carrying some leaves from a torn
Testament in my pocket.

The overseer, caring more for law than gospel, confiscated all he
found. He had his desk full of Bibles. It sounded oddly to hear him say
to the most religious girl in the room, when he took hers away, "I did
think you had more conscience than to bring that book here." But we had
some close ethical questions to settle in those days. It was a rigid
code of morality under which we lived. Nobody complained of it,
however, and we were doubtless better off for its strictness, in the
end.

The last window in the row behind me was filled with flourishing
house-plants--fragrant leaved geraniums, the overseer's pets. They gave
that corner a bowery look; the perfume and freshness tempted me there
often. Standing before that window, I could look across the room and
see girls moving backwards and forwards among the spinning-frames,
sometimes stooping, sometimes reaching up their arms, as their work
required, with easy and not ungraceful movements. On the whole, it was
far from being a disagreeable place to stay in. The girls were
bright-looking and neat, and everything was kept clean and shining. The
effect of the whole was rather attractive to strangers.

My grandfather came to see my mother once at about this time and
visited the mills. When he had entered our room, and looked around for
a moment, he took off his hat and made a low bow to the girls, first
toward the right, and then toward the left. We were familiar with his
courteous habits, partly due to his French descent; but we had never
seen anybody bow to a room full of mill girls in that polite way, and
some one of the family afterwards asked him why he did so. He looked a
little surprised at the question, but answered promptly and with
dignity, "I always take off my hat to ladies."

His courtesy was genuine. Still, we did not call ourselves ladies. We
did not forget that we were working-girls, wearing coarse aprons
suitable to our work, and that there was some danger of our becoming
drudges. I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became very
wearisome to me. In the sweet June weather I would lean far out of the
window, and try not to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside.
Looking away to the hills, my whole stifled being would cry out

"Oh, that I had wings!"

Still I was there from choice, and

"The prison unto which we doom ourselves,
No prison is."

And I was every day making disc