Of course, for the women, this meant
virtual imprisonment to the house, save on the occasion of the Sunday
drive to meeting. In these days, even the disciplinary tedium of a
convict's imprisonment is relieved by supplies of reading matter
gathered by benevolent societies. But for the imprisoned women of whom
I write there was not even this recreation. Printing had, indeed, been
invented some hundreds of years, but it can scarcely be said that
books had been as yet, and especially the kinds of books that ladies
care to read. A bible, concordance, and perhaps a commentary, with
maybe three or four other grave volumes, formed the limit of the
average library in wealthy Berkshire families of that day.
It is needless to say then, that Desire's time hung very heavy on her
hands, despite the utmost alleviations which embroidery, piano-playing,
and cakemaking could afford. For her, isolated by social superiority,
and just now, more than ever, separated from intercourse with the lower
classes by reason of the present political animosities, there was no
participation in the sports which made the season lively for the farmers'
daughters. The moonlight sledding and skating expeditions, the
promiscuously packed and uproarious sleighing-parties, the candy-pulls
and "bees" of one sort and another, and all the other robust and not
over-decorous social recreations in which the rural youth and maidens of
that day delighted, were not for the storekeeper's fastidious daughter.
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