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

"A bundle of fagots! A bundle of fagots!" In a third, which may have begun with a juvenile reacting of the Colonial struggle for liberty, we ranged ourselves under two leaders, who made an archway over our heads of their lifted hands and arms, saying, as we passed beneath,-- "Lift up the gates as high as the sky, And let King George and his army pass by!" We were told to whisper "Oranges" or "Lemons" for a pass-word; and "Oranges" always won the larger enlistment, whether British or American. And then there was "Grandmother Gray," and the "Old woman from Newfoundland, With all her children in her hand;" and the "Knight from Spain Inquiring for your daughter Jane," and numberless others, nearly all of them bearing a distinct Old World flavor. One of our play-places was an unoccupied end of the burying-ground, overhung by the Colonel's apple-trees and close under his wall, so that we should not be too near the grave-stones. I do not think that death was at all a real thing to me or to my brothers and sisters at this time. We lived so near the graveyard that it seemed merely the extension of our garden. We wandered there at will, trying to decipher the moss-grown inscriptions, and wondering at the homely carvings of cross-bones and cherubs and willow-trees on the gray slate-stones. I did not associate those long green mounds with people who had once lived, though we were careful, having been so instructed, not to step on the graves. To ramble about there and puzzle ourselves with the names and dates, was like turning over the pages of a curious old book. We had not the least feeling of irreverence in taking the edge of the grave-yard for our playground. It was known as "the old burying-ground"; and we children regarded it with a sort of affectionate freedom, as we would a grandmother, because it was old.