Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

“ When Letitia came to herself again, she was in a great feather-bed in the unfinished loft of the log-house. The wind blew in her face, a great, star shone in her eyes. She thought at first she was out of doors, then she heard a kind but commanding voice repeating, "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly in her great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little garret lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow, and the stars shining through the cracks in the logs. Not a bit of furniture was there in the room beside the bed and an oak chest. ”

“ She could, for instance, crochet, if she could not knit. She could repeat the multiplication-table, if she did not know the doctrine of predestination; she had also all the States of the Union by heart. But advanced knowledge is of no more value in the past than past knowledge in the future. She could not crochet because there were no crochet-needles; there were no States of the Union; and it seemed doubtful if there was a multiplication-table, there was so little to multiply.
So Letitia had to set herself to acquiring the wisdom of her ancestors. ”

“ She learned to card, and hetchel, and spin, and weave. She learned to dye cloth, and make coarse garments, even for her great-great-great-grandfather, Captain John Hopkins. She knitted yarn stockings, she scoured brass and pewter, and, more than all, she learned the Catechism. Letitia had never before known what work was. From long before dawn until long after dark she toiled. She was not allowed to spend one idle moment, had no chance to steal out and search for the little green door, even had she not been so afraid of wild beasts and Indians. ”