nt, unflagging, unending
activity. Amanda Dalton had energy enough to attend to a husband and
six children--cook, wash, iron, churn, sew, nurse--and she lived alone
with a cat. The village was a mile, and her nearest female neighbor,
the Widow Thatcher, a half-mile away. She had buried her only sister
in Lewiston years before, and she had not a relation in the world. All
her irrepressible zeal went into the conduct of her house and plot of
ground. Day after day, week after week, year after year, the
established routine was carried through. First the washing of the
breakfast dishes and the putting to rights of the kitchen, which was
radiantly clean before she began upon it. Next her bedroom; the
stirring-up of the cornhusk mattress, the shaking of the bed of live
geese feathers, the replacing of cotton sheets, homespun blankets, and
blue-and-white counterpane. Next came the sitting-room with its tall,
red, flag-bottomed chairs, its two-leaved table, its light stand that
held the Bible and work-basket and lamp. The chest of drawers and tall
clock were piously dusted, and the frames of the Family Register,
"Napoleon Crossing the Alps," and "Maidens Welcoming Washington in the
Streets of Alexandria," were carefully wiped off. Once a week the
parlor was cleaned, the tarlatan was lifted from the two plaster
Samuels on the mantelpiece, their kneeling forms were cleaned with a
damp cloth, the tarlatan replaced, and the parlor closed again
reverently. There was kindling to chop, wood to bring in, the modest
cooking, washing, ironing, and sewing to do, the flower-beds to weed,
and the little vegetable garden to keep in order.

But Amanda had a quick foot, a neat hand, a light touch, and a
peculiar faculty of "turning off" work so that it simply would not
last through the day. Why did she never think of going to the nearest
city and linking her powers with those of some one who would put them
to larger uses? Simply because no one ever did that sort of thing in
Bonny Eagle in those days. Girls crowded out of home by poverty sought
employment here and there, but that a woman of forty, with a good home
and ten acres of land--to say nothing of coupon bonds that yielded a
hundred dollars a year in cash--that such a one should seek a larger
field in a strange place, would have been thought flying in the face
of Providence, as well as custom.

Outside Bonny Eagle, in the roar and din and clamor of cities, were
all sorts of wrongs that