The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[287] the never-forgotten calamity of whose life was that Governor Brooks once saw her drinking out of the nose of her tea-kettle. Her school was in her bed-room, always untidy, and she was a constant chewer of tobacco; but the children were fond of her, and Maria and her father always carried her a good Sunday dinner. Thomas W. Higginson, in Eminent Women of the Age, mentions in this connection that, according to an established custom, on the night before Thanksgiving ‘all the humble friends of the Francis household—Marm Betty, the washerwoman, wood-sawyer, and journeymen, some twenty or thirty in all—were summoned to a preliminary entertainment. They there partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pie made in milk-pans, and heaps of doughnuts. They feasted in the large, old-fashioned kitchen, and went away loaded with crackers and bread and pies, not forgetting “turnovers” for the children. Such plain application of the doctrine that it is more blessed to give than receive may have done more to mould the character of Lydia Maria Child of maturer years than all the faithful labors of good Dr. Osgood, to whom she and her brother used to repeat the Assembly's catechism once a month.’

Her education was limited to the public schools, with the exception of one year at a private seminary in her native town. From a note by her brother, Dr. Francis, we learn that when twelve years of age she went to Norridgewock, Maine, where her married sister resided. At Dr. Brown's, in Skowhegan, she first read Waverley. She was greatly excited, and exclaimed, as she laid down