第36章 BEGINNING TO WORKA (4)

My mother never thought of disposing of her best furniture,whatever her need.It traveled with her in every change of her abiding-place,as long as she lived,so that to us children home seemed to accompany her wherever she went.And,remaining yet in the family,it often brings back to me pleasant reminders of my childhood.No other Bible seems quite so sacred to me as the old Family Bible,out of which my father used to read when we were all gathered around him for worship.To turn its leaves and look at its pictures was one of our few Sabbath-day indulgences;and Icannot touch it now except with feelings of profound reverence.

For the first time in our lives,my little sister and I became pupils in a grammar school for both girls and boys,taught by a man.I was put with her into the sixth class,but was sent the very next day into the first.I did not belong in either,but somewhere between.And I was very uncomfortable in my promotion,for though the reading and spelling and grammar and geography were perfectly easy,I had never studied any thing but mental arithmetic,and did not know how to "do a sum."We had to show,when called up to recite,a slateful of sums,"done"and "proved."No explanations were ever asked of us.

The girl who sat next to me saw my distress,and offered to do my sums for me.I accepted her proposal,feeling,however,that Iwas a miserable cheat.But I was afraid of the master,who was tall and gaunt,and used to stalk across the schoolroom,right over the desk-tops,to find out if there was any mischief going on.Once,having caught a boy annoying a seat-mate with a pin,he punished the offender by pursuing him around the schoolroom,sticking a pin into his shoulder whenever he could overtake him.

And he had a fearful leather strap,which was sometimes used even upon the shrinking palm of a little girl.If he should find out that I was a pretender and deceiver,as I knew that I was,Icould not guess what might happen to me.He never did,however.

I was left unmolested in the ignorance which I deserved.But Inever liked the girl who did my sums,and I fancied she had a decided contempt for me.

There was a friendly looking boy always sitting at the master's desk;they called him,the monitor."It was his place to assist scholars who were in trouble about their lessons,but I was too bashful to speak to him,or to ask assistance of anybody.I think that nobody learned much under that regime,and the whole school system was soon after entirely reorganized.

Our house was quickly filled with a large feminine family.As a child,the gulf between little girlhood and young womanhood had always looked to me very wide.I suppose we should get across it by some sudden jump,by and by.But among these new companions of all ages,from fifteen to thirty years,we slipped into womanhood without knowing when or how.

Most of my mother's boarders were from New Hampshire and Vermont,and there was a fresh,breezy sociability about them which made them seem almost like a different race of beings from any we children had hitherto known.

We helped a little about the housework,before and after school,making beds,trimming lamps,and washing dishes.The heaviest work was done by a strong Irish girl,my mother always attending to the cooking herself.She was,however,a better caterer than the circumstances required or permitted.She liked to make nice things for the table,and,having been accustomed to an abundant supply,could never learn to economize.At a dollar and a quarter a week for board,(the price allowed for mill-girls by the corporations)great care in expenditure was necessary.It was not in my mother's nature closely to calculate costs,and in this way there came to be a continually increasing leak in the family purse.The older members of the family did everything they could,but it was not enough.I heard it said one day,in a distressed tone,"The children will have to leave school and go into the mill."There were many pros and cons between my mother and sisters before this was positively decided.The mill-agent did not want to take us two little girls,but consented on condition we should be sure to attend school tile full number of months prescribed each year.I,the younger one,was then between eleven and twelve years old.

I listened to all that was said about it,very much fearing that I should not be permitted to do the coveted work.For the feeling had already frequently come to me,that I was the one too many in the overcrowded family nest.Once,before we left our old home,Ihad heard a neighbor condoling with my mother because there were so many of us,and her emphatic reply had been a great relief to my mind:--"There is isn't one more than I want.I could not spare a single one of my children."But her difficulties were increasing,and I thought it would be a pleasure to feel that I was not a trouble or burden or expense to anybody.So I went to my first day's work in the mill with a light heart.The novelty of it made it seem easy,and it really was not hard,just to change the bobbins on the spinning-frames every three quarters of an hour or so,with half a dozen othe little girls who were doing the same thing.When I came back at night,the family began to pity me for my long,tiresome day's work,but I laughed and said,--"Why,it is nothing but fun.It is just like play."And for a little while it was only a new amusement;I liked it better than going to school and "making believe"I was learning when I was not.And there was a great deal of play mixed with it.

We were not occupied more than half the time.The intervals were spent frolicking around around the spinning-frames,teasing and talking to the older girls,or entertaining ourselves with the games and stories in a corner,or exploring with the overseer's permission,the mysteries of the the carding-room,the dressing-room and the weaving-room.