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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
66
As
my
sister
went
on
with
the
story,
I
could
see
the
waves
grow
black,
and
could
hear
the
wind
mutter
and
growl,
while
the
fisherman
called
for
the
first,
second,
and
then
reluctantly,
for
the
third
time:--
"O
Man
of
the
Sea,
Come
listen
to
me!
For
Alice
my
wife,
The
plague
of
my
life,
Has
sent
me
to
beg
a
boon
of
thee!"
As
his
call
died
away
on
the
sullen
wind,
the
mysterious
"Man
of
the
Sea"
rose
in
his
wrath
out
of
the
billows,
and
said,--
"Go
back
to
your
old
mud
hut,
and
stay
there
with
your
wife
Alice,
and
never
come
to
trouble
me
again."
I
sympathized
with
the
"Man
of
the
Sea"
in
his
righteous
indignation
at
the
conduct
of
the
greedy,
grasping
woman;
and
the
moral
of
the
story
remained
with
me,
as
the
story
itself
did.
I
think
I
understood
dimly,
even
then,
that
mean
avarice
and
self-seeking
ambition
always
find
their
true
level
in
muddy
earth,
never
among
the
stars.
So
it
proved
that
my
dear
mother-sister
was
preparing
me
for
life
when
she
did
not
know
it,
when
she
thought
she
was
only
amusing
me.
This
sister,
though
only
just
entering
her
teens,
was
toughening
herself
by
all
sorts
of
unnecessary
hardships
for
whatever
might
await
her
womanhood.
She
used
frequently
to
sleep
in
the
garret
on
a
hard
wooden
sea-chest
instead
of
in
a
bed.
And
she
would
get
up
before
daylight
and
run
over
into
the
burying-ground,
barefooted
and
white-robed
(we
lived
for
two
or
three
years
in
another
house
than
our
own,
where
the
oldest
graveyard
in
town
was
only
separated
from
us
by
our
garden
fence),
"to
see
if
there
were
any
ghosts
there,"
she
told
us.
Returning
noiselessly,--herself
a
smiling
phantom,
with
long,
golden-brown
hair
rippling
over
her
shoulders,--she
would
drop
a
trophy
upon
her
little
sisters'
pillow,
in
the
shape
of
a
big,
yellow
apple
that
had
dropped
from
"the
Colonel's"
"pumpkin
sweeting"
tree
into
the
graveyard,
close
to
our
fence.
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