Ma’am Price came to Portland from one of the West India Islands. She was a woman of culture, but very decided and strict in school discipline. If a boy refused to hold his head up, she fastened a fork under his chin. No trifling with her.
Some years after this she was obliged to suspend her school on account of an alarm of smallpox. A number of her scholars, among whom were my mother and uncles, were inoculated with smallpox virus, put in a pesthouse, and Ma’am Price, in whose experience and judgment the parents reposed the greatest confidence, employed to take care of them.
It was customary, before the discovery of Jenner, to inoculate with smallpox matter; but the patients being first put under a strict régime and properly and seasonably cared for, the disorder was not much more severe than varioloid. It was seldom that a patient died or was even pitted.
These young persons had been long kept on water gruel and were convalescent, when Hugh McLellan, by aid of friends outside, procured two lobsters. The whole company were around the table about to partake, when Ma’am Price made her appearance, and forbade them to take a mouthful, saying it would kill them. They were, however, resolved to eat, live or die. When unable to prevent them, for the boys were large, she took out her box that was filled full of yellow Scotch snuff, strewed it over the fish, and stirred it in with a spoon. Though provoked enough at the moment, they cherished no ill-will against her; at least I think not, when I recollect the number of presents the boys and girls, whose parents were Ma’am Price’s scholars, used to carry to Turkey Lane.
The good lady’s house was a great resort for captains of vessels, with whom her husband had been acquainted in the West Indies, and who brought her a great many presents,—fruit, shells, coral, eyestones, and vanilla beans. People who got anything in the eye would go to her to have an eyestone put in, and the old ladies went there for sweet-scented beans to put in their snuff-boxes.
We were everlastingly teasing to carry some present to Ma’am Price, and we found our account in so doing. She would put the eyestones in a saucer and pour in vinegar, when they would crawl all over the saucer. She would show us old pictures, needlework, and beautiful shells, and tell us stories about the West Indies and the pirates. And always when we carried a present, she gave us tamarind or guava jelly, or some West India fruit.
There was one fellow who thought—though doubtless it was just his silly notion—that the boy who carried the most acceptable present received the largest share of sweetmeats. So one time when he was going to the good woman’s with several other boys, and all he had to carry was a plate of doughnuts, while one of the others had a fifteen-pound turkey, he told that boy if he would present the doughnuts and let him present the turkey, he would give him two flounder hooks and a gray squirrel; thus they swapped. We all thought the other boy rather regretted it when going home, but he regretted it a good deal more about a week after when Ma’am Price came to call on their respective mothers and thanked his mother for “the nice plate of doughnuts” she sent her. Ma’am Price was very punctual and particular in returning her acknowledgments, and she did it like Britannia stooping to conquer.
I am now going to tell the most wonderful thing that ever happened to this excellent woman. One forenoon during recess she went into her little garden, picked a mess of beans in her apron, sat down in the schoolroom to shell them, and shelled out three diamonds. What a talk it did make! People came from all the towns round to hear the story and look at “the diamonds that grew in a bean pod.”
I hear some boy say, “That never could be; diamonds couldn’t grow in a bean pod.” I have quoted that as town talk, and Ma’am Price and Polly always thought they grew there. I believe, moreover, that she shelled them out of a bean pod; I shall stick to that. It’s not the least use for you to tell me she didn’t. Mrs. Commodore Preble saw her with her own eyes shell them out, and so did Mrs. Matthew Cobb who lived in the cottage on the eastern corner of High and Free streets. My mother said she did, and Mrs. James Deering said so too. Now, then, that’s not all. The very day before the old lady died Miss Sarah Jewett said to her: “Ma’am Price, did you truly shell those diamonds out of a bean pod? Hadn’t the pod been opened, or was it solid together like the other pods?”