Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/212

170 the father, who may sometimes have grown tired of returning from his day's work in the fields to a deserted house, to make a fire and prepare his own food.

As the boys grew older they were very ingenious about the house. They learned to wash and iron their own clothes as well as to make them, and while none of them would work on the farm with their father they all knew how to run the loom, which their mother kept in the kitchen, and upon which she sometimes wove. They took naturally to the trades, and when they started out for themselves one chose that of a carpenter, another became a cobbler, a third a stone-cutter, a fourth a clock-maker, and Asa Gilbert, the future husband of the founder of the Christian Science Church, was a weaver. As a boy Gilbert had been much with his mother, often accompanying her on her drives and winding the "quills" for her loom on the rare occasions when she felt like spinning or weaving. At school, where he was nicknamed "Githy," he was backward in everything except penmanship, in which he excelled and in which he took great satisfaction. He had considerable personal pride of a kind which showed itself in his odd choice of clothes, his mincing gait, and the elaborate arrangement of his hair, which he trained to curl under in a roll at the back and combed up into a high "roach" in front. Like his brothers he was fond of hunting and spent much of his time shooting at birds or at a target. Sometimes he hired out to a farmer, but only for a few days or weeks at a time, for he had no taste for farming.

The family had no church connections or religious