All the Days of My Life: An Autobiography. Amelia E. Barr

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СКАЧАТЬ of my time at this farm for two years and a half, and if to be innocently joyful and busy and perfectly free from all care and anxiety is to be happy, then surely these years were the happiest years of my life. A child in Paradise may be as happy, but no 53 earth child could have been more fortunate than I was. Everything was so much better than I expected; yes, I can see the widespreading house amid its trees and gardens as I write, and when I go to Heaven, I would like my angel to pass it on the road, and let me look once more into its sunny rooms.

      I soon learned to manage my pony, and I usually rode into Ripon with Mr. Richmond on market days, took my music lesson, and then went home until I was called for. The housekeeper Mary taught me all about milk, cream and butter. I pulled cherries, ate cherries, and made cherry pies, and I knew every hen and chicken on the place. I was very friendly with the gardener, and from him I learned all about vegetables, fruits and flowers. If there was a superstition or story about any flower, he knew it; and he told it to me, generally with the flower in my hand. Thus a lady to whose house I often went to practice my music, gave me one day a pot of myrtle, and I took it at once to the old man. I said, “I want it planted.”

      “Well then, Missie, you must plant it yourself,” he replied; “for when myrtle is planted, you must spread out your skirt, and look as proud as you can. I say put it in your window, for myrtle is the luckiest plant for the window, and water it morning and night, looking as proud as you can while doing so. Myrtle is a proud plant, and it loves proud people.” On another day, I was going into the house with a branch of flowering white hawthorn.

      “Nay! nay!” he cried to me, “you mustn’t carry white hawthorn into the house. You might go to sleep where it is, and then would come great misfortune.” He looked very differently on a handful of rosemary. “That is all right, is all right,” he said. “Rosemary stands for success in everything.” In the very centre of the garden he had a little bed of grass, and he would not suffer tool of any kind to touch it. He called it “good man’s croft,” and told me that in order “to bring luck, we must always leave a bit of land unplanted for the fairies.”

      After I had been about a month at the farm, Mr. Richmond said to me one wet day, “Milly, I have had all my grandfather’s 54 books taken into the library. I want you to sort and shelve them for me. Would you like to do that?”

      I knew of nothing I would like half as much, for, as soon as I was well, the thought of books was again a joy to me. We went to the library together, and men were unpacking large boxes of books, and bringing a long table on which to sort them, and a set of library steps, pens, ink, pencils, paper, and so forth. I promised only to sort the books in the afternoon, or when too wet to take my usual morning ride with him about the farm. Then he gave me the key of the room, and left me among a thousand books.

      I was so happy! I was so happy! So peacefully, innocently happy! I read more than I sorted; I found so many wonderful books, that it was impossible to pass over. I met Ivanhoe first in that room, and Little Nell, and Pamela, and the Scottish Chiefs, and in a pile of unbound Family Heralds I made acquaintance with the short love story. Never shall I forget what thrilling hours I spent in that room with the “Children of the Abbey.” A year or two ago a lady to whom I named this book, said she had a copy, and would send it to me. I sat down, full of expectation, but alas! though the book was there, I could not summon back the child heart to read it. The tale that stole my heart away when I was eleven years old had nothing to say to me when I was seventy-seven. Yet I touched it tenderly as I whispered, “It charmed me once—I will not spoil that memory,” and so closed it forever.

      I thank God that ere any change came over days so beautiful and blessed, they ceased. The library was scarce finished, when I had to leave it; the farm life was just as happy and desirable, when I tearfully bade it good-bye forever. The pretty, clever Mary loved me well, and I had become a real companion to my affectionate friend, who liked me to call him “Uncle Thomas.” It was well to part ere any desire for parting came. Mr. Richmond said he would come for me the following summer, but I knew he would not. I felt sure he would marry Mary, and other interests would occupy him. I said good-bye to Richmond Farm in a fortunate hour. Its memory has sweetened my long, long life, and what I learned in its pleasant rooms, its 55 hay fields, and wheat fields, and cool, sweet dairy, has helped me in many a stress of life, that I then never dreamed of.

      The inevitable has always found me ready and hopeful, and I was glad we were going to the Isle of Man. I had never consciously seen the sea, but its tides were surely in my blood. I was much excited at the prospect, and Father was as eager and restless as a boy. It called him now, as it had called his fathers before him, and he was impatient of delay. We went in a little steamer called The King Orry, sailing from Liverpool. And, as I walked with him about the deck, we were both silent with emotion. But I felt quite at home. The motion of the boat was natural, and, when I walked to the wheel, I could scarcely keep my hands off it. I knew I could manage it. The salt breeze, and the smell of the sea, went to my head like wine.

      “Oh, Father!” I cried. “I wish that I might live always on the tide-top.”

      “The tide-top!” he echoed. “Who taught you those words, Milly?”

      “Nobody,” I answered. “They just came to me. Are they not right words, Father?”

      “Yes,” he answered slowly. “Your grandfather used them frequently. The last words he said to my mother were, ‘Fear not, Milly! I shall try to keep my ship on the tide-top.’ ”

      “But he did not, Father.”

      “No—no! He found a sailor’s grave. I will go and bring John here.”

      In a few minutes he returned with an armful of pillows, and then he carried my brother in his arms to the deck. I have never seen since such a transfiguration of Joy. The boy clapped his thin, white hands, and cried out, “The Sea! The Sea! The Sea!” His face glowed and shone, and he took deep breaths of the salt air. So he sat all day, feeding his heart on the sight of the blue, tossing waves, and some wild pageant of memories far far off, and hardly to be caught, as they threw the accumulated past upon his consciousness, very much as that last vision clangs and flashes for a drowning man.

      A never-to-be-forgotten, quiet, thoughtful day, and in the autumn gloaming we landed at Douglas, and the next morning 56 took a carriage for the ten-mile ride, which would take us to Castletown, then the capital of Man, and the place of our destination. With a lavish hand Nature has beautified this wonderful little island, thirty-three miles long, by thirteen miles wide, with the most exquisite scenes of sylvan loveliness, while the Gulf Stream laves all its rocky shores, giving it a climate such as we may have in Paradise. In the hottest month of the year the temperature is a little below sixty degrees, in the coldest month it is a little above forty-one.

      Our ride to Castletown was an enchanting one. It was on a day at the end of August, sunny and pleasantly warm. Such wealth of flowers! such multitudes of singing birds! I had never before seen or heard. And the sea was on every side of us! As we approached the capital we saw first the noble old fortress of the Lords of Man, lifting its huge bulk in the very centre of the town. It was but a small place, built of gray stone, in narrow winding streets, and so old that its very origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. Certainly it is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, town in Great Britain. It looked to me as if it had always existed.

      As we passed through the square of which the castle forms one side, we saw a fine regiment of Highlanders, in their picturesque costume, drilling, and a few ladies and some old gentlemen were sauntering along, stopping occasionally to watch some manœuver that interested them. An air of the utmost serenity pervaded the place, as we turned into a long crooked street called Malew Street, and stopped finally at a house whose door stood open to receive us. It was a large-roomed, sunny house, of three stories, and had a fine garden СКАЧАТЬ