My Great-Grandmother
My great-grandmother was the widow of an Episcopal clergyman, the Rev. Titus Welton, whose son was the first rector of the village church. My only acquaintance with my great-grandfather was connected with the white headstone that bore his name in the graveyard. With the exception of a quaint water-color portrait in profile of my grandmother in a mob-cap bound with a black ribbon, which was equally a portrait of the flowered back of the rocking-chair in which she sat, she survives in my memory in a series of pictures. I see her sitting before the open fire, knitting, with one steel needle held in a knitting-sheath pinned to her left side, or taking snuff from a flat, round box that contained a vanilla bean to perfume the snuff. Her hands were twisted with rheumatism, and she walked with a cane. On one occasion I trotted by her side to church and carried her tin foot-stove, warm with glowing coals.
She slept in a high post bed in her particular room over the sitting-room, which was warmed in winter by a sheet-iron drum connected with the stove below, and in one corner was a copper warming-pan with a long handle. When I sat at table in my high-chair eating apple-pie in a bowl of milk, she sat on the side nearest the fire eating dipped toast with a two-tined fork. The fork may have had three tines, but silver forks had not yet made their appearance.
My great-grandmother lived just long enough to have her picture taken on a plate of silvered copper by the wonderful process of Daguerre,[29]a process so like something diabolical that she protected her soul from evil, as all sitters in that part of the country did, by resting her hand on a great Bible, the back turned to the front, so that the letters “Holy Bible” could be read, proving that the great bookwas not a profane dictionary. The operator who took her daguerreotype traveled from town to town, hiring a room in the village tavern furnished with a chair, a stand on tripod legs, a brown linen table-cloth, and the aforesaid Bible, and when such of the people as had the fee to spare, the courage to submit to a new-fangled idea, and no fear that the face on the magical plate would fade away like any other spirit face when they opened the stamped-leather case with the red plush lining after it had lain overnight in the darkened parlor, he moved on like the cracker baker or any other itinerant showman.
My great-grandmother had never sent or received a message by telegraph or ridden in a railway-carriage, and died in peace just before those portentous inventions came to destroy forever the small community life in which she had lived.
1. My First Schooldays11. Punishments I Remember2. My Grandparents12. Queer Old Customs3. An Early Misfortune13. My First Superstitions4. Some Vanished Friends14. A Wonderful Day5. My Old Home15. Gifts6. Playmates16. My First School-books7. Old Toys17. Pictures of Childhood8. My First Games18. My Relatives9. A First Visit19. A Great Event10. My First Costumes20. Relics of the Past
1. My First Schooldays11. Punishments I Remember2. My Grandparents12. Queer Old Customs3. An Early Misfortune13. My First Superstitions4. Some Vanished Friends14. A Wonderful Day5. My Old Home15. Gifts6. Playmates16. My First School-books7. Old Toys17. Pictures of Childhood8. My First Games18. My Relatives9. A First Visit19. A Great Event10. My First Costumes20. Relics of the Past
Throw yourself back into the past. Conjure up the people with whom you used to associate. See once again the places where you played and where you lived. Think how happy it all was, and how good it is to look at it once more. Then put down on paper the things that you remember with the greatest interest. Write in such a way that you will give the reader the very spirit that you have. Remember: you are not to communicate facts; you are to communicate emotion.