It was my delight the moment school hours were over and the ceremony of dinner despatched—for the habits of the stately old English home, and the late dinners with their successive courses of fish, flesh, and fowl, were as rigidly preserved through all the changes and chances of founding a home in the wilderness as they had been under more favorable circumstances—to mount the stairs with “Auntie Francke,” now much past eighty, but as sprightly as myself, and while my companions, the daughters of the house, were indulging in a wild game of romps outside, draw my little arm-chair—she had a half-dozen of them provided for the small members of the household—to her side in the corner of the cheerful wood fireplace, and listen to her stories of other times.
As I have said, she was then past eighty, but the certainties of a position which placed her out of the reach of such cares and anxieties as surround ordinary lives, united with a serene temperament alive to all tender sympathies, had preserved the youth of her heart to atone for the ravages of time and adorn the decaying shrine with undying verdure and sweetness.
After the lapse of more than fifty years, how well do I remember the graceful attitudes of the erect form, the carefully-adjusted drapery of her rich, old-time costume, and, above all, the loving gleam of her mild black eye as it rested upon me at such times! The maternal instinct of her affectionate heart, never having found its proper object in offspring of her own, overflowed towards all the young within her reach, and her room was a perfect museum of winking and crying dolls, strange puzzles, dissected
pictures, flocks of magnetized ducks and geese, with miniature ponds wherein to exercise them by aid of a steel pencil—of all wonderful toys, in short, which she procured on her annual trips to Philadelphia, and was wont to set as traps to catch the little folk she so dearly loved. Her waiting-woman was an apt assistant in pursuit of such small game; and it has often been a wonder to me since how, with their precise, methodical ways and exquisitely tidy, punctilious habits, they could endure much less enjoy, the dire confusion and anarchy which resulted from these captures.
For my own part, I was by nature a quiet, reserved child. Though I could join tolerably well in a wild frolic, I preferred the chimney-corner and a story, for which I was a most persistent beggar when there was any chance of success. From my earliest childhood stories relating to history, and especially to the history of our own country, enthralled me beyond all others. This fancy had been fed by constant association in my own home with grandparents who had borne an active part in the scenes of the Revolution. They entertained many old friends whose memories were also stored with incidents and anecdotes of that period. Thus their interest was kept alive and their conversation constantly directed to the political and social events of those days, which opened the mind of their eager young listener, almost prematurely, to subjects of grave import quite beyond what would seem natural or appropriate for one of tender years.
What a treasure, then, was “Auntie Francke” to me when I was taken from my quiet home in the
woods, and left a trembling, homesick little stranger—much less as to size, indeed, than in age—under the hospitable roof of these dear friends of my mother in former years! On the score of that friendship I was received there to attend the village school with the daughters of the family, all older than myself. Mrs. von Francke’s room became at once my solace and delight, and even the Tales of the Arabian Nights melted into utter insipidity before the wondrous sketches she could give of “the times that tried men’s souls.” For she had entertained daily at her home in Philadelphia, as familiar friends, General Washington, Pulaski, De Kalb, Rochambeau, La Fayette, De Grasse—all the foreign worthies, in short, together with a host of our own countrymen whose names will be household words as long as our nation exists. Her husband was brought into constant intercourse with such men by virtue of his occupation, and his inclination led him to extend to them most freely the hospitalities of his home.
When my companions would break into my chosen hiding-place in search of me, and find me the fascinated listener of their aged relative, they would warn her to beware what yarns she spun for my amusement; “for,” they said, “she will surely write them down and keep the record. If you could see what she puts upon her slate in school that has no relation to the horrors of arithmetic, you would believe she is to be of the unhappy number who take such notes!”
Whether acting upon the hint or no, I did indeed, when pondering in my own little nest of a room over what I had heard, jot down from time to time many scraps in
the words of my kind old friend, from portions of which the following sketch is gathered.