One powerful quote from the passage is: “No; while I have one meal of victuals a day, I will not part with my children.” This quote stands out because it encapsulates the mother's fierce determination and love for her children despite the overwhelming hardships she faces. It highlights the importance of family and the profound sacrifices parents make to keep their loved ones together, even in dire circumstances. This sentiment resonates deeply as it illustrates not only the struggles of that era but also the universal theme of a parent's unconditional love.
In attempting to describe the life and times of the early mill-girls, it has seemed best for me to write my story in the first person; not so much because my own experience is of importance, as that it is, in some respects, typical of that of many others who lived and worked with me.
Our home was in Boston, in Leverett Court, now Cotting Street, where I was born the year the corner-stone was laid for the Bunker Hill Monument, as my mother told me always to remember. We lived there until I was nearly seven years of age…
In 1831, under the shadow of a great sorrow, which had made her four children fatherless,—the oldest but seven years of age,—my mother was left to struggle alone; and, although she tried hard to earn bread enough to fill our hungry mouths, she could not do it, even with the help of kind friends. And so it happened that one of her more wealthy neighbors, who had looked with longing eyes on the one little daughter of the family, offered to adopt me. But my mother, who had had a hard experience in her youth in living amongst strangers, said, “No; while I have one meal of victuals a day, I will not part with my children.” I always remembered this speech because of the word “victuals,” and I wondered for a long time what this good old Bible word meant.
My father was a carpenter, and some of his fellow-workmen helped my mother to open a little shop, where she sold small stores, candy, kindling-wood, and so on, but there was no great income from this, and we soon became poorer than ever. Dear me! I can see the small shop now, with its jars of striped candy, its loaves of bread, the room at the back where we all lived, and my oldest brother (now a “D.D.”) sawing the kindling-wood which we sold to the neighbors…
I had been to school constantly until I was about ten years of age, when my mother, feeling obliged to have help in her work besides what I could give, and also needing the money which I could earn, allowed me, at my urgent request (for I wanted to earn money like the other little girls), to go to work in the mill. I worked first in the spinning-room as a “doffer.” The doffers were the very youngest girls, whose work was to doff, or take off, the full bobbins, and replace them with the empty ones.
Share a quote from the source that you thought was powerful. Explain why you chose the quote in 2-3 complete sentences.
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