A New England Girlhood [30]
no such thing as getting rid of him. I began to dislike all boys on his account. There was one who tormented my sister and me--we only knew him by name--by jumping out at us from behind doorways or fences on our way to school, making horrid faces at us. "Inbred-Sin," I was certain, looked just like him; and the two, strangely blended in one hideous presence, were the worst nightmare of my dreams. There was too much reality about that "Inbreed-Sin." I felt that I was acquainted with him. He was the hateful hero of the little allegory, as Satan is of "Paradise Lost."
I liked lessons that came to me through fables and fairy tales, although, in reading Aesop, I invariably skipped the "moral" pinned on at the end, and made one for myself, or else did without.
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's story of "The Immortal Fountain," in the "Girl's Own Book,"--which it was the joy of my heart to read, although it preached a searching sermon to me,--I applied in the same way that I did the "Infant's Progress." I thought of Lida as the gentle, unselfish Rose, and myself as the ugly Marion. She was patient and obliging, and I felt that I was the reverse. She was considered pretty, and I knew that I was the reverse of that, too. I wondered if Lida really had bathed in the Immortal Fountain, and oh, how I wished I could find the way there! But I feared that trying to do so would be of no use; the fairies would cross their wands to keep me back, and their wings would darken at my approach.
The book that I loved first and best, and lived upon in my childhood, was "Pilgrim's Progress." It was as a story that I cared for it, although I knew that it meant something more,-- something that was already going on in my own heart and life. Oh, how I used to wish that I too could start off on a pilgrim- age! It would be so much easier than the continual, discouraging struggle to be good!
The lot I most envied was that of the contented Shepherd Boy in the Valley of Humiliation, singing his cheerful songs, and wearing "the herb called Heart's Ease in his bosom"; but all the glorious ups and downs of the "Progress" I would gladly have shared with Christiana and her children, never desiring to turn aside into any "By-Path Meadow" while Mr. Great-Heart led the way, and the Shining Ones came down to meet us along the road. It was one of the necessities of my nature, as a child, to have some one being, real or ideal, man or woman, before whom I inwardly bowed down and worshiped. Mr. Great-Heart was the perfect hero of my imagination. Nobody, in books or out of them, compared with him. I wondered if there were really any Mr. Great- Hearts to be met with among living men.
I remember reading this beloved book once in a snow-storm, and looking up from it out among the white, wandering flakes, with a feeling that they had come down from heaven as its interpreters; that they were trying to tell me, in their airy up-and-down- flight, the story of innumerable souls. I tried to fix my eye on one particular flake, and to follow its course until it touched the earth. But I found that I could not. A little breeze was stirring an the flake seemed to go and return, to descend and then ascend again, as if hastening homeward to the sky, losing itself at last in the airy, infinite throng, and leaving me filled with thoughts of that "great multitude, which no man could number, clothed with white robes," crowding so gloriously into the closing pages of the Bible.
Oh, if I could only be sure that I should some time be one of that invisible company! But the heavens were already beginning to look a great way off. I hummed over one of my best loved hymns,--
"Who are these in bright array?"
and that seemed to bring them nearer again.
The history of the early martyrs, the persecutions of the Waldenses and of the Scotch Covenanters, I read and re-read with longing emulation! Why could not I be a martyr, too? It would be so beautiful to die for the truth as they did, as Jesus did! I did not understand then that He lived and died to show us what life really means, and
I liked lessons that came to me through fables and fairy tales, although, in reading Aesop, I invariably skipped the "moral" pinned on at the end, and made one for myself, or else did without.
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's story of "The Immortal Fountain," in the "Girl's Own Book,"--which it was the joy of my heart to read, although it preached a searching sermon to me,--I applied in the same way that I did the "Infant's Progress." I thought of Lida as the gentle, unselfish Rose, and myself as the ugly Marion. She was patient and obliging, and I felt that I was the reverse. She was considered pretty, and I knew that I was the reverse of that, too. I wondered if Lida really had bathed in the Immortal Fountain, and oh, how I wished I could find the way there! But I feared that trying to do so would be of no use; the fairies would cross their wands to keep me back, and their wings would darken at my approach.
The book that I loved first and best, and lived upon in my childhood, was "Pilgrim's Progress." It was as a story that I cared for it, although I knew that it meant something more,-- something that was already going on in my own heart and life. Oh, how I used to wish that I too could start off on a pilgrim- age! It would be so much easier than the continual, discouraging struggle to be good!
The lot I most envied was that of the contented Shepherd Boy in the Valley of Humiliation, singing his cheerful songs, and wearing "the herb called Heart's Ease in his bosom"; but all the glorious ups and downs of the "Progress" I would gladly have shared with Christiana and her children, never desiring to turn aside into any "By-Path Meadow" while Mr. Great-Heart led the way, and the Shining Ones came down to meet us along the road. It was one of the necessities of my nature, as a child, to have some one being, real or ideal, man or woman, before whom I inwardly bowed down and worshiped. Mr. Great-Heart was the perfect hero of my imagination. Nobody, in books or out of them, compared with him. I wondered if there were really any Mr. Great- Hearts to be met with among living men.
I remember reading this beloved book once in a snow-storm, and looking up from it out among the white, wandering flakes, with a feeling that they had come down from heaven as its interpreters; that they were trying to tell me, in their airy up-and-down- flight, the story of innumerable souls. I tried to fix my eye on one particular flake, and to follow its course until it touched the earth. But I found that I could not. A little breeze was stirring an the flake seemed to go and return, to descend and then ascend again, as if hastening homeward to the sky, losing itself at last in the airy, infinite throng, and leaving me filled with thoughts of that "great multitude, which no man could number, clothed with white robes," crowding so gloriously into the closing pages of the Bible.
Oh, if I could only be sure that I should some time be one of that invisible company! But the heavens were already beginning to look a great way off. I hummed over one of my best loved hymns,--
"Who are these in bright array?"
and that seemed to bring them nearer again.
The history of the early martyrs, the persecutions of the Waldenses and of the Scotch Covenanters, I read and re-read with longing emulation! Why could not I be a martyr, too? It would be so beautiful to die for the truth as they did, as Jesus did! I did not understand then that He lived and died to show us what life really means, and