The Flag-Raising | Page 8

Elisha
Simpson little twins. Sore is my heart and bent my stubborn pride, With
Lijah and with Lisha am I tied, My soul recoyles like Cora Doctor's
Wife, Like her I feer I cannot bare this life.
I am going to try for the speling prize but fear I cannot get it. I would
not care but wrong speling looks dreadful in poetry. Last Sunday when
I found seraphim in the dictionary I was ashamed I had made it
serrafim but seraphim is not a word you can guess at like another long
one, outlandish, in this letter which spells itself. Miss Dearborn says
use the words you can spell and if you cant spell seraphim make angel
do but angels are not just the same as seraphims. Seraphims are
brighter whiter and have bigger wings and I think are older and longer
dead than angels which are just freshly dead and after a long time in
heaven around the great white throne grow to be seraphims. I sew on
brown gingham dresses every afternoon when Emma Jane and the
Simpsons are playing house or running on the Logs when their mothers
do not know it. Their mothers are afraid they will drown and aunt M. is
afraid I will wet my clothes so will not let me either. I can play from
half past four to supper and after supper a little bit and Saturday
afternoons. I am glad our cow has a calf and it is spotted. It is going to
be a good year for apples and hay so you and John will be glad and we
can pay a little more morgage. Miss Dearborn asked us what is the
object of edducation and I said the object of mine was to help pay off

the morgage. She told Aunt M. and I had to sew extra for punishment
because she says a morgage is disgrace like stealing or smallpox and it
will be all over town that we have one on our farm. Emma Jane is not
morgaged nor Richard Carter nor Dr. Winship but the Simpsons are.
Rise my soul, strain every nerve, Thy morgage to remove, Gain thy
mother's heartfelt thanks Thy family's grateful love.
Pronounce family quick or it won't sound right. Your loving little friend
REBECCA.
DEAR JOHN,--YOU remember when we tide the new dog in the barn
how he bit the rope and howled. I am just like him only the brick house
is the barn and I can not bite Aunt M. because I must be grateful and
edducation is going to be the making of me and help you pay off the
mortgage when we grow up. Your loving BECKY.
III. WISDOM'S WAYS THE day of Rebecca's arrival had been Friday,
and on the Monday following she began her education at the school
which was in Riverboro Centre, about a mile distant. Miss Sawyer
borrowed a neighbor's horse and wagon and drove her to the
schoolhouse, interviewing the teacher, Miss Dearborn, arranging for
books, and generally starting the child on the path that was to lead to
boundless knowledge. Rebecca walked to school after the first morning.
She loved this part of the day's programme. When the dew was not too
heavy and the weather was fair there was a short cut through the woods.
She turned off the main road, crept through Joshua Woodman's bars,
waved away Mrs. Carter's cows, trod the short grass of the pasture,
with its well-worn path running through gardens of buttercups and
whiteweed, and groves of boxberry leaves and sweet fern. She
descended a little hill, jumped from stone to stone across a woodland
brook, startling the drowsy frogs, who were always winking and
blinking in the morning sun. Then came the "woodsy bit," with her feet
pressing the slippery carpet of brown pine needles; the woodsy bit so
full of dewy morning surprises,-- fungous growths of brilliant orange
and crimson springing up around the stumps of dead trees, beautiful
things born in a single night; and now and then the miracle of a little
clump of waxen Indian pipes, seen just quickly enough to be saved

from her careless tread. Then she climbed a stile, went through a grassy
meadow, slid under another pair of bars, and came out into the road
again, having gained nearly half a mile. How delicious it all was!
Rebecca clasped her Quackenbos's Grammar and Greenleaf's
Arithmetic with a joyful sense of knowing her lessons. Her dinner pail
swung from her right hand, and she had a blissful consciousness of the
two soda biscuits spread with butter and syrup, the baked cup-custard,
the doughnut, and the square of hard gingerbread. Sometimes she said
whatever "piece" she was going to speak on the next Friday afternoon.
"A soldier of the