Her parents never kept a servant, and she was brought up to do
her part in the house. Living on plain, substantial fare, inured to
labor, and dressed so as to allow free play to every limb and muscle,
she laid in a stock of health, strength, and good temper that lasted her
down to the last year of her life. She never knew what dyspepsia was.
She never possessed a costly toy, nor a doll that was not made at home,
but she passed a childhood that was scarcely anything but joy. She was
an only child, and she was the pet of two families, yet she was not
spoiled.
She was one of those children who take naturally to all kinds of
culture. Without ever having had a child's book, she sought out, in the
old-fashioned library of the house, everything which a child could
understand. Chance threw a novel in her way ("Mysteries of Udolpho"),
which she devoured with rapture, and soon after, when she was but eight
years of age, she began to write a novel. Poetry, too, she read with
singular pleasure, never weary of repeating her favorite pieces. But the
passion of her childhood was painting pictures. Almost in her infancy
she began to draw with a pin and lilac-leaf, and advanced from that to
slate and pencil, and, by and by, to a lead-pencil and backs of letters.
When she had learned to draw pretty well, she was on fire to paint her
pictures, but was long puzzled to procure the colors. Having obtained in
some way a cake of gamboge, she begged of a washerwoman a piece of
indigo, and by combining these two ingredients she could make different
shades of yellow, blue, and green.
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