Page:Letters of Life.djvu/49

Rh the digestive organs usually given a substratum on which to build the recovered action of the system. Would that parents, in modern times, would more frequently consent to confer similar gifts upon their children.

My costume was simple, and unconstrained by any ligature to impede free circulation. Stays, corsets, or frames of whalebone, I never wore. Frocks low in the neck, and with short sleeves, were used both winter and summer. Houses had neither furnaces nor grates for coal, and churches had no means of being warmed, yet I cannot recollect suffering inconvenience from cold. Thick shoes and stockings were deemed essential, and great care was taken that I should never go with wet feet. Clear, abundant wood fires, sparkled in every chimney, and I was always directed, in cold seasons, to sit with my feet near them until thoroughly warmed, before retiring for the night.

A dress of white muslin, with a broad sash of pink or blue, was my highest style of decoration. There was no added ornament, save thickly clustering curls, not the gift of nature, but the production of my mother's untiring care and skill. This adornment, with scrupulous neatness, was all that she desired for her darling. The care of my teeth she reserved to herself, and made it no sinecure. Their pearly whiteness seemed sometimes to excite her vanity, and it was a proportionably keen disappointment to her that the second set should make their appearance of rather too