These details may seem to the reader trivial and futile; on the contrary, they were the very material from which life was building character. For all that surrounds a child, all that it sees, hears, feels or touches, helps to create its moral and intellectual nature.
See then how fortunate were my first six years. My physical being was well cared for by loving parents in a sweet orderly home, and my mental life well fed by books stimulating the imagination. Through the "Arabian Nights" tales I touched the domestic life of the wonderful East, China, India, Persia and Arabia; and at the missionary meetings, and at my home, I met men who had been to these far away places, and brought back with them curious and beautiful things, even the very gods they worshipped. There had been hitherto in other respects a good deal of judicious neglect in my education. Books had never been anything but a source of wonder and delight to me. I had never heard of a grammar and an arithmetic, and had never been deprived of a visit or a holiday because if I did not go to school, I would miss a mark, or lose my place in a class.
Fortunately this desultory education was marbled all through with keen spiritual incidents and issues. For the spiritual sight of children turns more sharply upon the world within the breast, than they show, or that anyone imagines. They hold in their memories imperishable days which all others have forgotten, visions beautiful and fearful, dreams without name or meaning, and they have an undefined impression of the awful _oldness_ of things. They see the world through doors very little ajar, and they know the walking of God through their dreaming sleep.
The happy and prosperous children are those, who had before all else the education that comes by reverence. This education is beyond all doubt the highest, the deepest, the widest and the most perfect of all the forms of education ever given to man. A child that has not been taught to reverence God, and all that represents God to man--honor, honesty, justice, mercy, truth, love, courage, self-sacrifice, is sent into the world like a boat sent out to sea, without rudder, ballast, compass or captain.
But the education by reverence must begin early. Children of very tender years may be taught to wander through those early ages of faith, when God took Enoch, and no one was astonished; when Abraham talked with God as friend with friend; when the marvelous ladder was let down by Jacob's pillow; when Hagar carrying her dying child in the desert saw without surprise the angel of the Lord coming to help her.
Nor is there any danger in permitting them to enter that dimmer world lying about childhood, to which _Robinson Crusoe_ and _Scheherazade_ hold the keys. The multiplication table can wait, until the child has been taught to reverence all that is holy, wise and good, and the imagination received its first impulse. So I do not call such events as I have chronicled trifling; indeed, I know that in the formation of my character, they had a wide and lasting influence.
A few days after the fair, Jonathan Greenwood was going to Bradford so he left me at my home as he passed there, and as soon as I came in sight of our house, I saw my sister running to the gate to meet me.
"I have a little brother!" she cried. "I have a little brother, Amelia."
"Mine, too," I asserted; and she answered, "Yes, I dare say."
"Is he nice?" I asked.
"Middling nice. You should see how everyone goes on about him."
"My word!" cried Jonathan, "you girls will be nobodies now. But, I shall stick by you, Milly."
"Yes," I answered dubiously, for I had learned already that little girls were of much less importance than little boys. So I shook my head, and gave Jonathan's promise a doubtful "yes."
"Tell Ann Oddy," he said, "that I will be in for a cup of tea at five o'clock." Then he drove away, and Jane and I walked slowly up the garden path together.
"Father called him John Henry, first thing," said Jane, "and Mother is proud of him, as never was."
"I want to see him," I answered. "Let us go to the children's room."
"He is in Mother's room, and Mother is sick in bed, and Ann is so busy with the boy, she forgot my breakfast, so I had breakfast with Father."
"Breakfast with Father! Never!"
"Yes, indeed, and dinner, too, for three days now. Perhaps as you have come home, Ann will remember that girls need something for breakfast.
Father wasn't pleased at her forgetting me."
"What did she say?"
She said, "Mr. Huddleston, I cannot remember everything, and the Mistress and the little lad _do_ come first, I should say."
"Was Father angry?" I asked.
"He said something about Mrs. Peacock."
"What is Mrs. Peacock doing here?"
"She is hired to help, but I think she never leaves her chair. Ann sniffed, and told Father, Mrs. Peacock had all she could do to take care of Mrs. Peacock. Then Father walked away, and Ann talked to herself, as she always does, when she is angry."
This conversation and much that followed I remember well, not all of it, perhaps, but its spirit and the very words used. It occurred in the garden which was in gorgeous August bloom, full of splendid dahlias and holly-hocks, and August lilies. I have never seen such holly-hocks since. We called them rose-mallows then which is I think a prettier name. The house door stood open, and the rooms were all so still and empty. There was a bee buzzing outside, and the girl Agnes singing a Methodist hymn in the kitchen, but the sounds seemed far away, and our little shoes sounded very noisy on the stairway.
I soon had my head on my mother's breast, and felt her kisses on my cheek. She asked me if I had a happy visit, but she did not take as much interest in my relations as I expected; she was so anxious to show me the new baby, and to tell me it was a boy, and called after his father's brother. I was jealous and unhappy, but Mother looked so proud and pleased I did not like to say anything disagreeable, so I kissed Mother and the boy again, and then went to the children's room and had a good cry in Ann Oddy's arms.
"Ann," I said, "girls are of no account;" and she answered, "No, honey, and women don't signify much either. It is a pity for us both.
I have been fit to drop with work ever since you went away, Amelia, and who cares? If any man had done what I have done, there would be two men holding him up by this time."
"Ann, why do men get so much more praise than women, and why are they so much more thought of?"
"God only knows child," she answered. "Men have made out, that only they can run the world. It's in about as bad a state as it well can be, but they are proud of their work. What I say is, that a race of good women would have done something with the old concern by this time. Men are a poor lot. I should think thou would want something to eat."
I told her I was "as hungry as could be," but that Jonathan was coming to tea at five o'clock.
"Then he'll make it for himsel'," she said. "Mr. Huddleston has gone to Windhill to some sort of meeting. Mrs. Huddleston can't get out of bed. I have the baby on my hands, and Mrs. Peacock makes her own tea at five o'clock--precisely."
"Then Ann let me make Jonathan's tea. I am sure I can do it, Ann. Will you let me?"
"I'll warrant thee." Then she told me exactly what to do, and when Jonathan Greenwood came, he found a good pot of tea and hot muffins ready, and he had given Agnes some Bradford sausage, with their fine flavoring of herbs, to fry, and Agnes remembered a couple of Kendal wigs[1] that were in the house and she brought them in for a finishing dish. I sat in my mother's chair, and poured out tea; but I sent for Jane when all was ready, and she gave me a look, still unforgotten, though she made no remark to disturb a meal so much to her liking.
Later, however, when we were undressing for bed, and had said our prayers, she reminded me that she was the eldest, and that I had taken her place in making tea for Mr. Greenwood. Many a time I had been forced to receive this reproof silently, but now I was able to say:
"You are not the oldest any longer, Jane. John is the oldest now.
Girls don't count."
In my childhood this eldest business was a sore subject, and indeed to this day the younger children in English families express themselves very decidedly about the usurpation of primogenital privileges, and the undue consideration given to boys.
A few weeks after the advent of my brother, John Henry, we removed to Penrith in Cumberland, and the night before leaving, a circumstance happened which made a great impression on me. There was a circle of shrubs in the garden, and a chair among them on which I frequently sat to read. This night I went to meet Mother at the garden gate, and as we came up the flagged walk, I saw a man sitting on the chair. "Let us go quickly to the house," said Mother; but a faint cry of "_Mary!_"
made her hesitate, and when the cry was repeated, and the man rose to his feet, my mother walked rapidly towards him crying out, "O Will!
Will! O my brother! Have you come home at last?"
"I have come home to die, Mary," he said.
"Lean on me, Will," she replied. "Come into the house. We leave for Penrith to-morrow, and you can travel with us. Then we shall see you safely home."
"What will your husband say?" the man asked.
"Only kind words to a dying man. Are you really so ill, Will?" And the man answered, "I may live three months. I may go much sooner. It depends----"
Then my mother said, "This is your uncle, Dr. Singleton, Milly;" and I was very sorry for a man so near death, and I went and took his hand, but he did not seem to care about me. He only glanced in my face, and then remarked to Mother, "She seems a nice child." I felt slighted, but I could not be angry at a man so sick.
When I went upstairs I told Ann that my uncle had come, and that he said he was going home to Kendal to die. "He will travel with us to-morrow as far as Kendal; Mother asked him to do so," I added.
"I dare say. It was just like her."
"Don't you like my uncle, Ann? I thought he was a very fine gentleman."
"Maybe he is. Be off to your bed now. You must be up by strike-of-day to-morrow;" and there was something in Ann's look and voice, I did not care to disobey.
Indeed Ann had every one up long before it was necessary. We had breakfast an hour before the proper time; but after all, it was well, for the house and garden was soon full of people come to bid us "good-bye." Some had brought lunches, and some flowers and fruits, and there was a wonderful hour of excitement, before the coach came driving furiously up to the gate. It had four fine horses, and the driver and the guard were in splendid livery, and the sound of the horn, and the clatter of the horses' feet, and the cries of the crowd stirred my heart and my imagination, and I believe I was the happiest girl in the world that hour. I enjoyed also the drive through the town, and the sight of the people waving their handkerchiefs to Father and Mother from open doors and windows. I do not think I have ever since had such a sense of elation and importance; for Father and I had relinquished our seats inside the coach to Uncle Will Singleton, and I was seated between the driver and Father, seeing well and also being well seen.
Never since that morning have I been more keenly alive in every sense and more ready for every event that might come; the first of which was the meeting and passing of three great wains loaded high with wheat, and going to a squire's manor, whose name I have forgotten. There were some very piquant words passed between the drivers about the coach going a bit to the wrong side. On the top of the three wagons about a dozen men were lying at their ease singing the prettiest harvest song I ever heard, but I only caught three lines of it. They went to a joyful melody thus: