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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
75
And
we
had
also
many
living
reminders
of
strange
lands
across
the
sea.
Green
parrots
went
scolding
and
laughing
down
the
thimbleberry
hedges
that
bordered
the
cornfields,
as
much
at
home
out
of
doors
as
within.
Java
sparrows
and
canaries
and
other
tropical
songbirds
poured
their
music
out
of
sunny
windows
into
the
street,
delighting
the
ears
of
passing
school
children
long
before
the
robins
came.
Now
and
then
somebody's
pet
monkey
would
escape
along
the
stone
walls
and
shed-roofs,
and
try
to
hide
from
his
boy-persecutors
by
dodging
behind
a
chimney,
or
by
slipping
through
an
open
scuttle,
to
the
terror
and
delight
of
juveniles
whose
premises
he
invaded.
And
there
were
wanderers
from
foreign
countries
domesticated
in
many
families,
whose
swarthy
complexions
and
un-Caucasian
features
became
familiar
in
our
streets,--Mongolians,
Africans,
and
waifs
from
the
Pacific
islands,
who
always
were
known
to
us
by
distinguished
names,--Hector
and
Scipio,
and
Julius
Caesar
and
Christopher
Columbus.
Families
of
black
people
were
scattered
about
the
place,
relics
of
a
time
when
even
New
England
had
not
freed
her
slaves.
Some
of
them
had
belonged
in
my
great-grandfather's
family,
and
they
hung
about
the
old
homestead
at
"The
Farms"
long
after
they
were
at
liberty
to
go
anywhere
they
pleased.
There
was
a
"Rose"
and
a
"Phillis"
among
them,
who
came
often
to
our
house
to
bring
luscious
high
blackberries
from
the
Farms
woods,
or
to
do
the
household
washing.
They
seemed
pathetically
out
of
place,
although
they
lived
among
us
on
equal
terms,
respectable
and
respected.
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