Anna's manners and language were those of a lady,though she had come from the wilds of Maine,somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Desert,the very name of which seemed in those days to carry one into a wilderness of mountains and waves.We chatted together at our work on all manner of subjects,and once she astonished me by saying confidentially,in a low tone,"Do you know,I am thirty years old!"She spoke as if she thought the fact implied something serious.My surprise was that she should have taken me into her intimate friendship when I was only seventeen.I should hardly have supposed her older than myself,if she had not volunteered the information.
When I lifted my eyes from her tall,thin figure to her fair face and somewhat sad blue eyes,I saw that she looked a little worn;but I knew that it was from care for others,strangers as well as her own relatives;and it seemed to me as if those thirty loving years were her rose-garland.I became more attached to her than ever.
What a foolish dread it is,--showing unripeness rather than youth,--the dread of growing old!For how can a life be beautified more than by its beautiful years?A living,loving,growing spirit can never be old.Emerson says:
"Spring still makes spring in the mind,When sixty years are told;"and some of us are thankful to have lived long enough to bear witness with him to that truth.
The few others who measured cloth with us were nice,bright girls,and some of them remarkably pretty.Our work and the room itself were so clean that in summer we could wear fresh muslin dresses,sometimes white ones,without fear of soiling them.
This slight difference of apparel and our fewer work-hours seemed to give us a slight advantage over the toilers in the mills opposite,and we occasionally heard ourselves spoken of as "the cloth-room aristocracy."But that was only in fun.Most of us had served an apprenticeship in the mills,and many of our best friends were still there,preferring their work because it brought them more money than we could earn.
For myself,no amount of money would have been a temptation,compared with my precious daytime freedom.Whole hours of sunshine for reading,for walking,for studying,for writing,for anything that I wanted to do!The days were so lovely and so long!and yet how fast they slipped away!I had not given up my dream of a better education,and as I could not go to school,Ibegan to study by myself.
I had received a pretty thorough drill in the common English branches at the grammar school,and at my employment I only needed a little simple arithmetic.A few of my friends were studying algebra in an evening class,but I had no fancy for mathematics.My first wish was to learn about English Literature,to go back to its very beginnings.It was not then studied even in the higher schools,and I knew no one who could give me any assistance in it,as a teacher."Percy's Reliques"and "Chambers'
Cyclopoedia of English Literature "were in the city library,and I used them,making extracts from Chaucer and Spenser,to fix their peculiarities in my memory,though there was only a taste of them to be had from the Cyclopaedia.
Shakespeare I had read from childhood,in a fragmentary way.
"The Tempest,"and "Midsummer Night's Dream,"and "King Lear,"Ihad swallowed among my fairy tales.Now I discovered that the historical plays,notably,"Julius Caesar"and "Coriolanus,"had no less attraction for me,though of a different kind.But it was easy for me to forget that I was trying to be a literary student,and slip off from Belmont to Venice with Portia to witness the discomfiture of Shylock;although I did pity the miserable Jew,and thought he might at least have been allowed the comfort of his paltry ducats.I do not think that any of my studying at this time was very severe;it was pleasure rather than toil,for Iundertook only the tasks I liked.But what I learned remained with me,nevertheless.
With Milton I was more familiar than with any other poet,and from thirteen years of age to eighteen he was my preference.My friend Angeline and I (another of my cloth-room associates)made the "Paradise Lost"a language-study in an evening class,under one of the grammar school masters,and I never open to the majestic lines,--"High on a throne of royal state,which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,"--Without seeing Angeline's kindly,homely face out-lined through that magnificence,instead of the lineaments of the evil angel "by merit raised To that bad eminence."She,too,was much older than I,and a most excellent,energetic,and studious young woman.I wonder if she remembers how hard we tried to get "Beelzebub--than whom,Satan except,none higher sat,"into the limits of our grammatical rules,--not altogether with success,I believe.
I copied passages from Jeremy Taylor and the old theologians into my note-books,and have found them useful even recently,in preparing compilations.Dryden and the eighteenth century poets generally did not interest me,though I tried to read them from a sense of duty.Pope was an exception,however.Aphorisms from the "Essay on Man"were in as common use among us as those from the Book of Proverbs.
Some of my choicest extracts were in the first volume of collected poetry I ever owned,a little red morocco book called "The Young Man's Book of Poetry."It was given me by one of my sisters when I was about a dozen years old,who rather apologized for the young man on the title-page,saying that the poetry was just as good as if he were not there.
And,indeed,no young man could have valued it more than I did.
