A New England Girlhood [71]
of heart was better to have than bookishness; girls who loved everybody, and were loved by everybody. Those are the girls that I remember best, and their memory is sweet as a breeze from the clover fields.
As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish forms that used to pass and repass me on the familiar road to the mill-gates, and also the few that I knew so well, those with whom I worked, thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped, my thoughts send a heartfelt greeting to them all, wherever in God's beautiful, busy universe they may now be scattered:--
"I am glad I have lived in the world with you!"
XI.
READING AND STUDYING.
My return to mill-work involved making acquaintance with a new kind of machinery. The spinning-room was the only one I had hitherto known anything about. Now my sister Emilie found a place for me in the dressing-room, beside herself. It was more airy, and fewer girls were in the room, for the dressing-frame itself was a large, clumsy affair, that occupied a great deal of space. Mine seemed to me as unmanageable as an overgrown spoilt child. It had to be watched in a dozen directions every minute, and even then it was always getting itself and me into trouble. I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great, groaning joints and whizzing fan, was aware of my incapacity to manage it, and had a fiendish spite against me. I contracted an unconquer- able dislike to it; indeed, I had never liked, and never could learn to like, any kind of machinery. And this machine finally conquered me. It was humiliating, but I had to acknowledge that there were some things I could not do, and I retired from the field, vanquished.
The two things I had enjoyed in this room were that my sister was with me, and that our windows looked toward the west. When the work was running smoothly, we looked out together and quoted to each other all the sunset-poetry we could remember. Our tastes did not quite agree. Her favorite description of the clouds was from Pollok:--
"They seemed like chariots of saints, By fiery coursers drawn; as brightly hued As if the glorious, bushy, golden locks Of thousand cherubim had been shorn off, And on the temples hung of morn and even."
I liked better a translation from the German, beginning
"Methinks it were no pain to die On such an eve, while such a sky O'ercanopies the west."
And she generally had to hear the whole poem, for I was very fond of it; though the especial verse that I contrasted with hers was,--
"There's peace and welcome in yon sea Of endless blue tranquillity; Those clouds are living things; I trace their veins of liquid gold, And see them silently unfold Their soft and fleecy wings."
Then she would tell me that my nature inclined to quietness and harmony, while hers asked for motion and splendor. I wondered whether it really were so. But that huge, creaking framework beside us would continually intrude upon our meditations and break up our discussions, and silence all poetry for us with its dull prose.
Emilie found more profitable work elsewhere, and I found some that was less so, but far more satisfactory, as it would give me the openings of leisure which I craved.
The paymaster asked, when I left, "Going where on can earn more money?"
"No," I answered, "I am going where I can have more time." "Ah, yes!" he said sententiously, "time is money." But that was not my thought about it. "Time is education," I said to myself; for that was what I meant it should be to me.
Perhaps I never gave the wage-earning element in work its due weight. It always seemed to me that the, Apostle's idea about worldly possessions was the only sensible one,--
"Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content."
If I could earn enough to furnish that, and have time to study besides,--of course we always gave away a little, however little we had,--it seemed to me a sufficiency. At this time I was receiving two dollars a week, besides my board. Those who were earning much more, and were carefully "laying it up," did not appear to be any happier than
As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish forms that used to pass and repass me on the familiar road to the mill-gates, and also the few that I knew so well, those with whom I worked, thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped, my thoughts send a heartfelt greeting to them all, wherever in God's beautiful, busy universe they may now be scattered:--
"I am glad I have lived in the world with you!"
XI.
READING AND STUDYING.
My return to mill-work involved making acquaintance with a new kind of machinery. The spinning-room was the only one I had hitherto known anything about. Now my sister Emilie found a place for me in the dressing-room, beside herself. It was more airy, and fewer girls were in the room, for the dressing-frame itself was a large, clumsy affair, that occupied a great deal of space. Mine seemed to me as unmanageable as an overgrown spoilt child. It had to be watched in a dozen directions every minute, and even then it was always getting itself and me into trouble. I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great, groaning joints and whizzing fan, was aware of my incapacity to manage it, and had a fiendish spite against me. I contracted an unconquer- able dislike to it; indeed, I had never liked, and never could learn to like, any kind of machinery. And this machine finally conquered me. It was humiliating, but I had to acknowledge that there were some things I could not do, and I retired from the field, vanquished.
The two things I had enjoyed in this room were that my sister was with me, and that our windows looked toward the west. When the work was running smoothly, we looked out together and quoted to each other all the sunset-poetry we could remember. Our tastes did not quite agree. Her favorite description of the clouds was from Pollok:--
"They seemed like chariots of saints, By fiery coursers drawn; as brightly hued As if the glorious, bushy, golden locks Of thousand cherubim had been shorn off, And on the temples hung of morn and even."
I liked better a translation from the German, beginning
"Methinks it were no pain to die On such an eve, while such a sky O'ercanopies the west."
And she generally had to hear the whole poem, for I was very fond of it; though the especial verse that I contrasted with hers was,--
"There's peace and welcome in yon sea Of endless blue tranquillity; Those clouds are living things; I trace their veins of liquid gold, And see them silently unfold Their soft and fleecy wings."
Then she would tell me that my nature inclined to quietness and harmony, while hers asked for motion and splendor. I wondered whether it really were so. But that huge, creaking framework beside us would continually intrude upon our meditations and break up our discussions, and silence all poetry for us with its dull prose.
Emilie found more profitable work elsewhere, and I found some that was less so, but far more satisfactory, as it would give me the openings of leisure which I craved.
The paymaster asked, when I left, "Going where on can earn more money?"
"No," I answered, "I am going where I can have more time." "Ah, yes!" he said sententiously, "time is money." But that was not my thought about it. "Time is education," I said to myself; for that was what I meant it should be to me.
Perhaps I never gave the wage-earning element in work its due weight. It always seemed to me that the, Apostle's idea about worldly possessions was the only sensible one,--
"Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content."
If I could earn enough to furnish that, and have time to study besides,--of course we always gave away a little, however little we had,--it seemed to me a sufficiency. At this time I was receiving two dollars a week, besides my board. Those who were earning much more, and were carefully "laying it up," did not appear to be any happier than