CHAPTER V

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_SUNDAY._

THE rest of the winter passed quietly, and pleasantly also, in spite of the whooping-cough, which ran through all our neighbourhood and almost broke up the school. Among the chief sufferers was poor Elnathan Crum, who died just as the spring flowers were beginning to come out in the woods and fields. Elnathan was very fond of flowers, and had them about him just as long as any could be found; and I well remember how Miss Tempy surprised and rather shocked some of the neighbours by filling the dead boy's cold hands with violets and trailing arbutus. I believe they thought the action savoured of superstition.

Emily Hyde, Jenny's sister, also died this spring. I specially recollect the fact from hearing Rose say that she thought Emmy must be glad to go where there were no lessons and no sewing.

"She was a wonderful smart girl," said Mrs. Edwards, who had dropped in on her way home to tell us the news. "Her father told Mr. Edwards that Emmy could read her Greek Testament at sixteen as well as he could, and was quite prepared to enter the Junior class at college. Only that the poor thing died so young, there is no knowing what she might have turned out."

"Yes; 'only,'" said Rose, who, as I have remarked before, would have her say on all occasions—"only that the poor thing died, the mare might have learned to live on nothing."

My own education did not suffer at all from the fact of my staying at home. I had begun arithmetic before I was taken sick, and liked it very much, and I made such progress in the science with the help of my mother and Jeanne that when I returned to school Miss Tempy placed me in a class of girls and boys two or three years older than myself. I also achieved one object of my literary ambition by being allowed to begin grammar. The manual I studied was Webster's little grammar arranged with questions and answers. The elder classes studied Murray with the exercises, than which no better book for teaching English has ever been contrived. But this was considered too hard for a beginner, though I do not really believe it was any more difficult than the one I had in hand. It is by no means the case that things are always made easier by attempts to simplify them.

Two important family events happened this spring—a new baby was born, and Ruth, now four years old, began to go to school. She was a sturdy, merry, sweet-tempered little thing, who made friends wherever she went, and she was soon quite at home in the little commonwealth, and needed no protection from me. She was a greater favourite than I had ever been, which I considered rather hard, seeing I was quite sure that she never took half as much pains to please Miss Tempy or any one else as I did; but she had an even, sunny temper and a disregard of small annoyances much more calculated to make her way smooth than were my excessive sensitiveness, my various and irregular moods and tenses. However, I can honestly say I was never for one moment jealous or envious of Ruth, but rejoiced in all her social and school triumphs as much as if they had been my own.

The new baby was a fine, bouncing boy, of a whom we were all as proud—so Rose said—as if we had made him ourselves. To Jeanne's special delight, he was named Henry Dupont, after her father. Jeanne was now toward sixteen, very sedate and mature for her age. She did not go to school this summer, but stayed at home to help mother with the work and the care of the baby; and a very efficient help she was. I missed her greatly in school, where we had always been companions, despite our differing ages, and I used regularly to tell her everything that happened—a practice which I am sure kept me out of a great many scrapes. She was a kind of outward conscience, for I was always thinking, "What will Jeanne say?"

I got on very nicely that summer. The school was small, and Miss Tempy was able to give me a great deal of individual attention, which she did, I suppose, all the more readily that I really loved learning for its own sake. I did rather grudge the time she would have me spend on fine needle-work and grew somewhat impatient under her extreme

## particularity. I specially remember almost breaking out into active

rebellion over a night-cap ruffle which she made me take out and do over three times before she was satisfied with it.

"The time will come, Olivia," said she, in her precise way—she never called one Olive or Olly, as other people did—"the time will come, Olivia, when you will thank me for making you do your work exactly right;" and she was correct. I have thanked her many a time when I have seen what work young, and even married, women make of sewing nowadays, especially of their button-holes. I made a fine linen shirt this summer—an achievement of which I was very proud; and my father, for whose birth-day I had prepared it, gave me a dollar—not, he was careful to explain to me, by way of payment, but as a reward or encouragement for taking so much pains to improve in my sewing.

I also learned to spin wool this summer, and this learning to spin was one of the many occasions on which I got myself laughed at by my brothers and Rose. Mother often employed a spinning-girl named Lucy Cherryman, who went out spinning by the week and was famous for accomplishing her day's work in less time than any one else in the neighbourhood. Lucy had a fine voice, and always sung at her wheel. The process of drawing out the thread looked very easy to me.

"Gently, gently!" said my mother. "You will have to be very careful at first."

But I was confident in my own powers, as usual. I drew out my thread, and at the same time struck up a verse of one of Lucy's favourite songs:

"Lady Margaret sat in her bow-window Combing out her golden yellow hair."

The consequences were what I might have expected. The thread snapped, the wheel ran back, and all was to begin over again. I was dreadfully mortified—not so much at the laugh which followed as at my own silliness—and could hardly be persuaded to try again. At last, however, the boys being out of the way, I took hold of the business once more in a more sober and careful spirit, and succeeded very well, insomuch that when I was fifteen I could despatch my day's work as well and in as short a time as Lucy Cherryman herself. I also learned the use of the little or linen-wheel, but I never spun much linen. The action of the small wheel affected my head and made me nervous, so that I could not get rid of the motion even in my sleep. So I left the little wheel to Jeanne, who was marvellously skilful in its use, and confined myself to the spinning of wool, and also of tow, which was easy, though dirty, work.

I often wonder, when I look back at it, how we used to find time for so much work, and I am almost tempted to think the days were longer eighty years ago than they are now. Besides all the household work performed by a farmer's family nowadays—the making of cheese and butter, the baking and other cooking—my mother brewed beer at least once in ten days, and usually every week. This beer was a very mild beverage, of course, and I don't know that any one could possibly have been intoxicated upon it, but it was very pleasant to the taste, being brisk and sparkling, at least when new. After a few days it began to deteriorate, and the appearance of certain white specks known as "messengers" gave warning that the time was come for another brewing.

But besides these cares, there was also the preparation of the family clothing, which was all made at home. The farmer sheared his own sheep, his wife and daughters spun the yarn, and not seldom themselves wove the cloth and flannel into which it was converted. It was the same with the flax, which was dressed in the barn and spun and woven in the house. We had some cotton clothes, but they were not very nice and were little used, and we had printed chintz, some of which came from India, for our best dresses.

I remember a story which I heard from Mrs. Sheldon concerning my Aunt Sylvia, my father's eldest sister. It seems there was to be a grand party in the town, to which Mistress Sylvia was of course invited, she being a young lady famous for both her beauty and her accomplishments. Miss Sylvia had set her heart upon a chintz dress to appear in on the grand occasion, but it was in the time of the war, and chintz dresses were not only inordinately dear, but extremely scarce. However, Aunt Sylvia was not to be foiled. She had a colour-box and was possessed of some skill in the art of painting flowers. So she took a pair of fine linen sheets; and having fastened them down on the floor, she proceeded to ornament the linen with bunches of flowers laid on with her best colours and skill. The gown thus produced was worn in triumph to the party, and was greatly admired. * But in general our clothes were nearly all home-made in every sense of the word.

* I had this tale from Mrs. Chloe Sheldon, a very intelligent old lady, who died at the "Home" in Rochester at the age of one hundred and four, retaining her faculties to the last.

With all these manifold employments, women found time for a great deal of fancy-work, especially in the way of working flounces and piecing bed-quilts, for much visiting, and also for a great deal of reading. It was a time of much interest and discussion in the theological world, and most of the neighbours who visited my mother were fully capable of taking an intelligent part in the arguments which were pretty sure to occur on the great points whereon the magnates of the said theological world were at issue. But their study was not confined to religious and metaphysical books. My mother was one of the best-read women I have ever met in classical English literature, especially in poetry, of which she was very fond; and though she knew no language but her own, at least she knew that thoroughly, and she saved many a dollar from her dress that she might spend it on books.

My father was also a reader, and took two newspapers; besides that, he rarely went to Pittsfield or Albany—whither some business concerning his father's property usually called him two or three times a year—without bringing home a new book. I shall never forget Jeanne's delight and mine when, after his return from one of these excursions, he produced Miss Burney's "Evelina" and "Cecilia." Mother at once made a law—more for my benefit than Jeanne's, who was always a law to herself in all matters of self-denial—that these charming volumes must not be touched till the work was all done and the lessons all learned—a rule which, instead of detracting from our enjoyment, only made it last the longer. We read and reread and discussed these volumes again and again; and I am sure no people I have ever met are more real to me at this moment than the characters in these stories.

For Sundays we had the Bible first of all. Grandfather had given each of his daughters at her marriage a fine family Bible with many prints and containing the Apocrypha. This book my mother wisely kept in reserve for our Sunday's entertainment; and as we were not allowed to have it on any other day, it was always new. Besides this, we had a few special Sunday books. One of these, and a great favourite of mine, was "Flavel on the Prophecies," which I used to read and dream over with great interest. "Paradise Lost" occupied a sort of debatable ground, especially after I found out that, though the book contained some of the same people who were in the Bible, yet the speeches and a good many of the stories were made up. It seemed to me, as indeed it does now, that Mr. Milton had no right to put his own words into the mouth of the Creator and Redeemer, and that the doing so was a great irreverence. Fox's "Book of Martyrs" was quite as much of a favourite and had not the same drawbacks, and I was never tired of meditating on the heroic instances of virtue and endurance recorded therein. Jeanne, however, never liked this book as well as I did. She seemed somehow to feel that the stories of Roman Catholic persecutions it contained were a sort of reflection on her own ancestors and on her kind friends the nuns of Baltimore, whom she always remembered with great affection.

We had no Sunday-school books and no Sunday-school, properly so-called, though we children learned the catechism in school, and were examined in the same by the minister in the meeting-house, usually as often as once in every month.

I don't think I ever found those old Sundays as tiresome as it is the fashion to represent them nowadays. For one thing, they were broken by the custom of keeping Saturday night, which prevailed universally at that time. Saturday morning was a time of considerable haste and bustle. There was usually baking to be done, and something specially nice to be prepared, that there need be no unnecessary cooking on Sunday. Often there was a little mystery attached to the Sunday feast, which was got ready in the buttery and committed to the big brick oven unseen by us children, that it might turn out a pleasant surprise. Our Sunday clothes were all to be looked over and got in readiness and the best shoes blacked. There were errands to be done at the store; and happy was I when these errands fell to my lot, for I was a favourite with old Mr. Clapp, who kept it, and I hardly ever went thither without receiving some little present—a piece of tinsel, an end of ribbon, a few raisins, or a lump of white sugar; or if the old gentleman had just returned from Albany or Boston, my eyes were usually made glad by the sight of a new little book.

But to return to our Sundays. As the day wore on, the bustle began to subside, and before sunset it was all over and the quiet of Sunday descended upon our household. There was often a prayer-meeting somewhere in the neighbourhood, which my father and brothers attended, but mother seldom went, and Jeanne and I had her all to ourselves for one of those precious talks which we loved so much, and to which I learned afterward to look back with an inexpressible sense of longing home-sickness and desolation. It could hardly have been so, I think, but it seems to me now as if on those evenings the sunsets were always bright and beautiful and the moon always shining. If any trouble or perplexity or wrong-doing had burdened our minds or consciences through the week, mother was sure to have it laid before her on Saturday night. Oh, they were lovely, peaceful hours!

We usually went to bed pretty early, as it was needful to be up in good season on Sunday morning in order to have the work done up in time to go to church. The breakfast was a little better than ordinary, and we children were each allowed a cup of tea; coffee had not come into general use at that time, though we sometimes had it on great occasions. A dainty specially allotted to Sunday morning was the Indian bread which had stood in the brick oven since the day before, and now came out hot and delicious, as no corn-bread can be which is not baked in the same way.

From breakfast to meeting-time was, I must admit, rather a weary interval. We children were all in our best clothes, and could not be allowed to run about for fear of spoiling them, so there was nothing for it but to sit still in our chairs, look out of the window, and fidget, while our elders did up such work as was absolutely needful. After I learned to read, I used to employ this time in committing to memory hymns and psalms; and I learned a great deal Of the hymn-book in this way.

Before the first bell had done ringing, we were all on our way to church, except when there was a little baby; then mother, Rose, and latterly Jeanne, took turns in staying at home with it. I was never considered steady enough for this office, to my great indignation—not that I desired to stay away from church, but I did not like to feel that I was not trusted.

Our pew in church was a square one, with seats which folded back as we stood up which we did in prayer-time. My own special seat was a corner one, with my back to the minister and my face to the window—a position which not seldom proved a snare to me when I grew so old that I was expected to remember and give some account of the sermon. A large tree grew before our particular window, and in this tree a pair of robins and also a pair of red squirrels made their home summer after summer, and I sometimes found it quite impossible not to be diverted from Mr. Henderson's sermons by the doings of these little people.

Mr. Henderson was considered a very fine preacher, but I do not think his discourses in general were calculated to be interesting or edifying to a little child. They were nearly always occupied with discussions of the abstruse points of doctrine which at that time absorbed so much attention in New England. I could not often follow his reasoning, or see any particular meaning or use in it if I did; and though I always remembered the text and the substance of the chapter that was read, I could make but a poor account of the sermon itself. I was always delighted when Mr. Henderson occupied himself with any subject of practical duty or gave, as he sometimes did, a lecture on the chapter he read, for at such times he was so clear and simple that any child could understand him, and his illustrations were full of point and beauty. But in general I must say it was a time of great relief when the sermon was ended and the last hymn sung. Both my brothers were in the choir, and it was always an interesting thing to see them standing in the gallery with their singing-books. I specially delighted in what were called fuguing tunes, where the different parts followed and caught and passed each other, always seeming in danger of utter confusion, but always coming out right in the end.

A good many boys and girls sat in the gallery, but mother always insisted that her children should remain with their parents, in which I think she was quite right, for such of the young folks as sat by themselves often got into sad trouble. Once I remember that two of our school-girls, Mehitabel Andrews and Abby Sheldon, behaved so badly that Mr. Henderson spoke to them from the pulpit. This was a terrible disgrace and distressed poor Abby, who was really a very good girl in general, though she had the misfortune of being very easily roused to laughter. She was forced to go and beg Mr. Henderson's pardon, as was no more than proper. The good man dealt very gently and kindly with her, pointing out the great impropriety of her conduct in disturbing public worship, etc., and concluding by the excellent advice that she should always sit with her grandmother or some elderly friend, and keep her eyes and attention fixed on the minister.

Mehitabel had nobody to control her except a very foolish and weak-minded step-mother, who, as Rose said, was always tight in the wrong place and loose in the wrong place. On this occasion Mrs. Andrews took Hetty's part against both Mr. Henderson and Miss Tempy Hutchinson, who was greatly mortified that one of her oldest girls should have involved herself in such disgrace. I am glad to say, however, that when Hetty's first anger cooled, and she had time to think the matter over, she saw her conduct in its true light, and of her own accord made proper apologies both to Mr. Henderson and Miss Tempy. The lesson was not lost on the other young folks who sat in the gallery, and for a long time the tithing-men, whose business it was to preserve order, had an easy time of it.

At noon we had an intermission of an hour between the services. This was a very pleasant, social time. Those who lived at a distance from the church—that is, at least half the congregation—stayed to the second service, and employed the time between in eating the luncheons they had brought with them and in quiet conversation. It was a place of meeting for friends and relations who, living in different parts of the town, did not see each other through the week, to detail family news and to compare notes on family affairs. Neighbourhood prayer-meetings were often arranged at this time; and if any one was sick, his or her case was talked over with friendly interest, and watchers arranged for where they were necessary.

We girls—that is, Jeanne and I—enjoyed the time of intermission greatly, chiefly because we were certain to see Cousin Lemuel's daughters Margaret and Emma, who were great friends of ours, and Myra Landon, another very distant cousin, who lived in quite another part of the town. We usually repaired to a distant corner of the grave-yard where some moss-grown stones afforded convenient seats, and clubbing the resources of our lunch-bags spread quite a little feast. We often took occasion at this time to make an exchange of books, and I particularly remember Myra's bringing with her "The Pilgrim's Progress," on which I fastened so eagerly that I had not a word for any one, thereby scandalizing Maggie and Emma, who declared it could not be a real Sunday book because there were pictures in it, and stories of giants and dragons and battles, just like our fairy-tales. Myra, on the contrary, maintained with doubtful logic that it was a Sunday book because her father read it on Sunday, and besides, it told about the "devil;" and to prove her position she turned to the picture of Apollyon, a very truculent-looking demon indeed. The matter was, as usual, referred to Jeanne, and she, as usual, advised me to wait and ask mother, to which I somewhat reluctantly consented. Highly delighted I was when mother told me that "The Pilgrim's Progress" was an excellent Sunday book, and father promised me that when I could say the whole catechism without one single mistake, I should have a copy of my own if he could find such a thing in Albany.

The afternoon session was usually somewhat shorter than the morning. Sometimes we had a catechising instead, at which time we children stood up before the minister and recited the catechism word for word; and happy was the boy or girl who by the readiness of his or her answers, and the accuracy with which the "proof-texts" were recited, won a word of commendation from Mr. Henderson. There were several negroes in our class, servants or the children of servants, and our gravity was sometimes severely tried by the oddity of their answers.

When church was out, we went home to a kind of tea-dinner which took place between four and five, at which the mysterious something which had been prepared the day before made its appearance, and when we children were again allowed a cup of well-sweetened tea if we succeeded in giving the texts correctly.

At sunset the restraints of Sunday, such as they were, ceased, but we children usually kept quiet till we could see one star, by way of being quite on the safe side. My mother and Rose took their knitting and father his weekly paper. Abner put on his best clothes and went to see his sweetheart. Tom and Ezra, and sometimes Jeanne and I, went to singing-school. The ringing of the nine o'clock bell sent everybody to bed; and that ended our Sunday.

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