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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
204
"You
can't
stand
the
fire
In
that
great
day!"
It
was
the
refrain
of
a
Millerite
hymn.
The
Millerites
believed
that
these
signs
in
the
sky
were
omens
of
the
approaching
catastrophe.
And
it
was
said
that
some
of
them
did
go
so
far
as
to
put
on
white
"ascension
robes,"
and
assemble
somewhere,
to
wait
for
the
expected
hour.
When
daguerreotypes
were
first
made,
when
we
heard
that
the
sun
was
going
to
take
everybody's
portrait,
it
seemed
almost
too
great
a
marvel
to
be
believed.
While
it
was
yet
only
a
rumor
that
such
a
thing
had
been
done,
somewhere
across
the
sea,
I
saw
some
verses
about
it
which
impressed
me
much,
but
which
I
only
partly
remember.
These
were
the
opening
lines:--
"Oh,
what
if
thus
our
evil
deeds
Are
mirrored
on
the
sky,
And
every
line
of
our
wild
lives
Daguerreotyped
on
high!"
My
sister
and
I
considered
it
quite
an
event
when
we
went
to
have
our
daguerreotypes
taken
just
before
we
started
for
the
West.
The
photograph
was
still
an
undeveloped
mystery.
Things
that
looked
miraculous
then
are
commonplace
now.
It
almost
seems
as
if
the
children
of
to-day
could
not
have
so
good
a
time
as
we
did,
science
has
left
them
so
little
to
wonder
about.
Our
attitude--the
attitude
of
the
time--was
that
of
children
climbing
their
dooryard
fence,
to
watch
an
approaching
show,
and
to
conjecture
what
more
remarkable
spectacle
could
be
following
behind.
New
England
had
kept
to
the
quiet
old-fashioned
ways
of
living
for
the
first
fifty
years
of
the
Republic.
Now
all
was
expectancy.
Changes
were
coming.
Things
were
going
to
happen,
nobody
could
guess
what.
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