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

"You can't stand the fire In that great day!" It was the refrain of a Millerite hymn. The Millerites believed that these signs in the sky were omens of the approaching catastrophe. And it was said that some of them did go so far as to put on white "ascension robes," and assemble somewhere, to wait for the expected hour. When daguerreotypes were first made, when we heard that the sun was going to take everybody's portrait, it seemed almost too great a marvel to be believed. While it was yet only a rumor that such a thing had been done, somewhere across the sea, I saw some verses about it which impressed me much, but which I only partly remember. These were the opening lines:-- "Oh, what if thus our evil deeds Are mirrored on the sky, And every line of our wild lives Daguerreotyped on high!" My sister and I considered it quite an event when we went to have our daguerreotypes taken just before we started for the West. The photograph was still an undeveloped mystery. Things that looked miraculous then are commonplace now. It almost seems as if the children of to-day could not have so good a time as we did, science has left them so little to wonder about. Our attitude--the attitude of the time--was that of children climbing their dooryard fence, to watch an approaching show, and to conjecture what more remarkable spectacle could be following behind. New England had kept to the quiet old-fashioned ways of living for the first fifty years of the Republic. Now all was expectancy. Changes were coming. Things were going to happen, nobody could guess what.