WOMAN IN ART
the grand-children amused themselves. But they liked better to nestle by her side while she chatted cheerfully, teaching them lessons of natural history illustrated by their surroundings, and linked with the Bible story of the creation of the world, the deluge, and the changes that came over the earth. The manner of her speaking was so deeply impressive that neither the lesson taught, nor the scenes connected with the telling, were ever quite forgotten. As one of them related, when himself growing old, "There was a spell over them as they looked into grandmother's uplifted face, with its sweet expression of perfect peace, and they were very quiet during the homeward walk."
What a deprivation for the children of today, that grandmothers of that calibre and teaching are no longer included in the universal curriculum of life. The writer was blessed with such an one, and the paucity of books in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries compelled the reading and study from the book of nature; the telling of what they learned or discovered to children formed their first schooling.
"The Bible was her constant study, its precepts the guide of her life, and the influence of its teachings ever shown in her character and conversation. When teaching her children from its pages, any irreverence or mutinous merriment was sternly rebuked.
"The venerable volume is covered with homespun cloth in check plaid of now faded blue and buff, the Continental colors, fashioned by her own hands, though patched to preserve the original fabric.
"When the tidings of the splendid success at Yorktown were brought direct from the General to his mother, she was moved to an exclamation of fervent thanksgiving: "Thank God! The war is ended, and we shall be blessed with peace, happiness, and independence, for at last our country is free!"
"After the surrender of Cornwallis, Washington, leaving Yorktown with a brilliant suite of French and American officers, started for Philadelphia, stopping enroute to visit his mother whom he had not seen for seven years. It was the 11th of November, 1781; the town of Fredericksburg was all aglow with joy and revelry. Washington in the midst of his brilliant suite sent to apprise his mother of his arrival, and to know when it would be her pleasure to receive him................
"Alone and on foot, the general-in-chief of the combined armies of France and America, the deliverer of his country, the hero of the hour, repaired to pay his humble tribute of duty to her whom he reverenced as the author of
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