University of Virginia Library

V.

“I must have been nine, or ten, or eleven years old, when
the pleasant-looking woman carried me away from the large
house. She was a farmer's wife; and now that was my residence,
the farm-house. They taught me to sew, and work
with wool, and spin the wool; I was nearly always busy now.
This being busy, too, this it must have been, which partly
brought to me the power of being sensible of myself as something
human. Now I began to feel strange differences. When
I saw a snake trailing through the grass, and darting out the
fire-fork from its mouth, I said to myself, That thing is not human,
but I am human. When the lightning flashed, and split
some beautiful tree, and left it to rot from all its greenness, I
said, That lightning is not human, but I am human. And so
with all other things. I can not speak coherently here; but
somehow I felt that all good, harmless men and women were
human things, placed at cross-purposes, in a world of snakes
and lightnings, in a world of horrible and inscrutable inhumanities.
I have had no training of any sort. All my thoughts
well up in me; I know not whether they pertain to the old
bewilderings or not; but as they are, they are, and I can not
alter them, for I had nothing to do with putting them in my
mind, and I never affect any thoughts, and I never adulterate
any thoughts; but when I speak, think forth from the tongue,
speech being sometimes before the thought; so, often, my own
tongue teaches me new things.

“Now as yet I never had questioned the woman, or her husband,
or the young girls, their children, why I had been
brought to the house, or how long I was to stay in the house.
There I was; just as I found myself in the world; there I was;
for what cause I had been brought into the world, would have
been no stranger question to me, than for what cause I had

been brought to the house. I knew nothing of myself, or any
thing pertaining to myself; I felt my pulse, my thought; but
other things I was ignorant of, except the general feeling of my
humanness among the inhumanities. But as I grew older, I
expanded in my mind. I began to learn things out of me; to
see still stranger, and minuter differences. I called the woman
mother, and so did the other girls; yet the woman often kissed
them, but seldom me. She always helped them first at table.
The farmer scarcely ever spoke to me. Now months, years
rolled on, and the young girls began to stare at me. Then the
bewilderingness of the old starings of the solitary old man and
old woman, by the cracked hearth-stone of the desolate old
house, in the desolate, round, open space; the bewilderingness
of those old starings now returned to me; and the green starings,
and the serpent hissings of the uncompanionable cat, recurred
to me, and the feeling of the infinite forlornness of my
life rolled over me. But the woman was very kind to me;
she taught the girls not to be cruel to me; she would call me
to her, and speak cheerfully to me, and I thanked—not God,
for I had been taught no God—I thanked the bright human
summer, and the joyful human sun in the sky; I thanked the
human summer and the sun, that they had given me the
woman; and I would sometimes steal away into the beautiful
grass, and worship the kind summer and the sun; and often
say over to myself the soft words, summer and the sun.

“Still, weeks and years ran on, and my hair began to vail
me with its fullness and its length; and now often I heard the
word beautiful, spoken of my hair, and beautiful, spoken of myself.
They would not say the word openly to me, but I would
by chance overhear them whispering it. The word joyed me
with the human feeling of it. They were wrong not to say it
openly to me; my joy would have been so much the more assured
for the openness of their saying beautiful, to me; and I
know it would have filled me with all conceivable kindness

toward every one. Now I had heard the word beautiful, whispered,
now and then, for some months, when a new being
came to the house; they called him gentleman. His face was
wonderful to me. Something strangely like it, and yet again
unlike it, I had seen before, but where, I could not tell. But
one day, looking into the smooth water behind the house, there
I saw the likeness—something strangely like, and yet unlike,
the likeness of his face. This filled me with puzzlings. The
new being, the gentleman, he was very gracious to me; he
seemed astonished, confounded at me; he looked at me, then
at a very little, round picture—so it seemed—which he took
from his pocket, and yet concealed from me. Then he kissed
me, and looked with tenderness and grief upon me; and I felt
a tear fall on me from him. Then he whispered a word into
my ear. `Father,' was the word he whispered; the same
word by which the young girls called the farmer. Then I
knew it was the word of kindness and of kisses. I kissed the
gentleman.

“When he left the house I wept for him to come again.
And he did come again. All called him my father now. He
came to see me once every month or two; till at last he came
not at all; and when I wept and asked for him, they said the
word Dead to me. Then the bewilderings of the comings
and the goings of the coffins at the large and populous house;
these bewilderings came over me. What was it to be dead?
What is it to be living? Wherein is the difference between
the words Death and Life? Had I been ever dead? Was I
living? Let me be still again. Do not speak to me.”

And the stepping on the floor above; again it did resume.

“Months ran on; and now I somehow learned that my
father had every now and then sent money to the woman to
keep me with her in the house; and that no more money had
come to her after he was dead; the last penny of the former
money was now gone. Now the farmer's wife looked troubledly

and painfully at me; and the farmer looked unpleasantly
and impatiently at me. I felt that something was miserably
wrong; I said to myself, I am one too many; I must go away
from the pleasant house. Then the bewilderings of all the loneliness
and forlornness of all my forlorn and lonely life; all these
bewilderings and the whelmings of the bewilderings rolled over
me; and I sat down without the house, but could not weep.

“But I was strong, and I was a grown girl now. I said to
the woman—Keep me hard at work; let me work all the time,
but let me stay with thee. But the other girls were sufficient
to do the work; me they wanted not. The farmer looked out
of his eyes at me, and the out-lookings of his eyes said plainly
to me—Thee we do not want; go from us; thou art one too
many; and thou art more than one too many. Then I said
to the woman—Hire me out to some one; let me work for
some one.—But I spread too wide my little story. I must
make an end.

“The woman listened to me, and through her means I went
to live at another house, and earned wages there. My work
was milking the cows, and making butter, and spinning wool,
and weaving carpets of thin strips of cloth. One day there
came to this house a pedler. In his wagon he had a guitar,
an old guitar, yet a very pretty one, but with broken strings.
He had got it slyly in part exchange from the servants of a
grand house some distance off. Spite of the broken strings,
the thing looked very graceful and beautiful to me; and I
knew there was melodiousness lurking in the thing, though I
had never seen a guitar before, nor heard of one; but there
was a strange humming in my heart that seemed to prophesy
of the hummings of the guitar. Intuitively, I knew that the
strings were not as they should be. I said to the man—I will
buy of thee the thing thou callest a guitar. But thou must
put new strings to it. So he went to search for them;
and brought the strings, and restringing the guitar, tuned it

for me. So with part of my earnings I bought the guitar
Straightway I took it to my little chamber in the gable, and
softly laid it on my bed. Then I murmured; sung and murmured
to it; very lowly, very softly; I could hardly hear myself.
And I changed the modulations of my singings and my
murmurings; and still sung, and murmured, lowly, softly,—
more and more; and presently I heard a sudden sound: sweet
and low beyond all telling was the sweet and sudden sound.
I clapt my hands; the guitar was speaking to me; the dear
guitar was singing to me; murmuring and singing to me, the
guitar. Then I sung and murmured to it with a still different
modulation; and once more it answered me from a different
string; and once more it murmured to me, and it answered to
me with a different string. The guitar was human; the guitar
taught me the secret of the guitar; the guitar learned me to
play on the guitar. No music-master have I ever had but the
guitar. I made a loving friend of it; a heart friend of it. It
sings to me as I to it. Love is not all on one side with my
guitar. All the wonders that are unimaginable and unspeakable;
all these wonders are translated in the mysterious melodiousness
of the guitar. It knows all my past history. Sometimes
it plays to me the mystic visions of the confused large
house I never name. Sometimes it brings to me the bird-twitterings
in the air; and sometimes it strikes up in me rapturous
pulsations of legendary delights eternally unexperienced and
unknown to me. Bring me the guitar.”