The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
As to schoolma'am, I ha'n't a word to say that a'n't favorable, and
don't harbor no unkind feelin' to her, and never knowed them that did.
When she first come to board at my house, I hadn't any idee she'd
live long. She was all dressed in black; and her face looked so
delicate, I expected before six months was over to see a plate of
glass over it, and a Bible and a bunch of flowers layin' on the lid
of the--well, I don't like to talk about it; for when she first come,
and said her mother was dead, and she was alone in the world, except
one sister out West, and unlocked her trunk and showed me her things,
and took out her little purse and showed me her money, and said that
was all the property she had in the world but her courage and her
education, and would I take her and keep her till she could get some
scholars,--I couldn't say not one word, but jest went up to her and
kissed her and bu'st out a-cryin' so as I never cried since I buried
the last of my five children that lays in the buryin'-ground with
their father, and a place for one more grown person betwixt him and
the shortest of them five graves, where my baby is waitin' for its
mother.
[The landlady stopped here and shed a few still tears, such as poor
women who have been wrung out almost dry by fierce griefs lose calmly,
without sobs or hysteric convulsions, when they show the scar of a
healed sorrow.]
--The schoolma'am had jest been killin' herself for a year and a
half with waitin' and tendin' and watchin' with that sick mother
that was dead now and she was in mournin' for. _She_ didn't say so,
but I got the story out of her, and then I knowed why she looked so
dreadful pale and poor. By-and-by she begun to get some scholars,
and then she would come home sometimes so weak and faint that I was
afraid she would drop. One day I handed her a bottle of camphire to
smell of, and she took a smell of it, and I thought she'd have
fainted right away.--Oh, says she, when she come to, I've breathed
that smell for a whole year and more, and it kills me to breathe it
again!
The fust thing that ever I see pass between the gentleman inquiries
is made about, and her, was on occasion of his makin' some very
searchin' remarks about griefs, sech as loss of friends and so on. I
see her fix her eye steady on him, and then she kind of trembled and
turned white, and the next thing I knew was she was all of a heap on
the floor. I remember he looked into her face then and seemed to be
seized as if it was with a start or spasm-like,--but I thought nothin'
more of it, supposin' it was because he felt so bad at makin' her
faint away.
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