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

VI. GLIMPSES OF POETRY. OUR close relationship to Old England was sometimes a little misleading to us juveniles. The conditions of our life were entirely different, but we read her descriptive stories and sang her songs as if they were true for us, too. One of the first things I learned to repeat--I think it was in the spelling-book--began with the verse:-- "I thank the goodness and the grace That on my birth has smiled, And made me, in these latter days, A happy English child." And some lines of a very familiar hymn by Dr. Watts ran thus:-- "Whene'er I take my walks abroad, How many poor I see. . . . . . . . . . . . . "How many children in the street Half naked I behold; While I am clothed from head to feet, And sheltered from the cold." Now a ragged, half-clothed child, or one that could really be called poor, in the extreme sense of the word, was the rarest of all sights in a thrifty New England town fifty years ago. I used to look sharply for those children, but I never could see one. And a beggar! Oh, if a real beggar would come along, like the one described in "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," what a wonderful event that would be! I believe I had more curiosity about a beggar, and more ignorance, too, than about a king. The poem read:-- "A pampered menial drove me from the door."