into the Charles, which is the natural but tortuous
bound between eighteen towns and cities of the county. It was named for
one of the Provincial governors of Massachusetts, Richard Bellingham--a
fine name. Farming is the chief occupation of the inhabitants at present
as it always has been. In former times there were two or three small
cotton and woollen mills on the river. The oldest of them, on the banks
of the Charles, is as picturesque a ruin as time, fire and neglect are
able to achieve in a hundred years. The walls of heavy blocks of stone,
roofless and broken in outline, are still standing. Great trees have
grown up within them and now overtop them. Here and there a poplar leans
forth from a broken window casement, leaving scant room for the ghosts
of ancient spinners and weavers to peer into the outer world at
midnight. From a distance it resembles a green, enclosed orchard. Decay
may mantle itself in newest green but cannot obliterate memories of
former generations. On these fallen floors the young women of Bellingham
once labored and were merry on fifty cents a day, a working day never
less than twelve hours long. They sang at their work, and when the loom
was running in good order, they leaned out of the windows or gossiped
with each other. On Sundays the roads and fields were gay with these
respectable Yankee maidens, becurled and beribboned, philandering with
their sweethearts or in bevies visiting each other's houses. Every girl
had her album in which her friends wrote their names, and usually they
were able to contribute an original stanza; or, if not, a line from the
hymn-book, or a sentiment from the school reader or Bible. They dressed
in calico in summer and in winter linsey-woolsey, and wore at their work
ample aprons of osnaburg, a small checked blue and white cloth. Vice was
unknown; at least the annals record no flagrant examples.

I fear those who only know the cotton and woollen mills of this day
cannot realize or believe what an immense blessing they were to New
England when they first began to dot all the streams offering sufficient
water power to operate their machinery. For the first time they opened a
way for young women to earn money whereby they could assist their
families and promote the improvement of their own condition. Work in
these mills was sought as a temporary employment generally; or for the
purpose of gaining money enough to attend an academy for a few terms,
from whence they w