s that might be edible. We
rejected what hurt our teeth. What we got we kept.

The current of my outer life was quiet to apparent dulness. After
breakfast Mary 'Liza and I had our lessons with my mother in "the
chamber." In another year we would have a governess, but the mothers of
that time always taught their children to read and write, to spell and
cipher through Emerson's _First Arithmetic_. I have known several who
never sent their boys and girls to school, even preparing the lads for
college. We had our reading, beginning with a chapter in the Bible,
then, our spelling and writing, and sums. After these, my mother read
aloud from Grimshaw's _History of England_, simplifying the language
when she considered it necessary, which was not often, while Mary 'Liza
made up the first set of chemises (in the vernacular "shimmys,") she had
undertaken for herself, and I knit twenty rounds on a stocking. My
mother put in a "mark" of black silk every morning from which I could
count the rounds upward. Mary 'Liza had knit a dozen pairs in all. In
the tops of six, she had knit in openwork her initials "M. E. B." I had
no ambitions in that direction. My views on the subject of ornamental
initials and sampler autographs were put into pregnant English at a
subsequent date by the elder Weller. He professed to have received at
second-hand from the charity-boy, set to con the alphabet, what the
retired stage-driver applied to matrimony--to wit, that it was not worth
while to go through so much to get so little. Knitting delighted not me,
nor stitching either.

Lessons and work over, the day began for me in joyful earnest. The rest
of the morning and all the evening were mine to use, or abuse, as I
liked. We applied "evening" to the hours between the three o'clock
dinner and bedtime. We may have caught the phrase from our Bible
readings. The morning and the evening were the day.

Early in the fall I had begged permission from my mother to utilize a
deserted chicken-house as a play-room. It was long and narrow; one side
was barred with upright slats that admitted light and air to the former
inmates; one end was taken up by the door; the other and the back were
solid boards, the house having been built in the angle of a fence. My
mother had the interior cleaned and whitewashed. I think she was glad to
provide a decent "den" for me nearer home than the Old Orchard and the
more distant woods, and she was losing hold of her hope of making