章节正文
mortgage with it.
"High is the rank we now possess,
But higher we shall rise;
Though what we shall hereafter be
Is hid from mortal eyes."
This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and
Mr. Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and
smiled at me. Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the
next morning with just one verse in the middle of it.
"She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
And ev'n the good with inward envy groan,
Finding themselves so very much exceeded,
In their own way by all the things that she did."
Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the
last rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to
being. Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my
"cast-off careers."
"What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?" he
asked, looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. "Women never hit
what they aim at, anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot
in the air they generally find themselves in the bull's eye."
I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should
be, when I grew up, was, that even before father died mother
worried about the mortgage on the farm, and what would become of
us if it were foreclosed.
It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way,
but oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of
us then to think of, and still has three at home to feed and
clothe out of the farm.
Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that
I will never really "grow up," Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know
the world any better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They
none of them know the old, old thoughts I have, some of them
going back years and years; for they are never ones that I can
speak about.
I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so
handsome and graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or
too busy to play with us. He never did any work at home because
he had to keep his hands nice for playing the church melodeon, or
the violin or piano for dances.
Mother used to say: "Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the
strawberries, your father cannot help." "John, you must milk next
year for I haven't the time and it would spoil your father's
hands."
All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel
shirts, except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white
ones with starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and
mother used to stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and
press the bosoms and collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new
dresses for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was
always taking care of the babies; and father was happy and well
and handsome. But we children never thought much about it until
once, after father had mortgaged the farm, there was going to be
a sociable in Temperance village. Mother could not go as Jenny
had whooping-cough and Mark had just broken his arm, and when she
was tying father's necktie, the last thing before he started, he
said: "I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a little about YOUR
appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a man like
me."
Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I
looked at her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a
minute I was ever so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It
has always stayed there, although I admired my handsome father
and was proud of him because he was so talented; but now that I
am older and have thought about things, my love for mother is
different from what it used to be. Father was always the favorite
when we were little, he was so interesting, and I wonder
sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it
seems very cruel.
As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition
to do something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy
to a child. I had not been to school then, or read George
Macdonald, so I did not know that "Ease is the lovely result of
forgotten toil."
Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and
everybody said how wonderful they were, and bought them straight
away; and she took care of a blind father and two brothers, and
traveled wherever she wished. It comes back to me now, that
summer when I was ten and Miss Ross painted me sitting by the
mill-wheel while she talked to me of foreign countries!
The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems
to the girls of her literature class. It was about David the
shepherd boy who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle
"wheeling slow as in sleep." He used to wonder about the wide
world that the eagle beheld, the eagle that was stretching his
wings so far up in the blue, while he, the poor shepherd boy,
could see only the "strip twixt the hill and the sky;" for he lay
in a hollow.
I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday
before I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long
to see as much as the eagle saw?
There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. "Rebecca dear," he
said, "it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the
shepherd boy did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see
'twixt the hill and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all
of heaven, if only you have the right sort of vision."
I was a long, long time about "experiencing religion." I remember
Sunday afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I
went there; when I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room
as I was bid, silent and still, with the big family Bible on my
knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's "Saints' Rest," but her seat was
by the window, and she at least could give a glance into the
street now and then without being positivelywicked.
Aunt Jane used to read the "Pilgrim's Progress." The fire burned
low; the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that
the pictures swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see
God; but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and
John that I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the
sad, long one beginning:
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead."
It was brother John for whom I was chieflyhomesick on Sunday
afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother
was always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro;
and at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and
thought I was grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to
lead in prayer.
I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like
thinking out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal
easier than to Aunt Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There
were things I could say to Him that I could never say to anybody
else, and saying them always made me happy and contented.
When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I
told him I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough
to be a real member.
"So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?' he asked, smiling.
"Well, there is something else much more important, which is,
that He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your
longings, desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that,
after all, is what counts! Of course you don't understand Him!
You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His benignity, His
wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could
stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly
comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege!
Don't be puzzled out of your blessedinheritance of faith, my
child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!"
"God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that," I said; "but
the doctrines do worry me dreadfully."
"Let them alone for the present," Mr Baxter said. "Anyway,
Rebecca, you can never prove God; you can only find Him!"
"Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr.
Baxter?" I asked. "Am I the beginnings of a Christian?"
"You are a dear child of the understanding God!" Mr. Baxter said;
and I say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never
forget it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in
the rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The
bell for philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have
been writing for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going
up the Academy hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand
hill for learning! I suppose after fifty years or so the very
ground has become soaked with knowledge, and every particle of
air in the vicinity is crammed with useful information.
I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow
hereabouts) and take it out again,-- when shall I take it out
again?
After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to
write in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen
worth putting down; something strange; something unusual;
something different from the things that happen every day in
Riverboro and Edgewood!
Graduation will surely take me a little out of "the
hollow,"--make me a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at
the whole wide world beneath him while he wheels "slow as in
sleep." But whether or not, I'll try not to be a discontented
shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter said, that the little
strip that I see " twixt the hill and the sky" is able to hold
all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to see
it. Rebecca Rowena Randall. Wareham Female Seminary, December
187--.
Eleventh Chronicle
ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
I
"A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
Conversed as they sat on the green.
They gazed at each other in tender delight.
Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
And the maid was the fair Imogene.
"Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
To fight in a far distant land,
Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
Some other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
"So hurtful to love and to me!
For if you be living, or if you be dead,
I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be
eighteen, but now that she was within a month of that
awe-inspiring and long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it
was destined to be a turning point in her quiet existence. Her
eleventh year, for instance, had been a real turning-point, since
it was then that she had left Sunnybrook Farm and come to her
"High is the rank we now possess,
But higher we shall rise;
Though what we shall hereafter be
Is hid from mortal eyes."
This hymn was sung in meeting the Sunday after my election, and
Mr. Aladdin was there that day and looked across the aisle and
smiled at me. Then he sent me a sheet of paper from Boston the
next morning with just one verse in the middle of it.
"She made the cleverest people quite ashamed;
And ev'n the good with inward envy groan,
Finding themselves so very much exceeded,
In their own way by all the things that she did."
Miss Maxwell says it is Byron, and I wish I had thought of the
last rhyme before Byron did; my rhymes are always so common.
I am too busy doing, nowadays, to give very much thought to
being. Mr. Aladdin was teasing me one day about what he calls my
"cast-off careers."
"What makes you aim at any mark in particular, Rebecca?" he
asked, looking at Miss Maxwell and laughing. "Women never hit
what they aim at, anyway; but if they shut their eyes and shoot
in the air they generally find themselves in the bull's eye."
I think one reason that I have always dreamed of what I should
be, when I grew up, was, that even before father died mother
worried about the mortgage on the farm, and what would become of
us if it were foreclosed.
It was hard on children to be brought up on a mortgage that way,
but oh! it was harder still on poor dear mother, who had seven of
us then to think of, and still has three at home to feed and
clothe out of the farm.
Aunt Jane says I am young for my age, Aunt Miranda is afraid that
I will never really "grow up," Mr. Aladdin says that I don't know
the world any better than the pearl inside of the oyster. They
none of them know the old, old thoughts I have, some of them
going back years and years; for they are never ones that I can
speak about.
I remember how we children used to admire father, he was so
handsome and graceful and amusing, never cross like mother, or
too busy to play with us. He never did any work at home because
he had to keep his hands nice for playing the church melodeon, or
the violin or piano for dances.
Mother used to say: "Hannah and Rebecca, you must hull the
strawberries, your father cannot help." "John, you must milk next
year for I haven't the time and it would spoil your father's
hands."
All the other men in Temperance village wore calico, or flannel
shirts, except on Sundays, but Father never wore any but white
ones with starched bosoms. He was very particular about them and
mother used to stitch and stitch on the pleats, and press and
press the bosoms and collar and cuffs, sometimes late at night.
Then she was tired and thin and gray, with no time to sew on new
dresses for herself, and no time to wear them, because she was
always taking care of the babies; and father was happy and well
and handsome. But we children never thought much about it until
once, after father had mortgaged the farm, there was going to be
a sociable in Temperance village. Mother could not go as Jenny
had whooping-cough and Mark had just broken his arm, and when she
was tying father's necktie, the last thing before he started, he
said: "I wish, Aurelia, that you cared a little about YOUR
appearance and YOUR dress; it goes a long way with a man like
me."
Mother had finished the tie, and her hands dropped suddenly. I
looked at her eyes and mouth while she looked at father and in a
minute I was ever so old, with a grown-up ache in my heart. It
has always stayed there, although I admired my handsome father
and was proud of him because he was so talented; but now that I
am older and have thought about things, my love for mother is
different from what it used to be. Father was always the favorite
when we were little, he was so interesting, and I wonder
sometimes if we don't remember interesting people longer and
better than we do those who are just good and patient. If so it
seems very cruel.
As I look back I see that Miss Ross, the artist who brought me my
pink parasol from Paris, sowed the first seeds in me of ambition
to do something special. Her life seemed so beautiful and so easy
to a child. I had not been to school then, or read George
Macdonald, so I did not know that "Ease is the lovely result of
forgotten toil."
Miss Ross sat out of doors and painted lovely things, and
everybody said how wonderful they were, and bought them straight
away; and she took care of a blind father and two brothers, and
traveled wherever she wished. It comes back to me now, that
summer when I was ten and Miss Ross painted me sitting by the
mill-wheel while she talked to me of foreign countries!
The other day Miss Maxwell read something from Browning's poems
to the girls of her literature class. It was about David the
shepherd boy who used to lie in his hollow watching one eagle
"wheeling slow as in sleep." He used to wonder about the wide
world that the eagle beheld, the eagle that was stretching his
wings so far up in the blue, while he, the poor shepherd boy,
could see only the "strip twixt the hill and the sky;" for he lay
in a hollow.
I told Mr. Baxter about it the next day, which was the Saturday
before I joined the church. I asked him if it was wicked to long
to see as much as the eagle saw?
There was never anybody quite like Mr. Baxter. "Rebecca dear," he
said, "it may be that you need not always lie in a hollow, as the
shepherd boy did; but wherever you lie, that little strip you see
'twixt the hill and the sky' is able to hold all of earth and all
of heaven, if only you have the right sort of vision."
I was a long, long time about "experiencing religion." I remember
Sunday afternoons at the brick house the first winter after I
went there; when I used to sit in the middle of the dining-room
as I was bid, silent and still, with the big family Bible on my
knees. Aunt Miranda had Baxter's "Saints' Rest," but her seat was
by the window, and she at least could give a glance into the
street now and then without being positivelywicked.
Aunt Jane used to read the "Pilgrim's Progress." The fire burned
low; the tall clock ticked, ticked, so slowly and steadily, that
the pictures swam before my eyes and I almost fell asleep.
They thought by shutting everything else out that I should see
God; but I didn't, not once. I was so homesick for Sunnybook and
John that I could hardly learn my weekly hymns, especially the
sad, long one beginning:
"My thoughts on awful subjects roll,
Damnation and the dead."
It was brother John for whom I was chieflyhomesick on Sunday
afternoons, because at Sunnybrook Farm father was dead and mother
was always busy, and Hannah never liked to talk.
Then the next year the missionaries from Syria came to Riverboro;
and at the meeting Mr. Burch saw me playing the melodeon, and
thought I was grown up and a church member, and so he asked me to
lead in prayer.
I didn't dare to refuse, and when I prayed, which was just like
thinking out loud, I found I could talk to God a great deal
easier than to Aunt Miranda or even to Uncle Jerry Cobb. There
were things I could say to Him that I could never say to anybody
else, and saying them always made me happy and contented.
When Mr. Baxter asked me last year about joining the church, I
told him I was afraid I did not understand God quite well enough
to be a real member.
"So you don't quite understand God, Rebecca?' he asked, smiling.
"Well, there is something else much more important, which is,
that He understands you! He understands your feeble love, your
longings, desires, hopes, faults, ambitions, crosses; and that,
after all, is what counts! Of course you don't understand Him!
You are overshadowed by His love, His power, His benignity, His
wisdom; that is as it should be! Why, Rebecca, dear, if you could
stand erect and unabashed in God's presence, as one who perfectly
comprehended His nature or His purposes, it would be sacrilege!
Don't be puzzled out of your blessedinheritance of faith, my
child; accept God easily and naturally, just as He accepts you!"
"God never puzzled me, Mr. Baxter; it isn't that," I said; "but
the doctrines do worry me dreadfully."
"Let them alone for the present," Mr Baxter said. "Anyway,
Rebecca, you can never prove God; you can only find Him!"
"Then do you think I have really experienced religion, Mr.
Baxter?" I asked. "Am I the beginnings of a Christian?"
"You are a dear child of the understanding God!" Mr. Baxter said;
and I say it over to myself night and morning so that I can never
forget it.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
The year is nearly over and the next few months will be lived in
the rush and whirlwind of work that comes before graduation. The
bell for philosophy class will ring in ten minutes, and as I have
been writing for nearly two hours, I must learn my lesson going
up the Academy hill. It will not be the first time; it is a grand
hill for learning! I suppose after fifty years or so the very
ground has become soaked with knowledge, and every particle of
air in the vicinity is crammed with useful information.
I will put my book into my trunk (having no blessed haymow
hereabouts) and take it out again,-- when shall I take it out
again?
After graduation perhaps I shall be too grown up and too busy to
write in a Thought Book; but oh, if only something would happen
worth putting down; something strange; something unusual;
something different from the things that happen every day in
Riverboro and Edgewood!
Graduation will surely take me a little out of "the
hollow,"--make me a little more like the soaring eagle, gazing at
the whole wide world beneath him while he wheels "slow as in
sleep." But whether or not, I'll try not to be a discontented
shepherd, but remember what Mr. Baxter said, that the little
strip that I see " twixt the hill and the sky" is able to hold
all of earth and all of heaven, if only I have the eyes to see
it. Rebecca Rowena Randall. Wareham Female Seminary, December
187--.
Eleventh Chronicle
ABIJAH THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR EMMAJANE
I
"A warrior so bold and a maiden so bright
Conversed as they sat on the green.
They gazed at each other in tender delight.
Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
And the maid was the fair Imogene.
"Alas!' said the youth, 'since tomorrow I go
To fight in a far distant land,
Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
Some other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier suitor your hand.'
'Oh, hush these suspicions!' Fair Imogene said,
"So hurtful to love and to me!
For if you be living, or if you be dead,
I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
Shall the husband of Imogene be!'
Ever since she was eight years old Rebecca had wished to be
eighteen, but now that she was within a month of that
awe-inspiring and long-desired age she wondered if, after all, it
was destined to be a turning point in her quiet existence. Her
eleventh year, for instance, had been a real turning-point, since
it was then that she had left Sunnybrook Farm and come to her
- election [i´lekʃən]
n.选举；选择 (初中英语单词) - oyster [´ɔistə] n.牡蛎 (初中英语单词)
- graceful [´greisfəl] a.优美的，流畅的 (初中英语单词)
- collar [´kɔlə] n.衣领；(狗等的)项圈 (初中英语单词)
- grown-up [´grəun-ʌp] n.成年人 a.成熟的 (初中英语单词)
- talented [´tæləntid] a.天才的；能干的 (初中英语单词)
- wherever [weər´evə] conj.无论在哪里 (初中英语单词)
- literature [´litərətʃə] n.文学；文献；著作 (初中英语单词)
- beheld [bi´held] behold的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- shepherd [´ʃepəd] n.牧羊人 vt.带领 (初中英语单词)
- wicked [´wikid] a.邪恶的；不道德的 (初中英语单词)
- steadily [´stedili] ad.坚定地；不断地 (初中英语单词)
- weekly [´wi:kli] a.&ad.每周一次(的) (初中英语单词)
- chiefly [´tʃi:fli] ad.主要地；尤其 (初中英语单词)
- feeble [´fi:bəl] a.虚弱的，无力的 (初中英语单词)
- philosophy [fi´lɔsəfi] n.哲学；人生观 (初中英语单词)
- writing [´raitiŋ] n.书写；写作；书法 (初中英语单词)
- academy [ə´kædəmi] n.专科学校；学会；协会 (初中英语单词)
- female [´fi:meil] a.女(性)的 n.女人 (初中英语单词)
- warrior [´wɔriə] n.勇士，战士 (初中英语单词)
- maiden [´meidn] n.少女 a.未婚的 (初中英语单词)
- absence [´æbsəns] n.不在，缺席；缺乏 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- mortgage [´mɔ:gidʒ] a.&vt.抵押 (高中英语单词)
- hereafter [hiər´ɑ:ftə] ad.&n.将来；来世 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- inward [´inwəd] a.向内的；心灵上的 (高中英语单词)
- amusing [ə´mju:ziŋ] a.有趣的 (高中英语单词)
- stitch [stitʃ] n.针脚 v.缝(纫) (高中英语单词)
- positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- inheritance [in´heritəns] n.继承(物)；遗传；遗产 (高中英语单词)
- particle [´pɑ:tikl] n.微粒；极小量 (高中英语单词)
- virgin [´və:dʒin] a.处女(般)的 n.处女 (高中英语单词)
- violin [,vaiə´lin] n.(小)提琴 (英语四级单词)
- temperance [´tempərəns] n.节制；节欲；戒酒 (英语四级单词)
- calico [´kælikəu] n.白棉布；印花布 (英语四级单词)
- necktie [´nektai] n.领带 (英语四级单词)
- blessed [´blesid] a.享福的；神圣的 (英语四级单词)
- experienced [ik´spiəriənst] a.有经验的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- whirlwind [´wə:l,wind] n.旋风；猛烈的势力 (英语四级单词)
- vicinity [vi´siniti] n.邻近，附近，接近 (英语四级单词)
- suitor [´su:tə, ´sju:-] n.原告；请求者；求爱者 (英语四级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- homesick [´həum,sik] n.思乡的 (英语六级单词)
- graduation [,grædʒu´eiʃən] n.毕业(典礼)；刻度 (英语六级单词)
- seminary [´seminəri] n.发源地；高等中学 (英语六级单词)
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