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

Things have happened, and changes have come. The New England that has grown up with the last fifty years is not at all the New England that our fathers knew. We speak of having been reared under Puritanic influences, but the traditionary sternness of these was much modified, even in the childhood of the generation to which I belong. We did not recognize the grim features of the Puritan, as we used sometimes to read about him, in our parents or relatives. And yet we were children of the Puritans. Everything that was new or strange came to us at Lowell. And most of the remarkable people of the day came also. How strange it was to see Mar Yohannan, a Nestorian bishop, walking through the factory yard in his Oriental robes with more than a child's wonder on his face at the stir and rush of everything! He came from Boston by railroad, and was present at the wedding at the clergyman's house where he visited. The rapidity of the simple Congregational service astonished him. "What? Marry on railroad, too?" he asked. Dickens visited Lowell while I was there, and gave a good report of what he saw in his "American Notes." We did not leave work even to gaze at distinguished strangers, so I missed seeing him. But a friend who did see him sketched his profile in pencil for me as he passed along the street. He was then best known as "Boz." Many of the prominent men of the country were in the habit of giving Lyceum lectures, and the Lyceum lecture of that day was a means of education, conveying to the people the results of study and thought through the best minds. At Lowell it was more patronized by the mill-people than any mere entertainment. We had John Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, John Pierpont, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among our lecturers, with numerous distinguished clergymen of the day. Daniel Webster was once in the city, trying a law case. Some of my girl friends went to the court-room and had a glimpse of his face, but I just missed seeing him.