Poganuc People: Their Loves and LivesStowe, Harriet Beecher
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Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"I was very glad, my dear, _you_ answered Dolly as you did," said
Mrs. Cushing to her husband that night when they were alone. "She
has such an intense feeling about all that relates to you, and the
Episcopal party have been so often opposed to you, that she will need
some care and caution now she is going where everything is to be
changed. She will have to see that there can be truth and goodness
in both forms of worship."
"Oh, certainly; I will indoctrinate Dolly," said the Doctor. "Yes, I
will set the whole thing before her. She has a good clear mind. I can
make her understand."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
LAST WORDS.
At last all the preparations were made, and Dolly's modest wardrobe
packed to the very last article, so that her bureau drawers looked
mournfully empty.
It was a little hair trunk, with "D. C." embossed in brass nails
upon one end, that contained all this young lady's armor--a very
different affair from the Saratoga trunks of our modern belles. The
pink brocade with its bunches of rose-buds; some tuckers of choice
old lace that had figured in her mother's bridal toilet; a few
bits of ribbon; a white India muslin dress, embroidered by her own
hands;--these were the stock in trade of a young damsel of her times,
and, strange as it may appear, young ladies then were stated by good
authority to have been just as pretty and bewitching as now, when
their trunks are several times as large.
Dolly's place and Aunt Debby's had been properly set down on Hiel's
stage-book for the next morning at six o'clock; and now remained only
an evening of last words.
So Dolly sits by her father in his study, where from infancy she has
retreated for pleasant quiet hours, where even the books she never
read seem to her like familiar friends from the number of times she
has pondered the titles upon their backs. And now, though she wants
to go, and feels the fluttering eagerness of the young bird, who has
wings to use and would like to try the free air, yet the first flight
from the nest is a little fearful. Boston is a long way off--three
long days--and Dolly has never been farther from Poganuc than she
has ridden by her father's side in the old chaise; so that the very
journey has as much importance in her eyes as fifty years later a
modern young lady will attach to a voyage to England.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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