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

I know that he was a studious man, fond of what was called "solid reading." He delighted in problems of navigation (he was for many years the master of a merchant-vessel sailing to various European ports), in astronomical calculations and historical computations. A rhyming genius in the town, who undertook to hit off the peculiarities of well-known residents, characterized my father as "Philosophic Ben, Who, pointing to the stars, cries, Land ahead!" His reserved, abstracted manner,--though his gravity concealed a fund of rare humor,--kept us children somewhat aloof from him; but my mother's temperament formed a complete contrast to his. She was chatty and social, rosy-cheeked and dimpled, with bright blue eyes and soft, dark, curling hair, which she kept pinned up under her white lace cap-border. Not even the eldest child remembered her without her cap, and when some of us asked her why she never let her pretty curls be visible, she said,-- "Your father liked to see me in a cap. I put it on soon after we were married, to please him; I always have worn it, and I always shall wear it, for the same reason." My mother had that sort of sunshiny nature which easily shifts to shadow, like the atmosphere of an April day. Cheerfulness held sway with her, except occasionally, when her domestic cares grew too overwhelming; but her spirits rebounded quickly from discouragement. Her father was the only one of our grandparents who had survived to my time,--of French descent, piquant, merry, exceedingly polite, and very fond of us children, whom he was always treating to raisins and peppermints and rules for good behavior. He had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War,--the greatest distinction we could imagine. And he was also the sexton of the oldest church in town,--the Old South,--and had charge of the winding-up of the town clock, and the ringing of the bell on week-days and Sundays, and the tolling for funerals,--into which mysteries he sometimes allowed us youngsters a furtive glimpse. I did not believe that there was another grandfather so delightful as ours in all the world.