From 8-year old Hilda Firestone’s diary:
I took all the kittens to bed with me last night. That is, not right in the bed, though I wanted to, but they were on the floor, right next to the bed where I could put my hand out, and touch them, but when I woke up this morning, only one was left. Grandmother told me that the rest of them had run away. I think that is a lie, but I couldn’t tell her so. Why is it, grown-ups can tell children anything, and children cannot tell grown-ups anything? Is it because children are not so smart as grown-ups? I think they are. I think I am much smarter than Grandmother. The other afternoon, Grandmother believed Mrs. Evans, that’s the lady who comes to brush her hair. She told her what a handsome woman she is, when she has only to look in the mirror to see that she isn’t handsome at all, although she isn’t hideous like Tante Esther. Mrs. Evans tells Grandmother that she is handsome just because Grandmother gives her money for brushing her hair, and perhaps even a little more money for telling her all these nice things. Mrs. Evans could tell me a billion times that I am pretty, and I would know it was a lie, only she has never told me so, not even once. I’d like to look like Antoinette, that’s the little girl who sits across the aisle from me at school. She has great black eyes, and wavy black hair, and she says that she was named after a Queen. I have ordinary green eyes, and my hair is no special color, and I was not named after a Queen, only after my mother, but once I heard a pretty song about a girl named Hilda who sat at a spinning wheel. After I heard it, I asked Grandmother if she could buy me a spinning wheel but she said that was silly, no one spins today, besides, I had enough to do that needed to be done, and that I don’t keep my bureau drawers neat, and after I learned to do that, I must learn to darn my own stockings. She asked me when I was going to stop daydreaming.
Hilda must be recalling a poem from the 1895 book: “The Model Orator, Or, Young Folks’ Speaker: Containing the Choicest Recitations and Readings from the Best Authors for Schools, Public Entertainments, Social Gatherings, Sunday Schools, etc.”
The University of Florida has a digitized copy of the book. The poem “Hilda, Spinning” is in a chapter entitled “Grave and Pathetic Readings” and begins at Image 251.
The poem begins:
“Spinning, spinning, by the sea,
All the night!
On a stormy, rock-ribbed shore,
Where the north-winds downward pour,
And the tempest fiecely sweep
From the mountains to the deep,
Hilda spins beside the sea,
All the night!….”