Eighty Years and More | Page 4

such teachings, and I have always had my
doubts of the virtue that is based on the fear of punishment.
Perhaps I may be pardoned a word devoted to my appearance in those
days. I have been told that I was a plump little girl, with very fair skin,

rosy cheeks, good features, dark-brown hair, and laughing blue eyes. A
student in my father's office, the late Henry Bayard of Delaware (an
uncle of our recent Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Thomas F.
Bayard), told me one day, after conning my features carefully, that I
had one defect which he could remedy. "Your eyebrows should be
darker and heavier," said he, "and if you will let me shave them once or
twice, you will be much improved." I consented, and, slight as my
eyebrows were, they seemed to have had some expression, for the loss
of them had a most singular effect on my appearance. Everybody,
including even the operator, laughed at my odd-looking face, and I was
in the depths of humiliation during the period while my eyebrows were
growing out again. It is scarcely necessary for me to add that I never
allowed the young man to repeat the experiment, although strongly
urged to do so.
I cannot recall how or when I conquered the alphabet, words in three
letters, the multiplication table, the points of the compass, the chicken
pox, whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever. All these unhappy
incidents of childhood left but little impression on my mind. I have,
however, most pleasant memories of the good spinster, Maria Yost,
who patiently taught three generations of children the rudiments of the
English language, and introduced us to the pictures in "Murray's
Spelling-book," where Old Father Time, with his scythe, and the farmer
stoning the boys in his apple trees, gave rise in my mind to many
serious reflections. Miss Yost was plump and rosy, with fair hair, and
had a merry twinkle in her blue eyes, and she took us by very easy
stages through the old-fashioned school-books. The interesting Readers
children now have were unknown sixty years ago. We did not reach the
temple of knowledge by the flowery paths of ease in which our
descendants now walk.
I still have a perfect vision of myself and sisters, as we stood up in the
classes, with our toes at the cracks in the floor, all dressed alike in
bright red flannel, black alpaca aprons, and, around the neck, a starched
ruffle that, through a lack of skill on the part of either the laundress or
the nurse who sewed them in, proved a constant source of discomfort to
us. I have since seen full-grown men, under slighter provocation than

we endured, jerk off a collar, tear it in two, and throw it to the winds,
chased by the most soul-harrowing expletives. But we were sternly
rebuked for complaining, and if we ventured to introduce our little
fingers between the delicate skin and the irritating linen, our hands
were slapped and the ruffle readjusted a degree closer. Our Sunday
dresses were relieved with a black sprig and white aprons. We had red
cloaks, red hoods, red mittens, and red stockings. For one's self to be all
in red six months of the year was bad enough, but to have this costume
multiplied by three was indeed monotonous. I had such an aversion to
that color that I used to rebel regularly at the beginning of each season
when new dresses were purchased, until we finally passed into an
exquisite shade of blue. No words could do justice to my dislike of
those red dresses. My grandfather's detestation of the British redcoats
must have descended to me. My childhood's antipathy to wearing red
enabled me later to comprehend the feelings of a little niece, who hated
everything pea green, because she had once heard the saying, "neat but
not gaudy, as the devil said when he painted his tail pea green." So
when a friend brought her a cravat of that color she threw it on the floor
and burst into tears, saying, "I could not wear that, for it is the color of
the devil's tail." I sympathized with the child and had it changed for the
hue she liked. Although we cannot always understand the ground for
children's preferences, it is often well to heed them.
I am told that I was pensively looking out of the nursery window one
day, when Mary Dunn, the Scotch nurse, who was something of a
philosopher, and a stern Presbyterian, said: "Child, what are you
thinking about; are you planning some new form of mischief?" "No,
Mary," I replied, "I was wondering why it was that everything we like
to do is a sin, and that everything we