University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.
WORK AND BEAUTY. — AN IMPRESSION OF THE REAL.

The child Margaret sits in the door of her house, on a
low stool, with a small wheel, winding spools, in our vernacular,
“quilling,” for her mother, who, in a room near
by, is mounted in a loom, weaving and smoking; the fumes
of her pipe mingling with the whizz of the shuttle, the jarring
of the lathe, and the clattering of treadles. From a
windle the thread is conducted to the quills, and buzz, buzz
goes Margaret's wheel, while a gray squirrel, squatted on
her shoulder, inspects the operation with profound
gravity.

“Look up the chimney child,” says the mother, “and
see what time it is.”

“I don't know how,” replies Margaret.

“I suppose we must get the Master to learn you your
a b c's in this matter,” rejoined the mother. “When the
sun gets in one inch, it is ten o'clock; when it reaches the
stone that bouges out there, it is dinner time. How many
quills have you done?”

“The basket is full, and the box besides. Chilion said
I might go and sail with him.”

“We have a great deal to do. Miss Gisborne's flannel
is promised the last of the week, and it must be drawn in
to-morrow. I want you to clean the skans; there is a
bunch of lucks down cellar, bring them up; get some plantain
and dandelion on the smooth for greens; you must

pick over those beans; put some kindlers under the pot;
then you may go.”

“I had a dream last night.”

“Hush! You are always dreaming. I am afraid you
will come to a bad end.”

“It was a pretty dream.”

“I can't help your dreams; here, pick up this.”

The woman had broken a thread in the chain, and while
Margaret was helping repair the accident, she looked into
her mother's face, and, as if following out her thoughts,
said, “A woman came near to me, she dropped tears upon
me, she stood in the clouds.”

“I can't stop to hear you now,” replied her mother.
“Run and do what I have told you.”

When Margaret had finished the several chores, she went
to the Pond. She was barefooted and barearmed. She
wore a brown linen gown or tunic, open in front, a crimson
skirt, a blue checked apron, and for head covering a green
rush hat. By a narrow foot-path, winding through shrubbery
and brambles, and defiling along the foot of a steep
hill that rose near the house, she came to the margin of the
water. Chilion, her brother, who was at work with a piece
of glass, smoothing a snow-white bass wood paddle, for a
little bark canoe he had made her, saw Margaret approach
with evident pleasure, yet received her in the quietest possible
manner, as she leaped and laughed towards him. He
asked her if she remembered the names of the flowers;
and while he was finishing the paddle, she went along the
shore to gather them. The Pond covered several hundreds
of acres, its greatest diameter measured about a mile
and a half; its outline was irregular, here divided by sharp
rocks, there retreating into shaded coves; and on its face
appeared three or four small islands, bearing trees and low

bushes. Its banks, if not really steep, had a bluff and precipitous
aspect from the tall forest that girdled it about.
The region was evidently primitive, and the child, as she
went along, trod on round smooth pebbles of white and rose
quartz, dark hornblende, greenstone, and an occasional
fragment of trap, the results of the diluvial ocean, if any
body can tell when or what that was. In piles, among the
stones, lay quivering and ever accumulating masses of
fleece-like and fox-colored foam; there were also the empty
shells af various kinks of mollusks. She climbed over the
white peeled trunks of hemlocks, that had fallen into
the water, or drifted to the shore; she trod through beds of
fine silver-gray sand, and in the shallow edge of the Pond
she walked on a hard even bottom of the same, which the
action of the waves had beaten into a smooth shining floor.
She discovered flowers which her brother told her were
horehound, skull-caps, and Indian tobacco; she picked
small green apples that disease had formed on the leaves of
the willows; and beautiful velvety crimson berries from
the black alder.

When all was ready, she got into her canoe, while her
brother led the way in a boat of his own. With due
instructions in the management of the paddle, she succeeded
tolerably well. Chilion had often taken her on the
water, and she was not much afraid. The pond was commonly
reported to have no bottom, and it possessed the
minds of the people with a sort of indefinable awe: but
this Margaret was too young to feel; she took manifest
delight in skimming across that dark, deep mystery.
She toppled somewhat, her canoe shook and tilted, but on
it went; there was a thin wake, a slight rustle of the water;
her brother kept near her, and she enjoyed the fearful pastime.
Reaching the opposite shore, Chilion drew up his

boat, and went to a rock, where he sat down to fish with a
long pole. Margaret turned into a recess where the
trees and rocks darkened the water, and the surface
lay calm and clear. The coolness of the spot was
inviting, birds were merry-making in the underwood,
and deep in the water she saw the blue sky and the
white clouds. “That looks like her,” she said, calling
to mind her dream. She urged her canoe up a shelving
rock, where she took off her hat and apron; and,
the process of disrobing being speedily done, waded into
the water. She said, “I will go down to the bottom, I
will tread on the clouds.” She sunk to her neck, she
plunged her head under; she could discover nothing but the
rocky or smooth sandy bed of the pond. Was she disappointed?
A sand-piper glided weet weeting along the
shore; she ran after it, but could not catch it; she sat
down and sozzled her feet in the foam; she saw a blue-jay
washing itself, ducking its crest, and hustling the water
with its wings, and she did the same. She got running
mosses, twin-flower vines, and mountain laurel blossoms,
which she wound about her neck and waist, and pushing off
in her canoe, looked into the water as a mirror. Her dark
clear hazle eyes, her fair white skin, the leaves and flowers,
made a pretty vision. She smiled and was smiled on in
turn; she held out her hand, which was reciprocated by
the fair spirit below; she called her own name, the rocks
and woods answered; she looked around, but saw nothing.
Had she fears or hopes? It may have been only
childish sport. “I will jump to that girl,” she said, “I
will tumble the clouds.” She sprang from the canoe, and
dropped quietly, softly, on the bottom; she had driven her
companion away, and as she came up, her garlands broke
and floated off in the ripples. Wiping herself on a coarse
towel her mother wove for her, see dressed, and went back
to her brother. A horn rang through the woods. “Dinner
is ready,” he said; “we must go.”

Returning, they came to the greensward in front of the
house, where was a peach-tree.

“I remember,” said her brother, “when you and that
were of the same size; now it shades you. It is just as old
as you are. How full of fruit it is.”

“How did it grow?” asked Margaret.

“I put a peach-stone in the ground one winter,” replied
her brother, “and it sprouted in the spring.”

“I was an acorn once,” rejoined the child, “so Obed says,
and why did'nt I grow up an oak-tree?”

A dog bounding towards them interrupted the conversation.
This animal had enormous proportions, and looked
like a cross of wolf and mastiff; his color was a brindled
black, his head resembled the ideas we have of Cerberus,
his legs were thick and strong, and he was called Bull. Following
the dog, approached the jolly-faced father of Margaret
from the barn, where he had been swingling flax; his
hat, face, and clothes were dangling and netted with tow
and whitish down, but you could see him laugh through the
veil; and the glow of his red face would make you laugh.
He caught Margaret and set her on the dog, who galloped
away with his load. They encountered her older brother
coming in from the woods, where he had been burning a
piece; his frock crusted with ashes, his face smirched with
coals. He spoke tartly to Margaret, and contrived to trip
the dog as he ran by, and throw his sister to the ground.

“Don't do so,” said she.

“Let Bull alone,” he replied, speaking in a blubbering,
washy manner, which we cannot transcribe. “You'll spile
him; would you make a goslin of him? Here's your sticks

right in the track;” saying which he scattered with his foot
a little paling she had constructed about a dandelion. She
must needs cry; the dog went to her, looked in her eyes,
lapped her tears, and she put her arms about his neck.
Her brother, who seemed to be a kind of major domo in
the family, whistled the dog away, and ordered his sister
into the house to help her mother.

Her father and older brother wore checked shirts, and a
sort of brown tow trousers known at the time—these things
happened some years ago—as skilts; they were short, reaching
just below the knee, and very large, being a full half
yard broad at the bottom; and, without braces or gallows,
were kept up by the hips, sailor fashion. Neither wore any
coat, vest, or neck-cloth. Her father had on what was
once a three-cornered hat, but the corners were now reduced
to loose ragged flaps; a leather apron completed his suit.
Her brother had a cap made of wood-chuck skin, steeple-shaped,
the hair of which was pretty well rubbed off. They
went to the cistern on the back side of the house, washed
and rinsed themselves for dinner. The father discovered
a gamesome expression of face, shining scirrous skin, and
a plump ruby head; his eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks
whealed and puffed, and through his red lips his laughter
exposed a suite of fair white teeth; his head was nearly
bald, and the crown showed smooth and glairy; and under
the thin flossy wreath of hair that invested his temples, you
would not fail to notice that one of his ears was gone.
Her brother had a more catonian look; thick locks of coarse
black hair kept well with his russet, sunburnt face, and his
lips, if by nothing else, were swollen with large quids of
tobacco.

The dinner-table, appropriate to the place in which it
was set, consisted of boards laid on a movable trestle without
a cloth. A large wooden dish or trencher contained,

flummery-like, in one mass, the entire substance of the
meal—pork, potatoes, greens, beans. There were no suits
of knives and forks, and the family helped themselves on
wooden plates, with cuttoes. A large silver tankard
curiously embossed, and bearing some armorial signets,
formed an exception to the general aspect of things, and
looked quite baronially down on its serf-like companions.
This filled with cider constituted their drink. They sat on
blocks of wood and rag-bottom chairs. Margaret occupied
a corner of the table near her younger brother Chilion, and
had a cherry plate with a wolf's bone knife and fork he
made for her. They all ate heartily and enjoyed their
meal. After dinner, Chilion went with his gun into the
woods, the father and elder brother returned to their
respective employments, her mother resumed her smoking
and weaving, and Margaret had a new stint at quilling.