A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

There they all stood again side by side on their shelves, the dear, dull, good old volumes that all my life I had tried in vain to take a sincere Sabbath-day interest in,--Scott's Commentaries on the Bible, Hervey's "Meditations," Young's "Night Thoughts," "Edwards on the Affections," and the Writings of Baxter and Doddridge. Besides these, there were bound volumes of the "Repository Tracts," which I had read and re-read; and the delightfully miscellaneous "Evangelicana," containing an account of Gilbert Tennent's wonderful trance; also the "History of the Spanish Inquisition," with some painfully realistic illustrations; a German Dictionary, whose outlandish letters and words I liked to puzzle myself over; and a descriptive History of Hamburg, full of fine steel engravings--which last two or three volumes my father had brought with him from the countries to which he had sailed in his sea-faring days. A complete set of the "Missionary Herald", unbound, filled the upper shelves. Other familiar articles journeyed with us: the brass-headed shovel and tongs, that it had been my especial task to keep bright; the two card-tables (which were as unacquainted as ourselves with ace, face, and trump); the two china mugs, with their eighteenth-century lady and gentleman figurines curiosities brought from over the sea, and reverently laid away by my mother with her choicest relics in the secretary-desk; my father's miniature, painted in Antwerp, a treasure only shown occasionally to us children as a holiday treat; and my mother's easy-chair,--I should have felt as if I had lost her, had that been left behind. The earliest unexpressed ambition of my infancy had been to grow up and wear a cap, and sit in an easy-chair knitting and look comfortable just as my mother did.