The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss | Page 9

a great deal of love, and Elizabeth says, Do tell Papa to come
home," wrote her mother to him, when she was six years old. Her
recollections of her father were singularly vivid. She could describe
minutely his domestic habits, how he looked and talked as he sat by the
fireside or at the table, his delight in and skillful use of carpenters' tools,
his ingenious devices for amusing her and diverting his own weariness
as he lay sick in bed, _e.g._, tearing up sheets of white paper into tiny
bits, and then letting her pour them out of the window to "make believe
it snowed," or counting all the bristles in a clothes-brush, and then as
she came in from school, holding it up and bidding her guess their
number--his coolness and efficiency in the wild excitements of a
conflagration, the calm deliberation with which he walked past the
horror-stricken lookers on and cut the rope by which a suicide was
suspended; these and other incidents she would recall a third of a
century after his death, as if she had just heard of or just witnessed
them. To her child's imagination his memory seemed to be invested
with the triple halo of father, hero, and saint. A little picture of him was
always near her. She never mentioned his name without tender
affection and reverence. Nor is this at all strange. She was almost nine
years old when he died; and his influence, during these years,
penetrated to her inmost being. She once said that of her father's virtues
one only--punctuality--had descended to her. But here she was surely
wrong. Not only did she owe to him some of the most striking
peculiarities of her physical and mental constitution, but her piety itself,
if not inherited, was largely inspired and shaped by his. In the whole
tone and expression of her earlier religious life, at least, one sees him
clearly reflected. His devotional habits, in particular, left upon her an
indelible impression. Once, when four or five years old, rushing by
mistake into his room, she found him prostrate upon his

face--completely lost in prayer. A short time before her death, speaking
of this scene to a friend, she remarked that the remembrance of it had
influenced her ever since. What somebody said of Sara Coleridge might
indeed have been said with no less truth of Elizabeth Payson: "Her
father had looked down into her eyes and left in them the light of his
own."
The only records of her childhood from her own pen consist of the
following letters, written to her sister, while the latter was passing a
year in Boston. She was then nine years old.
PORTLAND, _May 18, 1828._
My dear sister:--I thank you for writing to such a little girl as I am,
when you have so little time. I was going to study a little catechism
which Miss Martin has got, but she said I could not learn it. I want to
learn it. I do not like to stay so long at school. We have to write
composition by dictation, as Miss Martin calls it. She reads to us out of
a book a sentence at a time. We write it and then we write it again on
our slates, because we do not always get the whole; then we write it on
a piece of paper. Miss Martin says I may say my Sunday-school [lesson]
there. Mr. Mitchell has had a great many new books. I have been sick.
Doctor Cummings has been here and says E. is better and he thinks he
will not have a fever.... G. goes to school to Miss Libby, and H. goes to
Master Jackson. H. sends his love. Good-bye.
Your affectionate sister, E. PAYSON,
_September 29, 1828._
My dear sister:--I think you were very kind to write to me, when you
have so little time. I began to go to Mrs. Petrie's school a week ago
yesterday. I stay at home Mondays in the morning to assist in taking
care of Charles or such little things as I can do. G. goes with me. When
mother put Charles and him to bed, as soon as she had done praying
with them, G. said, Mother, will this world be all burnt up when we are
dead? She said, Yes, my dear, it will. What, and all the dishes too? will
they melt like lead? and will the ground be burnt up too? O what a
nasty fire it will make. I saw the Northern lights last night. I sleep in a
very large pleasant room in the bed with mother.... I have a very
pleasant room for my baby-house over the porch which has two
windows and a fireplace in it, and a little cupboard