Grandmother

“ I do the marketing, and talk Pidgin-English to Fong, and read Emerson and Carlyle and Guizot to grandmother, and huddle in woolly shawls like an old woman to keep from congealing where I sit! When the sun shines grandmother complains of the glare, and when it's foggy she complains of the gloom, and when it rains she goes to bed to keep warm. ”

“ As I lay welcome kisses on baby's wee brow!
A Grandmother, I? How the bright years have flown
Since I was a child scarce to maidenhood grown!
"And now in my arms, looking up in my eyes,
With orbs that are bluer than June's sunny skies,
Behold my own grandchild! Ah, verily, youth
'On double wings flies,' Grandpa says in good truth,
"As he looks in my face where no longer the rose
In my once dimpled cheeks in its loveliness grows,
And marks the white locks mingling faster each day
With the brown that old Time is fast stealing away. ”

“ The children call her grandma, and I heard Archie explaining to the gardener’s son, the other day, that she was really his grandmother, because she was the mother of his first father!
To me the past seems all a dream, and when I look about me upon my home, and hear the voices of my children shouting on the lawn, and see their father coming up the walk, and know that he will soon be at my side, bending over me in the old, teasing, loving way, I cannot realize that I am she who once plodded so drearily through the London fog and rain, hunting for work with which to get my daily bread. ”

“ If my grandmother be still alive, she is of no service to you, for by this time she must be nearly eighty years old—too old to be cared for by one to whom she has ceased to be of service, send her to me at Rochester, or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me a mother, and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could make her such. Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and take care of her in her old age. And my sisters, let me know all about them. ”

“ Oh grandfather, now grandmother won't ever have to eat hard, black bread any more. Oh, everything is so wonderful now! If God Our Father had done immediately what I prayed for, I should have come home at once and could not have brought half as many rolls to grandmother. I should not have been able to read either. Grandmama told me that God would make everything much better than I could ever dream. I shall always pray from now on, the way grandmama taught me. When God does not give me something I pray for, I shall always remember how everything has worked out for the best this time. ”

“ Grandmother and the children knelt around the table and prayed as long as the candles burned. Grandmother ended the prayer with the words: "Let the Eternal Light shine for them, and may their souls rest in peace!" ”

“ So there were wrathful moments when you wished you might live always with Grandmother. It was so easy to be good at her house—so easy, that is, to get two pieces of cake. And when God made little boys, you thought, He must have made Grandmothers to bake sugar pies for them.
"Suppose you were a little boy like me, Grandmother?" you once said to her.
"That would be fine," she admitted; "but suppose you were a little grandmother like me?"
"Well," you replied, with candor, "I think I would rather be like Grandfather, 'cause he was a soldier, and fought Johnny Reb." ”

“ The next afternoon Grandmother and Rhodora went home. When Grandmother was in the carriage the Skeptic tucked her in and put cushions behind her back and a footstool under her feet. Then the Philosopher laid a great nosegay of garden flowers in her lap. She was so pleased she coloured like a girl, and put out her delicate little old hand in its black silk mitt, and he took it in both his and held it close for a minute, looking at her with his blue eyes full of such a boyish expression of affection as his own mother might have seen now and then, years before. ”

“ Her best lessons did not come from books, and she learned one then as she saw the fairest success of a woman's life while watching this happy grandmother with fresh faces framing her withered one, daughterly voices chorusing good wishes, and the harvest of half a century of wedded life beautifully garnered in her arms. ”

“ My dear father, I am so glad to see you!—grandmother, it is refreshing to find you looking as though you bade defiance to time;—and you, my little cousin, how much you have improved! How lovely you have grown! A year does a great deal for one's appearance. ”

“ ELIZABETH AND VICTORIA. Every generation compared to the age it immediately succeeds is but a further lapse from Paradise. Every grandfather is of necessity a wiser, kinder, nobler being that the grandson doomed to follow him—every grandmother chaster, gentler, more self-denying, more devoted to the beauty of goodness, than the giddy, vain, thoughtless creature, who in her time is sentenced to be grandmother to somebody, whose still increased defects will only serve to bring out the little lustre of the gentlewoman who preceded her. ”

“ She was the handsomest old lady I ever saw, my revered grandmother, and in the spring of her years had been a reigning belle. To me she was still beautiful, in the gentle quietude of life's evening shades, the dignity of chastened passions, waiting hopes, and sustaining religious faith. I was her favourite grandchild, and the place near her feet, the arm laid across her lap, the uplifted eye fixed steadfastly on her face, constant as the recurrence of the still night hour, told a story of love and devotion on my part, which defied all competition. ”

“ A Little Girl and Her Grandmother I AM always sorry for children who have never known what it is to have a grandmother and a grandfather and an old mountain farm to visit, far away from everywhere. A little girl I once knew had all three. Her grandmother was the dearest grandmother I have ever seen. She was tall and stout, with a broad, comfortable lap, and her hands, as they stroked the little girl’s head on her shoulder, were smooth and soft. The grandmother’s eyes were blue and full of mischief and fun and love. ”

“ Mercifully we were the first to hear about this little one; for even as a baby she was so winning that Temple people would have done much to get her, and the old grandmother would almost certainly have been beguiled into giving her to them. How often it has been so! "She will be brought up carefully according to her caste. All that is beautiful will be hers, jewels and silk raiment." The hook concealed within the shining bait is forgotten. The old grandmother feels she is doing her best for the child, and the little life passes out of her world. ”

“ You ought not to have the heart to make me suffer so, to make the mother of your mother, who is so old and so near her last day, weep; the poor grandmother who has always loved you so, who rocked you all night long, night after night, when you were a baby a few months old, and who did not eat for amusing you,—you do not know that! ”

“ These words caused grandmother to come closer, and, scrutinizing my face, she asked, "Why, what's put Mary Ball into your head, child?" and, not waiting for reply, added, "You cannot deceive your old grandmother; you might as well give up now as at any other time;" and pointing to the still unopened valentine, while looking at the group of visitors, she tantalizingly said, "Open it, dearie, and see what George has sent you." ”

“ In years to come, say about the beginning of the nineteenth century, if I live so long, I shall say to my grandchildren, who will then be about eighteen or nineteen, and as beautiful as the day, ‘My dears,’ I shall say, ‘your grandmother, though you will find it difficult to believe, was not always toothless, nor did her hands always shake, nor were her cheeks wrinkled, nor were her chin and nose close together. ”

“ They are grandfather and grandmother to a dozen grown people and have great-grandchildren besides; their bodies are bent, their hair is grey, their step tottering and infirm. Is this the lightsome pair whose wedding was so merry, and have the young couple indeed grown old so soon! ”

“ Grandmother continued: "Indeed, they have enough to weep for, even if they gather no tears, for there is always much grief as well as joy. If they are happy in each other's love, envious people are sure to pour in some wormwood."
"Dearest Princess, Grandmother wants to intercede for two unhappy lovers. I beg you to listen and, dearest Princess, help!" The Countess clasped her hands and looked up imploringly into the face of her guardian. ”

“ Few of us, I imagine, but cherish the memory of some such being in the old home, a soft-voiced grandmother, with silvery hair brushed under a discreet and flattering cap, with soft, dark raiment and tulle-wrapped throat. There are still, it is to be hoped, many such lovable women in our land, but at times I look about me in dismay, and wonder who is to take their places when they are gone. ”

“ One day her mother said to her: “Come, Red Riding-Hood, I want you to go and see your grandmother, and take her a piece of cake and a bottle of wine; for she is ill and weak, and this will do her good. Make haste and get ready before the weather gets too hot, and go straight on your road while you are out, and behave prettily and modestly; and do not run, for fear you should fall and break the bottle, and then grandmother would have no wine. And when you pass through the village, do not forget to courtesy and say ‘Good-morning’ to every one who knows you.” ”

“ I have described my grandfather and my residence, but now I must introduce my grandmother; my dear, excellent, grandmother, whom I loved so much when she was living, and whose memory I shall ever revere. In person she was rather diminutive, but, although sixty years of age, she still retained her figure, which was remarkably pretty, and she was as straight as an arrow. Never had age pressed more lightly upon the human frame ”

“ Ah, I used to know a grandmother, and, although she has been among the angels thirty years or more, I can't think of her even now, without a sigh of regret that she could not have lived forever in this world, she was such a joy to us all. ”

“ King and patriarch, in the midst, sitteth the true-hearted farmer.
At his side, the wife with her needle, still quietly regardeth the children.
Sheltered in her corner-nook, in the arm-chair, the post of honor,
Calm with the beauty of age, is the venerable grandmother.
Clustering around her, watching the stocking that she knits, are the little ones,
Loving the stories that she tells of the days when she was a maiden,
Stories ever mix'd with lessons of a reverent piety. ”

“ For you've got his blue eyes and his brown hair and his sweet little ways, and Grandmother loves you—once for yourself and once for him."
"But where is the little boy now, Grandmother?"
"He's a man now, darling. He's your own father."
Every Sunday, Grandmother went to church. After breakfast there was a flurry of dressing, with an opening and shutting of doors up-stairs, and Grandfather would be down-stairs in the kitchen, blacking his Sunday boots. On Sunday his beard looked whiter than on other days, but that was because he seemed so much blacker everywhere else. ”

“ MY EARLY CHILDHOOD I WAS pleased, it seems, with the voyage and with the nursing-bottle. Warmly wrapped up, I slept in my grandmother’s arms. In the morning everything I saw from the diligence windows amused me greatly. The movement delighted me and made me dance. Every time I asked, “Mamma?” my grandmother answered: “Yes, look, see, she is down there.” At the relays I walked a little, for I already walked at that early age, and was much taken with and curious about the dogs, the chickens, and people, and was instinctively drawn to my grandmother, whom I soon grew to love fondly. ”

“ My heart is hard against weariness, and I would go and speak to the beautiful maiden.”
“Yo á! my poor boy,” said the grandmother. “She is as wonderful as she is wise and beautiful. She thinks not of men save as brothers and friends; and she it is, I bethink me, who sends the may-flies and gnats and mosquitoes, therefore, to drive them away. They are but disguised beings, and beware, my grandson, you will only cover yourself with shame as a man is covered with water who walks through a rain-storm! ”

“ You said, "Don't worry, it won't be long before you have somebody to whom she will be grandma, and you can get out of it gracefully by calling her grandma, too." Isn't it queer to think that I through my motherhood shall place you in the grandmother generation? As I look back to Cloverton days and my grandmother, I envy this baby of mine. There is something about a grandmother that is pretty fine. They thought I was a great kid at grandma's house—partly because of my unshakable [Pg 49] belief that my grandmother was beautiful. ”

“ She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. “Grandmother,” cried the little one, “O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree.” And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. ”

“ She is the grandmother par excellence, and spends her life in spoiling the little ones, cramming them with sugar-plums and rich cake whenever she has the chance, and nullifying mamma's punishments by surreptitious gifts and goodies. She is the dearly beloved of our childish recollections; and to the last days of our life we cherish the remembrance of the kind old lady with her beaming smile, taking out of her large black reticule, or the more mysterious recesses of her unfathomable pocket, wonderful little screws of paper which her withered hands thrust into our chubby fists ”