We behold a child eight or ten months old; it has brown,
curly hair, dark eyes, fair conditioned features, a health-glowing
cheek, and well-shaped limbs. Who is it? Whose
is it? what is it? where is it? It is in the centre of fantastic
light, and only a dimly-revealed form appears. It may
be Queen Victoria's or Sally Twig's. It is God's own child,
as all children are. The blood of Adam and Eve, through
how many soever channels diverging, runs in its veins, and
the spirit of the Eternal, that blows everywhere, has animated
its soul. It opens its eyes upon us, stretches out its hands to
us, as all children do. Can you love it? It may be the heir
of a throne, does it interest you; or of a milking stool, do
not despise it. It is a miracle of the All-working, it is endowed
by the All-gifted. Smile upon it, and it will smile you
back again; prick it, and it will cry. Where does it belong?
in what zone or climate? on what hill? in what plain? It
may have been born on the Thames or the Amazon, the
Hoan Ho or the Mississippi.

The vision deepens. Green grass appears beneath the
child. It may, after all, be Queen Victoria's in Windsor
Park, or Sally Twig's on Little Pucker Island. The sun
now shines upon it, a blue sky breaks over it, and the wind
rustles its hair. Sun, sky, and wind are common to Arctic
and Antartic regions, and belong to each of the three hundred
and sixty terrestrial divisions. A black-cap is seen to
fly over it; and this bird is said by naturalists to be found in

[figure description] Page 004.[end figure description]

every part of the globe. A dog, or the whelp of a dog, a
young pup, crouches near it, makes a caracol backwards,
frisks away, and returns again. The child is pleased, throws
out its arms, and laughs right merrily.

As we now look at the child, we can hardly tell to which
of the five races it belongs; whether it be a Caucasian,
Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, or Malay. Each child on
this terraqueous ball, whether its nose be aquiline, its eyes
black and small, its cheek-bones prominent, its lips large, or
its head narrow; whether its hue be white, olive, or jet, is of
God's creating, and is delighted with the bright summer light,
a bed of grass, the wind, birds, and puppies; and smiles in
the eyes of all beholders. It is God's child still, and its
mother's. It is curiously and wonderfully made; the inspiration
of the Almighty hath given it understanding. It will
look after God, its Maker, by how many soever names he
may be called; it will aspire to the Infinite, whether that
Infinite be expressed in Bengalee or Arabic, English or Chinese;
it will seek to know truth; it will long to be loved; it
will sin and be miserable, if it has none to care for it; it
will die. Let us give it to Queen Victoria. “No,” says
Sally Twig, “it is mine.” “No,” says the Empress Isabella,
“it is destined to the crown of Castile.” “Not so shure
of that, me hearty, it is Teddy O'Rourke's own Phelim.”
“Nay,” says a Tahitian, “I left it playing under the palmtrees.”
“What presumption!” exclaims Mrs. Morris, “it
is our Frances Maria, whom the servant has taken to the
Common.” “I just bore it in my own arms through the
cypresses,” says Osceola.

It seems to be in pain. “Mein Gott! gehet eilend hin.”
“Poor Frances Maria!” “Paneeweh htouwenaunuh neenmaumtehkeh!”
“Per amor del Cielo!” “Jesus mind
Teddy's Phelim.” “O Nhaw nddg erm devishd!” “Wæ
sucks! my wee bonny wean, she'll die while ye are bletherin
here.” “Bismillahi!” “Ma chere enfante!” “Alohi, Alohi!”
“Ora pro nobis!” “None of your whidds, dub the
giggle, and take the bantling up.” “Eatooaa!” What a
babel of exclamations! What manifold articulations of affection!
But hold, good friends, may be the child does not
belong to you.

The scene advances. Two hands are seen thrust down
towards it, and now it smiles again. Near by discovers itself
a peach tree. Where does that belong? Not like the blackcap
everywhere. In the grass shows the yellow disk of a

[figure description] Page 005.[end figure description]

dandelion; the skin of the child settles into a Caucasian
whiteness, and its fat fingers are making for the flower. Be
not disappointed, my friends, your children still live and
smile; let this one live and smile too. Go, Mongolian,
Ethiopian, American, or Malay, and take your child in your
arms, and it will remind you of this, since they are all so
much alike.

Now the child crawls towards the peach tree. Those two
hands, that may belong to its brother, set the child on its feet
by the side of the tree, as it were measuring their heights,
which are found to be the same. Yellow and brown chickens
appear on the grass, and run under the low mallows and
smart-weed. A sheet of water is seen in the distance, spotted
with green islands. Forest trees burst forth in the rim of
the picture — butternuts, beeches, maples, pines. A soberfaced
boy, seven or eight years old, to whom the two hands
are seen to belong, sits down, and with a fife pipes to the
child, who manifests strong joy at the sound. A man in a
three-cornered hat and wig, with nankeen small-clothes, and
paste buckles, takes the child in his arms. Where is the
child? A log cabin appears; a woman in a blue striped
long-short and yellow skirt, comes to the door. An Anglo-Saxon
voice is heard. If you were to look into the cabin or
house, you would discover a loom and spinning-wheels, and
behind it, a larger boy making shingles, and somewhere
about a jolly-faced man drinking rum. The woman, addressing
the first boy as Chilion, tells him to bring the child
into the house.

This child we will inform you is Margaret, of whom we
have many things to say, and hope to reveal more perfectly to
you. She is in the town of Livingston, in that section of the
United States of America known as New England. And
yet, so far as this book is concerned, she is for you all as
much as if she were your own child, and if you cared anything
about her when you did not know her, we desire that your
regards may not abate, when you do know her, even if she
be not your own child; and we dedicate this memoir of her
to All who are interested in her, and care to read about her.
In the meantime, if you are willing, we will lose sight of her
for seven or eight years, and present her in a more tangible
form, as she appeared at the end of that period.

[figure description] Page 006.[end figure description]

Returning, they came to the greensward in front of the
house, where was a peach tree.

“I remeber,” said her brother, “when you and that
were of the same size, now it shades you. It is just as old
as you are. How full of fruit it is.”

“Beautiful peaches they are too,” said Margaret, “when
they are ripe. How did it grow?”

“I put a peach-stone in the ground one winter,” replied
her brother, “and it sprouted in the spring.”

“I was an acorn once,” rejoined she, “so Obed says, and
why did'nt I grow up an oak-tree?”

A dog bounding towards them interrupted the conversation.
This animal had enormous proportions, and looked
like a cross of wolf and mastiff; his color was a brindled
black, his head was like the ideas we have of Cerberus, his
legs were thick and strong, and he was called Bull. Following
the dog, approached the jolly-faced father of Margaret
from the barn, where he had been swingling flax; his hat,
face, and clothes were covered and strung with tow and
whitish down, but you could see him laugh through the veil;
and the glow of his red face would make you laugh. He
caught Margaret and set her on the dog, who galloped away
with his load. They encountered her older brother coming
in from the woods, where he had been burning a piece; his
frock crusted with ashes, his face smirched with coals. He
spoke tartly to Margaret, and contrived to trip the dog as he
ran by, and throw his sister to the ground.

“Oh, don't do so,” said she.

“Let Bull alone,” he replied, speaking in a blubbering
washy manner, which we cannot imitate. “You'll spile him;
would you make a goslin of him? Here's your sticks right
in the track;” saying which he scattered with his foot a little
paling she had constructed about a dandelion. She must
needs cry; the dog went to her, looked in her eyes, lapped
her tears, and she put her arms about his neck. Her brother,
who seemed to be a kind of major domo in the family,
whistled the dog away, and ordered his sister into the house
to help her mother. Her father and older brother wore
checked shirts, and a sort of brown tow trowsers known at
the time — these things happened some years ago — as skilts;
they were short, reaching just below the knee, and very large,
being a full half yard broad at the bottom; supported by no
braces or gallows, and resting on the hips. Neither wore any
coat, vest, or neckcloth. Her father had on what was once a

[figure description] Page 007.[end figure description]

“I can't stop to hear you now,” replied her mother. “Run
and do what I have told you.”

When Margaret had finished the several chores, she went
to the Pond. She was barefoot and barearmed. She wore a
brown linen gown or tunic, open in front, a crimson skirt, a
blue checked apron, and on her head was a green rush hat.
By a narrow foot-path, winding through shrubbery and
brambles, and defiling along the foot of a steep hill that rose
near the house, she came to the margin of the water. Chilion,
her brother, who was at work with a piece of glass, smoothing
a snow-white bass-wood paddle, for a little bark canoe he had
made her, saw Margaret approach with evident pleasure, yet
received her in the quietest possible manner, as she leaped
and laughed towards him. He asked her if she remembered
the names of the flowers, and while he was finishing the
paddle, she went along the shore to gather them. The Pond
covered several hundreds of acres, its greatest diameter measured
about a mile and a half; its outline was irregular, here
divided by sharp rocks, there retreating into shaded coves;
and on its face appeared three or four small islands, bearing
trees and low bushes. Its banks, if not really steep, had a
bluff and precipitous aspect from the tall forest that girdled
it about. The region was evidently primitive, and the child,
as she went along, trod on round smooth pebbles of white
and rose quartz, dark hornblende, greenstone, and an occasional
fragment of trap, the results of the diluvial ocean, if
any body can tell when or what that was. In piles, among
the stones, lay quivering and ever accumulating masses of
fleece-like, and fox-colored foam; there were also the empty
shells of various kinds of mollusks. She clomb over the
white peeled trunks of bemlock trees, that had fallen into the
water, or drifted to the shore; she trod through beds of fine
silver-grey sand, and in the shallow edge of the Pond, she
waded on a hard even bottom of the same, which the action
of the waves had beaten into a smooth shining floor. She
discovered flowers which her brother told her were horehound,
skull-caps, and indian tobacco; she picked small
green apples that disease had formed on the leaves of the
willows; and beautiful velvety crimson berries from the black
alder.

When all was ready, she got into her canoe, while her
brother led the way in a boat of his own. With due instructions
in the management of the paddle, she succeeded tolerably
well. Chilion had often taken her on the water, and she

[figure description] Page 008.[end figure description]

was not much afraid. It was commonly reported that the
Pond had no bottom, and an indefinable awe possessed the
minds of people regarding it; but this Margaret was too
young to feel; she took manifest delight in skimming across
the top of that deep dark mystery. She toppled somewhat,
her canoe shook and titled, but on it went; there was a thin
wake, a slight rustle of the water; her brother kept near her,
and she enjoyed the fearful pastime. Reaching the opposite
shore, Chilion drew up his boat, and went to a rock, where
he set himself to catch fish with a long pole. Margaret
played awhile with her canoe, and turned into a recess where
the trees and rocks darkened the water, the surface of which
lay calm and clear. The coolness of the spot was inviting,
and birds were merry-making in the underwood, and deep in
the water she saw the blue sky and the white clouds. “That
looks like her,” she said, calling to mind her dream. She
urged her canoe up a flat rock on the shore, where she took
off her hat and apron; and, simply dressed as she was, the
process of disrobing being speedily done, she waded into the
water. She said, “I will go down to the bottom, I will tread
on the clouds;” she sunk to her neck, she plunged her head
under; she could discover nothing but the rocky or smooth
sandy bed of the Pond. Was she disappointed? A sand-piper
glided weet weeting along the shore; she ran after it,
but could not catch it; she sat down and sozzled her feet in
the foam; she saw a blue-jay washing itself, ducking its crest,
and hustling the water with its wings, and she did the same.
She got running mosses, twin-flower vines, and mountain
laurel blossoms, and wound them about her neck and waist,
and pushing off in her canoe, looked into the water as a
mirror. Her dark clear hazle eyes, her fair white skin, the
leaves and flowers, made a pretty vision. She smiled and
was smiled on in turn; she held out her hand, which was
reciprocated by the fair spirit below; she called her own
name, the rocks and woods answered; she looked about her,
but saw nothing. Had she fears or hopes? It may have
been only childish sport. “I will jump to that girl,” she
said, “I will tumble the clouds.” She sprang from her
canoe, and dropped quietly, softly on the bottom; she had
driven her companion away, and as she came up, her garlands
broke and floated off in the ripples. Wiping herself on a
coarse towel her mother wove for her, she dressed, and went
back to her brother. A horn rang through the woods.
“Dinner is ready,” he said, “we must go.”

Previous section

Next section