"I do not remember much about mamma. It is strange, too, that I do not,
because I was thirteen when she died; but I always loved papa best, and
stayed all the time I could in his study. Mamma was very pretty; the
prettiest woman I ever saw; but I don't know how it was, all her
prettiness did not seem to make papa care about her. He was a
clergyman--an Episcopal clergyman--and his father and his father's father
had been too; so you see for three whole generations it had been all books
and study in the family; but mamma's father was a farmer, and mamma was
stronger than papa; she liked to live in the country and be out of doors,
which he hated. I think I know now just how it all was; but it used to
puzzle me till I grew up. When I was sixteen, my Aunt Abby, papa's sister,
told me that mamma was said to be the most beautiful girl in the whole
State, and that papa fell so in love with her when he was just out of
college, that he came very near dying because his father did not wish them
to be married. Poor papa! it was just so always with him; he had such a
poor feeble body that any trouble or worry made him ill. I can see now
that it was because he and all his family had been such scholars, and
lived in the house, and sat still all their lives; their bodies were not
good for anything: and I am thankful enough that my body is like mamma's;
but I don't know what good it would do me, either, if dear papa hadn't
taught me all his ways of seeing things and feeling things. Mamma never
seemed to care much about anything, except when Dick or Abby were sick,
and she always used to go to sleep in church while papa was saying the
most beautiful things; sometimes it used to make me almost hate her. I
hated everybody that didn't listen to him. But Aunt Abby said once that
very few people could understand him, and that was the reason we never
stayed long in one place. People got tired of hearing him preach. This
made me so angry I did not speak to Aunt Abby for two years, except when I
was obliged to. But I see now that she was right. As I read over papa's
sermons I see that they would seem very strange to common men and women.
He saw much more in every little thing than people generally do. I used to
tell him sometimes he 'saw double,' and he would sigh and say that the
world was blind, and did not see half; he never could take any minute by
itself; there was the past to cripple it and the future to shadow it.
Poor, poor papa! I really th