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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
64
"Did
you
know
that
whenever
that
cock
crows
every
rooster
in
town
crows
too?"
I
listened
out
at
the
window,
and
asked,--
"But
when
will
he
begin
to
crow?"
"Oh,
roosters
crow
in
the
night,
sometimes,
when
you
are
asleep."
Then
my
younger
brother
would
break
in
with
a
shout
of
delight
at
my
stupidity:--
"I'll
tell
you
when,
goosie!--
'The
next
day
after
never;
When
the
dead
ducks
fly
over
the
river.'"
But
this
must
have
been
when
I
was
very
small;
for
I
remember
thinking
that
"the
next
day
after
never"
would
come
some
time,
in
millions
of
years,
perhaps.
And
how
queer
it
would
be
to
see
dead
ducks
flying
through
the
air!
Witches
were
seldom
spoken
of
in
the
presence
of
us
children.
We
sometimes
overheard
a
snatch
of
a
witch-story,
told
in
whispers,
by
the
flickering
firelight,
just
as
we
were
being
sent
off
to
bed.
But,
to
the
older
people,
those
legends
were
too
much
like
realities,
and
they
preferred
not
to
repeat
them.
Indeed,
it
was
over
our
town
that
the
last
black
shadow
of
the
dreadful
witchcraft
delusion
had
rested.
Mistress
Hale's
house
was
just
across
the
burying-ground,
and
Gallows
Hill
was
only
two
miles
away,
beyond
the
bridge.
Yet
I
never
really
knew
what
the
"Salem
Witchcraft"
was
until
Goodrich's
"History
of
the
United
States"
was
put
into
my
hands
as
a
schoolbook,
and
I
read
about
it
there.
Elves
and
gnomes
and
air-sprites
and
genii
were
no
strangers
to
us,
for
my
sister
Emilie--she
who
heard
me
say
my
hymns,
and
taught
me
to
write--was
mistress
of
an
almost
limitless
fund
of
imaginative
lore.
She
was
a
very
Scheherezade
of
story-tellers,
so
her
younger
sisters
thought,
who
listened
to
her
while
twilight
grew
into
moonlight,
evening
after
evening,
with
fascinated
wakefulness.
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