The young ship builder

It might be thought that people who lived on Groundnut Hill, in Palmyra, would have no more story to tell than the needy knife-grinder, but as Hiram Nute, the essence-peddler, says, “Wherever there’s human nater and the Lord’s providence, there’s apt to be consid’able goin’ on.”

Perhaps there was more “goin’ on” in our family from the fact that the human nature is somewhat mixed. There is sure to be an astonishing variety in any large family, I have observed, even when there are not, as in ours,two sets of children. But the queer differences with us are all set down to the fact of mother’s second marriage. She was Deacon Partridge’s daughter, and she married the Rev. Cyrus Dill, who was the “stated supply” at Palmyra, the summer that she was nineteen. He received a call to a small church in a large city, and three children were born there, Cyrus, Octavia and I. I am Bathsheba. They named me after my Grandmother Dill, because she was a woman who feared the Lord. It was my father’s behest, and was so set down in his will—he died just after I was born. The will was pasted into the family Bible. Every one said it was a beautiful will, because, while he had scarcely any material possessions, he yet bequeathed so much.