The good Alice took her scissors, and cut off lock after lock, till all were gone, save a few which she left around her forehead. Then she put on her simple muslin cap and tied it with a muslin string under her chin.
Just then, her boy awoke. Alice had laid him down on his bed, and the first sight the little fellow saw, when he awoke, was his mother"s hair which almost covered him up.
"Why, Mother, how could you do so? How could you cut off your pretty hair, and put on that ugly cap? What would father say? You said we must do what we thought would please him. It would not please him to have you cut off your pretty hair;" and the child burst into an agony of tears.
"Would it not please him that you should have a spelling book and a slate to write on, William? With this hair I can buy them for you. I have no other riches now."
The poor boy still wept. The hair was more to him, at that time, than all learning. He could not then have believed that the time would come, when he would remember with grat.i.tude his mother"s sacrifice for him and his little sister.
Alice gathered the locks, took from a drawer her last bit of blue ribbon, and tied them, saying, "This is the way he liked to see my hair tied when I was at my father"s cottage. I shall never tie it so again."
When the good vicar came to see Alice, as he did every day, she met him with me all nicely done up in a paper in her hands, and asked him if he would be so good as to take me to the hair dresser who had advertised for hair, make the best bargain he could for her, and, with the proceeds, get the few necessaries for commencing her small school. The good man cheerfully promised to do so, took the parcel from Alice, and carried it to his own house.
And so I bade farewell to dear Alice, and her neat cottage, and her sweet children. I was parted forever from that innocent head that had cherished only good and pure thoughts. I was no longer to be dressed by her dear hands. I was never again to shade and adorn her lovely face, nor fall in ringlets around her sloping shoulders, nor ever tremble again with the beatings of her gay and generous heart, as I often had when she let me fall over her neck and shoulders.
Nothing that ever had life in it could be insensible to such a sorrow as this. How I envied the few locks she kept around her precious forehead! How I wished that scissors had never been invented!
The good curate, faithful to his promise, took me to the hair dresser in London, according to the direction in the advertis.e.m.e.nt; and, before opening the paper which contained me, told him the story of Alice, of her trials, and of her excellent character and conduct, of her present need, and of her purpose to support and educate her children by her own efforts. He told him that there never was such a beautiful head of hair, and that he hoped he would be willing to give something handsome for it.
When the old clergyman opened the paper, and exhibited me to the hair dresser, he took me out as fondly as if I had been a baby, and shook me so as to make the ringlets curl again, but they would not.
I felt the difference between the old man"s hard fingers, and rough shake, and the soft touch of the dear Alice.
"Is it not beautiful?" said the old man.
"It is well enough," said the dealer. "I shall have to make a man"s wig of it. The curls will all boil out."
You may imagine my horror at these words; and, as for the poor vicar, he seemed thunderstruck.
"If I had any money to spare," said he, "I would buy this beautiful hair myself, and have it framed with a gla.s.s over it, and hang it up in my best parlor, with that blue ribbon that looks so like her; it"s as handsome as a picture; and then her dear children should have it at my death."
Whether it was that the hair dresser was afraid of losing me, or that his heart was slightly touched with compa.s.sion for Alice and her orphan children, I know not; but he offered the good curate a sum for me which satisfied him.
As the curate gave me up, he untied the blue ribbon, folded it up nicely, and put it into his pocket; and I think he dropped a tear as he did so.
The wig maker examined me again when he was by himself. "A fine head of hair it really is," said he. "It will make a good wig for a youngish sort of a man; and the curls will make it work easier."
Then he tied me up with a piece of twine, and tossed me into a large drawer with great bunches of hair of all colors and fineness.
Here I remained for I know not how long, without air or light, in this disagreeable company. At last, one day we were all taken out, and what we were made to endure I now shudder to think of. We were boiled, we were pulled and mauled and greased; in short, I wonder we had a whole hair left; but, after undergoing every thing you can imagine, I found myself on a pole in the shape of a gentleman"s wig, covered with high-scented pomatum and powder.
No one would have recognized me as the same beautiful hair that had adorned the head of Alice. There were a number of poles with wigs on them close by me, and I knew, as a matter of course, that I must look just like them. They looked perfectly hateful to me, and I felt disgusted with myself, because I knew I resembled them.
It is now a puzzle to me how men could have ever been so foolish as to make such a thing as I am, to put on their heads; these great unmeaning curls, this ugly club, as they called it, hanging down behind, and this horrid grease and powder too.
Most of my life, of course, has been pa.s.sed in this horrid shape in which you now see me; but the remembrance of my early days clings to me, and the love of freedom, and the sense of beauty which I acquired when the wind played through my natural curls as they covered the head of my dear Alice, have never forsaken me. It was then only that I truly lived. But, forgive me--I have the weakness of old age, and love to talk of youthful pleasures.
One morning, in the year seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, when I was just twenty-eight years old, a gentleman of middle age came into the hair dresser"s shop, and asked to look at his wigs. I was shown to him with some others. After examining us all, and trying on several, he chose me, because, he said, he thought I was made of the finest hair.
"This," said he, "will visit the American colonies, and probably remain there, for that will, I think, be my home."
I rejoiced to hear this, for I was weary of my present life, and longed for some variety.
The good gentleman who purchased me seemed well satisfied with my looks; but, when I saw myself in the gla.s.s, upon his long, narrow face, with his great bottle nose, and cheeks like the sides of a sulky, and all my pretty curls and my bright color gone, I wonder that each hair did not stand on end with fright; most likely it would have stood up, but for weight of pomatum and powder.
Soon after my owner purchased me, he set sail for America. As I was his new and best wig, I was packed carefully in a box, and knew nothing till he arrived here, and was settled in his place of residence.
The first time I was taken out of my box was on Sunday, when I was carefully adjusted on the Squire"s head. I call him Squire, for I soon found that Squire was the t.i.tle every one gave him, as he was the most important personage in the town in which he lived. I was as well pleased as a wig could be with the appearance of things in and around the house I was to inhabit. It was in a village about thirty miles from Boston, and was like an English country gentleman"s house. A wide hall pa.s.sed through the middle of it, with a grand staircase. From the doors at either end of the hall ran rows of elm trees. One led to the high road, the other up a gentle hill, on the top of which was a pretty burying ground with a path through it leading to a small church.
The Squire had a black man whom he called his boy, and who was, in fact, his slave, but whom he treated like a friend and brother.
Some years after, when slavery was abolished in Ma.s.sachusetts, the Squire called Cato to him, and said, "Cato, you are no longer my slave; you are free."
"But, ma.s.sa, you will not sell me."
"No, Cato, you are a freeman; I have no right to sell you. I don"t think I ever had any right to sell you; but now the law of the land makes you free, and I am glad of it."
"Then I can stay with you of my own free will, ma.s.sa."
"Yes, Cato, you can stay or go, just as you please."
"Then, ma.s.sa, I stay with you for love, and not cause I am your slave. Now I your friend." And Cato never left the Squire till the day of his death. But to return to my story.
The Squire, as I said, put me on very carefully, and then as carefully put over me his three-cornered hat, and took his gold-headed cane, and, with Cato behind him, walked reverently up the hill to church.
I was accustomed to the Episcopal church, where dear Alice went every Sunday; but this was a Presbyterian church, and I had never been in one before.
As I said, had not my hairs lost their power of motion by what I had endured from the scissors, and the vile process of making me into my present shape, every one of them would have risen up against the so-called music in this church; but my misfortunes and pomatum kept me quiet.
The sermon was at least two hours long, and many a hitch did the Squire give me before it was over; that was the beginning of the little trick, which you see I have now, of jerking up a little on one side occasionally.
The Squire had brought with him from England a complete set of furniture for his house; and, after some time, the things reached our abode which was about thirty miles from the sea coast.
What all these fine things were for was soon explained. The Squire, one day, put me into my nice box, putting on an old wig which he wore on week days. I soon found that we were in some kind of a vehicle, and, ere long, we arrived at a hotel in Boston. But we did not stay there long. The Squire was going to be married, and, as I was his best wig, I, of course, adorned his head at the wedding.
Who would have believed that I was the same hair that covered the head of dear Alice when she was a bride? Then curling like hyacinths, and glowing like sunshine, now stiff, dull and dead; looking, as I thought then, and think now, like nothing human or divine.
It was the second time the Squire had been married, so he was very sedate in his happiness. He brought home his bride in a few days, and there, at his excellent, delightful country house, all was soon arranged in the most orderly way possible.
The lady had a proper pole arranged for my accommodation, and made the Squire a nice velvet cap to wear in the evenings, when they were alone, and he wished to be relieved of my weight.
The relations of the Squire and his wife often visited them, and always in parties, English fashion, and remained some days; and then what feasting and merriment there was!
The house was surrounded by beautiful woods, and near by was a lovely pond; and young and gay hearts were often there to wake the echoes with their cheerful, laughing voices. Cato played on the violin, and, when the evenings were chilly or rainy, the young people danced till the small hours of the night.
All this I witnessed, for the Squire was a gentleman of the old school, was always in his best clothes for his company, and gave no sign of weariness till they retired to bed.
I should mention that the Squire was a justice of the peace. As he lived in a remote and very quiet country town, he had not many culprits brought before him. But occasionally he was called upon to decide upon the proper punishment of some young rogue, and now and then he had to marry a couple.