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VIII.

THE SPINNING-WHEEL.

MONTH after month passed away, and in Autumn the ships of the merchants.

Came with kindred and friends, with cattle and corn for the Pilgrims.

All in the village was peace; the men were intent on their labors,

Busy with hewing and building, with garden-plot and with merestead,

Busy with breaking the glebe, and mowing the grass in the meadows,

Searching the sea for its fish, and hunting the deer in the forest.

All in the village was peace; but at times the rumor of warfare

Filled the air with alarm, and the apprehension of

danger.

Bravely the stalwart Miles Standish was scouring the land with his forces,

Waxing valiant in fight and defeating the alien

armies,

Till his name had become a sound of fear to the

nations.

Anger was still in his heart, but at times the remorse and contrition

Which in all noble natures succeed the passionate

outbreak,

Came like a rising tide, that encounters the rush of a river,

Staying its current awhile, but making it bitter and brackish.

Meanwhile Alden at home had built him a new habitation,

Solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the firs of the forest.

Wooden-barred was the door, and the roof was covered with rushes;

Latticed the windows were, and the window-panes were of paper,

Oiled to admit the light, while wind and rain were excluded.

There too he dug a well, and around it planted an orchard:

Still may

be seen to this day some trace of the well and the orchard.

Close to the house was the stall, where, safe and secure from annoyance,

Raghorn, the snow-white steer, that had fallen to Alden's allotment

In the division of cattle, might ruminate in the

night-time

Over the pastures he cropped, made fragrant by sweet pennyroyal.

Oft when his labor was finished, with eager feet would the dreamer

Follow the pathway that ran through the woods to the house of Priscilla,

Led by illusions romantic and subtile deceptions of fancy,

Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship.

Ever of her he thought, when he fashioned the walls of his dwelling;

Ever of her he thought, when he delved in the soil of his garden;

Ever of her he thought, when he read in his Bible on Sunday

Praise of the virtuous woman, as she is described in the Proverbs,

How the heart of her husband doth safely trust int her always,

How all the days of her life she will do him good, and not evil,

How she seeketh the wool and the flax and worketh with gladness,

How she layeth her hand to the spindle and holdeth the distaff,

How she is not afraid of the snow for herself or her household,

Knowing her household are clothed with the scarlet cloth of her weaving!

So as she sat at her wheel one afternoon in the Autumn,

Alden, who opposite sat, and was watching her dexterous fingers,

As if the thread she was spinning were that of his life and his fortune,

After a pause in their talk, thus spake to the sound of the spindle.

“Truly, Priscilla,” he said, "when I see you spinning and spinning,

Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others,

Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment;

You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner."

Here the light foot on the treadle grew swifter and swifter; the spindle

Uttered an angry snarl, and the thread snapped short in her fingers;

While the impetuous speaker, not heeding the mischief, continued:

"You are the beautiful Bertha, the spinner, the queen of Helvetia ;

She whose story I read at a stall in the streets of Southampton,

Who, as she rode on her palfrey, o'er valley and meadow and mountain,

Ever was spinning her thread from a distaff fixed to her saddle.

She was so thrifty and good, that her name passed into a proverb.

So shall it be with your own, when the spinningwheel shall no longer

Hum in the house of the farmer, and fill its chambers with music.

Then shall the mothers, reproving, relate how it was in their childhood,

Praising the good old times, and the days of Priscilla the spinner!"

Straight uprose from her wheel the beautiful Puritan maiden,

Pleased with the praise of her thrift from him whose praise was the sweetest,

Drew from the reel on the table a snowy skein of her spinning,

Thus making answer, meanwhile, to the flattering phrases of Alden:

"Come, you must not be idle; if I am a pattern for housewives,

Show yourself equally worthy of being the model of husbands.

Hold this skein on your hands, while I wind it, ready for knitting;

Then who knows but hereafter, when fashions have changed and the manners,

Fathers may talk to their sons of the good old times of John Alden!”

Thus, with a jest and a laugh, the skein on his hands she adjusted,

He sitting awkwardly there, with his arms extended before him,

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