Loom and spindle

by Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson

Some of these schools were devoted to special studies. I went to a geography school, where the lessons were repeated in unison in a monotonous sing-song tone, like this: “Lake Winnipeg! Lake Winnipeg! Lake Titicaca! Lake Titicaca! Memphremagog! Memphremagog!” and also to a school where those who fancied they had thoughts were taught by Newman’s Rhetoric to express them in writing. In this school, the relative position of the subject and the predicate was not always well taught by the master; but never to mix a metaphor or to confuse a simile was a lesson he firmly fixed in the minds of his pupils.

As a result of this particular training, I may say here, that, while I do not often mix metaphors, I am to this day almost as ignorant of what is called “grammar” as Dean Swift, who, when he went up to answer for his degree, said he “could not tell a subject from a predicate;” or even James Whitcomb Riley, who said he “would not know a nominative if he should meet it on the street.”

The best practical lesson in the proper use of at least one grammatical sentence was given to me by my elder brother (not two years older than I) one day, when I said, “I done it.” “You done it!” said he, taking me by the shoulder and looking me severely in the face; “Don’t you ever let me hear you say I done it again, unless you can use have or had before it.” I also went to singing-school, and became a member of the church choir, and in this way learned many beautiful hymns that made a lasting impression on the serious part of my nature.

The discipline our work brought us was of great value. We were obliged to be in the mill at just such a minute, in every hour, in order to doff our full bobbins and replace them with empty ones. We went to our meals and returned at the same hour every day. We worked and played at regular intervals, and thus our hands became deft, our fingers nimble, our feet swift, and we were taught daily habits of regularity and of industry; it was, in fact, a sort of manual training or industrial school.

Some of us were fond of reading, and we read all the books we could borrow. One of my mother’s boarders, a farmer’s daughter from “the State of Maine,” had come to Lowell to work, for the express purpose of getting books, usually novels, to read, that she could not find in her native place. She read from two to four volumes a week; and we children used to get them from the circulating library, and return them, for her. In exchange for this, she allowed us to read her books, while she was at work in the mill; and what a scurrying there used to be home from school, to get the first chance at the new book!

It was as good as a fortune to us, and all for six and a quarter cents a week! In this way I read the novels of Richardson, Madame D’Arblay, Fielding, Smollett, Cooper, Scott, Captain Marryatt, and many another old book not included in Mr. Ruskin’s list of “one hundred good books.” Passing through the alembic of a child’s pure mind, I am not now conscious that the reading of the doubtful ones did me any lasting harm. But I should add that I do not advise such indiscriminate reading among young people, and there is no need of it, since now there are so many good books, easy of access, which have not the faults of those I was obliged to read. Then, there was no choice. To-day, the best of reading, for children and young people, can be found everywhere.

“Lalla Rookh” was the first poem I ever read, and it awoke in me, not only a love of poetry, but also a desire to try my own hand at verse-making.

And so the process of education went on, and I, with many another “little doffer,” had more than one chance to nibble at the root of knowledge. I had been to school for three months in each year, until I was about thirteen years old, when my mother, who was now a little better able to do without my earnings, sent me to the Lowell High School regularly for two years, adding her constant injunction, “Improve your mind, try and be somebody.” There I was taught a little of everything, including French and Latin; and I may say here that my “little learning,” in French at least, proved “a dangerous thing,” as I had reason to know some years later, when I tried to speak my book-French in Paris, for it might as well have been Choctaw, when used as a means of oral communication with the natives of that fascinating city.

The Lowell high school, in about 1840, was kept in a wooden building over a butcher’s shop, but soon afterwards the new high school, still in use, was provided, and it was co-educational. How well I remember some of the boys and girls, and I recall them with pleasure if not with affection. I could name them now, and have noted with pride their success in life. A few are so high above the rest that one would be surprised to know that they received the principal part of their school education in that little high school room over the butcher’s shop.

I left the high school when fifteen years of age, my school education completed; though after that I took private lessons in German, drawing, and dancing! About this time my elder brother and I made up our minds that our mother had worked hard long enough, and we prevailed on her to give up keeping boarders. This she did, and while she remained in Lowell we supported the home by our earnings. I was obliged to have my breakfast before daylight in the winter. My mother prepared it over night, and while I was cooking and eating it I read such books as Stevens’s “Travels” in Yucatan and in Mexico, Tasso’s “Jerusalem Delivered,” and “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.” My elder brother was the clerk in the counting-room of the Tremont Corporation, and the agent, Mr. Charles L. Tilden,—whom I thank, wherever he may be,—allowed him to carry home at night, or over Sunday, any book that might be left on his (the agent’s) desk; by this means I read many a beloved volume of poetry, late into the night and on Sunday. Longfellow, in particular, I learned almost by heart, and so retentive is the young memory that I can repeat, even now, whole poems.