"Who'd a thought on't, Mas'r Louis, me, an old nigger slave, up heah in de Norf layin' up money."
Ben had a saw-mill now of his own, and was an honest and thrifty young man. Many new houses had been built in our midst, and with them came of course new people and their needs.
We had, up to this time, heard often from our Southern Mary, and her letters grew stronger, telling us how noble a womanhood had crowned her life, and the latter part of 1851 she wrote us of a true marriage with one who loved her dearly. Her gifts to Mrs. Goodwin had been munificent, and well appreciated by this good woman. We hoped some time to see her in the North. She had never lost sight of Mr. Benton, and he still lived with his wife and boys. This delighted the heart of Mary, and I grew to think of him as one who perhaps had been refined through the fire of suffering, which I secretly hoped had done its work so well that he would not need, as Matthias thought Mas'r Sumner would, "dat eternal fire."
CHAPTER XX.
LIFE PICTURES AND LIFE WORK.
The pictures Louis painted were not on canvas, but living, breathing entities, and my heart rejoiced as the years rolled over us that the brush he wielded with such consummate skill was touched also by my hand; that it had been able to verify Clara's "Emily will do it," and that now in the days that came I heard her say "Louis and Emily are doing great good." I think nothing is really pleasure as compared with the blessedness of benefitting others.
My experience in my earliest years had taught me to believe gold could buy all we desired, but after Clara came to us and one by one the burden of daily planning to do much with very little fell out of our lives, and the feeling came to us that we had before us a wider path, with more privileges than we had ever before known, I found the truth under it all, that the want of a dollar is not the greatest one in life, neither the work and struggle "to make both ends meet," as we said, the hardest to enforce.
It was good to know my parents were now free from petty anxieties, that no unsettled bills hung over my father's head like threatening clouds, and that my mother could, if she would, take more time; to herself. Indeed she was forced to be less busy with hard work, for Aunt Hildy worked with power and reigned supreme here, and I helped her in every way. It was the help that came in these ways, I firmly believed, that saved mother's life and kept her with us. This was a great comfort, but none of us could say our desires ended here.
No, as soon as the vexed question of how to live had settled itself, then within our minds rose the great need of enlarged understanding. Millions of dollars could not have rendered me happy when my mind was clouded, and now it seemed to me, while strength lasted, no work, however hard it might be, could deprive me of the happiness and love that filled my heart. I loved to read and think, and I loved to work also.