"My name is George Hammond."
"Well, as I was telling you, you're welcome here to-night, and I don't know as I've anything against your settling over the river on Burgess's land. The people round here have been telling me your coming will be a good thing for us farmers, because you'll bring us a market for our corn and potatoes; but I don't see no use of raising more corn than we want for ourselves. We have enough selling to do with our lumber, and you'll be thinning out the trees.—But there's my old woman's got her supper ready."
I listened as I waited on the table. The talk varied from farming to mining and the state of the river, merging at last into the politics of the country, and through the whole of it I watched the stranger: noticed how different was his language from anything I had ever heard before; marked the clear tones of his voice and the distinctness of his utterance, contrasting with the heavy, thick gutturals, the running of words into each other, the slovenly drawl of my father and his men; watched his manner of eating, his neat disposition of his food on his plate; saw him move his chair back with a slight expression of annoyance, unmarked by any one else, as Will Foushee spit on the floor beside him. All this I observed, in a mood half envious, half sullen,—a mood which pursued me that night into my little attic, as I peevishly questioned with myself wherein lay the difference between us.
"Why is this man any better than Will Foushee or Ned Burgess? He is no stronger nor better able to do a day's work. Why am I afraid of him, when I don't care an acorn for the others? Why do my father and the men listen to him and crowd round him? What makes him stand among them as if he did not belong to them, even when he talks of what they know better than he? There is not a man round Sandy that could make me feel as ashamed as that gentleman did when he spoke to me this afternoon. Is it because he is a gentleman?" And sullenly I resolved that I would be put down by no airs. I was as good as he, and would show him to-morrow morning that I felt so. Then came the bitter acknowledgment, "I am not as good as he is. I am a stupid, ugly girl, who knows nothing but hateful housework and a little of the fields and trees; and he,—I suppose he has been to school, and read plenty of books, and lived among quality." And I cried myself to sleep before I had made up my mind fully to acknowledge his superiority.
It was one of my greatest pleasures to get up early. Our people were not early risers, except when work pressed upon them, and I often secured my only leisure hour for the day by stealing down the staircase, out into the woods, by early sunrise, when, wrapped in an old shawl, and sheltered from the dew by climbing into the lower branches of my pet maple, I would watch the fog reaching up the opposite hills, putting forth as it were an arm, by which, stretched far out over the trees, it seemed to lift itself from the valley,—or perhaps carrying with me one of the few books which made my library, I would spell out the sentences and attempt to extract their meaning.
They were a strange medley, my books: some belonging to my step-mother, and others borrowed or begged from the neighbors, or brought to me by the men, with whom I was a favorite, and who knew my passion for reading. My mother's books were mostly religious: a life of Brainerd, the missionary, whose adventures roused within me a gleam of religious enthusiasm; some sermons of the leading Methodist clergy, which, to her horror, I pronounced stupid; and a torn copy of the "Imitation of Christ," a book which she threatened to take from me, because she believed it had something to do with the Papists, but to which, for that very reason, I clung with a tenacity and read with an earnestness which brought at last its own beautiful fruits. Then, there was the "Scottish Chiefs," a treasure-house of delight to me,—two or three trashy novels, given me by Tom Salyers, of which my mother knew nothing,—and (the only poetry I had ever seen) a song-book, which had, scattered among its vulgarisms and puerilities, some gems of Burns and Moore. These my natural, unvitiated taste had singled out, and I would croon them over to myself, set them to a tune of my own composing, and half sing, half chant them, when at work out-of-doors, till my mother declared I was going crazy.
This morning I did not read. I sat looking down into the water from my perch, carrying on the inward discussion of the night before, and wishing that breakfast-time were come, that I might try my strength and show that I was not to be put down by any assumption of superiority, when suddenly a voice near me made me start so that I almost lost my balance. Mr. Hammond was standing beneath. He laughed, and held out his hand to help me down; but I sprang past him and was on my way to the house, when suddenly my brave resolutions came back to my mind, and I stood still with a feeling of defiance. I wondered what he would dare to say. Would he tell me how stupid he thought us all, how like the very pigs we lived? or would he describe his own grand house and the great places he had seen? I scowled up sullenly.
"Will you tell me where to find a towel, that I may wash my face here by the river-side?"
I laughed aloud, and with that laugh fled my sullenness. He looked a little puzzled, but went on,—
"I went to bed so early that I cannot sleep any longer; and if I could only find some way of getting across the river, I could get things under way a little before my men come up."