Ernest Linwood | Page 8

had a sweet little garden, where Peggy delved at early
sunrise and evening twilight. Without ever seeming hurried or
overtasked, she accomplished every thing. We had the earliest
vegetables, and the latest. We had fruit, we had flowers, all the result of
Peggy's untiring, providing hand. The surplus vegetables and fruit she
carried to the village market, and though they brought but a trifle in a
country town, where every thing was so abundant, yet Peggy said, "we
must not despise the day of small gains." She took the lead in all
business matters in-doors and out-doors. She never asked my mother if
she had better do this and that; she went right ahead, doing what she
thought right and best, in every thing pertaining to the drudgery of life.
When I was a little child, I used to ask her many a question about the
mystery of my life. I asked her about my father, of my kindred, and the
place of my birth.
"Miss Gabriella," she would answer, "you mustn't ask questions. Your
mother does not wish it. She has forbidden me to say one word of all
you want to know. When you are old enough you shall learn every
thing. Be quiet--be patient. It is best that you should be. But of one
thing rest assured, if ever there was a saint in this world, your mother is
one."
I never doubted this. I should have doubted as soon the saintliness of
those who wear the golden girdles of Paradise. I am glad of this. I have
sometimes doubted the love and mercy of my Heavenly Father, but

never the purity and excellence of my mother. Ah, yes! once when
sorely tempted.
We retired very early in our secluded, quiet home. We had no evening
visitors to charm away the sober hours, and time marked by the sands
of the hour-glass always seems to glide more slowly. That
solemn-looking hour-glass! How I used to gaze on each dropping
particle, watching the upward segment gradually becoming more and
more transparent, and the lower as gradually darkening. It was one of
Peggy's inherited treasures, and she reverenced it next to her Bible. The
glass had been broken and mended with putty, which formed a dark,
diagonal line across the venerable crystal. This antique chronometer
occupied the central place on the mantel-piece, its gliding sands,
though voiceless, for ever whispering of ebbing time and everlasting
peace. "Passing away, passing away," seemed continually issuing from
each meeting cone. I have no doubt the contemplation of this ancient,
solemn instrument, which old Father Time is always represented as
grasping in one unclenching hand, while he brandishes in the other the
merciless scythe, had a lasting influence on my character.
That night, it was long before I fell asleep. I lay awake thinking of the
morning's dawn. The starlight abroad, that came in through the upper
part of the windows, glimmered on the dark frame and glassy surface of
the old timepiece, which stood out in bold relief from the whitewashed
wall behind it. Before I knew it, I was composing a poem on that old
hour-glass. It was a hoary pilgrim, travelling on a lone and sea-beat
shore, towards a dim and distant goal, and the print of his footsteps on
the wave-washed sands, guided others in the same lengthening journey.
The scene was before me. I saw the ancient traveller, his white locks
streaming in the ocean blast; I heard the deep murmur of the restless
tide; I saw the footsteps; and they looked like sinking graves; when all
at once, in the midst of my solemn inspiration, a stern mocking face
came between me and the starlight night, the jeering voice of my
master was in my ears, a dishonored fragment was fluttering in my
hand. The vision fled; I turned my head on my pillow and wept.
You may say such thoughts and visions were strangely precocious in a

child of twelve years old. I suppose they were; but I never remember
being a child. My sad, gentle mother, the sober, earnest, practical
Peggy, were the companions of my infancy, instead of children of my
own age. The sunlight of my young life was not reflected from the
golden locks of childhood, its radiant smile and unclouded eye. I was
defrauded of the sweetest boon of that early season, a confidence that
this world is the happiest, fairest, best of worlds, the residence of joy,
beauty, and goodness.
A thoughtful child! I do not like to hear it. What has a little child to do
with thought? That sad, though glorious reversion of our riper and
darker years?
Ah me! I never recollect the time that my spirit was not travelling to
grasp some grown idea, to fathom the mystery