CHAPTER III.
THE LITTLE MILL-GIRL’S ALMA MATER.
The education of a child is an all-around process, and he or she owes only a part of it to school or college training. The child to whom neither college nor school is open must find his whole education in his surroundings, and in the life he is forced to lead. As the cotton-factory was the means of the early schooling of so large a number of men and women, who, without the opportunity thus afforded, could not have been mentally so well developed, I love to call it their Alma Mater. For, without this incentive to labor, this chance to earn extra money and to use it in their own way, their influence on the times, and also, to a certain extent, on modern civilization, would certainly have been lost.
Thad been to school quite constantly until I was nearly eleven years of age, and then, after going into the mill, I went to some of the evening schools that had been established, and which were always well filled with those who desired to improve their scant education, or to supplement what they had learned in the village school or academy. Here might often be seen a little girl puzzling over her sums in Colburn’s Arithmetic, and at her side another “girl” of fifty poring over her lesson in Pierpont’s Na tional Reader.
Some of these schools were devoted to special studies. I went to a geography school, where the lessons were repeated in unison in a monotonous sing-song tone, like this: ‘” Lake Winnipeg! Lake Winnipeg! Lake Titicaca! Lake Titicaca! Memphremagog! Memphremagog!” and also to a school where those who fancied they had thoughts were taught by Newman’s Rhetoric to express them in writing. In this school, the relative position of the subject and the predicate was not always well taught by the master; but never to mix a metaphor or to confuse a simile was a lesson he firmly fixed in the minds of his pupils.
As a result of this particular training, I may say here, that, while I do not often mix metaphors, I am to this day almost as ignorant of what is called “grammar” as Dean Swift, who, when he went up to answer for his degree, said he “could not tell a subject from a predicate ;” or even James Whitcomb Riley, who said he “would not know a nominative if he should meet it on the street.”
The best practical lesson in the proper use of at least one grammatical sentence was given to me by my elder brother (not two years older than I) one day, when I said, “I done it.” “You done it!” said he, taking me by the shoulder and looking me severely in the face ; “Don’t you ever let me hear you say I done it again, unless you can use have or had before it.” I also went to singing-school, and became a member of the church choir, and in this way learned many beautiful hymns that made a lasting impression on the serious part of my nature.
The discipline our work brought us was of great value. We were obliged to be in the mill at just such a minute, in every hour, in order to doff our full bobbins and replace them with empty ones. We went to our meals and re turned at the same hour every day. We worked and played at regular intervals, and thus our hands became deft, our fingers nimble, our feet swift, and we were taught daily habits of regularity and of industry ; it was, in fact, a sort of manual training or industrial school.
Some of us were fond of reading, and we read all the books we could borrow. One of my mother’s boarders, a farmer’s daughter from “the State of Maine,’ had come to Lowell to work, for the express purpose of getting books, usually novels, to read, that she could not find in her native place. She read from two to four volumes a week; and we children used to get them from the circulating library, and return them, for her. In exchange for this, she allowed us to read her books, while she was at work in the mill; and what a scurrying there used to be home from school, to get the first chance at the new book!
It was as good as a fortune to us, and all for six and a quarter cents a week! In this way I read the novels of Richardson, Madame D’Arblay, Fielding, Smollett, Cooper, Scott, Captain Marryatt, and many another old book not in eluded in Mr. Ruskin’s list of “one hundred good books.” Passing through the alembic of a child’s pure mind, I am not now conscious that the reading of the doubtful ones did me any lasting harm. But I should add that I do not advise such indiscriminate reading among young people, and there is no need of it, since now there are so many good books, easy of access, which have not the faults of those I was obliged to read. Then, there was no choice. To-day, the best of reading, for children and young people, can be found everywhere. “Lalla Rookh” was the first poem I ever read, and it awoke in me, not only a love of poetry, but also a desire to try my own hand at verse-making.
And so the process of education went on, and I, with many another “little doffer,” had more than one chance to nibble at the root of knowledge. I had been to school for three months in each year, until I was about thirteen years old, when my mother, who was now a little better able to do without my earnings, sent me to the Lowell High School regularly for two years, adding her constant injunction, “Improve your mind, try and be somebody.” There I was taught a little of everything, including French and Latin; and I may say here that my “little learning,” in French at least, proved “a dangerous thing,” as I had reason to know some years later, when I tried to speak my book-French in Paris, for it might as well have been Choctaw, when used as a means of oral communication with the natives of that fascinating city.
The Lowell high school, in about 1840, was kept in a wooden building over a butcher’s shop, but soon afterwards the new high school, still in use, was provided, and it was co-educational. How well I remember some of the boys and girls, and I recall them with pleasure if not with affection. I could name them now, and have noted with pride their success in life. A few are so high above the rest that one would be surprised to know that they received the principal part of their school education in that little high school room over the butcher’s shop.
I left the high school when fifteen years of age, my school education completed; though after that I took private lessons in German, drawing, and dancing! About this time my elder brother and I made up our minds that our mother had worked hard long enough, and we prevailed on her to give up keeping boarders. This she did, and while she remained in Lowell we supported the home by our earnings. I was obliged to have my breakfast before daylight in the winter. My mother prepared it over night, and while I was cooking and eating it I read such books as Stevens’s ” Travels” in Yucatan and in Mexico, Tasso’s ” Jerusalem Delivered,” and “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life.” My elder brother was the clerk in the counting room of the Tremont Corporation, and the agent, Mr. Charles L. Tilden, — whom I thank, where ever he may be, — allowed him to carry home at night, or over Sunday, any book that might be left on his (the agent’s) desk ; by this means I read many a beloved volume of poetry, late into the night and on Sunday. Longfellow, in particular, I learned almost by heart, and so retentive is the young memory that I can repeat, even now, whole poems.
I read and studied also at my work; and as this was done by the job, or beam, if I chose to have a book in my lap, and glance at it at intervals, or even write a bit, nothing was lost to the “corporation.”
Lucy Larcom, in her “New England Girlhood,” speaks of the windows in the mill on whose sides were pasted newspaper clippings, which she calls “window gems.” It was very common for the spinners and weavers to do this, as they were not allowed to read books openly in the mill; but they brought their favorite “pieces” of poetry, hymns, and extracts, and pasted them up over their looms or frames, so that they could glance at them, and commit them to memory. We little girls were fond of reading these clippings, and no doubt they were an incentive to our thoughts as well as to those of the older girls, who went to ” The Improvement Circle,” and wrote compositions.
A year or two after this I attempted poetry, and my verses began to appear in the newspapers, in one or two Annuals, and later in The Lowell Offering. In 1846 I wrote some verses which were published in the Lowell Journal, and these caused me to make the acquaintance of the sub-editor of that paper, who afterwards became my life companion. I speak of this here because, in my early married life, I found the exact help that I needed for continued education, — the leisure to read good books, sent to my husband for review, in the quiet of my secluded home. For I had neither the gowns to wear nor the disposition to go into society, and as my companion was not willing to go without me, in the long evenings, when the children were in bed and I was busy making “auld claes look amaist as good as new,” he read aloud to me countless books on abstruse political and general subjects, which I never should have thought of reading for myself.
These are the “books that have helped me.” In fact, of all the books I have read, I remember but very few that have not helped me. Thus I had the companionship of a mind more mature, wiser, and less prone to unrealities than my own; and if it seems to the reader that my story is that of one of the more fortunate ones among the working-girls of my time, it is because of this needed help, which I received almost at the beginning of my womanhood. And for this, as well as for those early days of poverty and toil, I aim devoutly and reverently thankful.
The religious experience of a young person oftentimes forms a large part of the early edu cation or development; and mine is peculiar, since I am one of the very few persons, in this country at least, who have been excommunicated from a Protestant church. And I cannot speak of this event without showing the strong sectarian tendencies of the time.
As late as 1843-1845 Puritan orthodoxy still held sway over nearly the whole of New Eng land; and the gloomy doctrines of Jonathan Ed wards, now called his “philosophy,” held a mighty grasp on the minds of the people, all other denominations being frowned upon. The Episcopal church was considered “little better than the Catholic,” and the Universalists and the Unitarians were treated with even less tolerance by the “Evangelicals”’ than any sect outside these denominations is treated to-day. The charge against the Unitarians was that they did not believe all of the Bible, and that they preached “mere morality rather than religion.”
My mother, who had sat under the preaching of the Rev. Paul Dean, in Boston, had early drifted away from her hereditary church and its beliefs; but she had always sent her children to the Congregational church and Sunday school, not wishing, perhaps, to run the same risk for their souls that she was willing to take for her own, thus keeping us on the “safe side,” as it was called, with regard to our eternal salvation. Consequently, we were well taught in the belief of a literal devil, in a lake of brim stone and fire, and in the “wrath of a just God.”
The terrors of an imaginative child’s mind, into which these monstrous doctrines were poured, can hardly be described, and their lasting effect need not be dwelt upon. It was natural that young people who had minds of their own should be attracted to the new doctrine of a Father’s love, as well as to the ministers who preached it; and thus in a short time the mill girls and boys made a large part of the congregation of those “unbelieving” sects which had come to disturb the “ancient solitary reign” of primitive New England orthodoxy.
I used often to wish that I could go to the Episcopal Sunday-school, because their little girls were not afraid of the devil, were allowed to dance, and had so much nicer books in their Sunday-school library. “Little Henry and his Bearer,” and “The Lady of the Manor,” in which was the story of “The Beautiful Estelle,” were lent to me; and the last-named was a delight and an inspiration. But the little “orthodox ’’ girls were not allowed to read even religious novels; and one of my work-mates, whose name would surprise the reader, and who afterwards outgrew such prejudices, took me to task for buying a paper copy of Scott’s “Red gauntlet,” saying, ‘‘Why, Hattie, do you not know that it is a novel?”
We had frequent discussions among ourselves on the different texts of the Bible, and debated such questions as, “Is it a sin to read novels?” “Is it right to read secular books on Sunday?” or, “Is it wicked to play cards or checkers?” By this it will be seen that we were made more familiar with the form, than with the spirit or the teaching, of Christianity.
In the spring of 1840 there was a great revival in Lowell, and some of the little girls held prayer meetings, after school, at each other’s houses, and many of them “experienced religion.” I went sometimes to these meetings, and one night, when I was walking home by starlight, for the days were still short, one of the older girls said to me, “Are you happy?” “Do you love Jesus?” ” Do you want to be saved?” — ” Why, yes,” I answered. “Then you have experienced religion,” said the girl; “you are converted.” I was startled at the idea, but did not know how to deny it, and I went home in an exalted state of feeling; and, as I looked into the depths of the heavens above me, there came to my youthful mind the first glimmer of thought on spiritual themes.
It was an awakening, but not a conversion, for I had been converted from nothing to nothing. I was at once claimed as a “young convert,” went to the church prayer-meeting, told my “experience” as directed, and was put on probation for admission to the church. Meanwhile, I had been advised not to ask my mother’s consent to this step, because she was a Universalist, and might object. But I did not follow this advice ; and when I told her of my desire, she simply answered, “If you think it will make you any happier, do so, but I do not believe you will be satisfied.” I have always been very thankful to my mother for giving me this freedom in my young life, —
“Not to be followed hourly, watched and noosed,” —
this chance in such an important matter to learn to think and to act for myself. In fact, she always carried out this principle, and never to my recollection coerced her children on any important point, but taught them to “see for themselves.”
When the day came for me to be admitted into the church, I, with many other little girls, was sprinkled ; and, when I stood up to repeat the creed, I can truly say that I knew no more what were the doctrines to which I was expected to subscribe, than I did about the Copernican System or the Differential Calculus. And I might have said, with the disciples at Ephesus, I “have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.” For, although I had been regularly to church and to Sunday-school, I had never seen the Articles of Belief, nor had I been instructed concerning the doctrines, or the sacredness of the vow I was about to take upon me. Nor, from the frequent backsliding among the young converts, do I think my case was a singular one, although, so far as I know, I was the only one who backslid enough to be excommunicated.
And later, when I was requested to sub scribe to the Articles of Belief, I found I could not accept them, particularly a certain part, which related to the day of judgment and what would follow thereafter. I have reviewed this document, and am able to quote the exact words which were a stumbling-block to me. “We believe … that at the day of judgment the state of all will be unalterably fixed, and that the punishment of the wicked and the happiness of the righteous will be end less.”
When the service was over, I went home, feeling as if I had done something wrong. I thought of my mother, whom my church people called an “unbeliever;” of my dear little brother who had been drowned, and whose soul might be LOST, and I was most unhappy. In fact, so serious was I for many days, that no doubt my church friends thought me a most promising young convert.
Indeed I was converted, but not in the way they supposed ; for I had begun to think on religious subjects, and the more I thought the less I believed in the doctrines of the church to which I belonged. Doubts of the goodness of God filled my mind, and unbelief in the Father’s love and compassion darkened my young life. What a conversion! The beginning of long years of doubt and of struggle in search of spiritual truths.
After a time I went no more to my church meetings, and began to attend those of the Universalists ; but, though strongly urged, as a “come-outer,” to join that body, I did not do so, being fearful of subscribing to a belief whose mysteries I could neither understand nor explain.
Hearing that I was attending the meetings of another denomination, my church appointed three persons, at least one of whom was a deacon, to labor with me. They came to our house one evening, and, while my mother and I sat at our sewing, they plied me with questions relating to my duty as a church member, and arguments concerning the articles of belief; these I did not know how to answer, but my mother, who had had some experience in “religious” disputes, gave text for text, and I remember that, although I trembled at her boldness, I thought she had the best of it.
Meanwhile, I sat silent, with downcast eyes, and when they threatened me with excommunication if I did not go to the church meetings, and “fulfil my covenant,” I mustered up courage to say, with shaking voice, “I do not believe; I cannot go to your church, even if you do excommunicate me.”
When my Universalist friends heard of this threat of excommunication, they urged the preparation of a letter to the church, giving my reasons for non-attendance; and this was published in a Lowell newspaper, July 30, 1842. In this letter, which my elder brother helped me to prepare, — in fact, I believe wrote the most of it, — several arguments against the Articles of Belief are given; and the letter closes with a request to “my brothers and sisters,” to erase my name from “your church books rather than to follow your usual course, common in cases similar to my own, to excommunicate the heretic.”
This request was not heeded, and shortly after a committee of three was “then appointed to take farther steps;” and this committee reported that they had “visited and admonished ” me without success ; and in November, 1842, the following vote was passed, and is recorded in the church book : – —
“Nov. 21, 1842.
Whereas, it appears that Miss Harriet Hanson has violated her covenant with this church, — first, by repeated and regular absence from the ordinances of the gospel, second, by embracing sentiments deemed by this church heretical ; and whereas, measures have been taken to reclaim her, but ineffectual; therefore,
Voted, that we withdraw our fellowship from the said Miss Hanson until she shall give satisfactory evidence of repentance.”
And thus, at seventeen years of age, I was excommunicated from the church of my ancestors, and for no fault, no sin, no crime, but simply because I could not subscribe conscientiously to doctrines which I did not comprehend. I relate this phase of my youthful experience here in detail, because it serves to show the methods which were then in use to cast out or dispose of those members who could not subscribe to the doctrines of the dominant church of New England.
For some time after this, I was quite in disgrace with some of my work-mates, and was called a “heretic” and a “child of perdition” by my church friends. But, as I did not agree, even in this, with their opinions, but went my “ain gait,” it followed that, although I remained for a time something of a heretic, I was not an unbeliever in sacred things nor did I prove to be a “child of perdition.” But this experience made me very unhappy, and gave me a distaste for religious reading and thinking, and for many years the Bible was a sealed book to me, until I came to see in the Book, not the letter of dogma, but rather the spirit of truth and of revelation. This experience also repressed the humorous side of my nature, which is every one’s birthright, and made me for a time a sort of youthful cynic; and I allowed myself to feel a certain contempt for those of my work-mates who, though they could not give clear reason for their belief, still remained faithful to their “covenant.”
There were two or three little incidents connected with this episode in my life that may be of interest. A little later, when I thought of applying for the position of teaching in a public school, I was advised by a well-meaning friend not to attempt it, “for,” the friend added, “you will not succeed, for how can a Universalist pray in her school ?”
Several years after my excommunication, when I had come to observe that religion and “mere morality” do not always go together, I had a final interview with one of the deacons who had labored with me. He was an overseer in the room where I worked, and I had noticed his familiar manner with some of the girls, who did not like it any better than I did; and one day, when his behavior was unusually offensive, I determined to speak to him about it.
I called him to my drawing-in frame, where I was sitting at work, and said to him some thing like this: “I have hard work to believe that you are one of those deacons who came to labor with a young girl about belonging to your church. I don’t think you set the example of good works you then preached to me.” He gave me a look, but did not answer; and shortly after, as I might have expected, I received an “honorable discharge ” from his room.
But let me acknowledge one far-reaching benefit that resulted from my being admitted to the Orthodox church, a benefit which came to me in the summer of 1895. Because of my baptism, administered so long ago, I was enabled to officiate as god-mother to my grandchild and namesake, in Pueblo, Colorado, — one among the first of the little girls born on a political equality with the little boys of that enlightened State, born, as one may say, with the ballot in her hand! And to any reader who has an interest in the final result of my religious experience, I may add, that, as late as 1898, I became a communicant of the Episcopal Church.
‘When the time came for me to become engaged to the man of my choice, having always believed in the old-fashioned idea that there should be no secrets between persons about to marry, I told him, among my other shortcomings, as the most serious of all, the story of my excommunication. To my great surprise, he laughed heartily, derided the whole affair, and wondered at the serious view I had always taken of it; and later he enjoyed saying to some of his gentlemen friends, as if it were a good joke, “Did you know my wife had been excommunicated from the church?”
And I too, long since have learned, that no creed —
"Can fix our doom, Nor stay the eternal Love from His intent, While Hope remaining bears her verdant bloom."