fowls and foliage alike moulted, shed the superfluous, when bracing October set the body in a glow, I alone of living things must be done up in flannel! And more,—did you ever try to draw on your stocking smoothly over a red flannel tumor at the ankle, and then attempt to button over the whole the shoe that fitted snugly enough over nothing at all? Did you ever tear off shoe and stocking, and, dancing red-legged and barefooted, cry out in frenzy that you would eschew breakfast and school, aliment and enlightenment, but never, never, never again would you wear footgear? Thus autumn. And spring, that season of vernal bourgeoning, was the time when I, too, like any other seedkin, slipped free of all stuffy incasings, and could sprout and spring in air and sun, clad in blessed, blessed muslin. I shall never forget the corroding bitterness induced by flannels. At times they absolutely reduced me to fisticuffs with my religion, so that filial piety, the ordaining of the seasons, and the very catechism itself, hung in the balance of the conflict. I believe I can hardly over-estimate the spiritual detriment done me by my flannels.
One incident of this, my first decade, I recall with mingled respect and envy:—
“It is not now as it hath been of yore.”
“Choose,” commanded my mother, “will you have a new dress this winter or St. Nicholas for next year?” I was stung at the implication that for such as me there could have been a doubt of the choice. St. Nicholas, of course! A magazine doth not wax old as doth a garment, and besides, is not reading more than raiment? Alas for the high intellectuality of eight years old! If the choice lay now between the dress and the book, would I hug the volume and walk among my fellows gladly shabby? I would not.
About at this same period we were visited by a family of strange little girls. There were three of them; they stayed three days, they changed their dresses three times a day, and they never wore the same dress twice. We regarded them as we might have regarded the fauna of Mars,—they were an utterly new thing. It was wonder at first, then pity, then wonder again, for we found that they liked it! Being little human animals even as we, they would rather be tricked out in fresh frocks than play tag! What were we going to wear that evening, they asked. Why, how in the world should we know? Something clean, of course. Our visitors’ bits of frocks were embroidered, beribboned, bevelveted in a manner simply incomprehensible. What in the world happened when they got dirty? That visit filled me with prophetic misgivings; some day I should have to wear stuff goods. In-a vision I saw the great gulf that separates the grown-up who cannot be put through the wash-tub from the child who can. Horror of the unwashable! “Shades of the prison-house,”—Oh, no!
Just here the retrospect reaches the place where the road turned; I do not say, forked, for it was not a question of alternatives; I was a woman-child, and I had to keep on in the only way. Hitherto my clothes had been as much or as little myself as the down of the chick, or the fur of the rabbit. Providence and my parents had provided my apparel without the faintest solicitude on my part, leaving me free to attend to my body and soul. This could not long endure. It is the era of Mother Hubbards that bridges together the old time and the new. The Mother Hubbard was so noteworthy, so startling, in fact, after the trimness to which we were accustomed, this
“Robe ungirt from clasp to hem.”
It swayed with a truly Hellenic undulation like the pictures in the mythology. I first admired, then coveted, then teased my mother into making me one. It was finished just after dinner, and though it was yet early for dressing, I put it on, and turned out upon the street, which, to my disappointment, was empty of children. There I strutted, and swelled, and waited
