The Elk County advocate. [volume] (Ridgway, Pa.) 1868-1883, 1882-03-02
My Great-Aunt Elizabeth.

As ! can remember my great-aunt
Elizabeth-ard / Was very little boy
when used to sec her-she was O we'll
rounded old Quaker lady with the neat
est of caps and a spotless kerchief
folded across her breast. What most
impressed me was that she knitted gray
woolen stockings all the time, appar-
eutly never looking at them and never
dropping q stitch. This struck me as q
very marvellous feat, and to tell the
truth / must still think it so, as 1 do
not find ladies young or old nowadays
who can do the same.
never imaSin that my great-aun
Elizabeth had experienced livelier
emotion than that consequent on drop.
ping stitch or having baking spoil.
Not till long after she was laid away in
one of the tombless mounds in the
Friends burying ground did / learn
from some old letters and papers what
whirlwind OF passion and of pain had
swept through her life half a century
before saw her.
She was the youngest daughter of my
ancestor, her father, who, with due re-
spect to his memory, must have been a
choleric and tyrannical old fellow. She
grew up Lcauty, and as at that time
marriages were formed early among the
settlers of Upland where the family
lived, hor sisters were soon carried OF
and she lived alone with her father,
then a widower. Naturally she did not
lack admirers, some from the surround
ing farms and some even from Phila-.
delphia and Newcastle. Two, however,
were particularly assiduous; the one,
John Hatton, already the prosperous
owner of Alarm in tho reighborhocd,
the other Thomas Ellsworth, a promis-
ing spris of the law from Newcastle.
The latter was dapper gentleman of
the day, with wig and black silk
stockings, and with the courteous man-
ners of the Established church, CT
which he AMI his parents were mem.
bcrs. He showed to great advantage in
Elizabeth's eyes in contrast to John
JIattcn, heavy youth, slow of speech
wearing an ill-ftting Quaker suit Of
homespun, and iuclined to surliness.
But her father locked at matters differ
emily. He had fcigped business in
Newcastle ana found the Ellsworth fam
lily to be, as he expressed it, of the
Maryland style of people, spending
their incomes il fine living, buying
wines and wearing imported goods.
Altogether the future Of young Ebs-
worth looked to him very problemati-
cal, SO one evening he began:
Elizabeth, I see thee has two fol-
lowers who are coming often; shall
not urge thee to marry either, but I
shall tell thee one thee shall not marry,
and that is Thomas Ellsworth. Nor
shall he co lie again into this house. 1
shall have no sparks in silk stockings
enter my DOORS"
Elizabeth knew well the hard infexi-
bic character of her father. She could
never remember to have sat on his
knee, nor to have kissed him. Yet she
knew that in his way he loved his fam
lily before all else, and what rendered
her case hopeless was that it was this
very love for her that prompted his
cruel action. She turned deadly pale,
and sinking on bench said not word.
Her father had expected passionate
remonstrance perhaps, but not silent
aequiescence. He well knew that her
affections were for Ellsworth. Many
men would have worked themselves
into rage to justify their harshness.
But he needed no such self-deception.
He acted as Friends usually act, with
perfectly clear convictions.
"Thee knows that in this act for
thy welfare. cannot allow thee to
enter family where the hours are
passed in worldly pleasures. where re-
ligion is hollow profession, and whose
goods are squandered in foIlies. Let
this relation 60 no further, and now 0
10 thy s!eep."
No Ills Q YsA in her bed did Eliza