Some of the family objected,for the Old World traditions about factory life were anything but attractive;and they were current in New England until the experiment at Lowell had shown that independent and intelligent workers invariably give their own character to their occupation.My mother had visited Lowell,and she was willing and glad,knowing all about the place,to make it our home.
The change involved a great deal of work."Boarders"signified a large house,many beds,and an indefinite number of people.Such piles of sewing accumulated before us!A sewing-bee,volunteered by the neighbors,reduced the quantity a little,and our child-fingers had to take their part.But the seams of those sheets did look to me as if they were miles long!
My sister Lida and I had our "stint,"--so much to do every day.
It was warm weather,and that made it the more tedious,for we wanted to be running about the fields we were so soon to leave.
One day,in sheer desperation,we dragged a sheet up with us into an apple-tree in the yard,and sat and sewed there through the summer afternoon,beguiling the irksomeness of our task by telling stories and guessing riddles.
It was hardest for me to leave the garret and the garden.In the old houses the garret was the children's castle.The rough rafters,--it was always ail unfinished room,otherwise not a true garret,--the music of the rain on the roof,the worn sea-chests with their miscellaneous treasures,the blue-roofed cradle that had sheltered ten blue-eyed babies,the tape-looms and reels and spinning wheels,the herby smells,and the delightful dream corners,--these could not be taken with us to the new home.
Wonderful people had looked out upon us from under those garret-eaves.Sindbad the Sailor and Baron Munchausen had sometimes strayed in and told us their unbelievable stories;and we had there made acquaintance with the great Caliph Haroun Alraschid.
To go away from the little garden was almost as bad.Its lilacs and peonies were beautiful to me,and in a corner of it was one tiny square of earth that I called my own,where I was at liberty to pull up my pinks and lady's delights every day,to see whether they had taken root,and where I could give my lazy morning-glory seeds a poke,morning after morning,to help them get up and begin their climb.Oh,I should miss the garden very much indeed!
It did not take long to turn over the new leaf of our home experience.One sunny day three of us children,my youngest sister,my brother John,and I,took with my mother the first stage-coach journey of our lives,across Lynnfield plains and over Andover hills to the banks of the Merrimack.We were set down before an empty house in a yet unfinished brick block,where we watched for the big wagon that was to bring our household goods.
It came at last;and the novelty of seeing our old furniture settled in new rooms kept us from being homesick.One after another they appeared,--bedsteads,chairs,tables,and,to me most welcome of all,the old mahogany secretary with brass-handled drawers,that had always stood in the "front room"at home.With it came the barrel full of books that had filled its shelves,and they took their places as naturally as if they had always lived in this strange town.
There they all stood again side by side on their shelves,the dear,dull,good old volumes that all my life I had tried in vain to take a sincere Sabbath-day interest in,--Scott's Commentaries on the Bible,Hervey's "Meditations,"Young's "Night Thouhts,""Edwards on the Affections,"and the Writings of Baxter and Doddridge.Besides these,there were bound volumes of the "Repository Tracts,"which I had read and re-read;and the delightfully miscellaneous "Evangelicana,"containing an account of Gilbert Tennent's wonderful trance;also the "History of the Spanish Inquisition,"with some painfully realistic illus-trations;a German Dictionary,whose outlandish letters and words I liked to puzzle myself over;and a descriptive History of Hamburg,full of fine steel engravings--which last two or three volumes my father had brought with him from the countries to which be had sailed in his sea-faring days.A complete set of the "Missionary Herald","unbound,filled the upper shelves.
Other familiar articles journeyed with us:the brass-headed shovel and tongs,that it had been my especial task to keep bright;the two card-tables (which were as unacquainted as ourselves with ace,face,and trump);the two china mugs,with their eighteenth-century lady and gentleman figurines curiosities brought from over the sea,and reverently laid away by my mother with her choicest relics in the secretary-desk;my father's miniature,painted in Antwerp,a treasure only shown occasionally to us children as a holiday treat;and my mother's easy-chair,--I should have felt as if I had lost her,had that been left behind.The earliest unexpressed ambition of my infancy had been to grow up and wear a cap,and sit in an easy-chair knitting and look comfortable just as my mother did.
Filled up with these things,the little one-windowed sitting-room easily caught the home feeling,and gave it back to us.Inanimate Objects do gather into themselves something of the character of those who live among them,through association;and this alone makes heirlooms valuable.They are family treasures,because they are part of the family life,full of memories and inspirations.
Bought or sold,they are nothing but old furniture.Nobody can buy the old associations;and nobody who has really felt how everything that has been in a home makes part of it,can willing-ly bargain away the old things.
