Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Yes. Spring was coming; the little blue herald was right, though he must have chilled his beak and frozen his toes as he sat there. But he came from the great Somewhere, where things are always bright; where life and summer and warmth and flowers are forever going on while we are bound down under ice and snow.

There was a thrill in the hearts of all the children that day, with visions of coming violets, hepaticas and anemones, of green grass and long bright sunny rambles by the side of the Poganuc river.

The boys were so premature in hope as to get out their store of fish-hooks, and talk of trouting. The Doctor looked over his box of garden seeds, and read the labels. "Early Lettuce," "Early Cucumbers," "Summer Squashes"—all this was inspiring reading, and seemed to help him to have faith that a garden was coming round again, though the snow banks yet lay over the garden-spot deep and high. All day long it thawed and melted; a warm south wind blew and the icicles dripped, so that there was a continual patter.

Two circumstances of importance in Dolly's horoscope combined on this happy day: Hiel invited Nabby to an evening sleigh-ride after supper, and Mrs. Davenport invited her father and mother to a tea-drinking at the same time.

Notwithstanding her stout words about Hiel, Nabby in the most brazen and decided manner declared her intention to accept his invitation, because (as she remarked) "Hiel had just bought a bran new sleigh, and Almiry Smith had said publicly that she was going to have the first ride in that air sleigh, and she would like to show Almiry that she didn't know every thing." Nabby had inherited from her father a fair share of combativeness, which was always bubbling and boiling within her comely person at the very idea of imaginary wrongs; and, as she excitedly wiped her tea-cups, she went on:

"That air Almiry Smith is a stuck-up thing; always turning up her nose at me, and talking about my being a hired gal. What's the difference? I live out and work, and she stays to home and works. I work for the minister's folks and get my dollar a week, and she works for her father and don't git nothin' but just her board and her keep. So, I don't see why she need take airs over me—and she sha'n't do it!"

But there was a tranquilizing influence breathing over Nabby's soul, and she soon blew off the little stock of spleen and invited Dolly into her bed-room to look at her new Leghorn bonnet, just home from Miss Hinsdale's milliner-shop, which she declared was too sweet for anything.

Now, Leghorn bonnets were a newly-imported test of station, grandeur and gentility in Poganuc. Up to this period the belles of New England had worn braided straw, abundantly pretty, and often braided by the fair fingers of the wearers themselves, while they studied their lessons or read the last novel or poem.

But this year Miss Hetty Davenport, and Miss Ellen Dennie, and the blooming daughters of the governor, and the fair Maria Gridley had all illuminated their respective pews in the meeting-house with Leghorn flats—large and fine of braid, and tremulous with the delicacy of their fiber. Similar wonders appeared on the heads of the juvenile aristocracy of the Episcopal church; and the effect was immediate.

Straw bonnets were "no where." To have a Leghorn was the thing; and Miss Hinsdale imported those of many qualities and prices, to suit customers. Nabby's was not of so fine a braid as that of the governor's daughters; still it was a real Leghorn hat, and her soul was satisfied. She wanted a female bosom to sympathize with her in this joy, and Dolly was the chosen one.