THE years between 1835and 1845,which nearly cover the time Ilived at Lowell,seem to me,as I look back at them,singularly interesting years.People were guessing and experimenting and wondering and prophesying about a great many things,--about almost everything.We were only beginning to get accustomed to steamboats and railroads.To travel by either was scarcely less an adventure to us younger ones than going up in a balloon.
Phrenology was much talked about;and numerous "professors"of it came around lecturing,and examining heads,and making charts of cranial "bumps."This was profitable business to them for a while,as almost everybody who invested in a "character"received a good one;while many very commonplace people were flattered into the belief that they were geniuses,or might be if they chose.
Mesmerism followed close upon phrenology;and this too had its lecturers,who entertained the stronger portion of their audiences by showing them how easily the weaker ones could be brought under an uncanny influence.
The most widespread delusion of the time was Millerism.A great many persons--and yet not so many that I knew even one of them--believed that the end of the world was coming in the year 1842;though the date was postponed from year to year,as the prophesy failed of fulfillment.The idea in itself was almost too serious to be jested about;and yet its advocates made it so literal a matter that it did look very ridiculous to unbelievers.
An irreverent little workmate of mine in the spinning-room made a string of jingling couplets about it,like this:--"Oh dear!oh dear!what shall we do In eighteen hundred and forty-two?
"Oh dear!oh dear!where shall we be In eighteen hundred and forty-three?
"Oh dear!oh dear!we shall be no more In eighteen hundred and forty-four,"Oh dear!oh dear!we sha'n't be alive In eighteen hundred and forty-five."I thought it audacious in her,since surely she and all of us were aware that the world would come to an end some time,in some way,for every one of us.I said to myself that I could not have "made up"those rhymes.Nevertheless we all laughed at them together.
A comet appeared at about the time of the Miller excitement,and also a very unusual illumination of sky and earth by the Aurora Borealis.This latter occurred in midwinter.The whole heavens were of a deep rose-color--almost crimson--reddest at the zenith,and paling as it radiated towards the horizon.The snow was fresh on the ground,and that,too,was of a brilliant red.Cold as it was,windows were thrown up all around us for people to look out at the wonderful sight.I was gazing with the rest,and listening to exclamations of wonder from surrounding unseen beholders,when somebody shouted from far down the opposite block of buildings,with startling effect,--"You can't stand the fire In that great day!"It was the refrain of a Millerite hymn.The Millerites believed that these signs in the sky were omens of the approaching catastrophe.And it was said that some of them did go so far as to put on white "ascension robes,"and assemble somewhere,to wait for the expected hour.
When daguerreotypes were first made,when we heard that the sun was going to take everybody's portrait,it seemed almost too great a marvel to be believed.While it was yet only a rumor that such a thing had been done,somewhere across the sea,I saw some verses about it which impressed me much,but which I only partly remember.These were the opening lines:--"Oh,what if thus our evil deeds Are mirrored on the sky,And every line of our wild lives Daguerreotyped on high!"My sister and I considered it quite an event when we went to have our daguerreotypes taken just before we started for the West.
The photograph was still an undeveloped mystery.
Things that looked miraculous then are commonplace now.It almost seems as if the children of to-day could not have so good a time as we did,science has left them so little to wonder about.Our attitude--the attitude of the time--was that of children climbing their dooryard fence,to watch an approaching show,and to conjecture what more remarkable spectacle could be following behind.New England had kept to the quiet old-fashioned ways of living for the first fifty years of the Republic.Now all was expectancy.Changes were coming.Things were going to happen,nobody could guess what.
Things have happened,and changes have come.The New England that has grown up with the last fifty years is not at all the New England that our fathers knew.We speak of having been reared under Puritanic influences,but the traditionary sternness of these was much modified,even in the childhood of the generation to which I belong.We did not recognize the grim features of the Puritan,as we used sometimes to read about him,in our parents or relatives.And yet we were children of the Puritans.
Everything that was new or strange came to us at Lowell.And most of the remarkable people of the day came also.How strange it was to see Mar Yohannan,a Nestorian bishop,walking through the factory yard in his Oriental robes with more than a child's wonder on his face at the stir and rush of everything!He came from Boston by railroad,and was present at the wedding at the clergyman's house where he visited.The rapidity of the simple Congregational service astonished him.
"What?Marry on railroad,too?"he asked.
Dickens visited Lowell while I was there,and gave a good report of what he saw in his "American Notes."We did not leave work even to gaze at distinguished strangers,so I missed seeing him.
