Chapter 13 - Page 2

I doubt not, for a child.
Many chronicles of the countryside came off my pen - sketches of
odd events and characters there in Faraway. These were read to the
assembled household. Elizabeth Brower would sit looking gravely
down at me, as I stood by her knees reading, in those days of my
early boyhood. Uncle Eb listened with his head turned curiously,
as if his ear were cocked for coons. Sometimes he and David
Brower would slap their knees and laugh heartily, whereat my
foster mother would give them a quick glance and shake her head.
For she was always fearful of the day when she should see in her
children the birth of vanity, and sought to put it off as far as might
be. Sometimes she would cover her mouth to hide a smile, and,
when I had finished, look warningly at the rest, and say it was
good, for a little boy. Her praise never went further, and indeed all
those people hated flattery as they did the devil and frowned upon
conceit She said that when the love of flattery got hold of one he
would lie to gain it.

I can see this slender, blue-eyed woman as I write. She is walking
up and down beside her spinning-wheel. I can hear the dreary
buz-z-z-z of the spindle as she feeds it with the fleecy ropes. That
loud crescendo echoes in the still house of memory. I can hear her
singing as she steps forward and slows the wheel and swings the
cradle with her foot:

'On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the tree of Life is blooming,
There is rest for you.

She lays her hand to the spokes again and the roar of the spindle
drowns her voice.

All day, from the breakfast hour to supper time, I have heard the
dismal sound of the spinning as she walked the floor, content to
sing of rest but never taking it.

Her home was almost a miracle of neatness. She could work with
no peace of mind until the house had been swept and dusted. A fly
speck on the window was enough to cloud her day. She went to
town with David now and then - not oftener than once a quarter -
and came back ill and exhausted. If she sat in a store waiting for
David, while he went to mill or smithy, her imagination gave her
no rest. That dirt abhorring mind of hers would begin to clean the
windows, and when that was finished it would sweep the floor and
dust the counters. In due course it would lower the big chandelier
and take out all the lamps and wash the chimneys with soap and
water and rub them till they shone. Then, if David had not come, it
would put in the rest of its time on the woodwork. With all her
cleaning I am sure the good woman kept her soul spotless.
Elizabeth Brower believed in goodness and the love of God, and
knew no fear. Uncle Eb used to say that wherever