later died during an Atlantic crossing as a result of the dysentery
aboard.
In the springtime, when it was light early in the morning, and this was a pearly light that is not known in America, an oyster
light that lasts for hours before the sun is actually up, and so has about it a diffuse and magical quality, Evan and I would
wake at daybreak and walk the distance into Laurvig to the school.
I can hardly describe to you the joy of those early morning walks together, and is it not true that in our extreme youth we
possess the capacity to see more clearly and absorb more intensely the beauty that lies all before us, and so much more so
than in our later youth or in our adulthood, when we have been apprised of sin and its stain and our eyes habe become dulled,
and we cannot see with the same purity, or love so well?
The coast road hugged at times the very edge of the cliffs and overlooked the Bay, so that on a fine day, to the east of us,
there would be the harbor, with its occasional schooners and ferries, and beyond it the sea twitching so blindingly we were
almost forced to turn our eyes away.
As we walked, Evan would be wearing his trousers and a shirt without a collar and his jacket and his cap. He wore stockings
that Karen or my mother had knit, wonderful stockings in a variety of intricate patterns, and he carried his books and dinner
sack, and sometimes also mine, in a leather strap which had been fashioned from a horse’s rein. I myself, though just a girl,
wore the heavy dresses of the day, that is to say those of domestic and homespun manufacture, and it was always a pleasure
in the late spring when our mother allowed me to change the wool dress for a calico that was lighter in weight and in color
and made me feel as though I had just bathed after a long and oppressive confinement. At that time, I wore my hair loose along
my back, with the sides pulled into a topknot. I may say here that my hair was of a lovely color in my youth, a light and
soft brown that picked up the sun in summer, and was sometimes, by August, golden near the front, and I had fine, clear eyes
of a light gray color. As I have mentioned, I was not a tall girl, but I did have a good carriage and figure, and though I
was never a great beauty, not like Anethe, I trust I was pleasant to look upon, and perhaps even pretty for several years
in my late youth, before the true responsibilities of my journey on earth began and altered, as it does in so many women,
the character of the face.
I recall one morning when Evan and myself would have been eight and six years of age respectively. We had gone perhaps three
quarters of the way to town when my brother quite suddenly put down his books and dinner sack and threw off his jacket and
cap as well, and in his shirt and short pants raised his arms and leapt up to seize a branch of an apple tree that had just
come fully into bloom, and I suspect that it was the prospect of losing himself in all that white froth of blossoms that propelled
Evan higher and higher so that in seconds he was calling to me from the very apex of the tree.
Hallo, Maren, can you see me?
For reasons I cannot accurately describe, I could not bear to be left behind on the ground, and so it was with a frenzy of
determination that I tried to repeat Evan’s acrobatics and make a similar climb to the height of the fruit tree. I discovered,
however, that I was encumbered by the skirts of my dress, which were weighing me down and would not permit me to grab hold
of the tree limbs with my legs in a shimmying fashion, such as I had just witnessed Evan performing. It was, then, with a
gesture of irritation and perhaps anger at my sex, that I stripped myself of my frock, along that most travelled of public
roads into Laurvig, stripped myself down to my underclothes, which consisted of a sleeveless woolen vest and a pair of unadorned
homespun bloomers, and thus was able in a matter of
aboard.
In the springtime, when it was light early in the morning, and this was a pearly light that is not known in America, an oyster
light that lasts for hours before the sun is actually up, and so has about it a diffuse and magical quality, Evan and I would
wake at daybreak and walk the distance into Laurvig to the school.
I can hardly describe to you the joy of those early morning walks together, and is it not true that in our extreme youth we
possess the capacity to see more clearly and absorb more intensely the beauty that lies all before us, and so much more so
than in our later youth or in our adulthood, when we have been apprised of sin and its stain and our eyes habe become dulled,
and we cannot see with the same purity, or love so well?
The coast road hugged at times the very edge of the cliffs and overlooked the Bay, so that on a fine day, to the east of us,
there would be the harbor, with its occasional schooners and ferries, and beyond it the sea twitching so blindingly we were
almost forced to turn our eyes away.
As we walked, Evan would be wearing his trousers and a shirt without a collar and his jacket and his cap. He wore stockings
that Karen or my mother had knit, wonderful stockings in a variety of intricate patterns, and he carried his books and dinner
sack, and sometimes also mine, in a leather strap which had been fashioned from a horse’s rein. I myself, though just a girl,
wore the heavy dresses of the day, that is to say those of domestic and homespun manufacture, and it was always a pleasure
in the late spring when our mother allowed me to change the wool dress for a calico that was lighter in weight and in color
and made me feel as though I had just bathed after a long and oppressive confinement. At that time, I wore my hair loose along
my back, with the sides pulled into a topknot. I may say here that my hair was of a lovely color in my youth, a light and
soft brown that picked up the sun in summer, and was sometimes, by August, golden near the front, and I had fine, clear eyes
of a light gray color. As I have mentioned, I was not a tall girl, but I did have a good carriage and figure, and though I
was never a great beauty, not like Anethe, I trust I was pleasant to look upon, and perhaps even pretty for several years
in my late youth, before the true responsibilities of my journey on earth began and altered, as it does in so many women,
the character of the face.
I recall one morning when Evan and myself would have been eight and six years of age respectively. We had gone perhaps three
quarters of the way to town when my brother quite suddenly put down his books and dinner sack and threw off his jacket and
cap as well, and in his shirt and short pants raised his arms and leapt up to seize a branch of an apple tree that had just
come fully into bloom, and I suspect that it was the prospect of losing himself in all that white froth of blossoms that propelled
Evan higher and higher so that in seconds he was calling to me from the very apex of the tree.
Hallo, Maren, can you see me?
For reasons I cannot accurately describe, I could not bear to be left behind on the ground, and so it was with a frenzy of
determination that I tried to repeat Evan’s acrobatics and make a similar climb to the height of the fruit tree. I discovered,
however, that I was encumbered by the skirts of my dress, which were weighing me down and would not permit me to grab hold
of the tree limbs with my legs in a shimmying fashion, such as I had just witnessed Evan performing. It was, then, with a
gesture of irritation and perhaps anger at my sex, that I stripped myself of my frock, along that most travelled of public
roads into Laurvig, stripped myself down to my underclothes, which consisted of a sleeveless woolen vest and a pair of unadorned
homespun bloomers, and thus was able in a matter of
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