Yet here, with the characteristic contentment of her people under all
circumstances, she settled down quietly to aid him and make his home
happy; bore him many children (most of whom were dead at the time I saw
her, as those living were separated from her at that period), reared and
educated them herself, toiled for and with them, late and early,
strained every nerve in the arduous cause of duty, and found herself, in
extreme old age, widowed and alone, having amassed but little of the
world's lucre, yet cheerful and energetic even if dependent still on her
own exertions.
All this and much more I had heard before I saw Madame Grambeau or her
abode--a picturesque affair in itself, however humble--consisting
originally of a log-house, to which more recently white frame wings had
been attached, projecting a few feet in front of the primitive building,
and connected thereto by a shed-roofed gallery, which embraced the whole
front of the log-cottage, along which ran puncheon-steps the entire
length of the grand original tree-trunk, as of the porch itself. It was
a triumph of rural art.
Over this portico, so low in front as barely to admit the passage of a
tall man beneath its eaves, without stooping, a wild multiflora rose,
then in full flower, was artistically trained so as to present a series
of arches to the eye as the wayfarer approached the dwelling; no
tapestry was ever half so lovely.
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