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

When the others started homeward, I followed. I did not mind their calling me lazy, nor that my father gave me only one tarnished copper cent, while Lida received two or three bright ones. I had had what I wanted most. I would rather sit under the apple-trees and hear the birds sing than have a whole handful of bright copper pennies. It was well for my father and his garden that his other children were not like me. The work which I was born to, but had not begun to do, was sometimes a serious weight upon my small, forecasting brain. One of my hymns ended with the lines,-- "With books, and work, and healthful play, May my first years be passed, That I may give, for every day, Some good account at last." I knew all about the books and the play; but the work,--how should I ever learn to do it? My father had always strongly emphasized his wish that all his children, girls as well as boys, should have some independent means of self-support by the labor of their hands; that every one should, as was the general custom, "learn a trade." Tailor's work--the finishing of men's outside garments--was the trade learned most frequently by women in those days, and one or more of my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind.