LYDIA KNIGHT'S HISTORY.
THE FIRST BOOK OF THE NOBLE WOMEN'S LIVES SERIES
By "Homespun."
JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR OFFICE
Salt Lake City, Utah.
1883.
PREFACE.
The growing demand for our own literature among the youth of thispeople has induced us to undertake the publication of a new series ofbooks. The general satisfaction which the books of the Faith-PromotingSeries have given, encourages us in the hope that this new series,which is designed to contain various items of interest and instructionfrom the lives of our noble sisters, will also be worthy of the perusalof the Saints.
We present, as the first book of the Noble Women's Lives Series, thehistory of a lady who early joined the Church, and remained faithfulthrough the various trials and hardships to which the early Saintswere subjected. And now, when in the evening of life, her influence isstill being felt for good in Zion. The history of such persons shouldbe written that the young may be stimulated to emulate their nobleexamples.
That this little work may prove both entertaining and instructive tothose into whose hands it may come is the earnest desire of
The Publisher.
LYDIA KNIGHT'S HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
A little girl with light-blue eyes and fair hair sat under the shadeof the forest trees pulling a sheep-skin. One by one her brothers andsisters, older and younger than she, had grown weary of the work andwandered off to play.
"Oh, Lydia, how can you sit there over that tiresome work. Look at theshadows under the trees, and the squirrels calling to us to come andchase them from limb to limb. Let's have a play," said the last littleboy as his patience at length had ebbed away.
"No," replied the fair-haired maiden, and the firm little mouth tookanother line of determination as she spoke, "I shall not leave thesheepskin till the last lock is pulled."
A "clearing" in the forest of the western part of New York State, alarge comfortable cabin on a rise of ground near the center of thespace, with wide-open doors and floors of gleaming white, waving grainon one side of the house and a large vegetable garden on the other sideconstituted the scene of a home in the forest wilds, which was a commonone in those days—the years between 1810 and 1820. The circle of highwaving trees gave a grandeur and beauty to the view that nothing elsecould possibly do.
The little girl who sat so steadily at work had been brought by herparents two years previously to this wild western home.
She was born in 1812, in Sutton, Worcester Co., Mass., and eight happyyears had been spent in her earliest home.
Shall I tell you about her father, whose name was Jesse Goldthwait? Hewas a medium-sized, well-built New Englander, prudent, industrious andthe possessor of a firm will. Her mother was a quiet-spoken woman, butshe bad an ardent temperament and a great deal of natural refinement.She had had some scholastic advantages and was exceedingly ambitiousfor her children. Five sisters and six brothers had Lydia, and a veryhappy and peaceful family they were.
Don't you know what "wool-pulling" is? Well, while my little girl isfinishing her work I will tell you:
When the sheep was killed for family use, the skin was rolled up bythe thrifty farmers in ashes or lime and laid away for some time. Thenthe wool could easily be separated from the hide. This last piece oflabor generally fell to the children. And in Jesse Goldthwait's familynone of the children would keep to the work but Lydia. So that it soonpassed into a proverb, when Lydia exhibited that determination inanything which was so striking a point in her character,