ISS EASTMAN, the pretty drawing-teacher at the academy, boards in our family. Some time ago she chanced to take up an old, faded daguerrotype-likeness of my grandmother. She proposed copying it; and a lovely picture in crayon, of Ralph's great-grandmother, is the result.
My grandmother was ninety years old when the likeness was taken; yet she appears in it erect and vigorous, sitting in her high-backed chair, with her knitting-work in her hand. She wears a snug cap, and a plain Quaker kerchief folded smoothly over her black silk dress.
Naturally we have talked much about her; and my boys, Ralph and Fred, who have a happy faculty for drawing me out, have well-nigh exhausted all my memories of their great-grandmother.
"Can't you think of something else about her?" Fred pleaded, a few nights ago when, tired of his books and games, he had seated himself comfortably before the fire.
"Yes," I replied, "I have been thinking of another story as I sit here knitting. It is about going to Southampton on a canal-boat."
"Oh, that's splendid, I know!" said both boys in a breath. "Hurry up, and count your stitches quick, mamma."
I paused a moment to knit to the seam-needle, and then began:—
"My father and mother lived in Westfield, on the banks of the New-Haven and Northampton Canal. My grandmother lived in Southampton, the town next north of ours. She, too, lived near the canal. We children used to think that the trip we often took from our house to hers was like a journey through fairy-land.
"The first time I ever went out from under my mother's wing was with my grandmother, who took me from home with her one bright June day. I was a little sober on parting with my mother; but the negro cook, on board the boat a fat, jolly-looking woman, took me under her special care.
"I went down in her cabin, and she gave me cookies and great puffy doughnuts, and a pink stick of candy, and I watched her while she cleaned the lamps."