If I went a walk in
the country, I had to bring her home a budget: the men and women on the
road, their dresses, appearance, countenances, and words; every kind of
bird in the air, and insect and chrysalis in the hedges; the crops in the
fields, the flowers and herbs on the banks. If I walked in the town, I
must not be eyes and no eyes; woe betide me if I could only report the
dresses! Really, I have known me, when I was but eight, come home to my
mother laden with details, when perhaps an untrained girl of eighteen
could only have specified that she had gone up and down a thoroughfare.
Another time mother would take me on a visit: next day, or perhaps next
week, she would expect me to describe every article of furniture in her
friend's room, and the books on the table, and repeat the conversation,
the topics at all events. She taught me to master history _accurately._
To do this she was artful enough to turn sport into science. She utilized
a game: young people in Boston play it. A writes an anecdote on paper, or
perhaps produces it in print. She reads it off to B. B goes away, and
writes it down by memory; then reads her writing out to C.
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