It was a favorite pastime with my grandmother, when the morning's work
was done, to uncover her flax-wheel, seat herself, and call me to sit
by her, and, after my childish manner, read to her from the "Life of
General Francis Marion," by Mason L. Weems, the graphic account of the
general's exploits, by the venerable parson. There was not a story in
the book that she did not know, almost as a party concerned, and she
would ply her work of flax-spinning while she gave me close and
intense attention. At times, when the historian was at fault in his
facts--and, to say the truth, that was more frequently the case than
comports with veracious history--she would cease the impelling motion
of her foot upon the pedal of her little wheel, drop her thread, and,
gently arresting the fly of her spool, she would lift her iron-framed
spectacles, and with great gravity say: "Read that again. Ah! it is
not as it happened, your grandfather was in that fight, and I will
tell you how it was." This was so frequently the case, that now, when
more than sixty years have flown, I am at a loss to know, if the
knowledge of most of these facts which tenaciously clings to my
memory, was originally derived from Weems's book, or my grandmother's
narrations. In these forays and conflicts, whenever my grandfather was
a party, her information was derived from him and his associates, and
of course was deemed by her authentic; and whenever these differed
from the historian's narrative, his, of consequence, was untrue.
Finally, Weems, upon one of his book-selling excursions, which simply
meant disposing of his own writings, came through her neighborhood,
and with the gravity of age, left verbally his own biography with Mrs.
McJoy, a neighbor; this made him, as he phrased it, General
Washington's preacher. He was never after assailed as a lying author:
but whenever his narrative was opposed to her memory, she had the
excuse for him, that his informant had deceived him.