A New England Girlhood [3]
than I ever have.
Young or old, we may all win inspiration to do our best, from the needs of a world to which the humblest life may be permitted to bring immeasurable blessings:--
"For no one doth know What he can bestow, What light, strength, and beauty may after him go: Thus onward we move, And, save God above, None guesseth how wondrous the journey will prove."
L.L. BEVERLY, MASSACHUSETTS, October, 1889.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. UP AND DOWN THE LANE II. SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE III. THE HYMN-BOOK IV. NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES V. OLD NEW ENGLAND VI. GLIMPSES OF POETRY VII. BEGINNING TO WORK VIII.BY THE RIVER IX. MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS X. MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES XI. READING AND STUDYING XII. FROM THE MERRIMACK TO THE MISSISSIPPI
A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD
I.
UP AND DOWN THE LANE.
IT is strange that the spot of earth where we were born should make such a difference to us. People can live and grow anywhere, but people as well as plants have their habitat,--the place where they belong, and where they find their happiest, because their most natural life. If I had opened my eyes upon this planet elsewhere than in this northeastern corner of Massachusetts, elsewhere than on this green, rocky strip of shore between Beverly Bridge and the Misery Islands, it seems to me as if I must have been somebody else, and not myself. These gray ledges hold me by the roots, as they do the bayberry bushes, the sweet- fern, and the rock-saxifrage.
When I look from my window over the tree-tops to the sea, I could almost fancy that from the deck of some one of those inward bound vessels the wistful eyes of the Lady Arbella might be turned towards this very hillside, and that mine were meeting hers in sympathy, across the graves of two hundred and fifty years. For Winthrop's fleet, led by the ship that bore her name, must have passed into harbor that way. Dear and gracious spirit! The memory of her brief sojourn here has left New England more truly consecrated ground. Sweetest of womanly pioneers! It is as if an angel in passing on to heaven just touched with her wings this rough coast of ours.
In those primitive years, before any town but Salem had been named, this whole region was known as Cape Ann Side; and about ten years after Winthrop's arrival, my first ancestor's name appears among those of other hardy settlers of the neighborhood. No record has been found of his coming, but emigration by that time had grown so rapid that ships' lists were no longer carefully preserved. And then he was but a simple yeoman, a tiller of the soil; one who must have loved the sea, however, for he moved nearer and nearer towards it from Agawam through Wenham woods, until the close of the seventeenth century found his descendants--my own great-great-grandfatber's family--planted in a romantic homestead-nook on a hillside, overlooking wide gray spaces of the bay at the part of Beverly known as "The Farms." The situation was beautiful, and home attachments proved tenacious, the family claim to the farm having only been resigned within the last thirty or forty years.
I am proud of my unlettered forefathers, who were also too humbly proud to care whether their names would be remembered or not; for they were God-fearing men, and had been persecuted for their faith long before they found their way either to Old or New England.
The name is rather an unusual one, and has been traced back from Wales and the Isle of Wight through France to Languedoc and Pied- mont; a little hamlet in the south of France still bearing it in what was probably the original spelling-La Combe. There is a family shield in existence, showing a hill surmounted by a tree, and a bird with spread wings above. It might symbolize flight in times of persecution, from the mountains to the forests, and thence to heaven, or to the free skies of this New World.
But it is certain that my own immediate ancestors were both indifferent and ignorant as to questions of pedigree, and accepted with sturdy dignity an inheritance of hard work and the privileges
Young or old, we may all win inspiration to do our best, from the needs of a world to which the humblest life may be permitted to bring immeasurable blessings:--
"For no one doth know What he can bestow, What light, strength, and beauty may after him go: Thus onward we move, And, save God above, None guesseth how wondrous the journey will prove."
L.L. BEVERLY, MASSACHUSETTS, October, 1889.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. UP AND DOWN THE LANE II. SCHOOLROOM AND MEETING-HOUSE III. THE HYMN-BOOK IV. NAUGHTY CHILDREN AND FAIRY TALES V. OLD NEW ENGLAND VI. GLIMPSES OF POETRY VII. BEGINNING TO WORK VIII.BY THE RIVER IX. MOUNTAIN-FRIENDS X. MILL-GIRLS' MAGAZINES XI. READING AND STUDYING XII. FROM THE MERRIMACK TO THE MISSISSIPPI
A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD
I.
UP AND DOWN THE LANE.
IT is strange that the spot of earth where we were born should make such a difference to us. People can live and grow anywhere, but people as well as plants have their habitat,--the place where they belong, and where they find their happiest, because their most natural life. If I had opened my eyes upon this planet elsewhere than in this northeastern corner of Massachusetts, elsewhere than on this green, rocky strip of shore between Beverly Bridge and the Misery Islands, it seems to me as if I must have been somebody else, and not myself. These gray ledges hold me by the roots, as they do the bayberry bushes, the sweet- fern, and the rock-saxifrage.
When I look from my window over the tree-tops to the sea, I could almost fancy that from the deck of some one of those inward bound vessels the wistful eyes of the Lady Arbella might be turned towards this very hillside, and that mine were meeting hers in sympathy, across the graves of two hundred and fifty years. For Winthrop's fleet, led by the ship that bore her name, must have passed into harbor that way. Dear and gracious spirit! The memory of her brief sojourn here has left New England more truly consecrated ground. Sweetest of womanly pioneers! It is as if an angel in passing on to heaven just touched with her wings this rough coast of ours.
In those primitive years, before any town but Salem had been named, this whole region was known as Cape Ann Side; and about ten years after Winthrop's arrival, my first ancestor's name appears among those of other hardy settlers of the neighborhood. No record has been found of his coming, but emigration by that time had grown so rapid that ships' lists were no longer carefully preserved. And then he was but a simple yeoman, a tiller of the soil; one who must have loved the sea, however, for he moved nearer and nearer towards it from Agawam through Wenham woods, until the close of the seventeenth century found his descendants--my own great-great-grandfatber's family--planted in a romantic homestead-nook on a hillside, overlooking wide gray spaces of the bay at the part of Beverly known as "The Farms." The situation was beautiful, and home attachments proved tenacious, the family claim to the farm having only been resigned within the last thirty or forty years.
I am proud of my unlettered forefathers, who were also too humbly proud to care whether their names would be remembered or not; for they were God-fearing men, and had been persecuted for their faith long before they found their way either to Old or New England.
The name is rather an unusual one, and has been traced back from Wales and the Isle of Wight through France to Languedoc and Pied- mont; a little hamlet in the south of France still bearing it in what was probably the original spelling-La Combe. There is a family shield in existence, showing a hill surmounted by a tree, and a bird with spread wings above. It might symbolize flight in times of persecution, from the mountains to the forests, and thence to heaven, or to the free skies of this New World.
But it is certain that my own immediate ancestors were both indifferent and ignorant as to questions of pedigree, and accepted with sturdy dignity an inheritance of hard work and the privileges