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When Old Harpeth, who has been looking down on a nice, peaceful, man ordained, built, and protected world, woke Glendale up the morning after my arrival and found me defiantly alone in the home of my fathers also of each of my foremothers, by the courtesy of dower he muttered and drew a veil of mist across his face.
Such, I think, is the final impression on the mind of an American visitor, when his delight at finding something permanent begins to yield to his Western love of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air of a spot where the forefathers and foremothers have grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a long succession of lives, without any intermixture of new elements, till family features and character are all run in the same inevitable mould.
"You, gentlemen, represent the collected society of which I am a part, and the fact is worth your consideration at least, that under the system of woman parasitism, dependence, and, in a way, slavery, the rugged qualities of strength of purpose, of womanly self-reliance, of constantly expanding mental and moral natures that so distinguished our foremothers, and which mean so much to the character of children, which in turn mean so much to the character of the citizen and the nation, have largely disappeared.
If I had discovered the shadow of tradition in the rest of the old house, I walked into the very depths of them as I entered the bedroom of my foremothers. Deep crimson coals of fire were in a squat fireplace, and a last smoldering log of some kind of fragrant wood broke into fragments and sent up a little gust of blue and gold flame as if in celebration of my arrival.
On December 21, 1892, we celebrated, for the first time, "Foremothers' Day." Men had celebrated "Forefathers' Day" for many years, but as women were never invited to join in their festivities, Mrs. Devereux Blake introduced the custom of women having a dinner in celebration of that day. Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker spent two days with me, and together we attended the feast and made speeches.
I feel like apologizing for my civilization." She pressed my hand. "Taisez-vous!" she replied, smiling. "Aita peapea. I am always happy. Remember I still live in Tahiti, and this is my time. My foremothers' day is past. Allons! We will be soon at the vaimato, and there we will have the déjeuner."
It may be because only the lower types of men remained here at the time of the great catastrophe, while the temples were filled with the noblest daughters of the race. My strain has remained clearer than the rest because for countless ages my foremothers were high priestesses the sacred office descends from mother to daughter. Our husbands are chosen for us from the noblest in the land.
"And the sight that would please me better than anything else I have even thought up to want to see," I found myself saying when I became conscious I hope I didn't use any of the oaths of my forefathers which must have been tempting my refined foremothers for generations and which I secretly admire Henrietta for indulging in on occasions of impatience with Sallie "would be Ned Hall left entirely alone with that squirming baby, that looks exactly like him, when it is having a terrible spell of colic and Ned is in the midst of a sick headache, with all the other children cold, hungry, and cross, the cook gone to a funeral, and the nurse in a grouch because she couldn't go and and he knowing that Mamie was attired in a lovely, cool muslin dress, sitting up here on the porch with us sipping a mint julep and smoking a ten-cent cigar, resting and getting up an appetite for supper.
One of the greatest trials these travellers had to endure was the wretched cooking which was the rule and not exception among our much-praised foremothers. In one of the old diaries is this single ejaculation, "O, the crimes that are committed in the kitchens of this land!"
Sada's eager mind absorbed everything offered her like a young sponge, and when a few months ago Susanna folded her hands and joined her foremothers, there was let loose on the world this exquisite girl with her solitary legacy of untried ideals and a blind enthusiasm for her mother's people. Right here, Mate, was when I had a prolonged attack of cold shivers.
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