Why do I single out that particular engraving for a place in these reminiscences?
It graced the first page of the November number of Godey’s Lady’s Book. The evening was wild with wind and blustering rain, the fire roaring defiance as the loosely fitting sashes rattled and the showers lashed the panes. There were five of us girls, and each had some bit of handiwork. To sit idle while the reading went on was almost a misdemeanor.
Dorinda Moody, Virginia Lee Patterson, Musidora Owen, Mea, and myself were classmates and cronies. My mother was reader that evening, and as she opened the magazine at the frontispiece, Virginia Patterson and I called out:
“Why, that is a picture of Miss Wilson!”
We all leaned over the stand to look at the engraving, which my mother held up to general view.
“It is like her!” she assented.
The young lady across the table blushed brightly in uttering a laughing disclaimer, and my mother proceeded to explain the extreme improbability of our hypothesis. Then she read the story, which, to the other girls, settled the matter. It was called “Our Keziah,” and began by telling that the title of the portrait was a misnomer. It was no “fancy sketch,” but a likeness of “Our Keziah.”
Silenced but not convinced, I restrained the impulse to tell my mates that stories might be made out of nothing. I knew it, and so did my only confidante, the handsome governess from Massachusetts, who had been installed in our school-room since June.
Mr. Tayloe had gone back to the theological factory to prosecute the studies that were to fit him to proclaim the gospel of love and peace. On the last day of the session he had preached us a short sermon, seated in his chair at the head of the room, twirling the seal dangling from his watch-chain; his legs crossed, the left hand tucked between them; his brows drawn together in the ugly horseshoe we knew well and dreaded much.
He must have descanted darkly upon the transitoriness of earthly joys and the hard road to heaven, for every girl in school was in tears except Mea and myself.