In general, Quakers did not give gifts, as material possessions should not be given heightened status.
They do not practise the art of conversation in quite the way the English do, but are straightforward to the point of bluntness.
Compliments in America can take an almost aggressive form, as if the speaker needs to defend her own shortcomings rather that simply to rejoice in another’s ability.
She attributed her own fine sewing to the prolonged periods of silence at Meeting; these had made her thoughts level and her hand steady, which was reflected in her even stitching.
Whatever’s happened to you during the day, as long as you got a nice pillowcase for your head at night, you’ll be all right. You got yourself a place to lay your head, Honor Haymaker. Things are lookin’ up.
Jem gazed up into the proper deep blue he knew well from Dorsetshire, coupled with the vivid green of the roadside grass and shrubs, and found himself smiling at these colors that were so natural and yet shouted louder than any London ribbon or dress.
It is perhaps difficult to understand if you have not had children yourself. The biological imperative of the parent is to protect the child, and when that is impossible it feels like a failure, whatever the circumstances. It is a complicated feeling to live with for the rest of your life.
I feel like a bird who has been wounded with an arrow and now cannot fly.
James found the talk by the wagons tiring after a while. He liked to listen, and he had thoughts of what he’d like to say about the weather, or the corn crop, or the road being macadamized, or the rascals in Congress. But he never quite had the courage to speak them aloud. By the time he had formed words to his liking, the conversation had moved on.
Life was often simply the repetition of the same movements in a different order, depending on the day and the place.
Stay here and do the packing and let the young one run all over California for you! Don’t you always say the success of collecting is in the packing? You’re the boss – take the most important role and stop moaning!
Was it so very obvious that I was not married? Of course it was. For one thing, I had no husband with me, looking after and indulging me. But there was something else about married women that I noticed, their solid smugness at not having to worry about the course of their future. Married women were set like jelly in a mold, whereas spinsters like me were formless and unpredictable.
He could not tell all of the California pines apart, the gray pine from the coulter, the bushop from the knobcone and the Monterey.
Quakers never haggled, but set what they felt was a fair price for materials and labour. Each product had what was thought of as its own intrinsic merit, be it a carrot or a horseshoe or a quilt, and that did not change simply because many people needed a horseshoe.
With every task she asked for instructions so that she would not offend Abigail with different ways of doing things that might imply her hostess was in the wrong. Abigail was the sort of woman who thought that way.
It was no surprise that her sewing was so uneven, for to make even stiches the seamstress herself had to be steady. Abigail tended to hunch over her patchwork, her fingers and thread a snarl, and sew a few stiches before abandoning it to look down the road towards the houses near the general store, or to get up for a drink of water.
Most other front gardens when planted with flowers looked both formal and artificial. Judith Haymaker, for instance, had put in daffodil and hyacinth bulbs so that they came up in rigid rows, a sight English women would have smiled at. While plentiful, Mrs Reed’s flowers had a randomness about them that reminded Honor of coming upon primroses or anemones in the woods. They were just there, as if they always had been. It took real skill to remove the gardener’s hand from the garden.
Our lives are becoming more convenient but less tangible, and bookshops are the victims of that choice.
She felt so confused by the gap between what she thought and what was expected of her that she could not speak. Perhaps it was better not to, until she was more sure of what she wanted to say. That way her words could not be twisted and flung back at her. Silence was a powerful tool at Meeting, clearing the way to God. Perhaps now it would allow Honor to be heard.
When I left the room, Maria Thins was still standing in front of the painting.