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

We were two miserable looking children when we reached home, the sticky ooze having changed her feet into unmanageable lumps of mud, with which my own clothes also were soiled. I had to drag or carry her all the way, for she could not or would not walk a step. And alas for the morocco boots! They were never again red. I also received a scolding for not taking better care of my little sister, and I was not very soon allowed again to have her company in my rambles. We usually joined with other little neighbor girls in some out-of-door amusement near home. And our sports, as well as our books, had a spice of Merry Old England. They were full of kings and queens, and made sharp contrasts, as well as odd mixtures, with the homeliness of our everyday life. One of them, a sort of rhymed dialogue, began with the couplet:-- "Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sits in the sun, As fair as a lady, as white as a nun." If "Queen Anne" did not give a right guess as to which hand of the messenger held the king's letter to her, she was contemptuously informed that she was "as brown as a bun." In another name, four little girls joined hands across, in couples, chanting:-- "I wish my father were a king, I wish my mother were a queen, And I a little companion!" concluding with a close embrace in a dizzying whirl, breathlessly shouting all together,--