When Grandmamma Was New: The Story of a Virginia Childhood

BOSTON LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY Copyright, 1899, BY LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY. THIRD THOUSAND Norwood Press J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
It was Fritz who said it first, and when he was three years younger than he is now.
Somebody asked him what sort of stories he liked best. No doubt he ought to have said Bible Stories, such as his mother tells on Sunday afternoons, and which he does love dearly. But he spoke out what he really thought and felt at the time of asking, and said, I like, best of all, to hear about what happened when Grandmamma was New.
The phrase tickled my fancy, and, thenceforward, I would have no other title for the sight-draughts made by the boys upon my bank of memory. When these vouchers grew into a volume, no name would serve my turn except the mot de famille set in circulation by the quaint five-year-old.
My laddies are well trained. (Good children run in the family.) I record, pridefully, that the sunny head of the least of the band has never drooped drowsily while the tale went on, and that his chirp was distinct in the general plea for, More—to-morrow night? with which the conclave brought up at the call to prayers and to pillows. This has not so far flattered me out of my sober senses as to beget a hope that my reminiscences will find such loving interest and attention so rapt in the larger audience outlying our doors. Yet I dare believe that other grandparents will read and other children will listen to the real happenings of the Long Time Ago when this Grandmamma was New.
MARION HARLAND.
Sunnybank, May, 1899.

UST look at her now, Molly! Isn't she the sweetest thing you ever saw?
Molly, that is, Myself, sitting on the door-step, elbows on knees and shoulders hunched sullenly up to my ears, did not budge or speak.
Before my gloomy eyes was the kitchen yard, a gray and gritty expanse, with never a tree or bush to shade it except the lilac hedge bounding it on the garden side, and one sickly peach tree growing at the corner of the house. Three hens and one rooster were scratching about the flat stone at the kitchen door.