herself would watch by the bedside until the shadows stole away and the
sunrise came again. I wonder where you have lived all your life if you
have never known a woman like that?

In the morning, as soon as the breakfast things were done and the men
folks had gone to the cloth-factory, Mrs. Martineau would marshal her
daughters in the sitting-room to sew. And there they sewed for four hours
every forenoon for more than four years; and as they sewed some one would
often read aloud to them, for Mrs. Martineau believed in
education--education gotten on the wing.

Sewing-machines and knitting-machines have done more to emancipate women
than all the preachers. Think of the days when every garment worn by men,
women and children was made by the never-resting hands of women!

And as the girls in that thrifty Norwich household sewed and listened to
the reader, they occasionally spoke in monotone of what was read---all
save Harriet: Harriet sewed. And the other girls thought Harriet very
dull, and her mother was sure of it, and called her stupid, and sometimes
shook her and railed at her, endeavoring to arouse her out of her
lethargy.

Harriet has herself left on record somewhat of her feelings in those days.
In her child-heart there was a great aching void. Her life was wrong--the
lives about her were wrong--she did not know how, and could not then trace
the subject far enough to tell why. She was a-hungered, she longed for
tenderness, for affection and the close confidence that knows no repulse.
She wanted them all to throw down their sewing for just five minutes, and
sit in the silence with folded hands. She longed for her mother to hold
her on her lap so, that she could pillow her head on her shoulder with her