Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/32

 To fulfil the duties of life as they came to her was her idea of what was required of her, and she never flinched and never lamented. What she was unable to buy she cheerfully did without, and what she could not secure did not disturb her. Her predominant trait was a certain setness. There were people she disliked and she never relented. There were people of whom she was fond, and no poverty, failure or misfortune could weaken her affection for them. She was not aggressive, but was immovable. She was timid at a distance, but when an emergency arose was calm and efficient. She never fainted nor grew hysterical, nor became “rattled,” but simply stayed there and did what could be done. I have seen her tried in sudden accident, in cases of extreme illness, on an occasion when the upsetting of a fluid lamp set fire to the room, and in all of these instances alike the same quiet strength of character was manifested. Her Irish and negro maids, from the point of view of the household training to which she had been accustomed, were a sorry lot of incapables, but when they were ill she nursed them, mended their clothing, and, in person, attended to their wants. In her childhood she lived with her grandmother at the southeast corner of Front and Pine streets, in Philadelphia, going to school on Pine Street, and later was a pupil in the Kimberton School in Chester County, where she learned the prim chirography of that Quaker establishment. Up to the end of her long life she could read a book and enjoy it all, meet a guest and chat with her cheerily, and in her eighty-fourth year she made for me an elaborate piece of needlework, so elaborate that a maid of eighteen would have abandoned the task.

Her marriage breakfast was cooked by Julia Roberts, a mulatto woman who was raised as a slave in the family of my great-great-grandfather, Samuel Lane, and who finally died, after I reached manhood, at the age of one hundred and four years. Patrick Anderson owned a slave and the Richardsons owned slaves. Once I had the bill of sale of a 24