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

Besides those who were of my kindred, I had several aunts by courtesy, or rather by the privilege of neighborhood, who seemed to belong to my babyhood. Indeed, the family hearthstone came near being the scene of a tragedy to me, through the blind fondness of one of these. The adjective is literal. This dear old lady, almost sightless, sitting in a low chair far in the chimney corner, where she had been placed on her first call to see the new baby, took me upon her lap, and--so they say--unconsciously let me slip off into the coals. I was rescued unsinged, however, and it was one of the earliest accomplishments of my infancy to thread my poor, half-blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her. We were close neighbors and gossips until my fourth year. Many an hour I sat by her side drawing a needle and thread through a bit of calico, under the delusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my brothers and sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use a reprehensible word. One of her ditties began with the lines:-- "Miss Lucy was a charming child; She never said, 'I won't.'" After bearing this once or twice, the willful negative was continually upon my lips; doubtless a symptom of what was dormant within--a will perhaps not quite so aggressive as it was obstinate. But she meant only to praise me and please me; and dearly I loved to stay with her in her cozy up-stairs room across the lane, that the sun looked into nearly all day.