruffle, very nicely crimped; " to wear about your throat," 
 she said, " when you have on that ugly-colored high dress." 
 
 I had to run away, with my full hands, up to the refuge of the 
 lodging-room. There was no withstanding all this. Just as I 
 had placed the precious gifts under the lid of my trunk, the 
 dinner-bell rang ; and I hurried my face into a dignified hard- 
 ness, by resolution and cold water, and went down, for the last 
 time, to the table from which I had scarcely been two days 
 absent for fifteen months. 
 
 There were good appetites at dinner that day, but mine was 
 not one of them. I caught my employer's eye, several times, in 
 a wondering survey, it seemed to me, of my general appearance ; 
 but as I could detect no positive dissatisfaction in his regard, 
 and felt secure in the opinion he had received of my qualifica- 
 tions and character, I did not let his scrutiny trouble me. In 
 leaving the table, I was detained, at the foot of the stairs, where 
 Benjamin still remained in his seat, waiting to speak to me. 
 
 " My dear," he said, " I am going for a walk with the boys, 
 and shall not see thee again, as thou wilt be gone before we get 
 back. Thou must not be too quick to yield to thy feelings, child. 
 I know thou art strong, and canst be resolute, if thou wilt, and 
 there will be need sometimes ; for thou wilt not always find as
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 359 
 
 good friends as thou art leaving here. I have talked with friend 
 Carpenter about thee, and thou wilt be in good hands. I need 
 not say to thee, be diligent and faithful in thy school ; for I 
 know thou wilt be. But if thou pleasest them well, thou wilt 
 find thyself rewarded for all thy pains. Farewell, my dear." 
 
 We shook hands, as he rose to go ; and, if I had followed the 
 grateful and affectionate impulse of my swelling heart, I should 
 have kissed the one I held in both mine. But there was so little 
 demonstrative breath in the Quaker atmosphere, that I only 
 blushed at my own weakness, and resigned it, after expressing 
 all that could be told in a simple, but fervent clasp. And how 
 much may be so conveyed by an earnest soul 1 Of all horrors 
 that are not tragical, deliver me from the loose, meaningless 
 touch of the hand with which so many persons meet us. To 
 clasp my hand, is to say, " I am glad to see you. Your presence 
 gives me a pleasure." When the act means this, it is not a 
 ceremony. It is a declaration of the soul, responsive to the 
 speech, the eye, and the countenance, which each publish the 
 same thing in their own way. If this is not the spirit-fact of 
 the meeting, why thrust forward, to offend me, a skeleton false- 
 hood, which will not even lie with a tolerable earnestness, but 
 will insult at once my self-respect and my sensibility, by saying, 
 " I am only a sham, but perhaps you may as well accept me for 
 something real, if it suits you ?" I would as lief a loathsome 
 reptile crawled over my hand, as resign it to such a touch of 
 man or woman. 
 
 When I reached the sitting-room, and looked from the window, 
 there stood Mr. Carpenter's chaise, a warm, comfortable-looking 
 vehicle, at the gate, ready for a start. He came in, and said, 
 " If thee has a large trunk to carry" 
 
 " Oh, no," I interrupted ; " it is very small. It will not be at 
 all in our way." And I inwardly determined that I would not 
 have this to say again. I would own a large trunk, even if it 
 were not filled, that I might be spared the mortification of pub- 
 lishing so continually my poverty.
 
 360 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 " Oh! 'tis the heart that magnifies this life, 
 Making a truth and beauty of its own." 
 
 LEAVE-TAKINGS were soon over none of them reaching below 
 the surface and I found myself on the road, riding briskly, in 
 a straining November gale that I had not been conscious of be- 
 fore, but which rent and whirled the few brave leaves that yet 
 hung to the wintry boughs, and sent the autumnal rack flying 
 through the stormy heavens, in wild confusion. My companion, 
 who was warmly clad and muffled to the chin in a substantial 
 wool wrapper over his collars, looked with some concern at my 
 light shawl ; and before we had driven a mile, which we did 
 very quickly, for the road was descending before us, and hard, 
 and clean as rain could wash it, he asked me if I were not cold, 
 and at the same moment offering me his comforter to put about 
 my throat. When I declined it, and asserted what was true 
 that I was then warm enough, he laid it on my knees, and 
 drawing the buffalo robe more closely about us, said : " We 
 shall go home as quick as a good horse can travel fourteen miles, 
 for I don't like the looks of the clouds, nor this violent south- 
 east wind. It may rain in an hour or two." 
 
 He touched the noble animal before us with his whip, and we 
 seemed to fly over the waste, brown earth. The speed and wind 
 were so exhilarating that I utterly forgot that I ought to feel 
 lonely and depressed ; forgot, almost, to look at what was be- 
 fore me in the months next coming, and lived for the time only 
 on the road and in the wild, hurrying air. We had but little 
 conversation by the way, but enough to inform me that the man 
 at my side had only an external life in his property, which was
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 361 
 
 large ; in his fine horses and carriages ; and in his wife and 
 children, because they were his, and therefore worthy of his 
 pride. Books, he did not read ; newspapers seldom, but he went 
 twice a week to meeting, and lived as well as any of his neigh- 
 bors. And these appeared to be the light, and hope, and 
 gospel of his life. If there were anything higher in it, except 
 the good-nature and practical kindness which he showed me, 
 and every one about him, I did not then discover it, nor ever 
 afterwards. 
 
 The country was thickly settled, and richly cultivated 
 farms, handsomely fenced, with great orchards and meadows, 
 spread themselves on either side of the road, and climbed the 
 hills away to their wooded tops, where the brown forest reared 
 itself against the frowning sky. The world seemed to be filled 
 with wealth and comfort, from which I did not feel myself alto- 
 gether excluded. The spirit of the day had touched the central 
 nerve of my life. From its vibrations came, in unaccountable 
 flow, hope, strength, courage, self-reliance, and whatever else 
 builds up and sustains the soul. Alas ! that the felt presence or 
 absence of these grand and comforting attributes should so often 
 depend upon the color of the clouds, the course of the winds, 
 and the aspects of the earth. Had a chilling rain been falling, 
 how should I have cowered and shrunk before it, filled with 
 dread of the possible miseries of the future. Had it been a day 
 of summer sunshine, nursing that unconscious indolence and soft- 
 ness of mental fibre which are so apt to steal over us, when the 
 heavens smile and the winds breathe repose, how inevitably 
 should I have foreseen the clouds and trials before me. 
 
 But here was nature, threatening her worst with a certain 
 good-nature in her eye, truly, but still a most palpable and im- 
 minent menace there challenging me, in rousing terms, to bring 
 arms to the field, and readiness to use them, if I came with ex- 
 pectations worthy a combatant in the life-battle. And I ac- 
 cepted the challenge with a gaiety and confidence I could scarcely 
 have prophesied of myself nnder such conditions, and so reached 
 16
 
 363 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 my new home in exalted spirits, and with a readiness to be 
 pleased with whatever I should find there, that could scarcely 
 have been overcome by any of the probable disagreeables of a 
 comfortable country house. 
 
 When we drove up, two boys, and a girl older than either of 
 them, stood in the front yard, eagerly watching our approach. 
 The face of the girl was thin and delicate, with blue eyes that 
 dull, opaque blue, which I have never seen set as a window to a 
 soul capable of high development. Her complexion and features 
 were good, but their predominant language was weakness. The 
 eldest boy had a grovelling face strong and positive features, 
 that were repulsive in every aspect ; the younger one, about five 
 years old, was a bright, beautiful child, with his, sister's color 
 and cast of features, but lighted up and glowing from the fire 
 within. 
 
 11 Here, children," said the father, assisting me to the ground, 
 " here is your teacher ;" and he summoned them to the inspection 
 of me, as if I had been a bundle of merchandise in which they 
 had special and peculiar rights and interest. 
 
 " Whath her name?" shouted the little fellow, keeping at a 
 distance ; while the girl and her big brother came up and shook 
 hands, demurely, with me, each gravely uttering the words : 
 " How does thee do ?" 
 
 " Tell him my name is Eliza," I said, as I was ushered along 
 towards the front door ; " and ask him to come here and see 
 me. w 
 
 But he ran sturdily away to the back of the house, and I lost 
 sight of him. I stepped upon the porch, and was received by u 
 young, fair woman, smooth-featured, with very dark-brown eyes, 
 which had an indescribable bluish or leaderftint in them, with- 
 out which they would have been brilliant. Here was repeated 
 the same " how does thee do ?" quite as mechanically as the 
 children had said it. But it sunk like a plummet into the breezy 
 sea of my spirits, and was as soon lost there. To each of these 
 inquiries I had to return the reply : "I am very well, I thank
 
 MT EARLY DATS. 363 
 
 you ?" and as neither question nor answer meant anything, or 
 were heard, with the smallest possible interest, I am obliged to 
 confess that, by the time I had answered the twelfth individual, 
 I was thankful the little three-year old did not feel it incumbent 
 on him to repeat the inquiry, and that the four-months baby 
 could not talk. 
 
 A great fire was blazing in the capacious Franklin stove, that 
 warmed the family room ; and, through an open door into the 
 next apartment, I saw, as I sat before it, a large table spread, 
 and two girls walking in and out with dishes in their hands. 
 They went and came so often that I was mentally wondering 
 what the occasion could be that called for so much and such a 
 variety of food ; plates piled with giant slices of bread ; hot 
 biscuit, as large as the baby's head ; enormous rolls of yellow 
 butter ; sausages ; stewed and baked fruit ; pitchers of milk and 
 cream, and large loaves of cake. " Can it be the ordinary sup- 
 per ?" I asked myself ; " or is there somebody here whom I have 
 not seen ?" 
 
 Presently we were invited in. I felt more chilly than I had 
 before entering the house, and little Caroline, when she saw me 
 shiver, after I had taken my seat at the table, left hers, next me, 
 and brought my shawl, which she carefully laid about my 
 shoulders. It was a little deed, but unprompted, and so quietly 
 done that it appealed strongly to my interest for the child, and 
 helped me to resolve myself into forgetfulness of her weakness, 
 and to determine mightily for her good. 
 
 There was no conversation during the meal ; a little broken 
 talk about the day's business at home, the journey for me, the 
 probabilities of the school being large or small, and other topics ; 
 but these were all. The table was substantially furnished for 
 eating, and those who surrounded it made that the business of 
 the hour. From the very plain fare of the boarding-school, 
 where one was always wholesomely hungry, to this laden board, 
 was a contrast which I felt at the time rather inclined to wonder 
 at than prove by doing justice to the viands before me.
 
 364 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Take another piece of sausage aiid some more bread," said 
 Mr. Carpenter, putting the one on my plate and handing the 
 other. " Thee doesn't eat. Such a ride ought to give thee an 
 appetite." 
 
 " It has," I said ; for I had already taken, as I thought, a 
 very full supper, and there yet remained the biscuit, and the 
 cake, and the fruit and cream untasted. 
 
 "We live by eating here," remarked Mr. Carpenter, in a 
 bluff, hearty way, receiving at the same time his third cup of 
 tea, strong, and rich, with cream and sugar. One such, with a 
 bit of bread and fruit, would have made a good meal. The 
 largest boy, whose name was Joseph, and who sat next his old 
 grandfather, whom he resembled more than any one else, seemed 
 to give his full faith to the gastronomic gospel, for he ate of 
 every dish and tried both cakes, commenting with a freedom 
 that fell little short of rudeness on the flavor of one which he 
 did not approve. 
 
 Little Caroline scarcely spoke. She seemed, in her soft, kindly 
 way, to be taking me in. Whenever I turned my eyes to hers, 
 they were fixed on me. She ate lightly, as if the supper was a 
 subordinate affair, aud indeed, in all aspects, she seemed strangely 
 lacking in the animal fullness and power, that marked every 
 other member, old and young, of the family. 
 
 When the meal was over, and we returned to the sitting-room, 
 I called her to me, and questioned her about her age ; which I 
 could scarcely believe her correct in reporting as almost twelve 
 (her mother did not look above twice those years herself), and 
 her studies, which, I found, had been confined to reading, spell- 
 ing, and the tables, with some attempts at ciphering and 
 writing. Her brother Joseph, she said, was eight, and he could 
 cipher a great deal ; but she was a great deal better reader 
 than he. 
 
 " So," I thought, as she left me to go to bed, " her face did 
 not deceive me. She has not much power, but I will fill what 
 the has to the brim." Iler gentleness and delicacy appealed to
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 365 
 
 me, in the midst of so much gross animal strength and enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 After the children had left us, and the father had fallen asleep 
 in the chair, his bluff, well-filled face looking redder and fuller 
 as he slept, and the old folks had jogged cosily away together, to 
 their own room, the mother and I had a talk about her family. 
 Caroline's delicacy was acknowledged, Joseph's strength boasted, 
 and the really beautiful, merry twins, who looked very much 
 alike, and both " lithped" with precisely the same accent and voice, 
 fondly laughed at. She was a true mother, and told me, sor- 
 rowfully, with, I suppose, some dim notion of a relation between 
 the facts, that she was but little over fifteen, and not half a 
 woman, when poor little Caroline was born. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 " The tissue of the life to be, 
 
 We weave with colors all our own; 
 And in the field of Destiny, 
 We reap as we have sown." 
 
 I WAS glad to be greeted by the earliest sunbeams looking 
 down upon me, from the wall above the foot of the bed, next 
 morning. I would have sleeping-rooms always front east, that 
 the first communion of the spirit with itself, might be held amid 
 the flush and pomp of a new day. Of all the daily agonies 
 which may return to the tried and struggling soul, there is none 
 more oppressive than the effort by which we pass from the death 
 of sleep, to the toil and pain of life. How we shrink from the 
 burden as, wave after wave, it rolls back upon us from the great 
 dark sea, whither it has been wandering in our hours of blessed 
 respite. How the spirit cries aloud for a little longer remission
 
 306 MY KARLY DAYS. 
 
 another tide of forgetfulness, that shall sweep over, and wash 
 out those terrible footprints, which grief or shame have left upon 
 the soul. 
 
 I rose instantly, gladdened by the light and warmth .that 
 came to me, but somewhat disturbed withal, that I should have 
 let the sun find me asleep. For it was one article of my simple 
 creed, to keep even with him : and then, a certain constitutional 
 zeal always to do, in full measure, what I undertook, made me 
 feel that I was behind time, if I were not always a little in ad- 
 vance. I liked to be up when he came, and to have the quarter 
 or half hour which nobody would ever call on me for, all to my- 
 self. 
 
 Dressing as hastily as possible, I repaired to the sitting-room, 
 expecting to meet the assembled family, but found only my two 
 oldest pupils. Master Joseph refused my greeting, by turning 
 abruptly to the window, when I spoke, and exclaiming : " Oh, 
 Car'/ira, John Frost is coming here to-day, to go with me up 
 to the little meadow, after nuts, and I don't want to go to school. 
 Thee tell mother, will thee ? I wish she wouldn't begin to-day," he 
 said, in reply to some low remonstrance of hers, " for I want to 
 go." He looked at me a moment, and then, coming almost to my 
 knee, said : " Isn't thee tired ?" 
 
 " No, my boy; I have slept well all night." 
 
 " Well, I wish thee was tired, aud couldn't keep school to-day. 
 Then mother would let me go." 
 
 He looked willful, and selfish, and I thought a lucky thought, 
 as he stood there, which I immediately tried, to reconcile and 
 win him with : 
 
 " Would you study well, and try to be a good boy, if I asked 
 your mother to let you go after dinner ?'' 
 
 " Oh, yes!" he said, eagerly, " that I would, I tell you," for- 
 getting for the moment the friendly " thee;" " I'd be as good as 
 
 "You must say Caroline," I said. "That is her name; and 
 not CarVine, as you call her."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 367 
 
 " It's too long but will thce ask mother to let me go?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The Qrst feeling of being burdened in my new charge, came 
 from this little passage. There was such an overflowing animal 
 life in the boy such an eagerness for " creeturly delights," as 
 our old preacher at school, used to designate all enjoyments which 
 he did not approve, that I felt already the difficulty I should 
 have in curbing these, and bringing him to any earnest mental 
 application. At breakfast he demolished an astonishing pile of 
 cakes, with honey and butter ; and coffee, and ham, besides 
 other et ceteras. Estimating him carefully with reference to the 
 probable conflicts before us, I was dismayed by this huge storing 
 away of ammunition, which, I saw, would all be made to tell 
 upon me, in some way or other, in the days that were coming. 
 
 " If he would only eat less," I thought, wishing that I had 
 him at our school-table. 
 
 After breakfast, I went to the schoolroom, where a good fire 
 had already raised the temperature to an oppressive degree; but 
 there was a south door, and windows on both sides that opened 
 with pulleys. Everything that I touched here, worked so per- 
 fectly everything was so arranged for comfort, order, plenty 
 and warmth, wherever I went, that despite the table the worst 
 feature of the household economy I began to feel myself very 
 much at home by the time nine o'clock came ; and I had got all 
 the home pupils, with six from the neighboring houses, in their 
 respective seats. 
 
 Caroline read very well ; rather surprisingly so with a pure 
 accent, that is, and an expression that proved that the words 
 were really signs of some meaning to her, not arbitrary sounds, 
 to be uttered as an exercise merely. Not so Master Joseph ; he 
 stood up, and literally roared : his shoulders rising with his 
 rising tones, and his over-fed face flushing and filling with the 
 strain, till I could bear it no longer, and seizc-d him by the shoul- 
 der, shaking the lust half of a wurd out of him, as I would have 
 wrestled with a boisterous dog. " Not so loud," I said, with
 
 368 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 some fervent utterances within, which relieved me more than any 
 audible expostulation could have done. 
 
 " Don't thee want me to read as loud as I can ?" he asked, in 
 some surprise. 
 
 " No, indeed. I wish you to read just as you speak here in 
 the house no louder." 
 
 " Why," he exclaimed, " Absalom White had me read as 
 loud as ever I could." 
 
 "Well, well, my boy, that will do. Absolam White isn't 
 teaching you now, and you must read as I wish you to. Go on 
 now, but mind, it must be no louder than you talk." 
 
 Before I got his voice subdued, I had frequent occasion to 
 wish that Absalom White had been blessed with at least the 
 average auricular sensibility of the hippopotamus or mastodon, 
 so vilely had he corrupted the vocal capacity of my pupil. It is 
 a penalty of the dreadful error which has rejected, as sinful, the 
 very sweetest and divinest of human gifts, the power of music, 
 that the ear should lose its appreciation of sounds. But what 
 the ear does not convey, the soul does not receive, and so it 
 shoots out in stiff, unwinning angularities, which, however re- 
 spectable they may be, we cannot accept thankfully in place of 
 the harmony and completeness which full culture would give it. 
 There are a great many Absalom Whites, to whose leather 
 organs, volume is the only desirable quality of any sound. They 
 may make very good smiths or machinists, but ought never to be 
 trusted with any mission that involves the training of the human 
 voice. 
 
 I gained upon Master Joseph by a steady, persevering process 
 of reduction, made up of kindness and sternness; but my victory 
 over him remained incomplete to the last day. Whenever the 
 pressure was lightened or remitted, up sprung the animal to full 
 and triumphant reign. I had no other pupil whose condition called 
 for so much of this sort of labor. 
 
 My school, after the first few weeks, numbered twenty-six, 
 among whom were several young men and women much older
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 369 
 
 than myself. I grew intensely interested in their progress, and 
 worked for it, according to the scripture injunction, with all my 
 might. In one sense, they all occupied one position towards me. 
 
 Apart from my interest in them individually, they were so much 
 capital stock on which to prove my capacity in instruction. I 
 worked very hard, but I was well able to do it, for my health 
 seemed to be perfect ; and the work was often rest. Oh ! 
 blessed days, when action flows spontaneously from untasked 
 powers when the bow never prays to be unbent, and life is sub- 
 lime, because it offers us work to be done ! 
 
 One question mainly occupied me that winter. Could I 
 prove myself an effective worker ? I have often marvelled since 
 at the content with which I trod the small measure in which life 
 was then meted to me. The winter snow upon the hills was 
 not colder than I was, to all the interests that warm and quicken 
 the young soul. My relations were as simple as it was possible 
 that those of one human being, living in the midst of others, and 
 bound to them by the ties of labor, compensation and home, 
 could be. I enjoyed half an hour romping with the handsome, 
 fat baby, after school, and almost every day had some little 
 affectionate chit-chat with Caroline, and now and then a little 
 political sparring with her father, who had good-naturedly con- 
 sented to take a newspaper, to oblige me ; and all the rest of 
 my leisure was occupied in swift plying of my needle; whereby 
 my dilapidated wardrobe rose from its ruins. Making and re- 
 pairing for there was an ingrained economy somewhere in the 
 unweeded garden of my nature, that would not let me waste 
 occupied my hands busily, all the winter. I received some unex- 
 pected gifts of material from the mothers of scholars, which had 
 the double value of real use, and of expressing an unmistakable 
 satisfaction with my performance. I was thus, for the day, liv- 
 ing a full life working out faithfully my noblest idea, and 
 rejoicing in the evidences of its value to those I served. 
 
 I received letters from Mary and John; the former expressing 
 the content and joy of a wife and mother the latter indicating 
 16*
 
 370 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 discouragement and concern for the future, but bidding me be- 
 lieve that all would yet be right with him, and consequently, 
 with me. He had found occupation, which would help 
 him home by and by ; and once on his old ground again, he 
 should be able to get along, and take care of me, too. But I 
 felt no disposition to fall back upon these assurances. If further 
 opportunity of study should come, well ; for when I allowed 
 myself to think at all of it, I earnestly desired it ; but if not, I 
 should also be ready to say " well " to that. 
 
 I made no social position in these months, was out of the 
 house to tea but once, except when I went a very few times, as 
 an appendage to the family. All that I knew of the simplest 
 forms of social life, was of instinct experience and instruction 
 had taught me nothing. 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 "The present, the present, is all thou hast, 
 
 For thy sure possessing ; 
 Like the Patriarch's angel, hold it fast, 
 
 Till it gives its blessing ; 
 And that cloud itself, which now, before thee, 
 
 Lies dark in view, 
 Shall, with beams of light from the inner glory, 
 
 Be stricken through." 
 
 THE winter wore on ; spring came, and with it the end of my 
 term of service here. But before the last day, there had come an 
 application for me to take a district school, for the spring and 
 summer, in a neighborhood where one of my old schoolmates 
 lived. I wished for employment, and answered that I would go. 
 HITG I taught six months, for twenty-five dollars, in a house 
 that not one of the more thrifty farmers of the place would have
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 371 
 
 tolerated anywhere in sight of a road upon his farm an un- 
 painted, dilapidated, unsightly structure, of the smallest dimen- 
 sions that would house the children and their teacher no yard 
 about it nothing to suggest that delicacy and self-respect ought 
 to be a part, both of cause and effect, in the daily acts of life. 
 I was indignant with righteous anger every day, that the order 
 and neatness which these wealthy people displayed, in providing 
 yards and tenements for their brute animals, were not, at least, 
 equalled in caring for their children. 
 
 When I found the forlorn old doors hacked afresh, and 
 the poor, mean forms, which were never fit for use, bearing 
 new marks of the knife, I could not remonstrate earnestly with 
 the boys ; for there was nothing to plead for but what I despised 
 more than they did. 
 
 Here I made some friends, who were long among the dearest 
 I had. Here I enjoyed the society, at rare and short intervals, 
 of a woman, who had something in her nearer akin to genius than 
 I had ever known who kindled me by her conversation and 
 reading, especially of poetry ; while here, I, for the first time, 
 visited and saw, at my leisure, a town, containing seven or eight 
 thousand inhabitants. Here I revelled, with a child's eagerness, 
 and more than childish curiosity, six whole hours of one day in 
 a menagerie transported with the lions, to. African deserts, and 
 with the tigers, to Indian jungles skimming, with the gay par- 
 rots and chattering monkeys, the endless forests and blooms of 
 the tropical zone and toiling over the mysterious and awful ice 
 continents of the Polar world, with the huge white bear, whose 
 ceaseless up and down, up and down, up and down, through the 
 whole day, awakened my pity, and sometimes haunted my sleep- 
 ing and waking hours, many weeks afterwards. Standing before 
 the lion's cage for a long time, I suppose for the crowd had 
 gone when I returned from the desert, whither his eyes had 
 drawn me I was touched upon the elbow by a keeper, 
 who said : " I have to clean the cages, miss. I guess you 
 haven't noticed that the people are all gone, have you ?"
 
 372 MY EARLY DATS. 
 
 " No, I had not," I replied, feeling a little startled ; bat, 
 looking around me, I saw three or four men, one of whom ap- 
 peared to be a proprietor, or principal manager. I wished very 
 much for an hour or so alone with the Asiatics and African?, and 
 without considering how strange a look it might have, I went, 
 unhesitatingly, up to this person, and asked, if I should be in the 
 way, if I stayed an hour longer in the tent 1 
 
 He looked at me a moment, with a puzzled expression of face, 
 and then, referring to his watch, said : " No, miss, no you can 
 stay an hour, if you wish to." 
 
 I thanked him, turned away, and commenced my quiet round 
 at the zebra's house, when, as I was endeavoring to recall the 
 very little knowledge I had of natural history, so as to place 
 him, and remember something of his habits, I felt my arm 
 rather earnestly taken hold of, and, looking up, saw, at my side, 
 a tedious, dull young man, who had been of the party with 
 which I had entered. He said, in a tone of wounded propriety, 
 that they had been hunting the town over for me, fearing I was 
 lost, till it luckily occurred to him that I might yet be where he 
 had found me. 
 
 " Don't you see," he asked, " that the tent is empty ?" 
 " Yes, I see. But I came here to look at the animals, not the 
 people ; and one of these persons told me I should not be in the 
 way for an hour yet." 
 
 " Very well," he replied, reluctantly, " if you wish to stay, I 
 will remain an hour with you ; but I should think you had been 
 here long enough." 
 
 " So I have," I replied, feeling that visions of deserts, and 
 jungles, and ice-floes were as impossible in his presence, as the 
 realities could be, in any of -the fair midsummer gardens that 
 surrounded us. He had a miraculous gift of inserting his dull- 
 ness into the very centre of one's mind, and there holding a 
 position of which no flight of imagination or forgetfulness could 
 render one unconscious. 
 
 While engaged in this neighborhood, I read some of the
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 373 
 
 books which the world called then its best of their kind : Scott's 
 Poems, and three of his novels the " Heart of Mid Lothian," 
 " Waverley," and the " Antiquary." I lingered long over the 
 bewildering pages of " Lalla Rookh," whose shining sophistries 
 appealed to my mirthfulness almost as much as they delighted 
 my imagination, and whose piled-up imagery made the common 
 earth on which I walked to and from my daily labors, seem 
 richer and more beautiful than it had before. 
 
 This summer was made memorable, too, in my reading experi- 
 ence, by a disappointment from which it took me long to recover. 
 I had never yet seen a copy of Shakspeare. In the few Quaker 
 homes where I had dwelt, it was either a proscribed book, or an 
 unappreciated one ; for I had never found it ; and I had looked 
 forward to meeting it, almost as I sometimes dreamed of stand- 
 ing some day by the Pyramids, or ascending the Mountains of 
 the Moon. 
 
 One day, when I had gone for a few minutes, out of my short 
 noon-time rest, into the house of my bookish friend, Mrs. Bran- 
 don, I asked if she had Shakspeare. 
 
 " Yes j and would lend it me, if I wished." 
 
 " Will you let me sec it now, a moment ?" 
 
 She brought and placed it in my hand a ponderous volume, 
 well worn, in which it seemed to me I held unimaginable stores 
 of wealth. 
 
 " You have read it a great deal," I said. 
 
 " Yes." I have had it many years, and I am very fond of 
 reading certain parts of it." 
 
 " Show me them, will you ?" 
 
 She opened to the Tempest, then to Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, and, last, to Coriolanus. I asked permission to call for 
 it on Saturday, the afternoon of which was my own. 
 
 When I sat down with it, I turned the leaves over and over, 
 embarrassed with the riches from which I was to choose. But, 
 as my eye lingered here and there, it fell upon lines that were 
 far from pleasing to me gross lines, which, ignorant as I was of
 
 374 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 the vices of the world, could not have been spoken to me with- 
 out giving mortal offence. I did not understand, perhaps I 
 scarcely could have been made to at that time, that the drama- 
 tist was to picture human nature, not its ideals. I looked into 
 those pages for greatness, purity, heroism, beauty all that 
 could kindle my enthusiasm, and lift me out of the common 
 world wherein I dwelt, into a region peopled by gods and god- 
 desses. I found, instead of these, gross men and coarse women, 
 using language that made my cheeks burn, so that one of the 
 daughters of the house, coming into ray room, laughed aloud, 
 and inquired what had happened to make me so angry. I was 
 first strongly minded to lay the book out of sight till Monday 
 morning, and then take it home, with thanks, and a confession 
 that it had not pleased me ; but as my hand lingered upon the 
 leaves, they opened at the Third Act of King Lear. The power 
 and the greatness of the second scene, arrested me. I turned to 
 the beginning, and read it through, possessed by the awful pas- 
 sions that played alternately on my mind, but never once satis- 
 fied. It was all so strange, wild, wicked, and dreadful, that I 
 could not be reconciled either to the good or the bad in it. 
 With my imperfect reading, and total ignorance of the aids 
 which the stage furnishes to the author, King Lear seemed to 
 me a wild, inextricable confusion of demons, fools, and madmen, 
 striving together amid storm, and frost, and wind, with the 
 triumphs always to the worst. On the whole, I was sorely dis- 
 appointed. The irredeemable feature of the book was, the 
 grossness of the language, which the fine passages I had read 
 did not reconcile me to. Shakspeare had been, in ray imagina- 
 tion, a porphyry or jasper column, chief among a few, supporting 
 a lofty dome, beneath which I had never yet set my footsteps. 
 Within and without it was all a glory, and this had sometimes 
 come to comfort and uplift me in the most laborious and dark- 
 ened hours of my scholar life. I was willing to wait, though I 
 had, too, somewhat of the impatient desire of my years, to enjoy, 
 this long-reserved delight.
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 375 
 
 I closed the volume, and sat in the twilight, saddened and 
 disappointed as we only can Vfe in youth, when some great hope 
 is taken from us, which our world is not yet wide or rich enough 
 to replace. I could not possibly foresee that time, and experi- 
 ence, and knowledge of human nature and of life, more true than 
 that we derive from the books called histories, would enable me 
 to place myself in this great master's gallery, and see that, if 
 there were offensive figures there, they had a sublime merit in 
 their unshrinking faithfulness ; and that he had the central 
 stand-point, painting his subjects from within, instead of with- 
 out making up his men and women synthetically, instead of 
 analytically. These thoughts belonged to later years, and did 
 not enter into the train that passed before me on that summer 
 evening. 
 
 Not to delight in Shakspeare, was to confess myself different 
 from all people whom I would be like. I knew he was the admi- 
 ration of the world. But how could refined tastes enjoy such 
 language as I had read there, or the reproduction of such char- 
 acters. I believed that as bad people as he had described, yet 
 lived in the world ; but why put them, with all their terrible 
 deeds and words, into books ? I did not want to get a worse, 
 but a better, humanity than I knew practically, from the writers. 
 I was discontented and clouded, under this discovery, and was 
 brooding over it in the twilight of my chamber, when one of the 
 girls came in there were four of them, very large, very stupid, 
 and very kind and, approaching me with a more youthful and 
 joyous motion than was common to her, said, " Does thee know 
 who is coming here to-morrow ?" (There were almost always 
 visitors on Sunday.) 
 
 " No. How should I know ?" And, in reality, I cared as 
 little ; for nobody ever interested me. The women were formal 
 and ignorant the men tedious and assuming. Young or old, it 
 was pretty much the same thing to me. I generally escaped 
 them as soon as politeness would allow me to. 
 
 "Well, then, I can tell thee it's somebody thee'll be right
 
 376 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 glad to see ; and I believe he's coming expressly" to see thee ; 
 for he has never visited us. So thee had better get thy cap set." 
 
 This was a phrase very current among my acquaintances 
 here, meaning the purpose to interest and captivate some one of 
 the opposite sex. At another time, I might have taken it as a 
 pleasant joke, for which it was, of course, intended ; but I had 
 just parted with Shakspeare, and was in no mood, either for 
 receiving common people or being joked about them. So I said, 
 gravely, " No one need come here to see me, to-morrow. I shall 
 be busy all day ; and I have no cap to set for anybody." 
 
 " Well, thee needn't be so sober about it," she said, laughing. 
 " I suppose he may come, if he likes, whether thee cares or not." 
 
 " Oh, yes," I said, " but don't bother me about staying down- 
 stairs." For it was a fashion of their hearty hospitality, to have 
 the whole household unite in entertaining the guest. To this 
 end, I was sometimes not a little annoyed by their importunities; 
 and I wished, now and here, to secure myself from this in the 
 anticipated visit. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I did not 
 yet know who was coming, and I asked. 
 
 " It is Mark Alger," was the answer. 
 
 I was at once interested, because he was the person who had 
 replied to an article I had published in one of the papers of the 
 neighboring town, defending Mr. Clay from some mean aspersions 
 in the print of the opposite party. This man was said to be very 
 clever, and certainly the article I remembered was at once keen 
 and courteous. I thought I should like to see the man who 
 wrote it ; and whom I had often heard spoken of, always favor- 
 ably, as to his intellect, and not otherwise in regard to charac- 
 ter. I had a great reverence for intellectual power, and I had 
 seen as yet but few persons endowed with it above the ordinary 
 measure.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 377 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 " Is not this a man a proper man ?" 
 
 I DID not go to meeting next morning, as was my custom." 
 The family all went, leaving me alone in the house ; and I re- 
 mained within, though it was one of Heaven's own mornings, 
 and every particular leaf, flower, bird, and cloud was clothed 
 with an added life and glory, drawn from the soft sky, and the 
 tender sunlight, and the delicious air which just rustled the 
 foliage and shook the odors of the flowers from their tiny 
 cups. \ 
 
 I sat at my window partly sad, partly expectant. I had sus- 
 tained a great loss, but I hoped something was coming to me. 
 And already I was prepared to accept healing. It is the law of 
 life ; we let go the past and turn to the future for redress. And 
 we find it in the looking. For time and chance are laden with 
 concealed blessings, which the diligent searcher cannot fail to 
 find. In the new person I hoped for somewhat that as yet had 
 not come to me in the mind of any man ; only in scanty frag- 
 ments in those of women. 1 hoped for a degree of power and 
 culture that I could clearly recognize as superior. 
 
 I dressed myself slowly, expecting the guest would arrive 
 with the family. I put on a plain white muslin, an opaque 
 fabric it was the only white dress I had a double lawn capo 
 over my shoulders, and my toilet was complete. I remember, 
 as I glanced at myself before going down, that I saw with 
 deep pain and humiliation how excessively plain my face was ; 
 not so dark certainly as once, but wanting symmetry in the 
 whole, and everything like beauty in each particular feature.
 
 378 MY EARLY DA.Y8. 
 
 There never was an undeformed girl, so very homely, I said to 
 myself sorrowfully, as I turned away and went slowly down 
 the stairs. I was generally buoyant with a very light, quick 
 and springing step. I scarcely ever when alone went up or down- 
 stairs in the ordinary way. A* step at a time was too slow for 
 my intent haste to be where I was going, and I had acquired a 
 habit of scaling up two steps ; and, with my hand on the rail, 
 coming down in some indescribable fashion, three, and sometimes 
 even -four, at once. The girls used to declare that a stair-carpet 
 would last me a lifetime. 
 
 But now I went with as leaden and staid a movement as any 
 matron. I had reached the parlor and thrown back the blinds, 
 to admit the air and as many little sunflecks as could make their 
 way through the clustered foliage of the woodbine, and was 
 just going to sit down, when I heard a quick step on the porch, 
 which was followed instantaneously by a rap on the door. I was 
 startled by the suddenness of the unexpected coming ; but, sup- 
 posing it to be some one of the neighbors, I opened the door, and 
 found myself face to face with a person whom I had never seen. 
 He lifted his hat, and spoke to me with a ceremonious politeness 
 which I seldom experienced ; and when I invited him in, he 
 entered and seated himself with an ease and freedom that quite 
 disembarrassed me. 
 
 " I am speaking to Miss Woodson, I believe ?" he said. 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " My name is Alger Mark Alger." 
 
 I was very much surprised, for I had not dreamed of this being 
 the guest ; and I came so near saying this in words, which I 
 could scarcely keep back, that it added to my confusion. 
 
 " I did not expect to find you alone, Miss Woodsou." 
 
 II It is but a chance," I said, " that the house is not closed. 1 
 generally go with Mr. Wilson's family to meeting." 
 
 " And yet I should imagine you are not greatly entertained or 
 pleased with what you hear there ?" 
 
 I acknowledged that I was not, except on the rare occasion
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 379 
 
 of a visit from some more gifted preacher, than those who be- 
 longed here. 
 
 " I should think," he said, " that the author of ' Twilight 
 Hours ' would not find much to please her in dreamy exhort- 
 ations made up of passages of Scripture and set phrases, which 
 have been current so long that all the silver is rubbed off them 
 long ago." 
 
 In answer to my look of surprise, he said : "You see I know 
 something cf you, which you would not have thought I did." 
 He referred to a few poor verses in which I had attempted to 
 express some crude thoughts ; and both were, in my own estima- 
 tion, disgraceful, as soon as I saw them in print. I never for- 
 gave the editor to whom they were sentry for not burning them. 
 
 " I am very much ashamed of those lines," I said, " and I 
 hope you will not refer to them again. My only comfort when 
 I saw them, was that nobody would know where they came from. 
 
 " Then you should have disguised your writing ; for they were 
 sent very soon after you went into print as the champion of Mr. 
 Clay, and the editor put the two together, when I went with my 
 reply, and so we found you out." 
 
 " He must have very little to do," said I. " I thought editors 
 had the least time of any business people." 
 
 " Ob, no," he replied ; " the editor of a small weekly paper in 
 a country town, has ample time to examine everything that 
 comes to his office if he chooses to." 
 
 " Well," I said, by way of dismissing the subject, " I shall 
 never give myself cause for like mortification again ; and I wish 
 to forget that I did this." 
 
 " Are you ambitious to write ?" he inquired. 
 
 I scarcely knew what answer to make to this question. I 
 wished he had not asked it. 
 
 After a moment I said, " I believe I am ambitious to do what- 
 ever I can do best ; if I could know just what that is, I think I 
 should try to content myself with doing it." 
 
 " Would you ? But trying is not always succeeding, you know."
 
 380 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " I suppose not," I replied, conscious of a vague confusion in 
 my own thoughts, arising from a perception of some sort of 
 double occupation of his. 
 
 We were in truth each considering the other attentively, but 
 under a pretence of paramount interest in the subjects we 
 spoke of. 
 
 Mr. Alger was at least twice my own age in years ; and had 
 the air and ease of a man thoroughly at home in the world. 
 Through the thin veil of words which he wove, I felt rather than 
 saw a presence not wholly satisfying to me. It made me watch- 
 ful of him, and gave me a certain disquiet after we had talked 
 awhile, which I was very glad to have removed by the return of 
 the family. 
 
 Then I had to meet the fire of the girls' smirks and smiles as 
 they passed the open door of the room, going up-stairs. They 
 were followed by two visitors, young ladies whom I had seen 
 often before, and shortly after a smart, pretentious young man, 
 their brother, entered the parlor and sat down. I found the 
 strangers were known to each other, and shortly availed my- 
 self of the second comer's presence to leave the room. Up- 
 stairs a good deal of joking was attempted, but it all fell dead 
 at my feet. 
 
 I was not a bit captivated not even interested how could I 
 be ? for my visitor had, in spite of my best efforts, almost con- 
 fined the conversation to myself a subject in which I had then 
 as little interest as one could possibly have. I did not return to 
 the lower rooms till we were summoned to dinner. Mr. Alger 
 rather shone at the table. Our meals were generally dull 
 enough, but he managed when addressed, even in the common civil- 
 ities of the occasion, to infuse into all his rejoinders some little 
 spark of humor, some satire, or sentiment, or anecdote that kept 
 up a ball of words, going from one to the other with increasing 
 pleasantness, till the meal was over. I felt better reconciled, 
 after this proof of his conversational skill, to his drawing near 
 me, having first called me to a remote corner of the parlor,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 381 
 
 to ask some idle question about a dried flower he had found 
 there in a book. Here he kept me talking till the delay fur- 
 nished a decent pretext for offering me a seat ; and then taking 
 another, he asked if I had read Bulwer's novels. 
 
 " Only ' Eugene Aram,'" I replied. 
 
 " Scott's ?" 
 
 " Yes ;" and I named those I have already mentioned. 
 
 " His poems ?" 
 
 " Yes, ' The Lady of the Lake,' ' Marmion,' and ' Kokeby.' " 
 
 He was very fond of them ; had the first at his tongue's end. 
 He repeated some of the finest descriptive parts, with keen ap- 
 preciation, apparently, of what had most delighted me. I had 
 never talked the poem over before. In fact, I read, as I thought 
 and lived here, alone. I took in, but never gave out ; and I 
 was surprised to find now much could be said and enjoyed by 
 persons who had read and been charmed by the same books. 
 
 " How do you live among these people ?" he asked, in a low 
 tone, after we had taken the cream off Scott, and I had at last 
 got warmed into downright talking after my poor fashion. 
 
 " They are very kind," I replied. 
 
 " I know it," he said, with a gravity through which mockery 
 was just faintly visible. " I know it ; they feed you well and 
 give you a good bed. They do the same by their domestic ani- 
 mals ; but that is not living, in the human sense." 
 
 "What I want beside," I said, "I provide for myself. ] 
 should have to do that anywhere, I think." 
 
 "No; not altogether. Living with some people, you in- 
 evitably get so much more than with others, just the same as 
 in the sunshine you get more warmth and vigor than in the shade. 
 There are persons, like the sun, their presence is always welcome 
 and healthful." 
 
 " Yes ; it must be pleasant to know many such people. I 
 have one or two such friends and the vision of Miss Hill rose 
 before me but I never see them since I have left school." 
 
 I wished to break off about this time, but finding that he
 
 382 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 gave me no opportunity, I at length said : " Excuse me, Mr. 
 Alger, I have had no chance of speaking to the other visitors, 
 who are old acquaintances of mine." 
 
 " I was just about to take leave," he said, " and will not de- 
 tain you. But let me say, that I am spending three or four 
 
 months at ," naming a small village three miles away ; " I 
 
 have a good many books there, some of which may be new to 
 you, and, with your leave, I will ride up, a fortnight from to-day, 
 and bring a couple of volumes with me. Will you trust me with 
 the selection of them ?" 
 
 " I shall have to," I replied, " if you bring them ; but I beg 
 you not to trouble yourself so much. Just now I have all the 
 books I want from my neighbor Mrs. Brandon, near the school- 
 house. I am sensible of your kindness, but I cannot think of 
 giving you so much trouble." 
 
 I felt all that I said, and could scarcely say it earnestly enough 
 to convey my full meaning, for I shrunk from this cool, though 
 good-natured way of establishing visits. This one had given me 
 about equal annoyance and pleasure, and I did not wish to know- 
 that another was inevitable. 
 
 He took his leave, saying that " there was a great deal of 
 false politeness in the world, about refusing to give trouble, 
 when people knew all the time that it was a pleasure in- 
 stead." 
 
 There was some bantering attempted after his departure, but I 
 cut it short at once, and very soou found my way to my owu 
 room, whence I endeavored to see what the day had done for me. 
 The verses were an unmitigated vexation a sound lesson 
 which I never forgot ; for never since have I perpetrated even a 
 couplet that has got the length of the printing-office. My part 
 in the conversation was also unsatisfactory. True, I had said 
 almust nothing, but yet enough to leave upon my mind, when re- 
 called, a vague sense of disquiet, the result of my extreme 
 ignorance of the art of civilized life the art of entertaining. 
 ' Won this right ?" I asked ; " or was that what I ought to have
 
 MT EAKLT DATS. 383 
 
 said or done ?" And I ended by first condemning and after- 
 wards pitying myself, to the extent of some natural tears, which 
 had the effect of relieving in a measure my disturbed feelings, 
 and clearing my perceptions sufficiently to make me resolve, if he 
 came again, that the visit should not be so pointedly paid to me. 
 I found, upon examination, that my disquiet arose solely from 
 the demeanor of my visitor, not from anything that I could ac- 
 cuse myself of. I had simply; sat and conversed with him on 
 subjects which others did not join us in, because they were wholly 
 unacquainted with them. There had not been a word uttered, 
 except the few about themselves, which every ear in the house 
 might not have heard ; yet I felt oppressed by the decided man- 
 ner in which he had made it apparent that it was said to me, 
 and to no one else, and somewhat disturbed also by the remembered 
 presence of that something which I had doubted on its first ap- 
 pearance. 
 
 The girls of the house, who, thoroughly good-natured, were 
 yet blessed with as little delicacy of perception as oysters, 
 mentioned the name of Mr. Alger several times during the first 
 days of this week, but it fell upon rock and yielded them nothing 
 for their pains. 
 
 " Do you think he is handsome ?" asked one. 
 
 " Yes, in one way, but in no other." 
 
 " Well, I never heard of that sort of beauty before ; what is 
 it now ?" 
 
 " Why, he has good features. Every one is very good, for I 
 noticed them particularly. Forehead, eyes, nose, mouth, chin 
 all well formed and proportioned ; yes, and well colored, too, 
 for his dark-brown hair and eyes are better with his pale face 
 than jet black would be. And yet he has not real beauty a 
 man's beauty I mean I hate the word in that connection, but 
 I don't know any other, and so I have to use it." 
 
 "Why, what would you have, pray ?" 
 
 " A certain nobleness that he has not. There would be some- 
 thing speaking in the eyes something which everybody would
 
 384: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 trust as soon as they looked at them, no matter what their color 
 or shape. I could paint it," I added ; " at least I think I 
 could, if I could paint at all, and I do hope I shall see it some 
 day." 
 
 " Well, you are very queer," said my companion. " When you 
 find it send or bring him here, will you ? I should like to see 
 it too." 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 " Cease not Voice of holy speaking, 
 Teacher sent of God be near." 
 
 " Leave him to himself, that lowest depth 
 . Of human baseness." 
 
 " Thine anguish will not let thee sleep, 
 Nor any train of reason keep." 
 
 I WENT through the fortnight without auy event worthy of an 
 hour's remembrance, except a letter from my brother, announcing 
 his probable return to the Xorth in the fall or winter. I re- 
 joiced greatly at this ; for, as I drew near the borders of the 
 social realms, and began to be conscious of approaching them 
 now, I felt the want of some guiding presence. The education 
 which life had given me had, I knew, eminently unfitted me to 
 trust myself anywhere out of my schoolroom or the family 
 circle. 
 
 In this respect I suffered the lack of such cultivation as social 
 classification bestows. Belonging higher in the scale than the 
 foot, I had been trained only to that position. The occupations 
 of my early years, instead of being such as they would have 
 been in a family at about my social level, were those of the 
 meanest servant, and every advantage I had enjoyed above that 
 which would be conceded to the scullion, I had conquered for
 
 MY EABLY DAYS. 385 
 
 myself wrested, as it were, from the gripe of my hard fortune. 
 It would be just if these difficulties could be borne in mind by 
 those who are disposed to complain of the crudities of the 
 American social state. There are men and women to be found 
 in all walks of life among us, from the highest to the humblest, 
 who have -reached their present positions by earnest and 
 righteous warfare, or have been thrown into them by revolutions 
 in the wheel of fortune which no sagacity could have foreseen. 
 O.ir system individualizes, and leaves general results to the influ- 
 ence of other causes than those which spring immediately from 
 social organization. Its beneficent workings are peculiarly our 
 own, and they are seen wherever we find, in the more elevated 
 conditions of life, persons who were born and reared under the 
 disadvantages of poverty, ignorance, and rudeness. Its reverse 
 operations are common to all systems. If the humanity with 
 which one enters into life will not sustain the outward position 
 where it is placed, it at least will not sink faster or further with 
 us than in the old, rigorous social states, where only mighty 
 genius can rend the iron bonds which confine the poor man to 
 his place. 
 
 We are crude, let us frankly acknowledge it ; but our crude- 
 ness comes from that freedom which opens to all the paths of 
 advancement. Life, with us, is a perpetual and universal struggle, 
 in the progress of which very many get out of the places they 
 are by education prepared to fill. But with the majority this 
 displacement is upward, and if we reach the ascending plane, 
 lacking somewhat of the culture and many of the accomplish- 
 ments that would adorn it if we arrive too late to acquire these, 
 and thereby subject ourselves to disparaging criticism, let it be 
 remembered that we are fulfilling a universal law ; if not in the 
 most graceful manner, at least with a laudable earnestness and 
 purpose, which, faithfully adhered to, must result in good. 
 
 In the old countries of Europe, a girl bred as I had been since 
 I was six years of age, could scarcely have found herself called 
 r.pon to exercise the judgment and social discrimination which I 
 17
 
 386 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 now needed, small as was yet my pretension, and narrow as was 
 the circle to which I was confined. I had, properly, no home, or 
 home influences no guidance, no appeal, no help in any ques- 
 tion that came before me, concerning my relations to others. la 
 regard to all which, I was, as will be imagined from what has 
 gone before, in a state of extreme ignorance. Therefore it was, 
 that I felt embarrassed at the idea of receiving visits, and 
 rejoiced doubly in the prospect of my brother's return, which, I 
 thought, would give me, in some part, at least, what I so much 
 needed. 
 
 The appointed Sabbath came, and with it the visitor and his 
 books. They were, indeed, volumes which it would have been 
 difficult to deny myself the pleasure of reading Lander's 
 "Travels in Africa," and the "Mutiny of the Bounty." I could 
 scarcely have refused them, had I had any pretext for doing so. 
 This day closed, as I had previously determined that it should, 
 upon a quieter mind than I was before left in possession of. I 
 had succeeded, by resolutely adhering to my purpose, in making 
 the visit seem a general one ; and this was a triumph which had 
 a doable value to me it relieved me of present embarrassment, 
 and gave me a consciousness of power to do what I thought 
 right under difficult circumstances, which greatly restored the 
 complacency I had before lost. 
 
 Mr. Alger was invited, by the young ladies, to repeat his visit, 
 a'courtesy which I had not the grace to join them in, though I 
 was very willing, at this time, that it should be extended to him. 
 I had enjoyed his presence and conversation, and my satisfac- 
 tion had been but once a little abated by detecting the question- 
 ing look in his eyes which had first disturbed me. But I had 
 not implicit trust in my own impressions, and when I recalled 
 'his uncomforting one, after the second visit I repeatedly dis- 
 nissed it, as unjust to my new acquaintance and unworthy of 
 myself. 
 
 Three weeks from that time it was one of the sultry August 
 days I was just setting out for a walk, as the cool evening
 
 MY EARLY DATS. 387 
 
 approached, and had turned to enter an overshadowed lane, one 
 side of which was bordered by a clear, gravelly stream, and the 
 other, for a considerable way, fenced with a natural wall of rock, 
 when I heard the sound of quick footsteps, and, almost before I 
 could turn my head to see who was near me, heard the voice of 
 Mr. Alger, speaking my name. I stopped, and he came up, with 
 extended hand, and a particularly pleased look upon his face. 
 The reia of his bridle rested upon his left arm, and the crinkled 
 coat of his handsome, chestnut-brown horse, showed that he had 
 been briskly ridden. I always had an affection for horses. Of 
 all domestic animals, they command most of my sympathy and 
 admiration. 
 
 " You have ridden fast," I said, looking at the gentle brute. 
 
 " Yes, for a warm day. In fact, I set out to call on you at 
 about three o'clock ; but I met a party of friends on the way, 
 who took me off four or five' miles, and afterwards I had to make 
 that up, to get here before dark. So Chestnut Charlie is a little 
 warmed ; but I will make him fast here, and join you in your 
 walk up the lane, and, meanwhile, he will have a chance to cool 
 off won't you, old fellow ?" he said, slapping his shiny neck. 
 
 The brute answered, in such a way, as an intelligent horse can 
 answer human thought and speech. There was evidently a good 
 understanding between the two parties, for which reason I felt 
 better pleased with the human one. But the walk was a diffi- 
 cult question to decide. As he had found me going, on what 
 pretext, short of one absolutely offensive, could I now refuse to 
 go ? I reflected, while he was securing his animal ; and when 
 he came to where I was standing against the rock, on the upper 
 side of the lane, I had determined to go a short distance, with- 
 out any remonstrance. I could do that, and turn back when I 
 saw fit, without rudeness. 
 
 So we walked slowly onward, talking, meanwhile, of whatever 
 came first to our thoughts at least, I did ; for I was at rest iu 
 my mind, and, therefore, was not using speech for concealment 
 when we came upon the subject of the African travels. They
 
 388 MY EAKLT DATS. 
 
 had interested me profoundly ; for, if there was anything in the 
 world about which I felt a keener desire to know all that was 
 known, than of the wonders of the Polar regions, it was just 
 these vast and mysterious deserts of Africa, with their lost rivers, 
 and huge, ferocious beasts, and myriads of oppressed humans, 
 and of connecting intelligences scarcely inferior to them. My 
 companion had had the same interest, with larger means of 
 gratifying it. He had read all manner of travels in that coun- 
 try; and Arabia, Egypt, and Palestine seemed as familiar to him 
 as his native State. Especially had he all the hypotheses of the 
 Niger mystery. I listened to the various opinions he quoted, 
 and the sketches of travel he gave from Burckhardt, Bruce, and 
 others. He was particularly clever in this way, and I noticed not 
 that the sun had set, until a flush of rose-colored light, falling on 
 us as we came opposite an opening in the line of trees and high 
 shrubs on the west, suddenly startled me into remembrance that 
 we were at least a mile from the house, and evening at hand. 
 
 " Mr. Alger," I said, " I have been so interested in your 
 accounts of those travellers, that I have forgotten time. The 
 sun has set, and we must turn back." 
 
 " Oh, not yet, Miss Woodson. The pleasautest hour of the 
 day is before us : let us not lose it." 
 
 " It is a considerable walk to the house," I replied, " and I 
 prefer to go no further." 
 
 I had already turned my face homeward, and moved, slowly, 
 two or three steps along the lane. After some more remon- 
 strance, he very reluctantly joined me, and we walked along at a 
 considerably quicker pace. I felt some trepidation, which I 
 could not have put in words, perhaps, if I had attempted to. I 
 was not exactly afraid ; for I believed the person with me to be 
 a gentleman ; but I lacked confidence in myself. If anything 
 but the most straightforward walking and talking should occur, 
 I felt the sleuderness of my own resources to meet it. I was 
 embarrassed, too, because I was not clear how far it would do to 
 show my embarrassment ; and so, with the rather hasty walking
 
 MT EARLY DATS. 389 
 
 I did now talk for the purpose of concealing the uppermost idea. 
 Without succeeding, however, in the smallest degree ; for, 
 through the transparency of my demeanor, anxiety was so 
 broadly visible, that my companion at length inquired if there 
 were any bears or wolves accustomed to haunt the lane 
 at twilight, that I was so fearful of being in it at that 
 time? 
 
 I was very glad, when we came in sight of the house, that no 
 lights were yet kindled. We walked more slowly from that 
 point ; and when we entered the door, though it was wide open, 
 we found no one within. I brought a lamp, and, taking another, 
 went over the rooms, to find some one ; but all were gone, 
 except the old lady, who, in partial undress, from the extreme 
 heat which I also felt, just now, very much was sitting in her 
 old-fashioned high-backed chair, fast asleep. To wake her, and 
 invite her into the parlor, was out of the question. I therefore 
 went alone, after taking a refreshing draught of cool water, and 
 renewing my confidence by the reflection that the girls could not 
 remain out long. I needed this the more, because Mr. Alger 
 had muttered something close to my ear, when we found the 
 parlor unoccupied, which sounded very much like the words, 
 " Thank Heaven I" and, on our way home, had conveyed, most 
 unequivocally, his sense of being " horribly bored by those soul- 
 less women." He never spoke of them as young ladies, or girls 
 which was my more unceremonious way of referring to them 
 hut always as women, in a ponderous tone and style, suggesting 
 the broadest contrast to youth, grace, or spirit. Indeed, they 
 were poorly endowed with these morning attributes, though 
 their years were few. Nevertheless, I should have hailed the 
 entrance of any one of them, with real joy, at this moment. I 
 sat down on the sofa, under one of the open windows, and, 
 taking my part in the conversation as well as I could, remained 
 there some time, undisturbed. Then he came over and took a 
 seat near me, speaking, in a lower tone, of myself of my past, 
 of my future ; then of himself of his lack of companionship
 
 300 MY KAKLT PAYS. 
 
 and sympathy ; of the ignorant and vulgar people by whom we 
 were both surrounded. 
 
 " You," he said, " are walled up here, as Clara was by the 
 monks in Marmion." 
 
 I laughed a little, and said I did not feel starved or suffocated. 
 It was a very comfortable death, if I was being executed. 
 
 "Yon understand me," he said, "and you know that I am 
 right. Confess it now." And, at the same moment, he laid his 
 hand on my arm. I drew back, but could not move far enough 
 away to displace it ; and he went on speaking, at first very ten- 
 derly, but, as I listened, becoming more confident and glozing, 
 till, at the end of some minutes' unbroken silence on my part, he 
 had, with incredible dexterity of thought and tongue, brought 
 himself round to the utterance of words which went through 
 and through my quivering heart, like poisoned arrows. 
 
 " It was very abrupt," you say. But it is probable that, plain, 
 unattractive, undeveloped as I was, the practised, calculating 
 man of the world did not deem me worthy more of his time and 
 pains. With eyes riveted to the ground, I sat and heard his 
 speech to its conclusion. I think I could not have moved a hand 
 or foot, till he stopped ; and then I lifted my face full before his, 
 and rose slowly, looking at him. I remember the doubtful stare 
 of his large eyes, and the paleness of his countenance, as I did 
 so. I passed from the room, and staggered up-stairs, without 
 an audible breath. It was the heaviest blow that Life had ever 
 dealt me. 
 
 I reached my chamber, and closed and bolted the door ; for I 
 had a consciousness of an enemy near me, and I remembered 
 that there was no one else in the house. The summer lightning 
 was twinkling, rn incessant play, around the horizon, and, by its 
 unsteady light, I made my way along to my bed. It was an 
 old-fashioned high bedstead, so far from the floor that I could 
 not sit down upon it, and I threw myself, at full length, upon 
 the white cover, and lay there, shivering in the heated air, cold 
 all over, though, for breathing, I might as well have been in an
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 391 
 
 ove ; for I could not breathe. There was a stricture across 
 my chest, which had been growing tighter from the first start- 
 ling word I had heard, and which now threatened to suffocate 
 me. I should have endeavored to call for help, had there beer 
 anybody in the house ; but I knew there was not, and so, after 
 lying for a few moments iu agony, I made a desperate effort, and 
 got to the open window. I leaned over the sill, and out intc 
 the still night, gasping for breath, and wishing almost that il 
 would never come freely again, that I might die at once, anc 
 forget all.. I heard the sound of horses' feet, vanishing away or? 
 the distant road, and felt that he was gone ; but still I suffered 
 When the blade is withdrawn, the wound yet remains. I did 
 not attempt to reason or expostulate with myself, or even feel 
 indignation. My spirit lay stricken down by this great humilia- 
 tion, and refused to rise. 
 
 The stars shone above ; the lightning played in the low 
 clouds about the horizon ; and by and by, ranks of black forms 
 came out of the southeast, and ranging up against the clear 
 sky, poured out their floods upon the earth ; but it all seemed 
 like something that was occurring to somebody else. The occu- 
 pants of the next room came in ; and from my windows I could 
 hear their heavy, measured breathing, in the still air ; but the 
 shower was long past, and the night was waning, before I left 
 that spot, and went to my bed/ When I rose to my feet, I felt the 
 same sensations throughout my body that I had felt in childhood 
 in the morning which ushered in that dreadful day of death as 
 if I had been violently stretched beyond my natural dimensions 
 and could not return to them but with great pain. I had not 
 shed a single tear ; I had not reasoned, nor grown angry yet ; 
 but the horrible oppression that first stifled me was gone, and I 
 was so weary in every fibre, that I laid down and slept soundly, 
 far beyond my usual time in the morning. When I awoke it 
 was with a knocking at my door, which reminded me instantly 
 that it was bolted. I rose quickly to open it, but the motion 
 set my head in a dizzy whirl, which it was impossible for me to
 
 392 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 control at once, so as to draw the bolt, but I answered to the 
 voice, and said I would be down very soon. 
 
 I did not want food, but I knew that I must at least make a 
 pretence of taking some, or report myself ill. Oh, for a plunge 
 into a pool of blessed cold water ! What would I not have 
 given for it ! But it was out of the question ; and I had to 
 hasten my ablutions, and go as promptly as possible to break- 
 fast. There was no margin, in that thrifty household, for late 
 comers to table least of all, on Monday mornings. I saw that 
 I was very pale, and had recourse to a rough piece of linen, 
 which I applied briskly to my cheeks, not to attract too much 
 attention ; and when I descended, and took my place, I had the 
 satisfaction of having to answer but one or two inquiries, and of 
 hearing one of the girls say I looked as if it were " blue Mon- 
 day" with me a saying which I afterwards understood to imply 
 that I had had agreeable company the previous evening, and 
 been up late. 
 
 " No," said her sister, " Eliza was in her room when I came 
 home, and that was only half-past nine." 
 
 " Yes," I replied. " I did not feel well last evening, and 
 retired early ; but I did not sleep till after the shower, and that, 
 I suppose, makes me look as if I had been up late." 
 
 I was relieved to be no more pressed on the subject ; for I 
 could as soon have parted with my tongue, as let it utter a word 
 of my trial and sorrow to these people. I hurried early away 
 to school, in order to have a little time to myself, alone, in the 
 fresh out-of-door world. The air was fragrant with the exhala- 
 tions from the garden, and the meadows across the road ; and 
 the small birds were glancing to and fro, with chirp, and song, 
 and twitter seeming to congratulate each other that the world 
 was brighter and more beautiful to them, than it had been the 
 day before. 
 
 What a laden heart I bore along down the smooth road to 
 the little brook, which always had a peculiarly friendly look to 
 me 1 There are objects and places, hi the natural world, as well
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 393 
 
 as persons, which have an appeal to us that is all their own. 
 Sometimes they represent a friend, or a home, or an affection, or 
 a hope. Perchance, we have first beheld them under an exer- 
 cise of some particular attribute of the mind, and ever after 
 they speak to it. My walk was but half a mile, but there were 
 two objects within it which were so related to my nature the 
 brook, and a large thicket of shrubs and wild vines, which, 
 during the whole summer, was thickly peopled with thrushes, 
 finches, robins, and other birds, who, I fancied, were always 
 saluting me, as I passed, with some message of cheerful encour- 
 agement. This morning, they were particularly gay, almost 
 boisterous, frolicking from bush to spray, and 
 
 " Looking to the summer heavens complete " 
 
 with such abundant joy, that, while I saw them, I could not but 
 turn my back upon the hateful shadow that overhung me. But 
 it was only for the time. I had not steadiness and strength 
 enough to press forward to a full victory ; and, when the hour 
 came, I called my little ones together, to undertake the dull 
 routine of morning exercises, with no more soul or purpose in my 
 tasks, than if I had been a machine of wood or metal, set there 
 to perform certain motive phenomena. In truth, I was not there 
 at all ; for, with the hum-drum quietness of the house, I first 
 began to think, with anything like deliberation, of the monstrous 
 insult I had suffered. Before, it had been an instinctive shrink- 
 ing a horrible recoil with which reason, judgment, and self- 
 respect had nothing to do, as one sometimes sees a frail worm, 
 crawling peacefully along, suddenly shiver and shrink, through 
 all its coils, when it encounters an object or surface that is 
 unfriendly to it. 
 
 Now, at this distance, I could begin to use my better faculties, 
 
 to judge of and resent the diabolical affront. What would 1 
 
 not have given for courage to go, at noon-time, and tell my 
 
 wretchedness, and pour out my accumulating anger, to Mrs. 
 
 17*
 
 394: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 Brandon ! Bat it was impossible. I had need know one as a 
 mother, or tender sister, to speak of the great outrage I had 
 seen contemplated against me. All the violence and resentment 
 that I was capable of, came thronging my tortured miud. Thf 
 air of the summer day was filled with tongues of flame, thai 
 scorched me at thought of this man. But, as I reflected, I soon 
 grew calmer, in the assurance I felt that I had given no occa- 
 sion for any rudeness, still less for positive insult ; for I had, in. 
 one way and another, gathered a sufficient knowledge of social 
 law, to understand that a man might, without disgrace, do 
 deeds, whose very shadow, falling upon the fame of a woman, 
 would send her shivering to ruin. I had learned that my sex, 
 always reckoned the weakest, always expected to trust to the 
 protective power and strength of man, was entitled to do so 
 only while it was faultless ; but I did not know how could I? 
 that, being so, in all matters of social purity, a woman was yet 
 lawful game, which a man might hunt without censure, and lure 
 to destruction, without sacrificing, in any degree, his pretensions 
 to rank as a gentleman 1 I had never yet, for a moment, 
 thought of women at least, of pure and worthy women as 
 claiming any position, or exercising any virtue, outside of the 
 narrow walls which old civilization had reared about them ; but 
 measuring myself by the standard therein erected, I could find 
 no cause of self-accusation. 
 
 All duy I pondered bitterly, rebelliously, over those insulting 
 words, and the offensive manner, that unmistakably seconded 
 their meaning. At the close of my labor, I went home, with a 
 violent headache. How easily I could have given up all effort, 
 and treated myself as ill 1 I was, indeed ; for the terrible ucr 
 votis shock and tension of the night before, had destroyed my 
 appe.itc, and reduced my energies so sensibly, that, added, the 
 wearing fatigue of the day, I was scarcely able to sit up till 
 dai k. During that time, I inclosed the three volumes that had 
 BO entertained and instructed me, in two pieces of coarse paper, 
 neither of which alone was sufficient, tied them about with any
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 395 
 
 bit of soiled twine that came first to ray hand meaning thereby 
 to express that thus, with rubbish and waste things, which I 
 wished never to see more, I threw their owner from me ; and so 
 laid them on my table, marked neatly, upon a blank bit of fine 
 paper, wafered on 
 
 " FOB M. ALGER, 
 
 I asked that some of the family who were going to the village 
 next day, would take them, as Mr. A. had forgotten them on 
 Sunday evening. The first tears I shed, were over these books. 
 They suggested to me how much I had lost, that it would have 
 been so delightful to enjoy, in the dearth of thought and true 
 life to which I was condemned. They brought back the pleasant 
 talk, on the countries of which they treated, and on other sub- 
 jects and countries, so very superior, in its tone and scope, to 
 that I heard from anybody else ; and thence it was a natural 
 and quick transition to the whole mournful phase of my late 
 experience ; and the sense of desolation which smites the young 
 heart when it is robbed of its trust in life, and in persons, rose 
 and filled my bosom to bursting. The world became, suddenly, a 
 great waste, in which I seemed to find myself alone, friendless 
 and distrustful. How miserable I was ! not in that hour only, 
 but in many that succeeded it before I left that place. 
 
 How painfully and discouragingly this testimony of actual 
 manhood contrasted with that I still cherished, but now almost 
 feared might have been a dream, sent to me so long ago, when a 
 little child, in the wild forests of the West I Involuntarily, as 
 the burning recollections rushed over me, I found myself placing 
 side by side this one whom I could not sufficiently detest, and 
 that one whom I learned to reverence, more and more, as the 
 perfect type of what, in youth, the pure and aspiring soul of a 
 woman always worships perfect manhood. It is the represen- 
 tative of Divinity to her. Its personal sufficiency and power are 
 rest to her comparative feebleness ; and the nobleness which, if
 
 396 MY EAELY DAYS. 
 
 she be noble and pure herself, she imputes to her hero, whether 
 brother, friend, or lover, makes her worship, the grandest act in 
 the opening drama of life. By it, both worshipper and wor- 
 shipped are lifted above mortal conditions. They are, for the 
 time, made dwellers among gods. 
 
 A grand ideal manhood or womanhood, coming early before 
 the soul, and abiding there till all its stature, and breadth, and 
 depth are ineffaceably taken upon it, is the most inestimable of 
 the blessings which life can give us. There is then planted a 
 seed, which, with whatever adversities and hindrances, is destined 
 to live. There is then enshrined an image, whose likeness we 
 are seeking, in all after time, with a religious belief that it 
 exists ; which also we, sensibly or insensibly, liken ourselves to, 
 in the seeking. 
 
 I would choose that my son, or my daughter, if pure and self- 
 centred, should early know and love, though ever so hopelessly, 
 the noblest youth or maiden among all. Since no loss, how- 
 ever painful, of a good, can be so calamitous, in the long run, as 
 never to have had it our own, if but for a day, or an hour.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 397 
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 
 " Oh, restless spirit ! wherefore strain 
 
 Beyond thy sphere ? 
 
 Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, 
 Are now and here." 
 
 " Lift thou the burden of the weary." 
 
 PASS over another year and leave, as I endeavored to, the 
 odious experience which marked the last one, out of memory 
 like toils, with like rewards in each. No real events breaking 
 the daily routine of the dull life. No angel coming down to stir 
 the waters, which seemed stagnating, far and near. Oh ! for a 
 wind, to run over them a tempest or hurricane, to toss them 
 into foam a tornado, to wrench them up from their long sleep I 
 I was sometimes hopeless in these days ; it seemed that nothing 
 could ever happen to me again, to break up the tiresome round 
 of school all day, with children, tiring my ear by their incurable 
 droning, and my soul by their dullness ; and my evenings, spent 
 either in seclusion with books, none of which had for me the 
 potent spells of former days, or with persons who had no pro- 
 perty in ideas, and who were content, when one was offered them, 
 to wonder and dismiss it. How my soul hungered for some liv- 
 ing communion and sympathy! 
 
 I had heard from my brother but twice, in all this time; and 
 the last summer was well past its drowsy mid days, before a 
 third letter came, that startled me, as a clap of thunder some- 
 times does, coming upon us in a bright day. It bade me, what- 
 ever I was doing, at once to give up all, and make myself ready 
 to join him, in about a fortnight, in one of the northern cities of 
 the State, where, on the 1st of September, I was to enter an
 
 398 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 academy the best institution in the State, he said, proudly for 
 a year's further study ! 
 
 I received this precious letter at the schoolhouse, and imme 
 diately there entered the old, crazy tenement, a new light, and 
 a new air there bent over it a new heaven, and there bloomed 
 around it a new earth how grand and fair 1 Life put on its 
 old glory, and Time took his swift wings, which he had long cast 
 aside, and both went smiling around me, in a harmonious speed- 
 ing away of the vapors that had gathered and settled in the 
 vales, and on the mountain-tops of my future. 
 
 I called, that evening, on one of the authorities of my school 
 a man whose extreme ignorance was equalled only by his 
 coarse presumption in .questioning, as he sometimes did, not me, 
 but my capacity to teach this paltry little school and, with 
 unspeakable inward satisfaction, announced to him that I had 
 concluded to give it up, with the close of the week. 
 
 " I thought," I said, " that you might like to have an oppor- 
 tunity of engaging a more competent teacher, and that I would 
 give you notice this evening." 
 
 I knew I was annoying him, for I was well assured that he 
 valued my faithfulness, and only questioned my ability, by way 
 of sustaining his own dignity. 
 
 " A better teacher 1" he said, in his loud, unmusical voice. 
 " I don't know anybody that wants a better one if thee will 
 only take a little more care in some things. Thee needn't 
 go on account of that, if that's all." 
 
 " It isn't quite all, Mr. Smith. I am going to school myselt, 
 and it isn't likely that I shall ever again teach a little school like 
 this. If I do, the people shall not be permitted to question m\ 
 ability, as you have. I am not going," I added, " to learn any- 
 thing I have taught, or that ever will be taught, here, but to 
 apply myself to studies, that neither you, nor the children of 
 your school, will ever hear of, unless by name; and I should likt 
 to speak a word for the comfort of the next teacher." I saw 
 that I had his attention, and went on : " Don't employ any one
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 399 
 
 that does not know enough to teach your children, and that is 
 not honest enough to do it faithfully ; but when you get such 
 a person, let her work in her own way. Everybody does best 
 so," I continued. "You farm your fields after your own fashion, 
 and, if you are a good farmer, you do it much more comfortably 
 so, than if somebody were always meddling with your ways. Do 
 you not ?" 
 
 " Well, I guess I do. Tbee's about right there." 
 
 " Then," I said, " do please to remember it, Mr. Smith. It 
 will make a great difference in the willingness of your teacher to 
 work for you. Nobody works as heartily, when they are always 
 found fault with, as when there occasionally comes a little praise, 
 or a few good-natured words, which show that their endeavors 
 are understood and appreciated. I could not say so much for 
 myself," I added, " while I was staying ; but now I am going, 
 I don't mind making a little quarrel with you, for the sake of 
 your children, and anybody who may come after me." 
 
 I could afford to be very pleasant in my reproof of this man, 
 who had given me a deal of trouble, because the sun was shining 
 on me at this time, and I was sailing away, with a fair wind, to 
 broader and richer seas, where he and I should never more cross 
 each other. I was invited to stay to tea, which I did; and when 
 I took my leave, there was a golden sunset flooding the summer 
 fields, and folding the still, dark tops of the locusts and poplars, 
 in its warm and loving arms. I was two miles from home, 
 but I seemed to be borne thither upon invisible wings; for I was 
 there, unfatigued, before it was dark enough for lamps to be 
 lighted. 
 
 But two more days for it was now Wednesday and I re- 
 solved upon "dismissing" on Friday evening. How quickly 
 they went, and how quickly came the hour of glad emancipation, 
 when, with two or three books of my own, and the other small 
 articles, which I had kept at school for my convenience, I deliv- 
 ered the keys into the hands of one of the oldest girls, a child of 
 nine, who stood tearfully by ; kissed her exceedingly fair cheek,
 
 400 MT EARLY DAYS. 
 
 and turned my back upon the house, and the spot, which seemed, 
 now that I was leaving them, more like a prison than ever be- 
 fore. " God help the next one!" I said, compassionately, as I 
 walked away past the thicket; and the birds, at their endless 
 jubilee; and the stream, twinkling and glancing over its pure, 
 bright bed. 
 
 If parents sympathized more with those who labor six or 
 seven hours a day, over their young, undeveloped children if 
 people would consider the hard lot, and the inevitable weariness 
 of this class of workers, and come more generously to their re- 
 lief, recognizing in them some claim to human tenderness and 
 Indulgence some needs, which their exhausting labors engender 
 if the old and the young, who are capable of understanding 
 this, would endeavor, by helpful kindness, and rational amuse- 
 ment, to put some courage and life into the weary and chilled 
 soul of the teacher, what a harvest society would reap from that 
 neglected field ! We demand, reasonably and dutifully, a high 
 order of intelligence, and moral life, in the instructors of our 
 children. We get one or the other, when it is possible both 
 when we can. We put this soul to the hardest tasks, to daily 
 drudgery, to which that of the mill-horse is light and easy; we 
 keep up the pressure which demands unflagging zeal, week after 
 week, month after month, till their sum amounts to years, and 
 we recognize in the laborer no other, or higher needs, than those 
 of the quadruped sustenance, shelter, and raiment. Many a 
 man and woman has worn out life thus, and done service, that 
 only God and the angels can fully estimate; and reached con- 
 firmed ill health, or old age, to sit down, and perish, unthauked 
 and uncared for. 
 
 Instruction, which opens, develops and warms the soul, is the 
 most God-like of all labor. The statesman, the jurist, the 
 author, the inventor, the artist, are all co-workers, if true and 
 faithful, with the professional teacher. Let not the hand, that 
 opens the soil to the seed of our hopes, droop unclasped ! 
 
 Wages paid, are no discharge from our obligation to these
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 401 
 
 brethren. Shall I ask a man or woman to sell me the soul, that 
 God has given him or her, for so much money, to retail every 
 day, and every week, for my own, and my children's good, the 
 priceless inner power and life, without which their labor is worth- 
 less ? and shall I never seek to replenish the fountain whence it 
 flows, to bless me and mine ? No ; let me rather bind up and 
 comfort this fainting spirit sometimes, when its burden is, per- 
 haps, proving too much for it. Let me seek it out, and give it 
 the helpful testimony I can bear to its well-done labors. 
 
 If you would have efficient and noble teaching, recognize in 
 your teacher some claim to a higher reward than your dollars, 
 for with them you pay also for the shoeing of your horses and 
 the tinkering of your pans. The faithful hand which does well 
 the labor I ask of it, is entitled to its wages, and just recognition 
 that -it has given value for what it receives ; but when I ask the 
 labor of the hand, and the eye, and the ear, and the tongue, and 
 the heart, and the soul all the vigilance and all the might of each 
 I owe for this something higher and more sacred than the 
 money I give something in kind returned for what I take. Let 
 every neighborhood, where teachers are employed, pour upon 
 them the gentle currents of social life. Have friendly gatherings 
 once a week ; informal meetings, where the pleasantest persons 
 shall assemble for two or three hours' intelligent intercourse and 
 recreation ; reading, conversation, and, if possible, music and 
 dancing not to exhaust but to refresh and let the teacher feel 
 that he or she is the chief guest of these occasions. Such re- 
 lations to parents would put power and life into the souls of 
 teachers that would return to them a hundred fold in the 
 culture of their children.
 
 402 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 " I would enjoy the present ; I would live 
 Like one new born." 
 
 " Yet pause ! for on thine inner ear 
 
 A mystic music grows, 
 And mortal man shall never hear 
 That diapason's close." 
 
 ON Saturday afternoon, a week after I had given up my school, 
 I was sitting with my friend, in whose house I had spent the ia- 
 terval, busily sewing on a silk dress the first one I had evui 
 been able to purchase when, just as the very last stitch was 
 taken, and the wonderful garment held up complete, for otir 
 mutual admiration, we heard the sound of swift carriage-wheels 
 a-stop, then a quick foot, and there stood my brother before tie 
 open door. I had not seen him in two years and a half, and 'A 
 seemed much longer than that, because during a part of the time 
 I had feared we should never meet again. The pure joy of see- 
 ing him was greater than it had ever been before. I knew him 
 now as a benefactor and friend, a guardian and protector. When 
 the greeting and introduction were over, he said : " And have 
 you really been making this handsome dress yourself?" 
 
 " Only the plain part of it," I replied ; " Mrs. Norman has 
 been kind enough to do the rest for me. Do you like it ?" 
 
 " Very much. It has the right look," he said, eyeing it criti- 
 cally as I held it up before him. 
 
 " But now, just fold it and pack your trunk as quickly as 
 
 possible. I must be back to kill to-night, to take the early 
 
 boat up the river in the morning." 
 
 Remonstrance against the haste was useless. I offered none,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 403 
 
 for I could be ready in half an hour ; but my friend vainly urged 
 that there was another day before us. 
 
 " I cannot stay," he said ; " I have promised positively to be 
 
 in A at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, and I can only 
 
 do it by returning to the river to-night." 
 
 Tea was hastily made while the packing was in progress up- 
 stairs, and in less than an hour we were on the road. I have 
 never known a more delightful drive than that was. I had never 
 before, since our early childhood, had John so long to myself as 
 I was to have him now. We talked of everything fast, like 
 people who are having a hurried interview, which may be broken 
 off at any moment. 
 
 He told me how proud he was of my letters, and asked if I 
 " had ever written anything but letters ?" 
 
 And when I said that I had, " but nothing that was worth 
 preserving," he looked disappointed, and said : 
 
 " When you write anything after this, no matter what you think 
 of it, you must not destroy it till some one else has seen it. 1 
 am in hopes of seeing you a woman yet that I can be proud of, 
 but it will take some patience and labor, and you must keep that 
 pride of yours down a little. Creep first and walk aftenvards is 
 the law ; isn't it ?" he asked, looking playfully into my face, 
 which was every moment growing more serious. 
 
 " You haven't fallen in love with anybody back here 1 
 hope ?" 
 
 " No," I said, with such promptness and asperity, that he 
 cried out : 
 
 " Hallo I we've had something in hand I am sure, or we 
 shouldn't be so fierce. What is it, eh ?" 
 
 " Nothing at all," I replied ; but knowing that he would not 
 believe those simple words, I added : " Nothing ; but I remem- 
 bered then an impudent person, who came to the house where 
 I was boarding while I taught the school, and annoyed me a little. 
 That's all." 
 
 " Sure you were not caught ?" he inquired.
 
 404 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 " Very sure. I never think of him unless he is accidentally 
 brought to my mind, and then it always makes me angry to re- 
 member how impertinent and ungentlemanly he was." 
 
 I did not like to characterize his conduct in any stronger 
 terms, for it was unlikely that we should ever meet again, and 
 certain that my brother's knowing his ill-treatment could do 
 good to no one, since they would never see each other. For the 
 future, I thought, nothing like this bitter experience can occur, 
 for now I shall have somebody always to advise me what I ought 
 to do, and whom I ought to avoid. I had a perfect trust in 
 John's wisdom. Nothing can go wrong with me, I thought, when 
 he is near. 
 
 At every pause in our talk, and they were few and short, I 
 jvas trying to regain a consciousness of my position. My de- 
 parture had been so sudden, and the joy of what was before me 
 was so great and unmixed, that it was not easy to catch the 
 future and combine it with the happy present, so that thev should 
 both seem to be, indeed, my own great possession. 
 
 As the darkness of evening approached, it was increased by 
 heavy clouds threatening a shower. The wind was driving under 
 the cover of our little carriage furiously, and a few large drops 
 had been dashed in our faces, just as a closed barouche drove 
 swiftly past us. 
 
 John shouted to the driver, and before I could speak I was 
 astonished to hear him ask the man, as he stopped his horses, 
 "if he had anybody inside?" 
 
 " No," was the reply." 
 
 " Well, then, tumble down, will you, my good fellow, and take 
 uiy sister in there, or she will be drenched before we get to 
 town ?" 
 
 I began to speak, but he said, half impatiently, for the rain 
 was increasing every moment : " Now, keep that woman's tongue 
 of yours still till we get there ; I know perfectly what I am 
 about, and when we get to the hotel you shall have the whole 
 chapter."
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 405 
 
 The driver held the door of the carriage open, and I sprang 
 in, glad to take refuge from the coming storm, as well for the 
 sake of my new bonnet as anything else. The door slammed to, 
 and I heard the words : " Take her to the hotel and be careful 
 how you drive ;" and we drove off. 
 
 How the rain poured ! I could see through the little glass 
 behind me that John kept close to us till it was utterly dark. 
 We reached the town. I could not remember ever having been 
 in lighted streets before, and so when the carriage stopped before 
 a large house, brilliant with lamps, I seemed to be in an en- 
 chanted land. The driver ran up the steps and presently re- 
 turned, accompanied by another person with an umbrella ; they 
 opened the door, let down the steps, and asked me to walk in. 
 
 " Is this the hotel ?" I inquired. 
 
 " Yes, ^na'am." 
 
 I alighted, and when I entered the parlor, where a showy as- 
 semblage of ladies and gentlemen were silting, and standing, 
 and talking, and laughing, I found myself still further within the 
 borders of fairy land. 
 
 A pianoforte stood open, and a beautiful young lady was 
 being urged to sit down and play upon it. I could have joined 
 in this importunity myself, I so longed to hear this wonderful in- 
 strument ; but while it was going on a gentlemanly-looking per- 
 son, with a pen in one hand and a large book in the other, 
 entered, and looking about the apartment, came to me and 
 asked if I " wished for a room, and would write my name in the 
 register ?" 
 
 I declined, and told him I expected my brother every mo- 
 ment, who would see to all I wanted. 
 
 What a comfort it was to say and feel this. It strengthened 
 me so much. I had courage to look the man straight in the 
 face while I paid it, and to add, in answer to his questioning ex- 
 pression, that " my brother's name was Woodson ; that he put 
 me in the close carriage three or four miles back on account of 
 the rain, and would be here directly himself."
 
 406 MT EARLY DAYS. 
 
 At that moment I heard his quick, decided step in the wide 
 hall, and at the next he entered the room. How proud I was 
 of him I I had admired the elegant appearance and easy man- 
 ners of the men before me, but there was not one so handsome 
 as he and none more graceful or self-possessed. What had 
 dazzled me was evidently very commonplace to him, for after 
 a word of inquiry as to my ride, and a report of his own, lie 
 said, glancing about over the company, " I will go and see our 
 rooms, and then come for you." 
 
 I ventured to say " that I was hoping to hear the piano 
 played before I went to my bedroom." 
 
 " Have you never beard one ?" he asked, looking at me in 
 Buch a way as showed that he understood me. 
 
 " Never. I never saw " 
 
 " Hush,'' he said, in that tone which, while it is less noticeable 
 than a whisper, more imperatively, commands the listener ; plac- 
 ing himself with the words between me and my possible 
 audience. " Hush, child ! I had no idea you were so ignorant 
 of common things." 
 
 I was chagrined and grieved, not alone at myself but that I 
 should be a source of mortiQcation to John, who, I could easily 
 see, would be profoundly ashamed to have my condition known 
 even to these strangers. While he was gone, I was endeavor- 
 ing to compare myself with the young ladies present not per- 
 sonally, that was impossible, but mentally so far as I could 
 judge of them by the talk I heard. It was certainly very poor. 
 There was neither wit in their remarks upon persons, nor intelli- 
 gence upon other ^natters ; and no earnestness, apparently, 
 about anything. Some poor gossip about individuals ; some 
 >itnperiiig denial of imputed accomplishments, or charms, or 
 triumphs ; some silly questions, which cither meant nothing or 
 answered themselves before they were framed, were the staple 
 of all this clatter of tongues. 
 
 Then, said I, I am not inferior to these except in beauty, for 
 I know I can cultivate ease and self-poiscssiou when I come to
 
 MT EARLY DATS. 407 
 
 mingle daily with polished people, as I shall now, and John 
 shall not, have cause to be long ashamed of me. 
 
 I did not hear the piauo. That was a pleasure reserved to a 
 later day of my progress in the civilization of art ; but after a 
 long talk with John, in the quiet of our rooms, which adjoined 
 each other, I went to my bed, to lie broad awake through the 
 whole night. The noise in the streets, which came distinctly up 
 through the open windows, the excitement of the uovel position, 
 the contiguity of the crowd of men and women, which seemed, to 
 my inexperience, vast the change which a few hours had made 
 in my surroundings, and the still greater change which another 
 day would produce all stimulated a train of thoughts in my 
 mind which reached backward into the far past, and forward 
 into the future, tossing, changing, shaping, and again melting 
 into the grey and shadowy realms, from which I could summon 
 10 sleep and command no waking quietness. Yet I was happy 
 happier than it has been my lot to be on many of the wakeful 
 nights that have etched themselves upon the soul's record of 
 later years. 
 
 It is curious, how, in a healthy life, sleepless nights mark eras 
 which remain forever distinct from each other. A single one, 
 sometimes, coming from a great joy or sorrow, or a shock that 
 has checked the vital currents in their channels, and shaken, as 
 with an earthquake force, from border to border, the realm of the 
 inner life, will stand out of the misty past for long years, aye, 
 for the whole mortal term. It has become a feature in the hind- 
 scape of memory, and is only lost sight of as headlands at sea 
 are, when the vapors of fre-sh-gathering storms wrap them too 
 thickly about. Let the present tumult of clouds, and winds, 
 and waters subside, and there they come again, looming over 
 the tranquil surface boldly as before. 
 
 In every earnest life, there are such headlands, upheaving 
 themselves along the shore of the years days of conflict ; 
 nights through whose long, sik-nt hours the spirit forbids the 
 approach of sleep, and holds its most solemn self-eommunings ;
 
 408 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 searches the past, explores the future, dives into the deeps, and 
 mounts the heights ; compasses the universe for its arguments, 
 and grounds its deductions in the deepest depths of human ex- 
 perience to which it can penetrate. 
 
 Somewhat in this wild way, was I travelling on that, my first 
 night in a city first, too, of a glorious career which had long 
 been promised, and was now come a career of high scholar- 
 ship. Of the natural sciences, except astronomy, I was in utter 
 ignorance. Chemistry, botany, geology, natural history, with 
 all their brother exponents of nature, and of God, were as yet 
 sealed books to me. So, also, were most of the systems and 
 opinions which intellect and genius have builded up, and the 
 ages transmitted to us. The garden of time had been opened to 
 me only by glimpses. I had but the vaguest notion of its limits 
 and productions. History had given me the wars of arms, aud 
 their periods of cessation. It was as is if one should be con- 
 ducted within the sound of Niagara, and expected to stay there 
 on the assurance that the noise was the real and substantial 
 power of the cataract, whereas we should prove by going forward, 
 that is was but an effect of the force which is forever working 
 its sure way deeper and deeper into the eternal rock. 
 
 Thus only did I know the past by its noise and rush ; its 
 bloodshed aud its horrors the outward and manifest effects 
 of those deep, hidden workings, whereby the glorious revolu : 
 tions of the ages are accomplished. I knew the tree that Crom- 
 well reared, but not the hand that planted the seed whence it 
 sprung. I knew that a terrible red sea had submerged France 
 in the years of her first revolution, but I did not know that one 
 of the bands that let forth that fearful tide, had been working at 
 a rude printing press, more than three hundred years before, 
 and another raised in defiance of religious despotism in Ger- 
 many, while yet France lay lapped in glory, unapproached by 
 the ideas which afterwards shook her from centre to circumfer- 
 ence. 
 
 Cause and effect were not connected in my knowledge of
 
 MY EARLY DATS. 409 
 
 human progress, and thus my reading had been both more 
 laborious and less satisfactory than it should have been. For I 
 could not rest in a knowledge of mere facts. Given these, I was 
 impelled to a ceaseless search for their cause, which it was 
 wearisome to be always disappointed in finding, as, with my poor 
 light and means, I so often had been. 
 
 Now I was to enjoy the inestimable privilege of placing my 
 band upon the hidden springs of events. I was to know some- 
 what of the inner as well as the outer of history. 
 
 I date far back of this time, a dim, vague, perhaps then uii- 
 statable conviction, which enlarged and whetted my desire for 
 knowledge immeasurably, viz. a conviction that each branch of 
 it bore closely and inseparably upon every other not merely 
 that there was an outward chain of connection, by which ac- 
 quaintance with one facilitated the introduction to another. 
 This exists obviously to all common thought and intelligence. 
 But my faith, which years of ignorance and darkness never 
 overturned or shook, was that, by an invisible, and to me inde- 
 finable power, or law, or bond, all truths and knowledges were 
 connected to all others, and that following this law, if it were 
 once found, from any starting point, we should reach outward 
 and downward and upward, grasping on all hands, sources of 
 continually increasing light, whereof the reflection should be as 
 infinite and various as the truths of creation. 
 
 With no means of approaching any elucidation of this idea, 
 which was most shadowy and intangible to myself, and which I 
 should not have dared attempt to state, to the most indulgent 
 friend, I yet cherished and at times dwelt on it, as I did to-night, 
 lying awake and hearing with the outward ear the heavy fall 
 of the summer rain upon roof and pavement. How different 
 from the soft music of the twinkling leaves and dimpling grass 1 
 With all my far away flights of memory, hope and speculation, 
 my ear was constantly sensible of the change v,hich this noise 
 testified, and an occasional thrill of thankfulness that I was here 
 would course along my nerves as I heard it. 
 13
 
 410 MY EAliLT DATS. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIL 
 
 " Early hath life's mighty question 
 
 Thrilled within the heart of youth, 
 With a deep and strong beseeching, 
 WHAT, and WHERE is TRUTH ?" 
 
 WE reached our destination the next day at two o'clock. 
 What a morning I spent on the steamboat ! It seemed to me 
 happiness and contentment enough for a lifetime. John had a 
 happy way of appealing to me for opinions on various subjects, 
 which, though there was an occasional gleam of mockery in it, 
 gave me, nevertheless, great satisfaction. I remember that we 
 walked the deck, for neither of us had the gift of keeping still, 
 and talked over Josephine's tragedy, heaping execrations upon 
 Maria Louisa, and almost weeping for Josephine and Napoleon, 
 whom I then regarded as about equally victims. We discussed 
 also the good and great of our own country Webster and 
 Clay, for whom the idolatrous worship of my childhood was yet 
 unbroken ; Jackson, who was John's hero, and other men aud 
 measures, my knowledge of which greatly delighted him. 
 
 11 1 didn't think you were so much of a politician," he said. 
 " Girls never care for politics." 
 
 ' Oh, yes, they do," I replied ; and I related how a school- 
 mate of mine and myself used sometimes to hold warm discussions 
 with one of our teachers, and how this man, though he taught 
 mathematics and philosophy, had actually betrayed the mon- 
 s-trons ignorance, one day, when some changes in the diplomatic 
 corps were under examination, of likening our foreign ambassa- 
 dors to religious ministers at home, and expressed the opinion,
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 411 
 
 that as changes of the latter were often found desirable, they 
 would also prove good in the former cases ; and how, thereupon, 
 we, his sage antagonists, looking at each other pitifully, retired, 
 leaving the field to him ; and as soon as we were out of ear-shot, 
 agreed that there could be no greater folly than attempting to 
 put ideas into a brain so hopelessly befogged, and so gave 
 him up. 
 
 I told this anecdote with more detail and freshness than I can 
 relate it now, by way of proving to John that I was not alone 
 among girls of my age in these interests. I remember that his 
 laugh showed more amusement than appreciation, and he said : 
 " Poor fellow ! What became of him after you two abandoned 
 his case ?" 
 
 But for all those jeering words, and the inimitable humor of 
 tone and look that accompanied them, I was not a bit put down 
 or intimidated ; nor afterward, when he said, slily, at the door 
 of my boarding-house, while waiting for it to be opened : 
 " Shall I introduce you as an undeveloped Secretary of State or 
 Postmaster-General ?" 
 
 " Stop your nonsense," I replied. " You just introduce me by 
 my name, and I'll make known what I am." 
 
 In three weeks the term was to commence. It was wise that 
 I was three weeks in advance of it, for it took me all the time 
 that John could spare, and that I could catch, with the few ac- 
 quaintances I made, to become sufficiently familiar with, and ac- 
 customed to, the city, to be able to sit down amid its din and 
 rush to quiet and effective study. On the opening Monday I 
 shall never forget it my brother came in the morning from his 
 business to accompany me to the institution. It was a very 
 handsome building of pure white marble, in simple almost severe 
 style of architecture, standing in a broad, pleasant street, that 
 was comparatively quiet and strewn with the early falling leaves 
 of autumn. I wondered, seeing how the trees were imprisoned 
 in the stone pavements, that there should be any leaves to fall. 
 I had often passed the edifice in my walks, and looked into its
 
 412 MY EAKLY DAYS. 
 
 deserted porch with something nearly akin to awe mingling with 
 joy, that by and by I was to be one of the privileged few to 
 enter there. The citizens had great pride in the school, which 
 numbered among its pupils young ladies from the farthest 
 States, and from foreign countries ; and they were vain of the 
 elegant structure which contained it, so that I was not likely to 
 have my own appreciation of the advantages before me lessened 
 by any opinions coming from others. 
 
 I had been directed by John the evening before to be dressed 
 as I " would for church " by half-past eight, at which time I 
 might look for him to be at the house. My good landlady, a 
 kind, sisterly, lovable little creature, came to assist me after 
 breakfast. 
 
 " She had partly expected a sister and cousin," she said, " to 
 come from Massachusetts, to go into the Academy at the com- 
 mencement of this term ;" and she expatiated in a ceaseless 
 strain, while fastening and arranging my dress, upon the high 
 character of the school the finished style of the pupils it 
 turned out ; their reputation as scholars all in a refined, intelli- 
 gent and sensible way, as a cultivated New England woman 
 would. 
 
 When we reached the building, whole bevies of girls were 
 thronging its broad porch and wide open doors. 
 
 " I shall go in with you," said John, " and introduce you to 
 the Principal, but I cannot remain, and after that you must make 
 your way alone. Don't be afraid to speak to some of the young 
 ladies when you wish to. I think there ought not to be any 
 very crushing weight of ceremony among school-girls. I am 
 sure," he added, looking into their glowing and handsome faces, 
 as they approached us, " I should not be long making acquaint- 
 ance with some of them, if I were lucky enough to have the 
 freedom of the establishment." 
 
 " No, no," I said, almost impatiently, " I dare say not ; but 
 you are impudent where I am timid, and deserve chastisement 
 often where I need to be encouraged; so there's no use in telling
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 413 
 
 me what you would do, good-for-nothing. I shall get through 
 in some fashion, I dare say, and after to-day of course I shall 
 know where I belong, and just what I am to do." 
 
 We made our way along, up one of the flights of broad stairs, 
 and into a room where the larger girls seemed to be chiefly con- 
 gregating. Near the door stood a gentleman, to whom my 
 brother spoke, and the next moment introduced me. 
 
 He was Mr. Hall, the principal teacher a very gentlemanly- 
 looking person, rather large but well made, with bold, decided 
 features of a dark cast, and a large, clear, prominent eye, that 
 was not black, but so deep and shady a brown, that it took a 
 good direct look into it to convince you what its color really 
 was. He looked very kindly at me, as he did at all the other 
 girls, and shook my hand, saying that the morning session would 
 not probably commence for an hour, but inviting me to go down 
 to the wardrobe and lay off my bonnet and shawl. When I 
 replied that I did not know the rooms, he called to a girl stand- 
 ing near us, in a lively little group, and introducing us to each 
 other, said : 
 
 " Miss Nelson, will you be kind enough to show Miss Wood- 
 son to the wardrobe, and take her under your charge, as she is 
 a stranger ?" 
 
 Of course she was happy, etc., and John, seeing me thus pro- 
 vided for, said, as we approached the head of the stairs : 
 
 " I can leave you now. I am sure you could not be in better 
 hands ;" and bowing politely to ray new friend, he went his 
 way. 
 
 " It is my brother," I said, as she looked after him. 
 
 "So I supposed," was the reply. " You will come to the 
 wardrobe first, will you not ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 And while I was folding my shawl, and placing my bonnet on 
 its hook, I was admiring and falling in love with my attendant. 
 I thought I had never seen a face that expressed so much purity 
 and sunny sweetness; and her voice was music itself ; her words
 
 414: MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 BO clearly and purely enunciated, with such childlike gentleness 
 and serenity in every action, look, and utterance, that I was 
 charmed, for the moment, out of all concern for myself in tho 
 momentous affairs of the day. 
 
 In reply to my questions, Miss Nelson informed me that she 
 was in her last year ; that she had taken the first mathematical 
 medal at the recent examination, and that there were about five 
 hundred pupils in the Academy, of which ninety were members of 
 the first department with her. 
 
 " Of course you will be with us," she said, as we returned up 
 stairs. 
 
 "I suppose I hope so," I replied; but feeling some painful 
 doubts arising from her great advantages over me, whether I 
 could be placed in classes with her. 
 
 Shortly after our return to the upper rooms, the loud, sonor- 
 ous voice of Mr. Hall, standing near the central doors, went 
 forth, inviting the young ladies to repair to the chapel, a large, 
 elegant room two floors above us. There was immediately a 
 soft stir and rush towards the stairs, up which a broad current 
 of youthful life, beauty, grace, and gaiety, was sweeping for the 
 next five minutes. I kept close to Miss Nelson, and congratu- 
 lated myself, as I moved along in the crowd, that my dress was 
 not inferior to the general style worn. I bad so often suffered 
 from a sense of noticeable poverty in this respect, that it was a 
 substantial, and, I hope, an allowable satisfaction, to find my- 
 self on so important an occasion free from this embarrassment. 
 My brother had wisely said, " Dress well the first day and the 
 first week; after that it will not matter so much what you wear." 
 
 In the chapel we found a little man who looked smartly about 
 on us with an important air, and, after we were settled, made 
 us a little speech, congratulating us on having met together for 
 so noble a purpose as the cultivation of our minds informed us 
 that though we might not know it, we were in the enjoyment o f 
 inestimable privileges in being members of that institution, and 
 seemed, by his manner and tone, to suggest that the very great
 
 MY EAKLY DAYS. 4:15 
 
 greatness of our privilege, was chiefly owing to his presence 
 there. 
 
 " Who is he ?" I asked, of Miss Nelson. 
 
 " Mr. Wilkinson, the Principal." 
 
 " I thought Mr. Hall was the Principal ?" 
 
 "No; he's the principal teacher, only." 
 
 I said uo more; for, of course, I understood we were not to 
 talk in the chapel ; but this much I could not keep back. 
 
 A short chapter was then read ; two or three stanzas of a 
 hymn sung, Mr. Hall leading ; a prayer made by Mr. Wilkin- 
 son ; and then, the old members were requested to repair to 
 their places, and the strangers to remain. 
 
 There were not many of us only some twenty-five young 
 ladies, and thirty or forty little girls. We were invited to recita- 
 tion rooms, contiguous to the chapel, where we were examined, 
 and assigned to our respective places. When Mr. Hall came to 
 me, I was trembling with apprehension, lest by some blunder, or 
 for real want of advancement, I should find myself placed in a 
 department below the highest, which, as I could have but a year 
 for study, would be an almost unendurable frustration of my 
 hopes. I answered his question?, and, in addition, ventured on 
 telling him what I wished, and hoped that I could do. He 
 seemed to catch at my enthusiasm at once, and sat looking at 
 me a moment, after I had done speaking, in such a manner, that 
 I said, while I felt my cheeks growing warmer with the effort : 
 " Do you think I can go into the First Department, sir ?" 
 
 " Oh, certainly !" was the prompt reply; and then, he added 
 the encouraging words : " I think you are ready for any studies 
 that you may choose to take with us." 
 
 With what a glad whirl my blood mounted up, and up, into 
 the topmost chambers of my brain, at these welcome sounds 1 
 I could have flown to tell John, who was little less anxious than 
 myself ; but I sat still, and when the word came, walked quietly 
 down-stairs, and took the seat and table given me, as meekly a3 
 if I were not straining every, nerve to suppress my too great joy.
 
 416 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 I looked at Miss Nelson, smiled, and nodded, and sat still, wait- 
 ing, now, the organization of classes. In due time, all was well 
 adjusted. 
 
 I, and the young ladies whom I was mostly called with, had 
 to do chiefly with Mr. Hall, for which I was very thankful. He 
 said nothing, generally, about our great privileges, and but little 
 of what we ought to do, but something in his words and tones 
 put every pupil upon her utmost efforts at once. When Mr. 
 Wilkinson spoke to us, though he did so in words of exhortation 
 and encouragement, he seemed to strike our ambition down to 
 coldness and death. He had no gift wherewith to inspire the 
 spirit with a spark of the divine purpose To Know. 
 
 J was enrolled in five classes, and went home in the after- 
 noon with my catalogue of books that were to be bought, and 
 of lessons that were to be learned for next day. Thus com- 
 menced my academic year, and thus it went on with increasing 
 labor of writing, reading, reviewing, and addition of new 
 studies, till I had all my time occupied in recitation, from 
 nine till half-past three the close of the winter day's sessions. 
 What glorious nights those were for study. The window of 
 my small room looked out upon the eastern sky, and many a 
 morning the day-streaks shone there before I had fully com- 
 pleted my tasks. 
 
 I had a few classmates whose zeal in study equalled my own, 
 and we ran a fearful race during that winter. Necessity as 
 well as ambition drove me, and they kept me company. The 
 laboratory occupied us one evening every week ; the telescope 
 and astronomical apparatus another ; a miscellaneous course of 
 lectures another, and after these, there yet remained the les- 
 sons for the next day ; semi-monthly compositions, and the 
 general reviewing, which we were liable to be caught up on, 
 as on an uncomfortable hook, every day. It was very labori- 
 ous, but, persisted in, it gave us the most satisfactory control 
 over all the knowledge we had on those subjects. I think it 
 did more to develop the mind and strengthen the memory, and
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 417 
 
 give us clear and defined ideas, than the first labor of study. 
 Scholars are so prone to regard recitation as the chief end of 
 study and the final disposition of every lesson, that with a vast 
 majority, especially of average minds, there is literally no care 
 or thought beyoud that. 
 
 But this state of things was impossible with us. Having 
 undertaken a study, we were expected, on any day thereafter, 
 to be ready to give answers to general questions on it, and 
 often to particular ones ; if we could not, we were disgraced 
 in our classes, and though there were many who preferred 
 disgrace to labor, yet the effect on the whole was of incalcula- 
 ble good, and accounted to me for the boasted superiority of 
 scholarship in the institution. In this I could not suffer the 
 idea of falling below the highest level, and therefore toiled with 
 an incredible application through the whole winter, growing 
 thinner and less elastic as the weeks went by, until, when the 
 first session drew to a close, I could not go up the long stairs, 
 where I had bounded two at a time in the beginning, without 
 stopping to breathe on the top of each. 
 
 I had repelled all my brother's inquiries, because I would 
 suffer ho interruption in my studies, and 1 believed that 
 with the week's rest at vacation I should be able to go on with 
 safety. Miss Nelson and I were great friends, and she thought, 
 so strong and healthy as I had been, that I could bear it. I 
 was greatly and generously aided in my labors by Mr. Hall, 
 the amount and variety of whose learning bewildered me. His 
 acquaintance with language and the sciences ; his knowledge 
 of history, of art, of invention, of metaphysics, seemed to me 
 almost superhuman ; and he was good enough to bestow some- 
 times great pains in counselling me, in criticising my style, aud 
 suggesting helps where I found difficulties. 
 
 I felt deeply grateful for this attention, and for a certain re- 
 cognition, which I always received from him, either tacit or 
 expressed, of a position and purpose, differing from the com- 
 fortable, well-provided students, among whom I -was striving. 
 18*
 
 418 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 " Our true victories lie all beyond to-day, 
 It is the unattained for which we cry." 
 
 " I will go forward, sayest thou, 
 I shall not fail to find her now." 
 
 WHEN the half-yearly examination came, I was well prepared 
 to hold my place in the various classes to which I belonged. 
 My brother managed to be present most of the time, and at the 
 close of each day I was richly rewarded for all the weariness I 
 felt, by his unmeasured and proud commendation. There was 
 always with him also another person, whose presence was at 
 once a stimulus and a dread to me a gentleman whom I had 
 seen but twice before this memorable week. He had recently 
 returned from a tour to Europe, and was full of incidents of 
 travel, and captivating, graphic description of places he had 
 visited. When I first met him, he seemed to take especial pains 
 to entertain me with accounts of what he had seen ; and as a 
 European traveller in those days was a much rarer person than 
 now, I was not a little flattered and pleased with his attention. 
 I was indeed very grateful, that a man who had not only en- 
 joyed the best educational advantages at home, but had seen 
 the wonderful Old World, with all its wealth of intellectual 
 greatness, its art, its splendid refinements, its beautiful and ac- 
 complished women, should find in a poor, rude girl like me, any- 
 thing worthy a second thought. And that he did was quite 
 evident, when he came in at a certain hour on a certain day, 
 according to a promise made three whole days before, to hear 
 my class in geometry examined.
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 419 
 
 At that examination I was severely tried, and achieved a com- 
 plete triumph. It was fortunate that I did, for a failure in the 
 fatigued condition of both mind and body I was then suffering, 
 would have utterly overwhelmed me. I was publicly compli- 
 mented by one of the oldest men in the institution, for answering 
 correctly a question I had never heard, as the sudden paleness of 
 my face when it was first put, abundantly proved, and which, as 
 my questioner enthusiastically said, he had never before had an- 
 swered without aid, by any student, male or female, though he 
 had put it to many. Congratulations poured in on every hand. 
 It was the last day, and the last class, and happy for me that it 
 was, for I needed John's arm when I got to the door, where, a 
 little aside from the crowd that was pouring out, he and our 
 friend Mr. Harrington stood, awaiting me. They, also, were full 
 of congratulations, but Mr. H. had scarcely spoken his, when 
 he said, " You look ill. You are very much fatigued." 
 
 I had to confess with something aYm to self-contempt that I 
 was. In truth, I found it difficult to keep my feet. With my 
 previous feebleness from continued excessive labor, the severe 
 efforts of the week, the excitement and sudden removal of it, by 
 the close of our exercises, I was in a condition to make any real 
 sympathy doubly precious to me. We went down-stairs, and 
 while I walked to the wardrobe, and, with dear Mary Nelson's 
 help, got on my cloak and bonnet, John stood in the hall wait- 
 ing for me. When I came back, Mr. Harrington was gone. 
 I was a little disappointed at this, but took John's arm, think- 
 ing very little of ray victory, or of anything but the effort of 
 getting home. As we opened the door to encounter the chilly 
 February wind, our friend ran briskly up the steps, and said : 
 " I have taken the liberty to bring a carriage ; I am sure you 
 had better ride home, though the distance is short." 
 
 I could not object, and we all got into it. That evening, a 
 friendly old doctor, who had always taken a lively interest in 
 me, from my first day in the city, sat by my bed, giving me, 
 occasionally a few drops of some nauseous mixture from a vial
 
 420 MY EAELT DATS. 
 
 he had brought with him, and saying, between his excessive 
 praises, and back-handed censure of my folly iu overworking 
 myself, that I should leave the books and go to the country for 
 a month. 
 
 "Nonsense, doctor ; I shall do no such thing. You sail 1 , tliu 
 ether day you liked to see a woman show her will, sometimes, 
 and now you may look for mine to appear." 
 
 " Well, at least, yon won't study any more, miss, for a fort- 
 night. Make your mind up peaceably to that." 
 
 " No, I'll have no compromise. I shall go right on with my 
 classes, week after next." 
 
 "No, you won't." 
 
 " Are you trying to provoke me ?" I said, wrathfully, for I 
 was afraid his persisting would alarm John, who was sitting by, 
 and then I should certainly be defeated. 
 
 " No, I don't want to do any such thing, though you are 
 handsomer when you look a little angry, as you do now, than 
 when you are so devilish serious. But I tell you that you won't 
 go to school any more for a fortnight. Now keep quiet for a 
 minute, and I'll tell you why. Your teacher that you all think 
 so much of what's his name Hall ? yes, Ilall has been dis- 
 charged by the Trustees." 
 
 " What for ?" 
 
 " For mixing with people whose politics don't please them, 
 they say." 
 
 " Who say, the Trustees ?" 
 
 " No, but they the world, I mean." 
 
 I meditated some time in silence. It was a great loss to me, 
 for I knew that his equal in learning and capacity could not 
 soon be found to take his place. 
 
 " What is he going to do ?" I asked. 
 
 " Open a private school two weeks from Monday." 
 
 " Then I shall take two weeks' rest, doctor. " 
 
 " I told you you would," he said, banteringly. " You see it's 
 just as I say. Women never do know their own minds."
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 421 
 
 " You be hanged, if you please," I replied. " But are you 
 sure that Mr. Hall is going to do what you say ?" 
 
 "Yes; he told me so, after your examination was over this 
 afternoon ; and he said, moreover, that if a certain young lady 
 would go to his school, and certain other young ladies too, who 
 would be sure to if she did, he should feel very much en- 
 couraged." 
 
 " What do you say, John ?" I asked. 
 
 " Go where you prefer to," he replied. " I am satisfied with- 
 out undertaking to control you; but you had better weigh well 
 the advantages and disadvantages on both sides. There is the 
 diploma ; and the medals you might get, are worth con- 
 sidering." 
 
 " Anybody who prefers them to the best instruction, may have 
 all I could get," I said. 
 
 I rested wholly and as easily as I could for four entire days, 
 and then my brother came in one evening with a small, neat 
 white parcel in his hand, and said, " I have brought you two 
 treats an extraordinary and wonderfnl piece of news that will 
 take your breath, and some of Old Dinah's cranberry tarts, to 
 help you bear it." 
 
 " Well, then," I said, " let me have the shock first. The 
 news first," I repeated, as he persisted in undoing the parcel. 
 " It is contrary to all usage to take a restorative and follow it 
 by a shock." 
 
 " That," he said with provoking deliberation, laying the paper 
 carefully spread open on my table, " that is because people don't 
 know what is coming, as we do'. If they did, they would make 
 themselves comfortable beforehand, so ;" and he took one of the 
 small tarts, and seating himself, coolly laid his feet upon my bed, 
 and began to cat it. 
 
 I knew by his face that he had not exaggerated the interest 
 of what he had to tell me, but I knew also that to undertake to 
 hasten the telling would be fruitless ; so I sat, most uncomfort- 
 ably impatient, to wait his pleasure. How moderately and relish-
 
 422 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 ingly he took the delicate pastry. I could have given him a 
 round of hearty cuffs, and have no doubt I should have done it 
 successfully, some months earlier. 
 
 At length he said, " I think your serene highness conde- 
 scended to express a favorable opinion of a certain fair, blue- 
 eyed young lady to whom I had the honor of introducing you 
 Bix weeks or two months ago at Mrs. Rawson's ?" 
 
 " Miss Stapleton ?" 
 
 " The same, your highness." 
 
 " Yes ; I thought she was very pretty ; and amiable, and good 
 I am sure ; wondering what, that was likely to happen to her, 
 could possibly be so interesting to me. 
 
 " What of her ?" 
 
 " Nothing, except that she is to be married, just a week from 
 this evening, about this hour, I should say," looking at his 
 watch. 
 
 " Well," I said, " I have no objection ; and I don't see how it 
 can possibly concern me, since she is not likely to ask me to her 
 wedding." 
 
 " Young ladies don't get married without marrying somebody, 
 do they ? Perhaps it might interest you to know who the 
 other party is." 
 
 " I hope he is a good man, whoever he is, for I am sure she 
 will make a dear, good wife." 
 
 " He is a pretty good fellow, I think," said John, " and I agree 
 that she deserves him." 
 
 " Who is it 1" 
 
 " Saving yer presence, it's me thin intirely." 
 
 "You!" 
 
 " Jist is that same, wi' respect to ye." 
 
 " You graceless vagabond," I said, " cheating me into the 
 belief that you were wholly devoted to me : and here have yon 
 gone through a courtship, and are on the eve of marriage 
 before I know it. Precious faith that is." 
 
 But we soon dropped raillery and banter, and came to more
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 423 
 
 serious tones. It was a very new and changed aspect of affairs 
 to me, and not without its painful phase, either, though I had 
 a real pleasure in his great happiness. 
 
 The marriage was rather hurried, he said, because four days 
 after he was to start for the West and South. 
 
 " And will she go with you ?" 
 
 " No, I shall leave her here with you." 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 ; Then I heard 
 
 A noise of some one coming through the lawn, 
 And singing clearer than the crested bird 
 That claps his wings at dawn." 
 
 THE wedding was the most considerable social event I had 
 ever participated in. I met many people at the house of the 
 bride's father, among others, Mr. Harrington, who very good- 
 naturedly devoted the evening to me, and, with John's approval, 
 attended me home, when the party broke up. 
 
 I entered Mr. Hall's school, but found not in myself quite the 
 same power of application I had possessed before. I could not 
 live in my books, and exclude the world altogether, ns I had 
 done. Mr. Harrington called to see me, once or twice a week ; 
 and the next day I was almost certain to find some opinion, of 
 his, or some passage of poetry that he had quoted, mixing itself 
 up with my problems, or getting into the French exercises, or 
 disturbing the affinities in Chemistry, or I remembered that 1 had 
 never yet mustered courage to express, even in the most indirect 
 manner, the gratitude I felt for his notice, which might hurt- 
 been bestowed on so many beautiful, accomplished persons. 
 
 I thought a great deal about this. One evening it was one 
 of the first that had come to our northern climate, from the
 
 424 MY EARLY DAYS. 
 
 long-locked chambers of the South I was walking slowly home, 
 with my armful of books, when I met, a few doors from our 
 house, the waiter, who said, " Oh, Miss Woodson, there's been a 
 gentleman to see you. The same tall, handsome-looking one, 
 that comes so often, you know. In an awful hurry he was, too ; 
 but he said he'd call again at seven." 
 
 " In a hurry !" I thought, as I went on more quickly. " What 
 can have happened, I wonder ?" And, in spite of myself, I felt 
 quite agitated, and very impatient for seven o'clock. It was not 
 yet that hour, when the bell rang, with a quick, strong pull ; 
 and, a moment after the door opened, I heard a flying step com- 
 ing up the stair, to my door. It opened, and there stood Norah, 
 the chamber-maid. 
 
 "That gintleman, miss, he be down-stairs, and he's afther 
 wanting yees, right away." 
 
 In spite of my concern, I laughed at this peremptory message ; 
 but I went down, gravitating my face all the way to the parlor- 
 door, where I saw Mr. Harrington standing, hat in hand, and 
 cloak on. 
 
 11 Can you not sit ?" I said. 
 
 " Not a moment. I am to leave A , in half an hour, for 
 
 the western part of the State in all probability for the Far 
 West. It is very sudden, but I could not go without shaking 
 your hand once again" he was holding it, in a painful clasp, all 
 the while "and without some last word of kindness, that it 
 would be pleasant to remember. Will you pardon me for ask- 
 ing, it, in this informal way ? The minutes are precious to me." 
 
 I could only say something, in broken speech, of having none 
 but grateful recollections of his numerous kindnesses, and wish- 
 ing that he might have a pleasant journey, and be very happy, 
 wherever he went. 
 
 " Thank yon ! Pardon me." Then, raising my hand to his 
 lips, he said, " I will write you from , my first stopping- 
 place." And with the words he was gone. 
 
 I stood still, bewildered with what had happened, as well
 
 MY EARLY DAYS. 425 
 
 as with the suddenness of it. Some old walls, which had seemed 
 to shut mo in a world of my own, separating me from the varied 
 and suuny aspects of the womanly life, were suddenly thrown 
 down. From beyond them, there came in a flood of soft and 
 pleasant light, which had never before fallen upon me. In it, I 
 went slowly back to my room. It was Friday evening. I laid 
 my books carefully aside, in one upright pile, on my table, 
 scrupulously placing the larger ones below ; and, when that was 
 done, I sat down by them. They were the same books I had 
 had for months ; but how diminished their power and import- 
 ance ! The same volumes ! but a larger one had just been 
 opened to me, of more vital interest. 
 
 I would fain hope the wish is in thy heart to turn its pages 
 with me at no distant day.
 
 CHAPIFS SELECT SERMONS, 
 
 THATCHER & HUTCHINSON, 
 
 523 Broadway, JTetc York, 
 
 YV'll publish soon, under the above title, a selection of Twenty of 
 [>R CHAPIN'S SERMONS, delivered in the Broadway Church, on the 
 topics : 
 
 XL Human Limitations. 
 XII. Home. 
 
 XIII. The Essential Good. 
 
 XIV. Chances in Life. 
 
 XV. The Epicurean's Maxim. 
 XVI. The Law of Growth. 
 XVII. The Unsatisfied Eye. 
 XVIII. The Book of Human Life. 
 XIX. The Loneliness of Christ. 
 XX. Overcoming the World. 
 
 I. Evangelical Truth. 
 I. The Nature of God. 
 II. Providence. 
 V. Working and Waiting. 
 V. The Alabaster Box. 
 VL Ideala of Life. 
 711. Characteristics of Religion. 
 VIII. The SigniQcance of Trouble. 
 IX. The Two Mites. 
 X. Providential Adjustments. 
 
 Booksellers and Agents will please send in their orders in advance, 
 that we may regulate the edition by the demand. 
 Price One Dollar. 
 
 $gf A liberal discount to Agents or Clubs who procure subscribers 
 in advance.
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 ON THK 
 
 EVILS OF GAMING. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. E. H. CIIAPIN, D.D. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 THATCHER & UUTCHINSON, 
 
 523 (St. NICHOLAS HOTEL) BROADWAY. 
 1859. 
 
 W H. Timoir. Priator tad >:.r.otypr, U A U Cwln St.. W. T.
 
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 Los Angeles^, 
 
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