The Morgesons | Page 3

my mother; and
those my father bought for his own reading, and which I liked, though I
only caught a glimpse of their meaning by strenuous study. To this day
Sheridan's Comedies, Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and Captain Cook's
Voyages are so mixed up in my remembrance that I am still uncertain
whether it was Sterne who ate baked dog with Maria, or Sheridan who
wept over a dead ass in the Sandwich Islands.
After I had made a dash at and captured my book, I seated myself with
difficulty on the edge of the chest of drawers, and was soon lost in an
Esquimaux hut. Presently, in crossing my feet, my shoes, which were
large, dropped on the painted floor with a loud noise. I looked at my
aunt; her regards were still fixed upon me, but they did not interfere
with her occupation of knitting; neither did they interrupt her habit of
chewing cloves, flagroot, or grains of rice. If these articles were not at
hand, she chewed a small chip.
"Aunt Merce, poor Hepburn chewed his shoes, when he was in Davis's
Straits."
"Mary, look at that child's stockings."
Mother raised her eyes from the Boston Recorder, and the article she
had been absorbed in the proceedings of an Ecclesiastical Council,
which had discussed (she read aloud to Aunt Merce) the conduct of
Brother Thaddeus Turner, pastor of the Congregational Church of
Hyena. Brother Thaddeus had spoken lightly of the difference between
Sprinkling and Immersion, and had even called Hyena's Baptist
minister "Brother." He was contumacious at first, was Brother
Thaddeus, but Brother Boanerges from Andover finally floored him.
"Cassandra," said mother, presently, "come here."
I obeyed with reluctance, making a show of turning down a leaf.
"Child," she continued, and her eyes wandered over me dreamily, till

they dropped on my stockings; "why will you waste so much time on
unprofitable stories?"
"Mother, I hate good stories, all but the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain; I
like that, because it makes me hungry to read about the roasted potatoes
the shepherd had for breakfast and supper. Would it make me thankful
if you only gave me potatoes without salt?"
"Not unless your heart is right before God."
"'The Lord my Shepherd is,'" sang Aunt Merce.
I put my hands over my ears, and looked defiantly round the room. Its
walls are no longer standing, and the hands of its builders have
crumbled to dust. Some mental accident impressed this picture on the
purblind memory of childhood.
We were in mother's winter room. She was in a low, chintz-covered
chair; Aunt Merce sat by the window, in a straight-backed chair, that
rocked querulously, and likewise covered with chintz, of a red and
yellow pattern. Before the lower half of the windows were curtains of
red serge, which she rattled apart on their brass rods, whenever she
heard a footstep, or the creak of a wheel in the road below. The walls
were hung with white paper, through which ran thread-like stripes of
green. A square of green and chocolate-colored English carpet covered
the middle of the floor, and a row of straw chairs stood around it, on
the bare, lead-colored boards. A huge bed, with a chintz top shaped like
an elephant's back, was in one corner, and a six-legged mahogany table
in another. One side of the room where the fireplace was set was
paneled in wood; its fire had burned down in the shining Franklin stove,
and broken brands were standing upright. The charred backlog still
smoldered, its sap hissed and bubbled at each end.
Aunt Merce rummaged her pocket for flagroot; mother resumed her
paper.
"May I put on, for a little while, my new slippers?" I asked, longing to
escape the oppressive atmosphere of the room.

"Yes," answered mother, "but come in soon, it will be supper-time."
I bounded away, found my slippers, and was walking down stairs on
tiptoe, holding up my linsey-woolsey frock, when I saw the door of my
great-grandfather's room ajar. I pushed it open, went in, and saw a very
old man, his head bound with a red-silk handkerchief, bolstered in bed.
His wife, grandmother-in-law, sat by the fire reading a great Bible.
"Marm Tamor, will you please show me Ruth and Boaz?" I asked.
She complied by turning over the leaves till she came to the picture.
"Did Ruth love Boaz dreadfully much?"
"Oh, oh," groaned the old man, "what is the imp doing here? Drive her
away. Scat."
I skipped out by a side door, down an alley paved with blue pebbles,
swung the high gate open, and walked up and down the gravel walk
which bordered the roadside, admiring my slippers, and wishing that
some acquaintance with poor shoes could see me. I thought then I
would climb the