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GRANDMOTHERS: BY ANNE P. L. FIELD
QUIET room faintly redolent with pot-pourri, books
everywhere, and seated in a high-backed chair in the
western window, with the sunset glow lingering lov-
ingly on her face, a silver-haired old lady, her beau-
tiful stately head framed in delicate lace, fine as a
cobweb; her seerlike eyes fixed upon the golden sky,
-such is my memory of a grandmother. That room was the shrine
of my childhood; there grandmother was nearly always to be found;
there all who knew her would bring their joys and sorrows, their
burdens or their blessings, sure of her wise counsel and her benedic-
tion. Her mind was an encyclopedia of treasures; what grandmother
didn't know, seemed to us children not at all worth knowing. We
felt like the little fellow in Mr. Riley's rhyme who said:-
        "My gran'ma she's read all books-ever' kind
          They is, 'at tell all 'bout the land an' sea
          An' nations of the Earth! An' she is the
          Historicul-est woman ever wuz!"
A keen sense of humor coupled with a brilliant, searching intellect,
made friends for her in every walk of life. College boys and distin-
guished men of letters were equally eager to pay her homage and to
catch the sparkle of her wit. Perhaps a drop of Quaker blood gave
her that smooth, untroubled brow, and that serene acquiescence to the
demands of grief; yet she was not without spirit; her eyes could
kindle and flash fire, and her lips send forth scathing words of denun-
ciation.
   Laces were my grandmother's one vanity. Marvelous, rare laces,
ivory-tinted, like the heart of a pearl; fragile as the morning mist,
and fragrant with the prisoned perfumes of time. I cannot recall ever
seeing her without frostlike frills at neck and wrists, and her hair
graced with a cap of threaded foam. One of those caps is my choicest
relic of bygone days, and whenever I lift it out of my treasure chest,
the spirit of its owner seems hovering over me, as the spirit of old
Peter Grimme hovered over his beloved ward, saying:-
   "Then good night to you, my darling; love cannot say good-bye.
        I shall linger in your heart. I shall be waiting for you, and
knowing all your life. . . . I shall be everywhere about you."
Truly the spirit of my grandmother is "everywhere about" me. I
am
hourly conscious of her influence, and the living force of her nature
urges me on toward the star I have chosen to follow. As a child I
used to feel that to be like grandmother was the highest earthly pin-
nacle of attainment, and, as a woman, I retain that same feeling, for
what could be more magnificent than a gradual crescendo of experi-
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