Lydia Knight's History The First Book of the Noble Women's Lives — Story, Setting & Ideas

A little girl with light-blue eyes and fair hair sat under the shade of the forest trees pulling a sheep-skin. One by one her brothers and sisters, older and younger than she, had grown weary of the work and wandered off to play.

"Oh, Lydia, how can you sit there over that tiresome work. Look at the shadows under the trees, and the squirrels calling to us to come and chase them from limb to limb. Let's have a play," said the last little boy as his patience at length had ebbed away.

"No," replied the fair-haired maiden, and the firm little mouth took another line of determination as she spoke, "I shall not leave the sheepskin till the last lock is pulled."

A "clearing" in the forest of the western part of New York State, a large comfortable cabin on a rise of ground near the center of the space, with wide-open doors and floors of gleaming white, waving grain on one side of the house and a large vegetable garden on the other side constituted the scene of a home in the forest wilds, which was a common one in those days--the years between 1810 and 1820. The circle of high waving trees gave a grandeur and beauty to the view that nothing else could possibly do.

The little girl who sat so steadily at work had been brought by her parents two years previously to this wild western home.

She was born in 1812, in Sutton, Worcester Co., Mass., and eight happy years had been spent in her earliest home.

Shall I tell you about her father, whose name was Jesse Goldthwait? He was a medium-sized, well-built New Englander, prudent, industrious and the possessor of a firm will. Her mother was a quiet-spoken woman, but she bad an ardent temperament and a great deal of natural refinement. She had had some scholastic advantages and was exceedingly ambitious for her children. Five sisters and six brothers had Lydia, and a very happy and peaceful family they were.

Don't you know what "wool-pulling" is? Well, while my little girl is finishing her work I will tell you:

When the sheep was killed for family use, the skin was rolled up by the thrifty farmers in ashes or lime and laid away for some time. Then the wool could easily be separated from the hide. This last piece of labor generally fell to the children. And in Jesse Goldthwait's family none of the children would keep to the work but Lydia. So that it soon passed into a proverb, when Lydia exhibited that determination in anything which was so striking a point in her character, they would say to each other:

"It's no use trying to make her give up her design. You know Lydia never leaves till the last lock is pulled."

The years passed on and Lydia grew apace. But as she attained to early womanhood, she did not lose the slender form, the quiet voice she had inherited from her mother, or the firm will her father had bequeathed to her. She was brought up to habits of work and she had also received religious training from her parents.

When the girl was about fifteen years old, a council was held concerning her by her father and mother:

"Let us send the girl to school, father: you are comfortable for means, and Lydia is a good, obedient girl."

"That she is," replied the father, "and studiously inclined. I will think it over, mother."

After some deliberation, a boarding-school was chosen, and the girl placed under proper care.

Who cannot fancy the life of a school-girl of fifteen? Happy, careless as to the future, mindful of the husking-bees and quiltings, and with bright, shy glances for the youths who begin to "wish to see you home."

Among Lydia's acquaintances in the village where she was attending school, was a young man whose name was Calvin Bailey. One who was a stranger in the village, but his smart, dapper ways, and his smooth address won him many friends among the thoughtless, the youth and the pleasure-loving of the villagers.

"He is _so_ nice," said the girls.

"Calvin is the right sort of a fellow for a frolic," added the young men.

Lydia admired the young man in common with the rest of her companions, and was far too young, too much of a child to dread the very smoothness which so often covers a wicked heart.

The Winter passed into Spring and Lydia returned to her home.

That Summer in her happy home was one long to be remembered by the girl who was fast hastening to so different an experience in life.