[6] arrived after dark at a lonely little white farmhouse, and were ushered into a large parlor where a cheerful wood fire was crackling. I was placed in the arms of an old lady, who held me close and wept silently, a thing at which I marveled, for my great loss was already faded from my childish mind.I remember being put to bed by my aunt in a large room, on one side of which stood the bed appropriated to her and me, and on the other that of my grandmother. My aunt Harriet was no common character. A more energetic human being never undertook the education of a child. Her ideas of education were those of a vigorous English woman of the old school. She believed in the Church, and had she been born under that regime would have believed in the king stoutly, although being of the generation following the Revolution she was a not less stanch supporter of the Declaration of Independence.
According to her views little girls were to be taught to move very gently, to speak softly and prettily, to say “yes ma'am,” and “ no ma'am,” never to tear their clothes, to sew, to knit at regular hours, to go to church on Sunday and make all the responses, and to come home and be catechised.
During these catechisings she used to place my little cousin Mary and myself bolt upright at her knee, while black Dinah and Harry, the bound boy, were ranged at a respectful distance behind us; for Aunt Harriet always impressed it upon her servants “ to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters,” a portion of the Church catechism that always pleased me, particularly when applied to them, as it insured
