University of Virginia Library

An autumn day beside the Merrimack,
Deepening its color betwixt rocky steeps
Dyed rich with crimson oak and purple ash,
And stray flakes of the maple's airier red;
With clouds of asters on the turf, and flames
Of golden-rod just fading out above,
Against cool rocks and sky. Below, three girls
Upon a knoll reclining. Two were fair;
And all three faces frank and lovable.

Far up the bank a merry picnic-group,
In story-telling, sports, and songs, forgot
Absence of these three,—Esther, Minta, Ruth.
Together once more for a little while,
They talked as girls do, by themselves; and turned
Thoughts, wishes, troubles, inside out. Each laughed
At each,—sweet, loving laughter; now and then
Almost pathetic, for it held farewells.
Changes had come. Hope's pretty cob-houses
Fate had demolished; Minta so complained.
That Esther Hale should form a partnership
With Doctor Archibald Mann, and emigrate,
As now seemed likely,—that was hard to bear;
But Ruth to leave her also,—'t was too much!

Where was Ruth going? A rich lady friend
Of Miriam Willoughby's, soon to cross the sea
With growing daughters, for long residence,
A teacher sought; and Eleanor made Ruth known,
Her gifts and her acquirements; these were all
The lady asked, who gladly gave, in turn,
Thrice the mill-fees. The one enthusiasm
Of Ruth was study of the Old-World ways,
Languages, histories. She surprised herself
With eager, girlish freshness of delight
She never had expected. Lives like hers
Get cheated out of youth sometimes; but now
Minta seemed scarcely younger: and indeed,
Minta was grave to-day; though, for all that,
Her eyes laughed—they did always—while she drew
Pictures of Esther as the Doctor's wife
Visiting ague-patients at his side
Out in the unknown Somewhere of the West:—
“You, firmest old maid of us all! Just think!
You, who have painted single blessedness
So bright, you drew us into league with you
Against mankind and for our liberties;
O Esther, you, of all girls!
“And you, Ruth,
Whom I had counted on to teach me all
I want to know, and more,—you must steer off
Among your countesses and duchesses,
And by and by be one yourself, perhaps;
For stranger things have happened. There 's a girl
I used to know, who went to Mexico
When cotton-mills were built there, and is now
Wife of some ruling officer, and at home
In halls of the Montezumas. That sounds grand,
Although she may not be so comfortable
As in a well-chinked log-house.”
“O,” said Ruth,
“I take my democratic heart with me,
And mean to bring it back, whole. Rather, far,
I 'd weave cloth here my life long, than lose that!
Woman can climb no higher than womanhood,
Whatever be her title.”
“I confess,”
Said Esther, “disappointment at myself,
Dear Minta,—for I meant to honor it,
Blessed old-maidhood! as my chosen lot.
We do not choose; our way is all mapped out
By the unknown Wisdom! No one more surprised
Than I, at my own present happiness!
I never dreamed of aught so beautiful
As life looks now before me.
“The old maid,
Who makes the name disgrace, you cannot be,
Minta, with all your deep unselfishness,
Your glad health, bounding fancy, and light heart.
I think the sweetest women I have known
Have lived on single, happy to the end,
And happiness-creators.”
“I'm consoled!”
Laughed Minta, “and accept the inevitable
With a good grace, since worse was possible,—
You know I might have married Solon Dale!
Now hearken to my plans and theories!
I mean to learn; and then I mean to teach
Girls to be thorough women, wives or maids.
Health of soul, mind, and body, but without
Self-coddling, shall be first; and after that,
All wisdom, all accomplishments desired.
It is my firm faith that the alphabet
Was meant for woman's use as much as man's.
Devotion to it no more injures her
Than sacrifice at stove-and-kitchen shrines,
Or bowing down before the deity
Enthroned on ruffles, plumes, and furbelows.
Neat dress is good, and so is housewifery;
But there is something in the spelling-book
More valuable than either. Human beings
God made us, then he added womanhood;
And never does he add to mar his work
Or lower its greatness. An intelligence
Is woman, or a failure.”
“Even so!”
Said Ruth; “and presently I shall return
And in your school take my professorship,
Unless a wiser Solon finds you out,
And you slip off, as Esther has.”
“Dear girls,”
Joined Esther, “bright have been our working-days
Together; and yet happier times will be
Than all our happiest here. Yes, by and by,
When Ruth returns, you both must come to me,
And at my Western fireside we will read
Our life's continued story.
“Eleanor, too.
What think you? Is it possible that she
And Ralph should love each other? Just a hint
She dropped once, before ever Archibald Mann
Was anything to me more than to her.
And Isabel,—I want her so with me
In my new home! but Miriam Willoughby
Claims her, claims both of them.
“The fairy prince
She used to laugh about may find her yet,
Ere Miriam thinks of it; may come disguised
Like a young carpenter I 've lately seen
Working at Willoughby Place. I 've watched his look
When she has passed; a timid, earnest gaze,
I 've learned to understand. But Isabel
Will not too easily trust any man,
After the dangerous risk she ran with one.
Still, when I overheard her hum these words
The other day, they seemed significant:—

What trade shall with his compete?
What honor can earth confer
Like this,—to be found at the feet
Of the Son of the carpenter?
Around hammer and chisel, the hand
Of Christ leaves a halo grand.

“O Esther! Ruth!” cried Minta; “after all,
'T is work we love, and work we long to do;
But always better work, and better still:
Is not that right ambition? The good God,
Letting us labor, makes us like himself,—
Creator, glad in his accomplished work,
Ever beginning, perfect evermore!”

“If we could work like Him!” said Ruth. “We hold
Our single thread, and that one broken thread
Can make such mischief with the web! I 've seen
One thread drop down through the long films of warp
Winding themselves around the dresser's beam,
And catch, and tangle, and make such a snarl
As hours could not undo. And after all
Mending attempted, with the woof filled in,
'T was marked ‘Imperfect’; doomed to some cheap use.”

Then Minta: “And the spinner of that thread,—
I might have been the one,—careless of oil,
Or band, or spindle, was responsible;
Not you who dressed, or she who wove. So back
To their beginnings good and evil go,
One wretched blunder spoiling a whole life;
And yet—we all are blunderers.”
“Not quite all;
At least, not so to me. Though some pick flaws
In Pastor Alwyn, through him we have learned
That ‘minister’ is no unmeaning word.
His character and sermons harmonize,
So winning us to sympathy with truth,
We are led unaware, and all as one,
In search of it. And Miriam Willoughby,
The busiest weaver of us all,—our lives
Have gathered strength beneath her touch; and yet
I 've heard her styled ‘lofty aristocrat,’
Because of her fine manners,” Esther said.

“And that is what I call vulgarity,”
Cried Minta; “not to know the genuine ring,
Or glimmer of pure gold from counterfeit.
True ladies are true women, poor or rich;
Yet human nature needs to be refined,
Like gold and silver.”
“Girls, dear girls,” said Ruth,
“You guess not what good work you 've done for me,
Since I have known you! Sentimental, weak,
A baby crying for lost playthings, I
Seem to myself to have been; to say ‘am’
I can refuse with honesty, thank Heaven
And you! I 've seen you sacrifice so much
For others,—seen you full of cheerfulness
When I could only mope, I 've been ashamed
Before you, in my thoughts. Why, how absurd
To think, one moment, that a human soul
Was set here just to gratify itself,
However innocently! There 's no loss
For any one of us. God takes away
The things we do not need, and fills our hands
With useful implements, bidding us work out
Our own salvation, and our neighbor's, too;
And nothing else is living.”
And Ruth's voice
Died softly into reverie, while her heart
Kept time to this inaudible undertone:—

But now late afternoon had changed to gold
The rippling silver of the Merrimack,
And the gay company, in twos and threes,
Gathered around the girls for parting. This,
A holiday of love and of regret,
A score or two had taken, the intimates
Of one or all.
Turn forward, leaves of fate!
There 's one will go among the Cherokees,
A mission-teacher. At the Capitol
One will be seen, bride of a Senator.
A country and a city parsonage
Await those grave-eyed sisters. Alice, there,
Will sail with her proud Captain round the globe,
While little Ann paints pictures with her pen.
That broad-browed, delicate girl will carve, at Rome,
Faces in marble, classic as her own.
And this, a millionnaire's wife, will regret
Her dear old factory-nook, and the clear gold
The sunshine coined there, bringing her no care.
Some will wear out in schools their faithful lives;
And most be happy wives, in thrifty homes,
Mothers of men and women.
Like the sea
Must the work-populations ebb and flow,
So only fresh with healthful New-World life.
If high rewards no longer stimulate toil,
And mill-folk settle to a stagnant class,
As in old civilizations, then farewell
To the Republic's hope! What differ we
From other feudalisms? Like ocean-waves
Work-populations change. No rich, no poor,
No learned, and no ignorant class or caste
The true republic tolerates; interfused,
Like the sea's salt, the life of each through all.

In that third decade past, thoughts grave as these
Could scarcely visit the young toiler's mind,
Who knew her labor transient; who at will
Took up or dropped her shuttle, well assured
That life had various need of her two hands.
Mill-work meant then a fresh society
Of eager, active youth, long held apart
In rustic hamlets; that, like flint and steel,
Meeting, struck light from faculties unknown.

And all around, the rough idyllic strength
Of old New England lay;—the morning keen
Upon the sharp-cut hills; the steel-blue sea
Binding the brawny continent, that kept
The secret of its power untold. That hour
Can never be repeated. Whoso toils
To-day toils in a different atmosphere.
The chariot-wheels of Progress fill the air
With dust.—Yes, it was something to be born
While this gray Mother Century was young.

The group dispersed. Good wishes and good byes
Filled the crisp autumn air. The Merrimack
Whispered a parting from its hollow bed;
And, with that nightfall, Ruth and Esther, too,
Beheld the close of their mill-working days.

Not many evenings later, Esther sat
By Eleanor, in her room at Willoughby Place,
That looked across the blue breadth of the Charles
To the old Trimountain City, fading back
In twilight shadow, its gray State House dome
Touched with a dusky crimson from the west,
Where the sun sank, a red, distended orb;—
Yet stayed, unwilling to lose sight of earth.

Eleanor, reclined in a carved Indian chair,
Leaned back on pillows, white-robed, her soft eyes,
Under dark hair smooth-parted, shining out
From her Madonna forehead; a pink glow
Like the last tint of sunset in her cheek:
So beautiful, the faces at the door,
Isabel's, Miriam's, ere they disappeared,
Turned back and gazed again. She seemed a part
Of the suffusing harmony of light
In which the world lay tranced; and Esther looked,
And breathed no word, for fulness of her heart.

But Eleanor spoke at last:—
“Esther, I said
I had a secret, once. Have you not guessed,
By this time, what it is?”
The name Ralph
Arose through Esther's thoughts,—Ralph, who had sent
Messages, offerings of fruit and flowers
To the sweet invalid often,—Ralph, the one
Whom, of all others, for his tenderness,
His probity, his manhood, she would trust
With her beloved one, now she knew so well
The joy of being loved and loving back.
Ralph, one of the strong souls born to protect,
Might well revivify a drooping life,
Delicate as her friend's; or, failing that,
Beautify its decline. Half musingly
She sighed,—
“O Eleanor, a lovelier bride
Than you I cannot picture.”
Eleanor,
With a faint wonder fading from her eyes,
Said softly,—
“I? a bride? Yes, Esther, yes!
And in an unknown country I shall find
Such love! and such a home! You look toward yours
In the far, wonderful West; mine from the East
Dawns on me. There 's a City of whose streets
We 've read together; there my Bridegroom lives.
Land of true health, where no inhabitant
Says ever, ‘I am sick.’”
Now Esther, hushed
Before the dissolution of her dream
For Eleanor,—in the blindness of her love,
Painting a double marriage, two in white,
Eleanor, herself; and Pastor Alwyn's voice
Blessing two happy brides,—though Ralph indeed
Loved Eleanor but with far-off reverence,
As seraph might love saint,—wept silently
With bowed head, at the long-evaded truth.

But Eleanor's hand lay on her brow, no pain
Thrilling its flower-like touch:—
“For both of us
'T is but a journey; more life and more love
For both of us.”
Still, Esther could not raise
Her tearful eyes, till Eleanor besought:
“Esther, dear sister, look up! let us feel
Together this most lovely close of day,—
This evening, which is like a shutting flower
That opens with the sun!
“I do not die!
I fold my petals for immortal dawn!”

And in that twilight hush God drew their hearts
Indissolubly close. For what is love
But His most perfect weaving,—intertwine
Of the soul's deathless fibres, threading in
Our human lives, one weft with the Divine?

There leave them, looking forth into fair realms
Of untried being; into opening heavens
Radiant with invitation. East and West
Life beckons. Nothing satisfies the soul
But opportunity for nobler work,
And glimpses of illimitable fields.