University of Virginia Library

LETTER LV.

Once more I find myself seated at the humble old
fireside, beneath my mother's roof. Once more I see
about me old familiar faces and familiar objects, every
one of which carries me back by some association to my
childhood. There is the tall mantel-piece, with the same
bright brass candlesticks, which have been in use since
I remember anything, placed symmetrically one on each
end; the mahogany clock in the corner, with a full moon
rising above its round visage in blue clouds, and with face
and eyes exactly like my dear old grandmother, whose
smooth countenance was as round and good-natured as
any full moon you ever saw. There are the two silhouette
profiles in the jettest black of my venerated father
and of my mother, facing each other, over the little looking-glass
between the windows; my father with a queue,
and my mother with a preposterously short waist and
high cap—objects that I used to gaze upon with admiration
when a child, only wondering why they were so
black.

There is also in one corner my little red cricket, on
which I used to sit at my mother's knee, and learn the
old Puritan catechism, and the dreadful story of John
Rogers who was represented in a famous wood-cut, tied
to a stake, burning, and his wife and nine children, one

at the breast, lamentably standing around, with a wicked
soldier stirring up the fire. The same little Primer—
torn, dirty, with woful-looking dogs' ears—I now see on
my mother's triangular little book-shelf in the corner.

There sits my dear good mother, too, in her low rocking-chair,
where she has sat, when she sat down at all,
since my earliest recollection, with the same three-footed
little stand by her side, to hold her thread-box and needle-book,
and by night a candle. There she sits now in “her
corner,” as the one opposite used to be called “pa's corner,”
and admiring my New York hat, and wondering
“how fashions do change!” She is still handsome, with
the same pure complexion of rose-red and white; the
same mild, motherly, kind eye; the same quiet, serene,
almost holy, smile! But I cannot deceive my loving
gaze by denying that she has changed since I left her.
Her soft brown hair is streaked with silvery threads, and
crosswise her forehead I discern lines that Time has engraven
there with his relentless burin. She will be fifty
years of age next Christmas, and yet so gentle has been
her disposition, so quiet the flow of the river of her daily
life, that she looks (excepting the cross lines and silver
hair) not more than five-and-thirty. She looks happier
now than ever; and once in a while I feel that, as I
write, her eyes rest lovingly upon me, with a mother's
deep love—while gratitude for my return in safety and
health fills her soul heavenwardly.

My little brother and sister are seated on the floor,
enjoying the numerous presents which I brought them,
and which filled a trunk by themselves; for not only the
colonel sent them many, but dearest Isabel and Isidore
also. My letter to Charlie, which you printed so kindly,

was received by him with uproarious joy. It was the
village wonder for a week. All the good dames came in
to read, or hear my mother read, a real printed letter in
the “noospapers” to a little boy.

“Do tell!” Well, who'd ever?” “Now only think!”
“A'n't it curious?” were the exclamations of the good
souls.

But if my letter in print created such a sensation
among our kind, unsophisticated neighbors, what must
have been the sensation produced, think you, sir, at my
return home? It would be difficult to describe the scenes
of welcoming which I passed through. Everybody came
to see me, old and young, for a mile about; and for three
days I have been holding a levee; and have had to do
talking enough for a three volume-book of travels, in
order to gratify their homely curiosity about the South
and the “black slaves,” and cotton, and sugar, and
oranges growing on trees, and how there was no snow,
and the mocking-birds, and everything which was different
from what they had in New Hampshire.

“So you've seen fig-trees,” said old Deacon Starks,
looking at me with great respect. “Zaccheus climbed
up into one; and you have seen jist sich a tree? And
the Master went to one to get figs, and finding none,
curst it. Wall, I'd liked to a seed somethin' with my
own eyes as is in the Bible.”

“Do you think the leaves is big enuf for aprons, Miss?”
respectfully asked an old maid, a stranger and new-comer,
who had been introduced as Miss Tape.

“And you say you see pummegranates on trees,” observed
the deacon, perseveringly; “well, them are Bible

fruits, because as they made the seven candlesticks like
pummegranates.”

“And does every South woman sleep with a gun under
her pillow, to keep from bein' killed by the black slaves
in the night? I wouldn't trust myself among the kritters.
I never sees one here but I feel skeared, they are
so black.”

“It's a marcy you ever got back safe,” said old
grandam Ford, who was as deaf as a door, and never
waited for or expected replies.

Every dress I have has been borrowed, and my trunks
are empty, the contents going the rounds of the neighborhood.
The truth is, I am the lioness of the village
just now; and I expect that I shall have as many as a
dozen offers before New Year's, for it is reported I have
“made my fortin teachin' down South,” a pedagogical
miracle, Mr. —, which you can vouch for was never
yet done on the earth. All the beaux are getting measured
for new suits at little Billy Buttonhole's, the tailor,
who has promised to make seven complete suits by Saturday
night, when the little Shears knows very well,
that with his whole force of one woman and a white-headed
lad, Tommy, he can't finish one. One thing is
very fortunate, that it is not known here that I am an
authoress at all, otherwise I have no doubt that Mr.
Font, the village editor of the Democratic paper, “A
Voice from the Mountains, and White Hills Democratic
Investigator,” would be annoying me with the honor of
soliciting a contribution for his “Poet's Corner.”

This letter ends my literary career, Mr. —. It has
been brief and obscure, but nevertheless has been pleasant
to me. Monsieur de Cressy (who chanced to occupy

the same car with me as far as the depot near this village,
and then continued on to Montreal,) insists that
my letters be collected and published in a volume. Dear
me! I write a bound book? The idea is alarming. I
fear my letters, which may do well enough for a newspaper,
would make a sorry figure between covers. But
they are yours, Mr.—, and if any of your readers
(those dear friends whom, having not seen, I esteem and
love) express a desire to have them put into a volume,
I yield my own views to yours and theirs. If they
should merit the honor of appearing in a book-form, I
would like, if it were not too presumptuous, to call the
book:—

ISABEL;
OR,
THE GOVERNESS AND PUPIL:
A TALE OF THE WEST AND SOUTH.

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS,
BY KATE CONYNGHAM.

I suggest this title because the letters embrace a little
romancero, as you have perceived from the beginning to
the end, of which Isabel (not Kate) is the true heroine.

Good-bye, Mr. —, I thank you for your condescension
in admitting my poor writings into your columns,
and I feel grateful to those dear friends who have spoken
kindly of them.