Last night’s thunderstorm brought a sparkling morning. I spent it in the kitchen garden, where the seedlings of chards and lettuces, parsley, squash, and so much else were crowded close. With the wet soil loosening their roots, it was easy to thin them, to give the remaining plants more space and light. And what a pleasure to find so much that has overwintered! We can make several soups from the parsnips, carrots, potatoes, and onions that were missed at harvest, with nothing needed from the market except bones. Frau V. said she’ll spend the savings on finer meats and poultry for the Burnhams and keep slivers for me and Margaret. I found tender leaves of spinach and chickweed, too, and new sprouts on the surviving stalks of thyme and sage. Henry balked at my milk afterward, probably because of the radishes and bitter greens I ate as I thinned.
When I gardened at home, I often considered how the growth of plants resembles the gradual growth of the spirit. And seeing life make its way from seed to plant does bring one a glorious hope. All through the plant’s movement toward maturity, it is beautiful: adorable in its seedling state, full of promise as it sends its stalks up and out, then gorgeously fulfilled as it offers its yearly profit.
Yet this no longer seems to me to describe the trajectory of the human spirit, which can easily be thwarted by circumstance and become warped and bitter.
Are we so much less fortunate than plants? Or am I the warped and bitter one, who fails to see the profit in my struggles?
Regardless, I loved much about this morning. When my hands are immersed in dirt, my mind drifts away, and my body is left to take part in the buzz of aliveness where the so-called lower creatures dwell. Today the plants and trees and dirt and rocks vibrated with that power. I felt the sap flowing in the trees, delivering its timeless message: renewal comes.
Margaret returned from church in late afternoon, and we resumed her lessons after supper. We sat on the hooked rug in her room a dozen steps from mine. She pulled her lesson book from beneath her mattress and showed me page after page of carefully formed letters. No wonder I’ve seen light beneath her door when I rise at night. She can write all the uppercase letters now!
When I praised her progress, she shared her intention to write not only to her oldest sister but also to Rosa—a friend in Germantown. She wants to make a sampler for her mother, too, to show how well she makes use of her time. I’ll help her choose a verse of Scripture for the bottom of it.
We practiced the lowercase. She sounded out each letter after me, and next I had her trace each one on the page with her finger. She felt a good deal of excitement, sometimes exclaiming “Oh!” or “I wondered how that sounds!”
Advanced composition was my forte at the Meeting school; my students, by Margaret’s age, knew their letters forward and backward and upside down. I guided them in crafting arguments, not in learning the alphabet. But teaching Margaret her letters this afternoon was equally rewarding. There was such a sweetness in guiding her hand with mine.
Soon her hand grew tired. It’s strong and rough from hauling and scrubbing, but holding a pencil is a new kind of work. I got up to leave and noticed a drawing upon her nightstand, with “Meghan Tooley” written in neat script at its bottom.
“My oldest sister drew that,” she told me. “She’s the one that went to school.”
“What’s that building?” I asked.
“The cottage where my family lives. See the stream?”
I nodded. “How far from here?”
“Some forty miles.”
“Does thee miss it?”
Her somber nod told me she did. “But I don’t miss the cotton mill.” She told me that her entire family besides her father gets up before dawn for black coffee and biscuits, then walks to the mill for eleven-hour shifts, six days a week. She did this with them from age five to eleven, which is why sometimes she coughs. “Everyone coughs,” she said, “from the fibers and dust in the air.”
Because their combined wages had been hardly enough to feed and house them, Margaret came by train to the city, being the one among her siblings who spoke well and had the best manners by nature. She found her job with the Burnhams through an intelligence office. She sends back twelve dollars a month—most of her earnings, and more than she made at the mill—and spares her family the cost of keeping her, besides.
Our conversation ended abruptly, for Henry called out. My time is marked in segments sized by a baby’s stomach.
As I nursed him, I felt glad to be in this house. Today was First Day, and I found no moments for silent waiting. But teaching Margaret was my worship.
NOTEBOOK SIX
Fifth Month 15
Today we closed the windows against a heavy rain, making it an ideal time for removing the grime that wafts in from the street and covers everything. Since Margaret was already serving Clementina and two lady visitors in the parlor, in addition to her usual round of tasks, I began to do this job rather than cooking through Henry’s morning nap.
I fetched rags, a bucket, the lamb’s-wool duster, and a feather brush and began in the dining room, making fast progress. I wiped the cherry table, the chairs, the dishes, and the sideboard. I cleaned the glass cabinet doors while peering in at charming items of painted porcelain and silver. Then I stepped into Albert’s study and lost my focus. For the basic features of the world seemed encapsulated in that room—in its collections of shells and rocks and feathers, its stuffed pheasant under a dome, its array of insects pinned to velvet trays, its foreign stamps under glass. The walls held botanical drawings, a painting of people in baggy pants hunting tigers amid odd-shaped trees and hills, and a wall hanging embroidered with an unfamiliar alphabet and roughly rendered people and animals.
Whether these items gave evidence of an active mind and wide-ranging adventures or had merely been purchased to give such an impression, I couldn’t say. But I was enthralled. What drew me most were the things I’d spied while sitting before the hearth with Albert and Henry: the books that crammed the many shelves.
I read the titles on their spines as I drew the fluffy duster across them. Some works of geography and natural sciences I recognized, and an encyclopedia. Yet I felt slight in the face of the many titles and authors I didn’t know. A Friend’s guarded education aims at depth in useful subjects and in those that develop one’s inner compass; the more fanciful works are roped off as unwise influences. At a duster’s length from a feast of uncensored ideas, I longed to grab hold.
I remembered the name Albert had said while teasing me—Marx. I found the Ms among the alphabetized rows. Then to my eyes leapt not Marx’s work but a small book bearing a grand gold-lettered title on its thin spine: On Liberty.