We saw the men march to dinner; saw their coarse fare, and peered into their bare cells; and a great pity rose within me for their blighted lives. To this day the sight of “Copper John”—the statue we see on the top of the prison, on driving in to Auburn—awakens the recollection of the painful emotions born that day when I first learned how hard the way of the transgressor really is.
About the only plays I ever saw, until I went away from home, were “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and “Ten Nights in a Bar Room,” played in our home town, and “East Lynne” in Syracuse. These were my only preparation for the appreciation and understanding of Booth’s “Hamlet,” which I saw my first year in Boston.
A mere child when “Uncle Tom” came to town, and too moved to do anything but cry openly, I was unmercifully tormented the next day at school by the older girls who, having witnessed my humiliation of the night before, jeered at and mimicked me. Curiously enough, many years later, while visiting in Worcester, Massachusetts, I encountered the star of this performance at close quarters: I was taken ill while there, and the landlady of my hostess was the “Topsy” of my early remembrance. When she learned that I had seen her as “Topsy,” she doubled her offices in my behalf: there was a distinct improvement in my toast and gruel, although her housekeeping was almost as “shifless” as “Aunt Ophelia” had complained of years before.
My first experience with remorse came when I was quite a little girl, on learning of the death of a schoolmate: One of the older girls, on seeing me weeping bitterly, looking at me coldly said, “Humph! you needn’t cry—you used to quarrel with her—you know you did.” As though I didn’t know it only too well! For years that girl’s twitting me of those irrevocable quarrels seemed the most unfeeling thing imaginable.
It was perhaps when I was sixteen that another schoolmate, going into a rapid decline, died of “consumption.” During that summer I went almost daily to brush her hair; she said I did not tangle it as others did. It was painful to see her wasting daily: that ominous cough, that sickly odour, and her pathetic hopefulness as her condition became more hopeless! But I had a strong sense of duty then. It was about the time, I suppose, that youthful altruism developed. Sometimes I would be so tired from work at home that I could hardly drag myself up the hill, and I dreaded the depressing environment. When she died they sent for me to dress her hair. She had requested it. That seemed more than I could do. (I have never been able to conquer my repugnance to touching a dead body.) But there was no way out of it. After the task was done, with which there was no one to help me except her brother, who was no help at all, I stayed and got supper for the invalid parents, and did other little things round the house, waiting for someone to come in who would stay the night. But no one came. I could not leave those helpless parents alone, so sent word home that I was going to stay, at the same time sending for a schoolmate to come and bear me company.
We had Louisa M. Alcott’s “Old-Fashioned Girl” to read, and proceeded to pass the night sitting up in the room next to the one where our dead schoolmate lay. The girl’s brother (the same who years before had bitten off the nose of my leatherhead doll), kept coming into the room and lamenting his sister’s death; then, going into the parlour, he would weep over the body, groaning and reproaching himself noisily for his past unkindness. The wildness of his grief, which came in paroxysms, was terrible. I pitied him, but it was a relief when he calmed down and went to bed.
Late in the evening the undertaker came and was alone in the parlour a long time. On coming out he asked who was going to stay over night. Lizzie and I told him we were. “But what grown person, I mean.” On learning that there was no one else, he scrutinized us a moment, then said to me, “If you will step in here, I will show you what I wish you to do.” Wondering, I followed him and learned that at midnight I was to remove the cloth from the face, moisten it in a solution, replace it, “taking care to press it well down on the eyes and around the nose and lips.” I have forgotten what else we had to do, but remember that I had to remove the folded hands from across the chest. (I did it by taking hold of the nightgown sleeves at the wrist. How startled I was at the spring the arms gave as I let go the sleeves!) He added that if I did it at midnight, and again at three or four o’clock in the morning, it would answer.
I have done much harder things since, but never remember undertaking anything that seemed more of an ordeal than that was then—our dead schoolmate, my shrinking at the feel of a corpse, the mere staying up in this remote house that night, no neighbours within call, we two girls, with the sick parents and the remorse-stricken brother—no one to give us moral support—small wonder that I quailed! But it had to be done.
My companion, less self-contained, and terrified on learning what was required, began to be hysterical. It was not easy to get her interested in the book, but we read on and on, taking turns through the long hours, our feverish excitement increasing as the dread hour approached. How loud the clock ticked! how every little sound about the house smote our ears! how furtively we kept glancing at the time, pretending not to be thinking of it! how our voices trembled! We both started in affright as the clock began to strike twelve! Lizzie held the lamp while I did as I had been instructed. Poor girls! They seem like someone else, not I and another. She trembled and nearly dropped the lamp; and when it was done, we almost ran from the room. It was no vulgar fear of the corpse; it was the general gruesomeness, our loneliness, and all that—the uncanny, tiny little mother, a mere skeleton; the Quilp-like father—everything added to our shuddering dread.
No sooner had we closed the creaking folding-doors and were back in the sitting-room than my companion, heaving a sigh of relief, said, “Now let’s go and have something to eat.” I could have screamed outright—“Eat now! after that experience!” My hands felt contaminated, even after repeated washings. I begged her to wait awhile. So Miss Alcott still diverted us till I felt I could go and eat. After that we grew cheerful, even hilarious, and then felt guilty for laughing in that house of mourning.