Wearing
those shirts, when new, made a boy's skin pretty red. I dare say
they were quite equal to a hair shirt to do penance in; and wiping
on a new home-made linen towel suggested wiping on a brier bush.
Dear me! how long it has been since I have seen any tow, or heard
a loom or a spinning-wheel, or seen a boy breaking in his new
flax-made shirt! No one sees these things any more.
Mother had but little schooling; she learned to read, but not to
write or cipher; hence, books and such interests took none of her
time. She was one of those uneducated countrywomen of strong
natural traits and wholesome instincts, devoted to her children; she
bore ten, and nursed them all--an heroic worker, a helpful neighbor,
and a provident housewife, with the virtues that belonged to so many
farmers' wives in those days, and which we are all glad to be able
to enumerate in our mothers.
She had not a large frame, but was stout; had brown hair and blue
eyes, a fine strong brow, and a straight nose with a strong bridge
to it. She was a woman of great emotional capacity, who felt more
than she thought. She scolded a good deal, but was not especially
quick-tempered. She was an Old-School Baptist, as was Father.
She was not of a vivacious or sunny disposition--always a little
in shadow, as it seems to me now, given to brooding and to dwelling
upon the more serious aspects of life.
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