The Bay State Monthly — Volume 1, No. 1, January, 1884Various
History
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 1, No. 1, January, 1884
Various
Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
During breakfast Mr. Wetherell passed me some cheese, and I asked Mrs.
Wetherell if she made cheese.
"Not this month," she replied, "in July and August I shall. I am packing
butter now."
"Do you think you are going to be contented back here?--you won't see as
much going on as you do at home," Mr. Wetherell asked me.
"O, yes," I answered; "I expect to enjoy myself very much."
Samanthy, the daughter, now well advanced in life, seemed very solemn
and said very little. I wondered if she were sick, or unhappy. A little
later in the day, while I was watching Mrs. Wetherell salt a churning of
butter in the back porch, she said to me: "You mustn't mind Samanthy,
she isn't quite right in her head: a good many years ago she had a sad
blow." She hesitated; I disliked to ask her what it was, so I said "Poor
woman!" "Yes," said her mother, "she is a poor soul. She was expecting
to be married to Eben Johnson, a young man who worked on our new barn.
She got acquainted with him then, and after a year or so they were
promised. Eben was a good fellow, a j'iner by trade. He lived in the
village. In the fall before they would have been married, in the spring,
he had typhoid fever, and they sent for Samanthy. She went and took care
of him three weeks, and then he died. She came home, and seemed like one
in a maze. After a little while she was took with the fever, and liked
to died, and my two girls, Margaret and Frances, both had it and died
with it. Samanthy has never been the same since she got well. Her health
has been good, but her mind is weak." I had noticed that Mrs. Wetherell
seemed very much broken in health and spirits, and after hearing this
story I did not wonder that the blows of Providence had weakened her
hold on life.
Samanthy was very shy of me at first, but after a few days she would
talk in her disjointed way with me.
One morning I was out in the well-house. The well was very deep, and by
leaning over the curb, and by putting one's arms around one's head, one
could see the stars mirrored in the bottom of the dark old well.
Samanthy came out for some water, while I was star-gazing in this way.
She said: "What you lost?"
"O, nothing. I am only looking at the stars."
Samanthy looked as if she thought I might be more profitably engaged. I
took hold of the handle of the windlass, swung off the great oaken
bucket, and watched it descend its often-traveled course, bumping
against the wet, slippery rocks with which the well was stoned.
Samanthy said: "You can't pull that up; it's heavy."
"Let me try," I said. "I never drew water with a windlass."
I had a much harder task than I supposed, but succeeded in swinging the
bucket onto the platform of the curb, and turned the water into
Samanthy's pail. I never asked permission to draw another bucketful.
I noticed below the well a large mound, grass-grown, with an apple-tree
growing on its very top. I wondered how it came there, and one day asked
Mr. Wetherell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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