A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

ROOM AND M

HE HYM

CHILDREN AND

NEW E

MPSES O

GINNING

BY THE

UNTAIN

GIRLS' M

ING AND

MERRIMACK TO T

NGLAND

DOWN TH

ey find their happiest, because their most natural life. If I had opened my eyes upon this planet elsewhere than in this northeastern corner of Massachusetts, elsewhere than on this green, rocky strip of shore between

e, and that mine were meeting hers in sympathy, across the graves of two hundred and fifty years. For Winthrop's fleet, led by the ship that bore her name, must have passed into harbor that way. Dear and gracious spiri

rown so rapid that ships' lists were no longer carefully preserved. And then he was but a simple yeoman, a tiller of the soil; one who must have loved the sea, however, for he moved nearer and nearer towards it from Agawam through Wenham woods, until the close of the seventeenth century found his descendants-my own great-

their names would be remembered or not; for they were God-fearing men, and had been pe

France still bearing it in what was probably the original spelling-La Combe. There is a family shield in existence, showing a hill surmounted by a tree, and a bird wit

ty an inheritance of hard work and the privileges of poverty, leaving the same bequest to their descendants. And poverty has its privileges. Whe

ited material wealth of any kind. And to those serious-minded, reticent progenitors of mine, loo

"second sight"; and some remarkable stories are told of her knowledge of distant events while they were occurring, or just before they took place. Her dignity of presence and character must have been noticeable. A relative of mine, who as a very little child, was taken by her mother to visit my grandmother, told me that she had always r

more of the romantic and legendary charm of it than if I had been brought up there, for my father, in his communicative moods, never wearied of telling us about his childhood; and we felt that we stil

outh" in nearly all these first-settled cities and villages of Eastern Massachusetts.) The town wore a half-rustic air of antiquity then, with its old-fas

ow candles and oil lamps, and sat by open fireplaces. There was always a tinder-box in some safe corner or other, and fire was kindled by striking

tinental soldiers in full uniform, marching one after the other), while we looked up the chimney into a square of blue sky, and sometimes caught a snowflake on our for

roasted in the ashes, and the Thanksgiving turkey in a "tin-kitchen," the business of turning the spit being usual

there was never was anything that tasted better than my mother's "firecake,"-a short-cake spread on a smooth piece of board, and set up with a flat-iron before the blaze, browned on one side, and then turned over

ooking could be quite so nice as that which was done by an open fire. We younger ones reveled in the wa

t and witch legends. The wonder seems somehow to have faded out of those tales of eld since the gleam of red-hot coals died away from the hearthstone. The shutting up of the great fireplaces

derstand the poetry of English domestic life, reading it, as they must, by a reflected illumination from the past. Wh

gle blinkin

t it almost seems as if that tender poem of hearth-and-home life had been written for us too. I can s

supper done, w

e ingle form

o'er, wi' pat

ble, ance his

s questions on Sabbath afternoons, when the tea-table had been cleared. He ended the exercise with a prayer, standing up with his face turned toward the wall. My most vivid recollection of his living face is as I saw it reflected in a mirror while he stood thus praying. His closed eyes, the paleness and seriousness of his countenance, awed me. I never forgot that look. I saw it but once again, when, a

ny years the master of a merchant-vessel sailing to various European ports), in astronomical calculations and historical computat

osoph

o the stars, cr

mplete contrast to his. She was chatty and social, rosy-cheeked and dimpled, with bright blue eyes and soft, dark, curling hair, which she kept pinned up under her w

after we were married, to please him; I always have wo

phere of an April day. Cheerfulness held sway with her, except occasionally, when her do

ehavior. He had been a soldier in the Revolutionary War,-the greatest distinction we could imagine. And he was also the sexton of the oldest church in town,-the Old South,-and had charge of the winding-up of the town clock, and the ringi

far into one's heart, with an expression at once penetrating and benignant. To my childish imagination she was an embodiment of serene and lofty goodness. I wished and hoped that by bearing her baptismal name I might become like her; and whe

turesque old house, with its sloping roof and tall well-sweep. And she always brought out some book or picture for me from her quaint old

rs through the persons who came nearest to us in our earliest years. Those larger planets held our little one to its

ivilege of neighborhood, who seemed to belong to my babyhood. Indeed, the family hearthsto

er, and it was one of the earliest accomplishments of my infancy to thread my poor, half-blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her. We were close neighbors and gossips until my fourth year. Many an hour I sat by her side drawing a needle and thread through a bit of calico, under the delusion that

was a cha

said, 'I

rmant within-a will perhaps not quite so aggressive as it was obstinate. But she meant only to praise me and please me;

thing for my ragchildren-absurd creatures of my own invention, limbless and destitute of features, except as now and then one of my older sisters would, upon my earnest petition, outline a face for one of them, with p

eside us and opposite us. Her well was close to our door, a well of the coldest a

horoughfare thither. I imagined that those were her buttercups that we gathered when we got over the wall, and held under each other's chin, to see, by the reflec

ent earthy odor-I can smell it now-repelled us from the damp corner where it grew. It made us think of graves and ghosts; and I think we were forbidden to go there. We much preferred to sit on the sunken curbstones, in

holesome neglect." Our tether was a long one, and when, grown a little older, we occasionally

there were partly quarried ledges, which had shaped themselves into rock-stairs, carpeted with lovely mosses, in various patterns. These were the winding ways up our castle-towers, with breakfast-rooms and boudoirs along the landings, where we

they flew over, to dip their beaks and glance shyly at us, as if they wished to share our games. We could see the steeples and smokes of Salem in the distance, and

e cliff-side down to the water's edge; but they were only giving the name of the farmer who owned the land, Whenever there was an unusu

ugh at last they have leveled it and widened it, and made a commonplace thoroughfare of it. I am glad that my baby life knew it in all its queer, original irregularities, for it se

and orchards. We were still on home ground, for my father's vegetable garden and orchard were here. After a long straight st

he time, but at high tide it was a river indeed; all that a child could wish, with its boats and its sloops, and now and then that most available craft for a crew of children-a gundalow. We easily transformed the spelling into "gond

beyond; for when we had passed under the piers of the bridge, the estuary broadened into the harbor and the open sea. Then somebody on board would tell a story of children who had drifted away beyond the

a wild train of children that ran homeward in the twilight up the narrow lane, with wind-shod feet, and hair flying like the manes of young colts, and light hearts bounding to their own footsteps. How good and dear our plain, two-story d

elcome as anybody. He would seat us in a row on the green slope, and give us a half hour or so of incoherent exhortation, to which we attended respectfully, if not reverently; for his whole manner showed that,

s and sing to it; and that though she was half afraid herself, the baby-I like to fancy I w

Merrimack. He always wore a loose calico tunic over his trousers; and, when the mood came upon him, he started off with two canes,-se

on the top, and was refused. There were many miles between him and his destination. But he did not upbraid the ungracious driver; he only swung his two canes a lit

respect on her annual pilgrimages. She brought with her some printed rhymes

elsh, was b

County, M

was an in

prived me o

I used to run away when this pilgrim came, for she was not talkative lik

e would do with us, but the sight of one always sent us breathless with fright to the shelter of the maternal wing. I did not at all like the picture of Christian on his way to the wicket-gate, in "Pilgrim's Progress," before I had read the book, becau

own borders, and in delight and liberty I am a child again. Its narrow limits were once my whole known world. Even then it seemed to m

I

M AND MEE

l's" residence. There was a spacious garden behind it, from which we caught glimpses and perfumes of unknown flowers. Over its high walls hung boughs of splendid great yellow sweet apples, which, whe

beach. It was one of those large old estates which used to give to the ver

an on the box; and when he took the family out for an airing we small child

of our lane into and out of its headquarters, a big, unpainted stable close at hand. This stage-coach, in our minds

dhered a long time to the Puritanic custom of saving Sunday-work by baking beans on Saturday evening, leaving them in the oven over night. After a while, as families left off heating their ovens, the bean-pots were t

it was something of a wag. Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting in the street for a residen

t your old bean-p

s the ready reply. What the sobriquet of

e went to school upstairs in the same building. After he left off going to sea,-before my birth,-my father t

k in all the little ones about us, no matter how young they were, provided th

ny-tinted four o'clocks, whose regular afternoon-opening just at the close of school, was a daily wonder to us babies. From the schoolroom window we could watch the slow hands of the town clock and get a peep at what was going on in the street, although there was seldom anybo

" One of them, an elderly man, tall and erect, used to come out regularly every day, and stand for a long time at the corner, motionless as a post, with his nose and chin

o go to school, I was often sent down-stairs for a half hour's recreation not permitted to the older on

recollections of my father is connected with that window. He had taken me into the shop with him after dinner,-I was perhaps two years old,-and I was playing beside him on the counter when one of his old sea-comrades came in, whom we knew as "Captain Cross." The Captain tried to make fri

and carrying me "pickaback" up and down the shop, and I clung to him in the happy consciousness that I belonged to him, and that he would not let anybody else have me; though I did not feel quite easy until Captain Cross disappeared. I suppose that this little incident ha

mined that feature carefully in the looking glass, but could not discover anything usual about it. It was quite beyond me to imagine that our innocent little baby could have anything to do with the possible disfigurement of my face, but she did

inary operations and other employments. If a baby's head nodded, a little bed was made for it on a soft "comforter" in the corner, where

This ferule was shaped much like the stick with which she stirred her hasty pudding for dinner,-I thought it was the same,-and I found

block. Sometimes, in his absence, a boy was made to sit in his place for punishment, for being a "blockhead" too, as I imagined. I hoped I should never be put there. Stupid little girls received a different treatment,-an occasional r

flax-wheel, wetting her thumb and forefinger at her lips to twist the thread,

ver heard anybody else sing, resounds i

st thou, pil

hrough this

not 't is f

ot thy cou

answer broke in with a change, quick and jub

ound for t

go to glo

h! Praise

amilies had to resort to some means of keeping their little ones out of mischief, while they attended to their domes

the age of two years and a half. Certain it is that a few passages in the Bible, whenever I read them now, do not fail to bring before me a vision of Aunt Hannah's somewhat sternly smiling lips, with her spectacles just above them, far down on her nose, encouraging me to pronounce the hard words. I think she tried

t; and the two "In the beginnings," both in Genesis and John. Every child's earliest and proude

fter Aunt Hannah,-I think it must have been her favorite too,-was, "L

new that even a little child's heart was sometimes troubled. And it was a Voice that cal

ing waters, and the sound of many happy voices, and above them all the One Voice that was saying, "I go to prepare a place for you." The vision gave me a sense of freedom, fearless and infinite. What was there to be afraid of anywhere? Even we little children could see the open do

om great boughs outside dancing and wavering around me, I seemed to be talking to them and they to me in unknown tongues, that left within me an ecstasy yet unforgotten. These shadows had brought a message

under the dark, still, clear sky, splendid with stars, thicker and nearer earth than they have ever seemed since. All my little being shaped itself into a subdued delighted "Oh!" And then the exultant thought flitted through the m

were all here on a journey,-that this was not the place where we really belonged. Some of the

her and

me unto

s varyin

hers and

me unto

able, where they remained for years. My thought about that other land may have been only a baby's dream; but the dream was very real to me. I us

lid earth beneath them. I grew with the sprouting grass, and enjoyed my life as the buds and birds seemed to enjoy theirs. It was only as if th

clear and vivid, are difficult to put into shape. But other grown-up children, in looking back, will doubt

t not always outgrown with childhood. The "sounding brass and tinkling cymbals," for instance, in the Epistle to the Corinthians, seemed to me things to be greatly desired. "Charity" was an abstract id

Bible readings. They were absurd enough, but after getting laughed at a few times at home for making

u-cumbereth." These vegetables grew on the ground, and I had heard that they were not very good f

e meeting-house porch, as the boys did, with their squeaking brogans, looking as restless as imprisoned monkeys after they had got into those consp

ng or anything unusual was going on at home. She was a large-featured woman, with a very deep masculine

s began b

and tried to make out the resemblance in my mind, but could not. I unburdened my difficulty at home, telling the family that "Aunt Nancy go

hen now. That did not help me for I thought that only grown-up persons could be Christians, from which it followed that all children must be heathen. Must I think of Myself as a heathen, then, until I should be old enough to be a Christian? It was a shocking conclusion, but I could see no other answer to my question, and I felt ashamed to ask again. My self-invented theory about the human race was that Adam and Eve were very tall people, taller than the tallest trees in the Garden of Eden, before they were sent out of it;

wholesome than on week-days. Saturday afternoon and evening were regarded as part of the Sabbath (we were taught that it was heathenish to call the day Sunday); work and playthings were laid aside

bread, the traditional pot of beans, the Indian pudding, and the pies; for no further cooking was to be done until Monday. We smaller girls th

ot a kind of heathen field, since we could only go into it on week-days. The wild flowers over there were perhaps Gentile blossoms. Only the flowers in the garden were well-behaved Christians. It was Sabbath in the house, and possi

d wearing a new bonnet and my best white dress and muslin "vandyke," of which adornments, if

it still through the "ninthlies," and "tenthlies," and "finallys" of the sermon! It was impressed upon me that good children were never r

k curly hair brushed down in "bangs" over his eyebrows, who sat behind a green baize curtain near the outside door, peeping out at me, as I thought. I had an impres

en calash, and her hidden right hand gently swaying a long-handled Chinese fan. She was the deacon's wife, and I felt greatly interested in her movements and in th

of him. I was a little afraid of my father, but then he sometimes played with us children: and besides, my father was only a man. I thought the minister belonged to some different order of beings. Up there in the pulpit he seemed to me so far off-oh! a great deal farther off than God did. His distance made my reve

were always ministerially profound, and I was so overwhelmed with surprise and awe that I forgot to make the proper response of a "curtsey," but ran home as fast as I co

nderstand them at all. It was from Aunt Hannah that I received my first real glimpses of the beautiful New Testament revelation. In her unconscious wisdom she chose for me passages and chapters that were like openings into heaven. They contained the great, deep truths which are simple because

nt of a Sabbath-day sphere, while we belonged to the every-day world. I distinctly remember the day of my christening, when I was between three and four years old. My parents did not make a public profession of their faith until after the birth of all their children, eight of whom-I being my father's ninth child and seventh daughter-were baptized at one time. My two

s gentle She

ry of our Lord's baptism. I could not make out any special messa

ieving that I was following a direct instruction, I clasped my fan to my bosom and held it there as we walked up the aisle, and during the ceremony, wondering why th

bsorbed manner then, and when we returned from church, that it was something exceeding

s to his side. The chapter had ended with the echo of a voice from heaven, and with the glimpse of a descending Dove. And the water-drops on my forehead,

the horizons of heaven and earth met and were blended then. And who can tell whether the fragrance of th

I

HYMN

h the hymn-book ("Watts' and Select"), reading or repeating them to her, while she was busy with her baking or ironing, and she was always a willing listene

ometimes I learned two or three hymns in a forenoon or an afternoon. Finding it so easy, I thought I would begin at the beginning, and learn the whole. There were about a thousand of them included in the Psalms, the First, Second, and Third Books, and the Select Hymns. But I had learned to read before I had any knowledge of counting up number

t attracted me, I knew not why. Of some I was fond just because I misunderstood them; and of these I made a free version in my mind, as I murmured them over. One of my first favorites was c

e sinner, in

d thought

d stanza

o Jesus, t

a mounta

a rose that grew on a mountain must surely be prettier than any of our red wild roses on the hill, sweet as they were. I would pluck that rose, and carry it up the mountain-side into the temple where the King sa

courts; I'

r may o

Pilgrim's, at the "House Beautiful"; but I should not be afraid of them

ut peris

solved

cy on a "Pilgrim's Progress" of my own, a happy little dreamer, tell

suggested Nature in some way,-flowers, t

lasting spr

withering

ely be found in that heavenly land, blooming on through the cloudless, endless year. And I seemed to smell the spiciness of bay berry and sweet-fern an

l of Zio

nd sacre

ach the heav

he golden

re pink then, not red, nor white, nor even double) and a sprig of camomile; and their

e choir

heavenl

e beautiful where "there was no more sea." I concluded that the hymn and the text could not really contradict other; that there must be something like the sea in heaven, aft

laid, remot

ry, Sweet S

reeze, no l

sails, and s

d recognizes among its noblest treasures of sac

amps of heav

been gazing in at some window

re but the

divine

by's soul with equal brightness all the time. Earth draws her dark curtains too soon over the wi

tic hymn o

in a myst

y ear and listened, expecting to hear it shaped into words, it still did give me an idea of the presence of One Infinite Being, that thrilled me with reverent awe. And this was one of the best less

my eyes see through the sky, beyond which I supposed he lived. But it was easy to believe that He could look down and see me, and that He knew all about me. We were taught very early

hat I did; but I was told that if I did truly love Him I should always be good. I knew I was not that, and the feeling of sudden orphanage came

e to go to sleep for that dread. And the thought was too awful to speak of to anybody. Baby that I was, I shut my lips in a sort of reckless despair, and thought that if I coul

fference to us, I could not understand how. It seemed like a lovely story, the loveliest in the world, but it sound

Sabbath-school in our little chapel, and spok

: He loves you, and wants you to love Him! He is you

Testament, then, did really mean what it said! Jesus said He wou

o anybody else. I was sure that I loved Him. It was like a beautiful secret between us two. I f

ouse were opened wide again, by the only hand that holds the key. The world was all bright and fresh

he sweet light was never wholly stifled out, though I did not always keep my face turned towards it: and I know now, that just to let his lifegiving smile s

d to a Person, to the Divine Person,-or they bring Him before the mind in some distinct way, instead of being w

rom both only what really belonged to me. To be among those who found in the true sources of faith and adoration, was like breathing in my native air, though I could not tell anything about the land from which I had come. Much that w

When it came to the knowledge of my most motherly sister Emilie,-I like to

sun, and up

ld repeat any one of a hundred hymns, she would teach me to write. I earned the book when I was about four years old. I think it was a collection of some of Jane Taylor's verses. "For Infant Mi

dip a goose quill into an inkstand, and make written le

rammels" into real letters and words I disobeyed her injunction, and disfigured the pages with numerous tell-tale blots. Then I hid the book away under the garret eaves, and refused to bring it to ligh

nteresting one. Children ought to be children, and nothing else. But I am not sorry that I learned to read when so

prive me of. It did not seem to me as if I learned them, but as if they just gave themselves to m

g them sung was like being caught up in a strong man's arms, to gaze upon some wonderful landscape. These climbing and flying hymns,-how well I

souls! away,

hills I lif

land of pu

ul, and stre

er porti

erdam!" Sometimes it seemed as if the very roof was lifted off,-nay, the roof of the sk

of them. They come flocking back through the years, lik

s join our c

s round th

e, all love

en, to eart

world! the L

e song of

ghty thund

ullness

eaks upon

jah! for

otent sha

ah! let

the earth

he songs of angels, and with all that I had heard and believed, in my fledgling soul, of the glorious One who was born in a manger and died on a cross, that H

ul hymns, though I did it when they

om the to

a wretched l

lds us n

to the sad strains that chanted of "this barren land," this "vale of tears," this "wilderness" of distress and woe. It let us light-hearted children too quickly down from the higher key of mirth to which our careless thoughts we

possibly know how to be. I knew afterwards that my elders were sometimes, at least, sincere in their sadness; for with many of them life must have been a hard struggle. But when they shook their heads and said,-"Child, you will not be so happy by and by; you are seeing your best days now," I still doubted. I was born with the ble

hat I loved the most. I had my own mental reservations

em, my h

er dear

half of the third stanza,

egations ne'

aths hav

nd I did want the congregation to break up some time. Indeed, in those bright spring days, the last hymn in the afternoon always sounded best, because with it came the opening of doors into the outside air, and the pouring in of a mingled scen

s preliminaries,-the rustling of singing-book leaves, the sliding of the short screen-curtains before the singers along by their clinking rings, and now and then a premonitory

those girlish, blooming faces I thought hers the very handsomest. But she did not o

quite envied that tall, pretty sister of mine. I was sure that I should open my mouth wide, if I could only be in her place. Ala

r musical utterance is perhaps a prophecy that in a perfect world we shall all know how to sing. But

the deep undertone of the sea. And the purity, the calmness, and the coolness of the dear old Sabbath days seems lingering yet in the words of those familiar hymns, whenev

om the eternal hills; like the west wind of spring, never by a breath less balmy and clear for having poured life into

V

LDREN AND F

d upon firm foundations-upon the Moral Law as taught in the Old Testament and confirmed by the New. Whatever else we did not understand, we believed that to disobey our parents, to lie or steal, had been forbidden by a Voice which was not

had done something forbidden, which I knew she had been about only a little while before. She answered "No," and without an

ct denial of the truth as only "kind-of" lying, it perplexed me to imagine. The years proved that t

successfully resist. I remember the very spot-in a footpath through a green field

k every morning, to purchase which I went always to the money-drawer in the shop and took out four cents. We were allowed to take a "s

g as I passed around the counter with my tin pail I made up my mind to possess myself of that amount. My father's back was turned; he was busy at his desk with account-books

l these dangerous painted toys to children. But the little man was pretty to look at, and I wanted him, and meant to have him. It was just a child's first temptation to get possession of what was

n the success of my attempt, as any thief might be; and I w

mer's field, and nobody was in sight, I took out my purl

if they were red hot, to my very soul. It was agony to hold them. I laid them down under a tuft of grass in the footpath, and ran as if I had left a demon behind me. I did my err

a much happier child if I bad confessed, for I had to carry about with me for weeks and months a heavy burden of shame. I thought of myself as a thief, and used to dream of be

whether in the family or out of it. I hated the sight of the little sugar horseback rider from that da

go to heaven. I understood, from talks I had listened to among older people, that infancy lasted until children were about twelve years of age. Yet here was I, an infant of less than six years, who had committed a sin. I did not know

l, neither a baby nor a woman. Having discovered that I was capable of being wicked, I thought it would be better if I could grow up a

who came nearest to my child-life recognized the value of truth as impressed through the imagination, and left me in delightful freedom among my fairy-tale books. I t

s or elves came over with the Pilgrims in the Mayflower. But a little red-haired playmate with whom I became intimate used to take me off with her into the fields, where, sitting, on the edge of a disused cartway fringed with pussy-clover, she poured into my ears the most remarkabl

father weed his vegetable-garden. But she guarded herself by informing me that it would be impossible for us to open the door ourselves; that it could only be unfastened from the inside. She told me these people's names-a "Mr. Pelican," and a "Mr. Apple-tree Manasseh," who had a very large family of little "Manassehs." She said that there was a still larger family, some of them probably living just under the spot where

er way of being a heroine in her own eyes and mine, and

she had passed many a night there, seeing unaccountable sights, and hearing mysterious sounds. She further announced that she was to be married, some time, to a young man who lived over there. I infe

e fading memory I have of the book is that it was a very silly one; and when I discovered that the rest of the romantic occurrences she had related, not in that volume, were to be found in "The Children of the Abbey,"

brother Ben pointed up to the gilded weather-cock on the

rows every rooster in town crows too?"

ill he begi

the night, sometimes

uld break in with a shout

l you whe

t day af

ducks fly ov

t "the next day after never" would come some time, in millions of years, p

ends were too much like realities, and they preferred not to repeat them. Indeed, it was over our town that the last black shadow of the dreadful witchcraft delusion had rested. Mistress Hale's house was just across the burying-groun

me to write-was mistress of an almost limitless fund of imaginative lore. She was a very Scheherezade of story-tellers, so her yo

ping Beauty," and the rest,-she had picked up somewhere most of the folk-stories of Ireland and Scotland, and also the wild legends of

-consciousness of being a bewitched princess who must perform some impossible task, such as turning a whole roomful of straws into gold, one by one, or els

might all have happened on one of the islands out in Massachusetts Bay. The fisherman was foolish enough, it seemed, to let his wife do all his wishing for him; and she, unsatisfied

k, and could hear the wind mutter and growl, while the fisherman cal

of th

isten

ice my

gue of

to beg a b

, the mysterious "Man of the Sea" rose i

stay there with your wife Alice, a

an; and the moral of the story remained with me, as the story itself did. I think I understood dimly, even then

preparing me for life when she did not know

run over into the burying-ground, barefooted and white-robed (we lived for two or three years in another house than our own, where the oldest graveyard in town was only separated from us by our garden fence), "to see if there were any ghosts there," she told us. Returning noiseles

before four o'clock in the morning, dressing me hurriedly, and taking me out with her for a walk across the graveyard and through the dewy fields. The birds were singing, and the sun was just

it the wall

for me. "So you did not know it wa

of the real grandeur of the ocean. Not a sail was in sight, and the blue expanse was scarcely disturbed by a ri

s. We could see the white breakers dashing against the long narrow island just outside of the harbor, which I, with my childish misconstruction of names, called "Breakers' Island"; supposing that the grown people had m

Ocean" to look at from our window, to dance along the edge of, to wade into or bathe in, if we chose? The map of the world became more interesting to me than

ff alone through them. I greatly enjoyed the freedom of

of him as a living creature. When I went some time after to take him down he had clasped with two or three of his fingers the bough where I laid him, so

children did. I thought it must be wicked. And then he looked so uncomfortable, imploringly wriggling his claws while he lay upo

two. This made me careful to pick up only the empty ones, and there were plenty of them. One we called a "butterboat"; it had something shaped like a seat across the end of it on the inside. And the curious sea-urchin, that looked as if he was made only for ornament, when he had once got rid of his spines, and

to where the sea-lovage and purple beach-peas had dared to root themselves. I listened, and felt through all my little being that great, surging word of power, but had no guess of its meaning. I can think of it now as the eternal voi

s, indeed; prettier than anything that grew in gardens. It was the red sand-wort; but why a purple flower should be called red, I do not know. I remember holding these little amethystine blossoms like jewels in the palm of my hand, and wondering whether people who walked along that road knew wh

myself now leaning in ecstasy over a small, rough-leaved purple aster in a lonely spot on the hill, and thinking that nobody else in all the

tched away from our door-steps, all golden with dandelions in spring. Those dandelion fields were like another heaven dropped down upon the earth, where

estion, "Does my mother want me to come home?" Or we sat down together in the velvety grass, and wove chains

in close bunches. Its companion was the tiny four-cleft innocence-flower, that drifted pale sky-tints across the chilly fields. Both came to us in crowds, and looked out with us, as they do with the small girls and boys of to-day, from the windy crest of Powder House Hill,-the one playground of my

f the east wind, coquettishly wasting the show of her finery on the frowning air. Bluebirds twittered over the dandelions in spring. In midsummer, goldfinches war

healthy, learning unconsciously the useful lesson of doing without. The birds and blossoms ha

s virtues of the people we lived among, drawing thence its bloom and song, and fragrance. There was granite in their character and beliefs, but it was granite that could smile i

EW EN

when it was part of the original Salem settlement,-old enough to have gained a character and an individuality of its

much fishermen as farmers; they were as familiar with the Grand Banks of Newfoundland as they were with their own potato-fields. Every third man you met in the

attracted them. "Land-lubber" was one of the most contemptuous epithets heard from boyish lips.

anean,-as if it were not much more than going to the next village. It seemed as if our nearest neighbors liv

ral; and children had foreign curiosities and treasures of the sea for playthings. There was one imported shell that we did not value much, it was so abundant-the freckled univalve they called a "prop." Yet it had a mysterious interest for us lit

ars of preserved tropical fruits, tamarinds, ginger-root, and other spicy appetizers,

ea-peas" we had to play with! It never seemed as if they real

n. Those were the days when we had half cents in circulation to make change with. For part of our currency was the old-fashioned "ninepen

rows and canaries and other tropical songbirds poured their music out of sunny windows into the street, delighting the ears of passing school children long before the robins came. Now and then somebody's pet monkey would

Caesar and Christopher Columbus. Families of black people were scattered about the place, relics of a time when even New England had not freed her slaves. Some of them had belonged in my great-grandfather's family, and they hung about the old homestead at "The Farms" long after they were at liberty t

n from the islands across the harbor-bar, with a moaning like that we heard when we listened for it in the shell. Almost ev

rd of near home, although the names of the two nearest-Great and Little Misery-are said to have

ight her captain probably mistook one of the Cape Ann light-houses for that on Baker's Island, and steered straight upon the rocks in a lonely cove just outside the cape. In the morning the bodies of her dead crew were found tossing

States could only tell the story of the American Revolution, of the Wa

s in the reading books, and through Fourth of July speeches. The Father of his Country had been dead only a little more than a quarter of a century, and General Lafayette was still alive; h

arched through the streets to the Common with boys and girls at their heels,-such girls as could get their mother's consent, or

re in bloom, then; and it was a picturesque fashion of the time for little girls whose parents had no flower-gardens to go around begging a bunch of lilacs, or a tulip or tw

nt, and at morning and noon cannon were fired off. But torpedoes and fire-crackers did not make the highways dangerous;-perhaps they were thought too expensive an amusement. Somebody delivered an oration;

s regarded merely as a day when we were to eat unlimited quantities o

ks, I wished we could have that beautiful holiday. B

my favorites were by Mrs. Sherwood. Some of them were about life in India,-"Little Henry and his Bearer," and "Ayah and Lady." Then there

was my usual playmate, and whom I admired very much for what I could not help seeing,-her unusual sweetness of disposition. I read Mrs. Sherwood's "Infant

o such thing as getting rid of him. I began to dislike all boys on his account. There was one who tormented my sister and me-we only knew him by name-by jumping out at us from behind doorways or fences on our way to school, making horrid faces at us. "Inbred-Sin," I was certain, loo

although, in reading Aesop, I invariably skipped the "moral" pin

hought of Lida as the gentle, unselfish Rose, and myself as the ugly Marion. She was patient and obliging, and I felt that I was the reverse. She was considered pretty, and I knew that I was the reverse of that, too. I wondered if Lida rea

it, although I knew that it meant something more,-something that was already going on in my own heart and life. Oh, how I used to

ristiana and her children, never desiring to turn aside into any "By-Path Meadow" while Mr. Great-Heart led the way, and the Shining Ones came down to meet us along the road. It was one of the necessities of my nature, as a child, to have some one being, real or

he story of innumerable souls. I tried to fix my eye on one particular flake, and to follow its course until it touched the earth. But I found that I could not. A little breeze was stirring an the flake seemed to go and return, to descend and then ascend again,

at invisible company! But the heavens were already beginning to

hese in br

d to bring the

uld be so beautiful to die for the truth as they did, as Jesus did! I did not understand then that He lived and died to show us what life really means, and to give us true life, lik

mprehend. And yet they taught me to say those dear words of the Master, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me!" Surely He meant what He said. H

to encounter. If anybody ever needed a grown-up

l as we did our own playmates. But we did not think those English children had so good a time as we did; they had to be so prim and methodical. It seemed to us that the little fol

transatlantic playmates. I think we sometimes started off with our baskets, expecting to find those English flowers in

isies. I was delighted when my mother told me one day that a yellow flower I brought her was a cowslip, for I thought she meant that it

or the Exiles of Siberia;" "Nina: an Icelandic Tale;" with the "Vicar of Wakefield;" the "Tour to the H

t into a corner where nobody would notice me, and read on through sunset into moonlight, with eyes blurred with tears. I did not feel that I was doing anything wron

be sure; and that was one of the best and worst things about it. The sentimentalism of some of those romances was altogether unchildlike; but I did not take much of it in. It was the habit of running over pages and pages to get to the end of a story, the habit of reading without caring what I

was round, ruddy, and laughing with health; and, though I practiced at the glass a good deal, I could not lengthen it by puckering down my lips. I quite envied the little girls who were pale and pensive-looking, as that was

tall pine-trees whispering to each other across the sky-openings above me, the graceful ferns, the velvet mosses dotted with scarlet fairy-cups, as if the elves had just spread their table for tea, the unspeakable charm of the spice-breathing air, all wove a web of enchantment about me, from which I had no wish to disentangle myself. The silent spell of the woods held me with a power stronger even than that of the solemn-voiced sea. Sometimes this same brother would get permission to take me on a longer excursion,-to visit the old homestead at "The Farms." Three or four miles was not thought too long a walk for a healthy child of five years; and that road, in the old time, led through a rural Para

ty. Farther down the road, where the cousins were all grown-up men and women, Aunt Betsey's cordial, old-fashioned hospitality sometimes detained us a day or two

us, as she often did. They announced to us the approach of inexhaustible kindliness and good cheer. We took in a home-feeling with the words "Aunt Betsey" then and always. She had just the husband that belonged

ed me to share his boyish sports. But I did not like to ride in a wheelbarrow, nor to walk on stilts, nor even to coast down the hil

play-fellows, but he seemed to consider me in the way when they were his guests. Occasionally we would forget that the neighbor-boys were not girls, and would find ourselves all play

oys should

t maidens f

anter and fi

thing I neve

buryport. He had found an old pair of reins and tied them to a saw-horse, that he switched and "Gee-up"-ed vigorously. The journey was as brief as delightful. I ran home feeling like the heroine of an elopement, asking myself meanwhile, "What would my brother John say if he knew I had been playing with boys?" He was very particular about his sisters' behavior. But I incautiously said to one sister in whom I did not usually confide, that I thoug

everybody who died. John was social, and did not like to go up into the belfry and stay an hour or so alone, and as my grandfather positively forbade him to take any other boy up there, he one day got permission for us two l

small, and across to the water and the ships in the east, and the clouds and hills in the west! But when he struck the tongue against the

emphatic. Still the great waves of solemn sound went eddying on, over the hills and over the sea, and we had to hear it all, though we stopped

fied; and when I looked up and caught John's blank, dismayed look, I began to feel like crying, too. The question went swiftly through my mind,-How many days

It was not long before we saw both him and my grandfather on their way to the church. They came up to the little door, and told us to push with our united strength against it. The rusty lock soon yielded, and how good i

with my little sister, who, having been much indulged, to

first upheld her light weight. I stood petrified with horror. I knew all about that dangerous place. I had been told that nobody had ever found out how deep that mud was. I was uttered just one imploring "Come back!" when she turned to me with a shriek, throwing up her arms towards me. She was sinking! There was nobody in sight, and there was no time to think. I ran, or rather flew, across the bog, with just one thought in my mind, "I have got to get her out!" Some angel must have prevented me from making a misstep, and sinking with her. I felt the power of a giant suddenly taking possession of my small frame. Quicker than I could tell of

hes also were soiled. I had to drag or carry her all the way, for she could not or would not walk a step. And alas for the morocco boots! They were never a

ur sports, as well as our books, had a spice of Merry Old England. They were full of kings and qu

f rhymed dialogue, be

een Anne, she s

lady, as wh

hich hand of the messenger held the king's letter

own as

le girls joined hands acro

father we

mother wer

little c

ce in a dizzying whirl, breat

fagots! A bun

uggle for liberty, we ranged ourselves under two leaders, who made an archway

gates as hi

eorge and his

for a pass-word; and "Oranges" always won the

was "Grandmothe

n from Ne

r children

d

t from

or your dau

ur play-places was an unoccupied end of the burying-ground, overhung by the Colonel's a

ross-bones and cherubs and willow-trees on the gray slate-stones. I did not associate those long green mounds with people who had once lived, though we were careful, having been so instructed, not to step on the graves. To ramble about there and puzzle ourselves with the names and dates, was like

lder than it does now. There was only one main street, said to have been the first settlers' cowpat

the clip of the deep water at the Farms. All her elder children recognized in her quiet steady-going ways a maternal unity and strength of character, as of a town that understood her own plans, and had settled down to peaceful, permanent habits. Her spirit

I

ES OF

life were entirely different, but we read her descriptive stories and sang her songs as if they were true for

e goodness

y birth h

, in these

Englis

very familiar hymn b

take my wa

ny poo

. . .

children i

aked I

lothed from

ered from

s the rarest of all sights in a thrifty New England town fifty years ago. I used to look sharply for those chil

rrows of a p

I had more curiosity about a beggar, and more ig

nial drove me

aning to the word "servant." There were women who came in occasionally to do the washing, or to help about extra work. But they were decently clothed, and had homes of

from home observation, was something like this: People who live in three-story houses, and keep their green blinds closed, and hardly ever come out and talk with the folks in the street. There were a few

our part while young. I think we were rather eager to begin

e work or the pay. I generally gave it up before I had weeded half a bed. It made me so warm! and my back did ache so! I stole off into the shade of the great apple-trees, and let the west wind fan my hot cheeks, and looked up into the boughs

nt, while Lida received two or three bright ones. I had had what I wanted most. I would rather sit under the apple-trees and hear the birds

ot begun to do, was sometimes a serious

mns ended wi

nd work, and h

rst years

give, for

account

d the play; but the work,-how

should, as was the general custom, "learn a trade." Tailor's work-the finishing of men's outside garments-was the trade learned most frequently by women in those days, and one or more of my o

ooks! and how many thousand, thousand stitches there must be in his coat and pantaloons! And I suppose I have got to grow up and have a husband, and put all those little stitches into his coats and pantaloons. Oh, I never, never can do it!" A shiver of utter discouragement went through me

school, while we were learning the alphabet; and almost every girl, large or small, had a bed-quilt of her own beg

em. One fragment, in particular, was like a picture to me. It was a delicate pink and brown sea-moss pattern, on a white ground, a piece of a dress belonging to my married sister, who was to me bride and angel in One. I always saw her face before me when I unfolded this scrap,-a face

irit and mine. She had come back to us for a brief visit, soon after her marriage, with some deep, new experience of spiritu

nd she turned to me with a smile and said, "Won't you

happy she made me by wishing me to do

I seek, prote

ness of her love for me, fixed it at once indelibly in my memory. Perhaps I shall repeat

, called my sewing "gobblings." I grew disgusted with it myself, and gave away all my pieces except the pretty sea-moss patter

ockings of her own knitting before she was married. Here was another mountain before me, for I took it for granted

ver, was never attempted, any more than the patchwork quilt. I heard somebody say one day that there must always be one "old maid" in every family of girls

. Some one listening reproved her, but she said, "Why, if they fit themselves to be good, helpful, cheerful old maids, they will certainly be better wives, if they ever are married," and that maxim I laid by in my memory for future contingencies, for I believed in every word she ever uttered. She herself,

o two seemed at all alike. It was like rehearsing in a small world each our own part in the great one awaiting us. If we little ones occas

perfectly that the wooden lady was always a typical specimen of the genteel doll-world; and another was an expert at fine stitching, so delicately done that it was a pleasure to see o

hought. Except when there was "widening" or "narrowing" to be done, I did not need to keep my eyes upon it at all. So I took a book upon my lap and read,

f the hymn-book, the first rhymes I committed to memory were in the "Old Farmer's Almanac," files of

the "Palladiums" and other journals that we ought to have kept as antiquarian treasures. We value

oduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morn

amusement, one afternoon when we two were sent up into the garret to entertain ourselves without disturbing the

day, said

king down a

ly the wind

ightning flas

sfully ignorant of rhetoricians' rules, and supposed that the rhyme was the on

thunder, how

myself a li

e had been

ound me wa

d to say them over to the family, and then they sounded silly. The habit was formed, however, and I went on writing little books of ballads, which

write some verses in young lady's album; and Aunt Hannah asked me to repe

o babies; no! I wanted books with stiff covers, that could stand up side by side on a shelf, and maintain their own character as books. But I did not know how to make a

its title-page I read "The Life of John Calvin." I did not know who he was, but a book was a book to me, and this would do as well as any to begin my library with. I looked upon it as a treasure, and to make sure of my claim, I took it down to

d adopt. John Calvin was left to a lonely fate, and am afraid that at last the mice devoured him. Before I had quite forgotten him, however, I did pick up one other book of about his size, a

arned was called Spenserian. It was Byron's "Vision o

. St. Peter came into it, and King George the Third; neither of which names meant anything to me; but the scenery seemed to be

oud, holding a bunch of keys. I put the two together in my mind, imagining the chintz counterpane to be an illustr

at at the ce

ed o'er

the long words, and went abou

at at the ke

ed o'er

Time, still reminds me, forlorn and half-clad, o

an infant's library; but I was not aware of any unfitness or incompatibility. To m

one child's tastes. I felt no incongruity between Dr. Watts

chiel, bewar

unting me, I would run out of doors eating a big piece of bread and butter,-sweeter than any has tasted since,-and would jump up

was a collection of excellent literary extracts, made by one who was himself an author and a poet. It deserved to be called "first-class" in another sense than that which was understood by its title. I cannot think that modern reading books have improved upon it much. It co

e gray bird with

author, which we all liked to read, partly from a childish love of the t

ame in its m

ts vanished b

ffs bowed; and t

f life was the t

yet with whom I could aspire,-for something like this I think mountains must always be to those who truly love them,-was Coleridge's "Mont Blanc before Sunrise," in this same "First Class Book." I believe that poetry really first took possession of me in that poem, so that afterwards I could not easily mistake the genuineness of its ring, though my ear might not be suffici

could not live without it. The thought of it was to me like the thought of God and of truth. To leave out poetry would be to lose the real meaning of life. I fe

orrents! sile

lorious as the

en full moon?

rainbows? Who wi

spread garlands

then

h their soft and

and torrents, and my child-heart in i

loud of incense

tars, and tell

thousand voice

ver stood face to face with mountains until I was a mature woman, always, after this vision of them, they were

he life-outfit of a human being. It was the greatest of blessings to me, in the long days of toil to which I was shut in much earlier than most young gir

f young people in this generation. Poetry is one of the angels whose presence will drive out this sordid demon, if anything less than the Power of the H

such dilution. So I go back to the "American First Class Book," and affirm it to have been one of the best of reading-books, because it gave us children a taste of the finest poetry and prose which had been written in our English tongue, by British and by American authors. Among the pieces which left a permanent impression upon my mind I recall Wirt's description of the

n, and he had been a poor man all the days of his life"-to the happy waking of his little daughter Margaret out of her fever-sleep with which it ended, it was one sweet picture of lowly life and honorable po

t be to be poor than to be

ur way of living, never luxurious, grew more and more frugal. Now and then I heard mysterious allusions to "the wolf at the door": and it was whispered that, to escape him, we might all have to turn our backs upon the home where

I

ING TO

mpression it left upon me was of sleep; more peaceful and sacred than common slumber, yet only sleep. My dreams of him were for a long time

misses the man at the helm. His grave, clear perception of what was best for us, his brief wor

property except the roof that sheltered us and a small strip of land, her situation was full of perplexities which we little ones could not at all understand. To be fed

o I did the next best thing I could think of-I sang hymns as if singing to myself, while I meant them for her. Sitting at the window with my book and my knitting, while she was preparing dinner or supper with a depressed air because she missed the

observe that s

e discon

n

m a foun

hat had come to her out of her own heart. Nobody but my mother, indeed, would have called my chirping singing. But as she

led on the n

n

est of the sons

n

tell us of

ld live together in peace, and children should be their fearless playmates. Even the savage wolf Poverty would be pleasant and neighborly then, no doubt! A Little Child among them, lea

aven, although so many people around me talked as if that were the most desirable thing of all. But I could n

years, could have any use for the dust to which their bodies had returned. Were they not already as alive as they could be? I found that there were different ideas of the resurrection among "orthodox" people, even then. I was told however, that this was too

k of heaven

s to "languish into life." That was the meaning

y whisper:

pirit, co

recedes; it

ns on my e

ds seraph

tle later expressed to me t

ers into li

is but g

Christian to his Soul" ends, left the whole cloudy qu

where is t

where is

had gone to a better home than the one be lived

they do in heaven. Nobody would be selfish, nobody would be unkind; no! not so much as in a single thought. What a delightful world this would be to live in then! He

me when it would begin. The first minister who preached in our church, long before I was born, had studied the subject much, and had written boo

es, whether they wanted to or not? And what would be done with the bad ones, if there were any left? I did not

ppy thousand years, when I wanted to so much. But I had not lived even my short life in the world without leading something of my own faults and perversities; and when I saw that there was no sign of an approaching millennium in my heart I had to conclud

f the family found occupations by which the domestic burdens were lifted a little; but, with only the three youngest to cl

e South American trade. His inclination led him that way; it seemed to open before him a pr

re upon strange seas and to seek unknown lands. He had even given to the wanderer he described the name of her own absent son-"Benjamin." As she left the church she met a neighbor who informed her that the brig "Mexican" had arrived at Salem, in trouble. It was the vessel in which my brother had sailed only a short time before, expecting to

fate, with the crew fastened down in the hold. One small skylight had accidentally been overlooked by the freebooters. The captain discovered it, and making h

rtened to plain "Jack" by the "Mexican's" crew, came to see my brother one day, and at the dinner table he went through the whole adventure in pantomime, which we children watched with wide-eyed terror and amusement. For there was some comedy mixed with what had been so nearly a t

k made eyes at each other down there in the darkness, not daring to speak. The

room the ruffian of a boatswain who had threatened his life. This boatswain and several others of the crew were executed in Bosto

ch we had all been baptized. One Sunday morning we children were told, when we woke, that we could not go to me

ce taken a journey there, with the possibility in his mind of making the place his home, his limited income furnishing no adequate promise of a maintenance for his large

tion-house for mill-girl boarders. Some of the family objected, for the Old World traditions about factory life were anything but attractive; and they were current in New England until the experiment at Lowell had

ple. Such piles of sewing accumulated before us! A sewing-bee, volunteered by the neighbors, reduced the quantity a litt

running about the fields we were so soon to leave. One day, in sheer desperation, we dragged a sheet up with us into an apple-tree in the

s with their miscellaneous treasures, the blue-roofed cradle that had sheltered ten blue-eyed babies, the tape-looms and reels and spinning wheels, the herby smells, and the delightful dream corners,-these could not be taken with us to the new home.

hat I called my own, where I was at liberty to pull up my pinks and lady's delights every day, to see whether they had taken root, and where I could g

d I, took with my mother the first stage-coach journey of our lives, across Lynnfield plains and over Andover hills to the banks of the Merrimack.

chairs, tables, and, to me most welcome of all, the old mahogany secretary with brass-handled drawers, that had always stood in the "front room" at home. W

ides these, there were bound volumes of the "Repository Tracts," which I had read and re-read; and the delightfully miscellaneous "Evangelicana," containing an account of Gilbert Tennent's wonderful trance; also the "History of the Spanish Inquisition," with some painfully realistic illustrations; a German Dictionary, whose outl

ury lady and gentleman figurines curiosities brought from over the sea, and reverently laid away by my mother with her choicest relics in the secretary-desk; my father's miniature, painted in Antwerp, a treasure only shown occasionally to us children as a holiday

who live among them, through association; and this alone makes heirlooms valuable. They are family treasures, because they are part of the family life, full of memories and inspirations. Bought or sold,

herever she went. And, remaining yet in the family, it often brings back to me pleasant reminders of my childhood. No other Bible seems quite so sacred to me as the old Family Bible, out of which my father used to

into the first. I did not belong in either, but somewhere between. And I was very uncomfortable in my promotion, for though the reading and spelling and grammar and geography were perfectly easy, I had

ischief going on. Once, having caught a boy annoying a seat-mate with a pin, he punished the offender by pursuing him around the schoolroom, sticking a pin into his shoulder whenever he could overtake him. And he had a fearful leather strap, which was sometimes used even upon the shrinking palm of a litt

ssist scholars who were in trouble about their lessons, but I was too bashful to speak to him, or to ask assistance of any

anhood had always looked to me very wide. I suppose we should get across it by some sudden jump, by and by. But among

re was a fresh, breezy sociability about them which made them seem almost

liked to make nice things for the table, and, having been accustomed to an abundant supply, could never learn to economize. At a dollar and a quarter a week for board,(the price allowed for mill-girls by the corporations) great care in expenditure was necessary. It was not in my mother's nature clo

t did not want to take us two little girls, but consented on condition we should be sure to attend school the

already frequently come to me, that I was the one too many in the overcrowded family nest. Once, before we left our old home, I had h

n I want. I could not spare

mill with a light heart. The novelty of it made it seem easy, and it really was not hard, just to change the bobbins on the spinning-frames every three quarters of an hour or so,

ng but fun. It is

ixed with it. We were not occupied more than half the time. The intervals were spent frolicking around around the spinning-frames, teasing and talking to the older girls, or enter

f blind door at the great water-wheel that carried the works of the whole mill. It was so huge that we could only watch a few of its spokes at a time, and part of its dripping rim, moving with a slow, measured strength through the darkness that shut it in. It impressed me with something of the

ough various s

by trifl

eternal thou

sturbed

lessons for us. But it was not, and could not be, the right sort of life for a child, and w

thorough in their instruction; and my mind seemed to have been ploughed up during that year of work, so that knowledge took root in it ea

rn to the mill. It was a severe disappointment to me, though I did not say so at home. I did not at all accept the conclusion of a neighbor whom I

girl hasn't got any such head-piece as

think the solution was then formed, inwardly, that I would go to school again, some time, whatever happened. I went ba

to be carried along with the current, and do just what everybody else did? No: I knew I should not do that, for there was a certain Myself who

presumption of extreme youth. How gladly would I know now, after these long years, just why I

ekeepers. And the ambition of most girls was to follow their mothers' footsteps in this direction; a natural and laudable ambition. But girls, as well as boys, must often have been conscious of their own peculiar capabilities,-must have desired to cultivate and make use of their in

late and pencil, to draw pictures, was my first request whenever a day's ailment kept me at home from school; and I rather enjoyed being a little ill, for the sake of amusing myself in that way. The wish grew up with me; but there were no good drawing-te

nd years in trying. I did try a little, and very often. Jack Frost was my most inspiring teacher. His sketches on the bedroom window-pane in cold mornings were my ideal studies of Swiss scenery, crags and peaks and chalets and fir

I was not to be an artist, and I am rather glad that I was hindered, for I had even stronger incli

very proud. But I believed that a person must be exceedingly wise before presuming to attempt it: although now and then I thought I could

great many that were ever put on paper. They seemed to fly into my mind and away again, like birds with a carol through the air. It seemed strange to me that people should notice

a relative say

s she will get money for it. I have heard of somebo

inder any work I had to do. I crept away into a corner to write what came into my head, just as I ran away to play; and I looked upon it only as my most agreeable amusement, never thinking of preserving anything which did not of itself stay in my memory. This too was well, for the time did lot

that I must make myself useful in the world, and certainly one could be useful who could "keep school" as Aunt Hannah did. I did not see anything else for a girl to do who wanted to use her brains as well as he

rbing wish to be a teacher, but it seemed to me that I might succeed if I tried. What I did like about it was that one must know something first. I must acqu

towards pen and paper in moments of leisure. But to write anything worth while, I must have m

ut, not without many breaks and hindrances and neglects, during the next six or seven years,-to learn all I could, so that I shoul

I

HE R

es long to get acquainted wit

They were bordered by green meadows, and graceful trees leaned over to gaze into their bright mirrors. Our shallow tidal creek was the only river I had k

eside the rushing waters,-among them Sir Walter Scott's own harebells, which I had never thought of except as blossoms of poetry; here they wer

king excursions down the river to watch the meeting of the slow Concord and the swift Merrimack; or around by the old canal-path, to

a very late breakfast, with draggled gowns and aprons full of dewy wild roses. No matter if we must get up at five the next morning and go back to our hum-drum toil, we should have t

y close to the mill-gates, too, in those days. There was green grass all around them; violets and wild geraniums grew by th

and in front of some of them the overseers had gay flower-gardens; w

the oldest corporation (the "Merrimack"), and seemed a part of it, and a part, also, of the original idea of the place itself, which was always a city of worshipers, although it came to be filled with a population which preferred me

little girl in a pink gown and white sunbonnet gathering flowers when I passed that way, and I often went out of my path to do so. These relieved the monotony of the shanty-like s

ooked as if it had emigrated bodily from the bogs of Ireland. It had settled itself down into a green hollow by the roadside, and it

tuals" hung around our back yard, always of Hibernian extraction; and a slice of bread was rewarded w

heir favorite camping-places. Their strange endeavors, to combine civilization with savagery were a great source of amusement to us; men and women clad alike in loose gowns, stove-pipe hats, and moccasons; grotesque

g down of a mild sort of barbarianism, and is often attended by a painfully awkward self-consciousness. I had an innate dislike of conventional

nd had a good cry, which I would not for the world have had them know about, as that would have added humiliation to my distress. And the greatest pity about it was that I too soon became accustomed to the situation. I felt like a child, but considered it my duty to think and behave like a woman. I began to look upon it as a

ive and work with us. We had our evening frolics and entertainments together, and we always made the most of our brief holiday hours. We had also with us now the sister Emilie of my fairy-tale m

hen we came in shivering from our work, through a snowstorm, complaining of numb hands and feet, she would say cheerily, "But it doesn't make you any warmer to say you are cold;" and this was typical of the way she took life generally, and tried to have us take it. She was constantly denying

fore she went to her work, even though the water was chiefly broken ice; and we did the same whenever we could be resolute enough. It required both nerve and will to do this at five o'clock on a zero morn

to his people. She quite wore this book out, carrying it about with her in her working-dress pocket. After that, "Locke on the Understanding" was used in the same way. She must have known both books through and through by heart. Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their physics and met

intellect in comparison with hers. I would gladly have kept pace with her if I could. Anything under the heading of "Didactick," like some of the pieces in the old "English Reader," used by school-children in the generation just before

was really our teacher, although she never assumed that position. Certainly I learned more from her about my own capabilities

early to win our daily bread. This remark applies especially to me, as my older sisters (only two or three of them had come to Lowell) s

, and sisters, some attending school, and some at work in the mill,-was a little fortni

eart and the poet's soul, in her later years, and could tell her how happy she had helped to make my childhood.) Our little sheet was called "The Diving Bell," probably from the sea-associations of the name. We kept our secrets of authorship very close from everybody except the editor, who had to decipher the handwriting and copy the pieces. It w

e the only audience), to listen to the reading of our first paper. We took Saturday evening, because that was longer than the other workday evenings, the mills being closed earlier. Such guessing and wondering and admiring as we h

relessness about her own special belongings, told of her rising one morning, and after hunting around for her sho

es rhymes, I had attempted an essay of half a column

to no particular end. But the editor praised it, after having declined the verdict of t

was far more desirable, and it seems so to me still. I will give my little girl readers a single specimen of my twelve-year-ol

's like a

ce been for

relong will

and lovel

s like a ful

s not kn

st soon, ala

and fad

like a wit

s beneath

its beauty

ance yet

child's usual inclination to look forward meditatively, rather tha

active world; and the author of the shoe-story horrified us by declaring that she meant to be distinguished when she grew up for something, even if it was for something bad! She did go so f

for the pleasure of rhyming and writing, indifferent as to what might come of it. For any one who could take hold of every-day, practical work, and carry it on successfully, I had a profound respect. To be what is called "capable" seemed to me better worth while than merely

it was a comfort to be assured that my scribbling was not wholly a waste of time. So I used pencil and paper in every spare minute I could find. Our little home-journal went bravely on through twelve numbe

ink I was the youngest of the group,-prepared a Constitution and By-Laws, and named ourselves "The Improvement Circle." If I remember rightly, my sister was our first president. The older ones talked and wrote on many subjects quite above me. I was shrinkingly

ture person, who scarcely thought it worth her while to speak often to a child like me; and I was, when with strangers, rather a reserved girl; so I kept myself occupied with the river, my work, and my thoughts. And the river and my thoughts flowed on together, the happiest of companions. Like a loitering

ys we had only weekly papers, and they had always a "poet's corner," where standard writers were well represented, with anonymous ones, also. I was not, of course, much of a critic. I c

er the blue h

nd loved her "B

ast crushe

ndred H

h was printed in her volume, but which sounds so entirely unlike everythin

thy past

e untrod

tempest! ha

hine outra

tanza that I often n

much: scrol

n our wear

point of

ed in ou

never seen it since, nor ever had the least clue to its authorship. It stirred

mind! That

ce and t

n sits, a s

es his jud

oul! That st

ous and

leeping on

he scoffs

n tears to ea

ng thing, th

e poets,-that it is love, service, the sacrifice of self for others' good. The lesson was slowly learned, but ever

re thou livest

ish thy pleasin

men's want

here. All world

oy of doing

known passage

ich the weak and

eir own

le thing to

fort, which,

st its sense;

ht to die unmour

oicest

otation made nowadays from his poems, was often on my sister E

round thee like

, and because it will be good for my girl readers to keep in mind o

work of high

ngel's happin

earth while in

n by thee sha

stream shall dee

n these few and

sparing and u

grave with amar

ts divine in heaven

always stays at home, is necessarily narrowing. That is one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly begun to live until we can take in the idea of the wh

our acquaintance with each other. It blended itself with the flow of our lives. Almost the firs

lowed a r

th of liq

ow soft ba

through va

ith its pr

elds and wo

ch a pure

ing pride

ly along

entle deed

ering far,

thers ki

er own virt

oughts, like

n her hear

ent to be

enely m

ed from Time

t in Love's

ver in my ideal of her. The Merrimack has blent its music with the onward song of many

l-educated, about twenty years old, and she had brought with her to her place of toil the orphan child of her sister, left to her as a death-bed legacy. They boarded with a relative. The factory boarding

everybody about her felt in everything she said and did. I think I first knew, through her, how character can teach, without words. To see her and her little niece togethe

all thought that the Scriptures had a right to go wherever we went, and that if we needed them anyw

rl in the room, when he took hers away, "I did think you had more conscience than to bring that book here." But we had some close ethical questions to settle in t

efore that window, I could look across the room and see girls moving backwards and forwards among the spinning-frames, sometimes stooping, sometimes reaching up their arms, as their work required, with easy and not ungracef

first toward the right, and then toward the left. We were familiar with his courteous habits, partly due to his French descent; but we had never seen anybody bow to a room full of mill girls in tha

nd that there was some danger of our becoming drudges. I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became very wearisome to me. In the sweet June weathe

at I ha

there from

nto which we

riso

rned also that there are many things which belong to the whole world of us together, that no one of us, nor any few of us, can claim or enjoy for ourselves alone. I discovered, too, that I could so accustom myself to the noise that it became like a silence to me. And I defied the machinery to make me its slave. Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if

difficult to say whether the hard things or the pleasant things did me most good. But when I was sincerest wit

an make those circumstances our helpers, when we can appreciate the good there is in them. It has often seemed to me as if Life stood beside me, looki

eling of our own distinctiveness, since that is our only clue to the Purpose behind us and the End before us. But when we h

steadily. Left to itself, it would be only a loose, useless filament. Trying to wander in an independent or a disconnected way among the other threads, it would

le. And when we once get a glimpse of the Divine Plan in it all, and know that to be just where we are, doing just what we are doing just at this hour because it is our appointed hour,-when we become aware that this is the very best thing possib

Life always rewards those who do their little faithfully by giving them some greater oppor

ot to thy plac

y place God m

X

AIN-F

eat distances, regions unknown to us, as the northern districts of Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont were, in t

s in the mill, had come from far up near the sources of the Merrimack, and she told me a great deal about her home, and about farm-life among the hills. I listened almost with

to whom it all appeared like the merest commonplace. What she felt about it was that it was "awful cold, sometimes; the days were so short! and it grew dark so early!" Then she told me a

The scent of pine-woods and checkerberry-leaves seemed to bang about her. I believe I like

pal comment was, "They don't think much of sailors up aour way." And I received the impression, from her

eal of the country in it, one that is rich in beautiful scenery and ancestral associations, is almost like a living being, with

ar relative's homestead, were only half a day's journey distant; and the misty ocean-spaces beyond still widened out on our imagination from the green inland landscape

coming and going among us. The stagedriver looked upon us as his especial charge, and we had a sense of personal property in the Salem and Lowell stag

abies. One of them sent for me just when the close air and long days' work were beginning to tell upon my health, and it was dec

e younger, a plump, vigorous urchin, three or four months old, did, without doubt, "feel his life in every limb." He was my especial charge, for his brother's clinging weakness gave him, the first-born, the place nearest his mother's heart. The baby bore the family name, mine and his mother's; "our little Lark," we s

of the nature on which it leans for protection. I think I should have missed one of the best educating influences of my youth, if I had not had the care of that baby for a yea

picy foreign odors. (My cherub's papa was a sea-captain, usually away on his African voyages.) Little Nell and her grandfather became as real to me as my darling charge, and if a tear from his nurse's eyes sometimes dropped upon his cheek as he slept, he was not saddened by it. When he awoke he was irrepres

e taught, indeed, how to do everything that a woman might be called upon to do under any circumstances, for herself or for the household she lived in. It was one of the advantages of the old simple way of living, that the yo

day, besides keeping the house tidy, and doing any other needed neighborly service, such as sitting all night by a sick-bed. To be "a good watcher" was considered one of the most impor

window and could hear the wind blowing and a bird or two singing. Nature is often very generous in opening her heart to those who must keep their hands employed. Perhaps it is because she is always quietly at work herself, and so sympathizes with her busy human friends. And possibly there is no needful occupation which is wholly unbeautiful. The beauty

s. But these were not the things I had most wished to do. The whole world of thought lay unexplored before me,-a world of which I had already caught large and tempting glimpses, and I did not like to feel the horizon shutting me in, even to so pleasant a corner as this. And the worst of it was that I

lk, but I knew he would not be inconsolable. So I only said "I must go,"-a

the surrounding waves urging it forward, with or against its own will. I felt that I belonged to the world, that there was something for me to do in it, though I had not yet found out what. Something to do; it might be very little, but st

receding, up to invisible heights, however unattainable they might seem. I was conscious of a desire that others should feel something coming to them out of my life like the breath of flowers, the whisper of the winds, the warmth of the sun

time often expressed these and similar longings. They were vague, and they were too likely to dissipate themselves in mere dreams. B

exhalations, and she cannot separate their elements, if she would; they all belong to the landscape of her youth

a new background and a new hope. We shared an uneven path and homely occupations; but above us hung glorious summits never wholly out of sight. Every blossom and every dew

use it leads upward. This our daily duty was to us. Though we did not always know it, the faithful plodder was sure to win the heights. Unconsciously we learned the lesson that only by humble Doing can any of us win the lofty po

h will furnish a plain clue for all bewildered travelers hereafter. There is no more exhilarating human experience than this, and per

dent labor for other women. They practically said, by numbering themselves among factory girls, that in ou

came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before. Their grandmothers had suffered the hardships of frontier life, had known the horrors of savage warfare when the beautiful valleys of the Connecticut and the Merrimack were threaded wi

banks,-the Merrimack,-I have felt as if I could also hear the early music of my workmates' lives, those who were born among these glorious summits. Pure, strong, crystalline natures, carrying down with them the light of blue skies and the freshness of free winds to their place of toil, broadening and stren

he Eternal Life, the only Reality; and her weakness comes also from her inclination to lean against something,-upon an unworthy support, rather than none at all. She often lets h

ch his world needs help. She is here to make this great house of humanity a habitable and a beautiful place, without and within,-a true home for every one of his children. It matters not if she is poor, if she has to toil for her daily brea

ng inspiration. In this a girl often surpasses her brother; and it is for her to hold firmly and faithfully to her holiest instincts, so that when he lets his standard droop, she may, through her spiritual strength, be a standard bearer for him. Cour

that they were her own. The woman who employed her, if her nature was at all generous, could not feel that money alone was an equivalent for a heart's service; she added to it her friendship, her gratitude and esteem. The domestic problem

this new work the few hours they had of every-day leisure were entirely their own was a satisfaction to them. They preferred it to going out as "hired help." It was like a young man's pleasure in entering upon business for himself. Girls had never tried that experiment before, and they liked it. It brought out in them a dormant strength of

occupations, which among us are usually only temporary, and are continually shifting from one pair of hands to another. Changes o

yed in either of the ways indicated. If she would shrink from it a little, then she is a little inhuman when she puts her unknown human sisters who are so occupied into a class by themselves, feeling herself to be somewhat their superior. She is really the superior person who has a

idea that it means something external in dress or circumstances has been too generally adopted by rich and poor; and this, coupled with the sweeping notion that in our country one person is just as

f womanhood in the Old World. But they themselves belonged to the New World, not to the Old; and they were making their own traditions, to hand down to their Republican descendants-one

d respect. They never, at their work or away from it, heard themselves contemptuously spoken of on account of

. We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks-the women who do something and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy. And if we would escape from our pettinesses, as we all may and should, the way to

RLS' MA

to quote to us, because, she said, she often repea

ld, so thorny,

ss unblighted

thistly sorro

part of wisdo

aw of love, t

guished than our

tience bear ou

with others,

in some distant boarding-house; she gave money to send to missionaries, or to help build new churches in the city, when she was earning only eight or ten dollars a month clear of her board, and could afford herself but one "best dress," besides her working clothes. That best dress was often nothing but a Merrimack print. But she insisted that it was a great saving of trouble to have just this one, because she was not obliged

after us younger ones,-two or three hours a day was all the time she could c

who find a way to do it. People go to them as to a bank that never fails. And surely, they who have a

incely fortune of to-day, because she managed with it to make so many people happy. But th

ich most influenced mine. And it was true that our smaller and more self-centred natures in touching hers caught something of her spirit, the contagion of her warm heart

let me watch with her at night by a sick-bed. I think it was partly for the sake of keeping as close to her as I could-though not w

to grow up under his influence. I shall never forget the effect left by the tones of his voice when he first spoke to me, a child of ten years, at a neighborho

e children, too;

ady mentioned the incident-had I heard that Name spoken so tenderly and familiarly, yet so reverently. It was as if he had been gazing

t I saw, a real Voice that I heard, a real Person who was calling me. I could not mistake the Presence that had so often drawn near me and shone with sunlike eyes into my soul. The words,

an myself, and took with them the vows that bound us to his service. Of what was then said and read I scarcely remember more than the words of heavenly welcome in the Epistle,

I was thinking of, although there was a long list of them, to which we all bowed assent, as was the custom. It was the homecoming to the "house not made with hands," th

uld I ever let it slip from me, and lose the way to the "many mansions" that now seemed so open and so near? I could not think so. It is well that we cannot foresee

ach towards the Source of all spiritual life. To draw near to the One All-Beautiful Being, Christ, to know Him as our spirits may know The Spirit, to receive the breath of his infinitely loving Life into mine, that I might breathe out that fragrance again

as nothing in itself, nothing for others, which it has not received. The loving Voice of Him w

and related only lighter incidents. But one thing I was aware of, from the time I began to think and to w

e is much more to love, to believe in, and to seek, in the invisible world out of which it all grows. What has best revealed our true selves to ourselves must be most helpfu

o most of us; and it was one of the mill regulations that everybody should go to church somewhere. There must ha

rk, accompanying us on our picnics down the river-bank,-a walk of a mile or so took us into charmingly pic

ne," originated with literary meetings in the vestry of two religious societies, the first in th

nings, read aloud our poems and sketches, and made such critical suggestions as he thought desirable. This magazine was edited by two young women, both of whom had been employed in the mills, although at that time the were teacher

uainted with the editor of the "Offering," and we knew only a few of its contributors. The Universalist Church, in the vestry of which they met, was in a distant part of the city. Socially, the place where we worshiped was the place where we naturally came together in other ways. The churches were all filled to overflowing, so that

l it was merged in the "Lowell Offering," to which we then transferred our writing efforts. It did not occur to us to call these efforts "literary." I know that I wrote just as I did for our little "Diving Bell,"-as a sort of pastime, and because my daily toil was mechanical, and furnished no occupation for my thoughts. Perhaps the fact

irst two years, edited by a gentleman of acknowledged literary ability. But people seemed

ghtest actions should be moved by some earnest impulse from behind. We might write playfully, but there must be conscience and reverence somewhere within it all. W

oting from Pollok, Cowper, and Milton, and ending with Diedrich Knickerbocker's definition of immortal fame,-"Half a page of dirty paper." For other titles I had "Thoughts on Beauty;" "Gentil

pleasant days, when

nd verdant fields

ounding heart with ev

in my ears was ri

all them back, those

fraught with joys I

Science opes with

ll many a flower to ch

ize myself at times, quite unnecessarily. The title of one sting of morbid verses is "The Complaint of a Nobo

torms are raging,

dlessly crushe

were better ob

hless, ingl

ake me a more useful plant. I am glad to remember that these discontented fits were only occasional, for certainly they were unreasonable. I w

escribes this phase of

sad fancie

ry of d

wn prodi

miliar ha

st of us do. I think I must have had a frequent fancy that I was not long for this world. Perhaps I thought an early death rather picturesque; many young people do. There is a certain kind of poetry th

? The world is

that looks up

tled a "Song in June," which ought to be cheerful, goes

roud in the m

feel like saying to any young girl who inclines to rhyme, "Don't sentimentalize! Write more of what you see than of what you feel, and let your f

xpression. I remember this distinctly about one of my poems with a terrible title,-"The Murderer's Request,"-in which I mad

some storm-ri

e depths of a

Byr

nd where the cy

eds that are done

ot think I felt at all murderous in writing it; but a more innocent subject would hav

re as I knew her,-in our stern, blustering, stimulating New England,-and I chanted the praises of Winter

ll child, and they never withdrew their companionship from my thoughts, for there

d been to me like a human little friend. But the wild flowers had my heart. I lived and breathed with them, out under the free winds of heaven; and when I could not see them, I wrote about them. Much that I co

d wandered in and were twining themselves around the whirring spindles, as I repeated it, verse after verse. Better still, they drew me out, in fancy, t

rt and soul of the flowers as hardly anybody else did. He made me feel as if they were really related to us human beings. In fancy my fe

icate for

eath, and look

sues from the s

of the indw

ken of the u

soul of this

ermonish little poems under the inspiration of the flowers at my factory work, and pe

KE THE

they o'er vall

ert, and smile

t in no young

ke the

uds in the hea

s with the mello

coming sunligh

ke the

ets on the wild

epths are new od

wofold of Love

ke the

Who their brigh

th, look they a

from their lo

ke the

p they when aut

fragrance aroun

pe of Spring's f

e the f

eriodicals of that day, so that at last I also wrote one, in self-defense, to claim my

ACK MY F

nd of rose-buds was twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as the sunshine tha

nd, with a merry laugh, threw it upon the water. In her glee she forgot that her treasures were growing less, and wi

nced along, regardless of her sorrow; and as it bore the blooming burden away, her words came back in a taunting echo, along its reedy margin.

in the thoughtless child an emblem of thyself! Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its frag

rs of Time, thou wilt cry, in tones more sorrowful than those of the weeping child, "Bring back

s "New Year's Night of an Unhappy Man," with its yet haunting glimpse of "a fair long paradise beyond the mountains." I am not sure but the idea of tryi

rse into English verse, not wincing at the greatest-Goethe and Schiller. These studies were pursued i

way into print, however, but for the coincident publication of the two mill-girls' magazines, just as I entered my teens. I fancy that almost everything any of us offered them

liant and original young woman, who wrote novels that were published by the Harpers of New York while she was employed at Lowell. The two ha

fering" were united in the year 1842, under t

ring" closed its existence when I was a little more than twenty years old. The only continuous editing I have ever been engaged in was upon "Our Young Folks." About twenty years ago I was editor-in-charge

ing how it looked in print. It was good practice for us, and that was all that we desired. We were complimented and quoted. When a Philadelphia paper copied one of my little poems, suggesting some verbal i

ges. I wished to do good and true things, but not such as would subject me to the stare of coldly curious eyes. I could never imagine a girl

t idea of continuing at that kind of work permanently. Our composite photograph, had it been taken, would have been the representative New England girlhood of those days. We had all been fairly educated at public or private schools, and many of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining a better education. Very few were among us without some distinct plan for bettering the condition of themselves and those they loved. For the first time, our young women had com

hem as a vision of hope,-I remember being dazzled by it myself for a while,-and Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the Lowell mill-girls. Meanwhile they were improving themselves and prepar

y "Lowell lawyers." This seemed almost too foolish a suggestion to contradict, but the editor of the "Offering" thought it best to give the name and occupation of some of the writers by way of refutation. It was for this reason (much against my own wish) that my real name was first attached to anything I wrote. I was then book-keeper in the cloth-room of the Lawrence Mills. We had all us

. We do not know ourselves without our companions and surroundings. I cannot narrate my workmates' separate experiences, but I know that because of having lived among them, and b

y choice natures--some of the choicest in all our excellent New England, and there were no false social standards to hold them apart. It is the best society when people meet sincerely, on the ground of the

he most cultivated, however, who were the most companionable. There were gentle, untaught girls, as fresh and simple as wild flowers, whose unpretending goodness of heart was better t

es, and also the few that I knew so well, those with whom I worked, thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped, my

ve lived in the

I

AND ST

, that occupied a great deal of space. Mine seemed to me as unmanageable as an overgrown spoilt child. It had to be watched in a dozen directions every minute, and even then it was always getting itself and me into trouble. I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great, groaning joints and whizzing fan, was aware of my incapacity to m

he west. When the work was running smoothly, we looked out together and quoted to each other all the sunset-poe

like chario

sers drawn; a

rious, bushy,

herubim had b

ples hung of m

ranslation from th

it were no

eve, whil

opies t

, for I was very fond of it; though the espe

ce and welco

s blue tr

ds are liv

ir veins of

hem silen

t and fle

endor. I wondered whether it really were so. But that huge, creaking framework beside us would continually i

d some that was less so, but far more satisfactory, as

en I left, "Going where

sententiously, "time is money." But that was not my thought about it. "Time

s due weight. It always seemed to me that the Apostle's

aiment, let us be

ever little we had,-it seemed to me a sufficiency. At this time I was receiving two dollars a week, besides my boar

have never had the opportunity of knowing, by experience, how it does make one feel. It is something to have been spared the re

ition or possession; and at my new work I had hours of freedom every day. I never

in the cloth-room, where she was, which I gladly secured. This was a low brick building next the countin

much to have something to do which required the use of pen and ink, and I think there must be a good many scraps of verse buried among the blank pag

quest, on public occasions. He lent me the first volume of Whittier's poems that I ever saw. It was a small book, containing mostly Antislavery pieces. "The Yankee Girl" was one of them, fully to appreciate t

seen her-that pr

ack the dark wea

her eye that the

the sunshine tha

Southron! Go ba

lood of the heart

he later editions, the impression of which, as it remains to m

tresses, thou

shadow, and go

such poems as "The Angel of Patience," "Follen," "Raphael," and that wonderfully rendered "Hymn" from L

reath Divin

o'er all t

touch of vie

my soul

breath the

a touch the

ather, Th

hadow of t

ghing of

apture an

ht it belonged to my poetic friend, the baler of cloth. But one day he informed me that it was a borrowed book; he thought, however, he should cl

the penciled comment, "Singularly beautiful." It was Poe's "Raven," which had just made its first appearance in some magazine. It seemed like an apparition in literature, indeed; the sensation it created am

ples." Some one lent me the "Voices of the Night," the only collection of Longfellow's verse then issued, I think. The "Footsteps of Angels" glided at once into my memory, and took possession of a permanent p

and "Uncle Tim," and others of the delightful "May-Flower" snatches first appeared in this way. Irving's "Sketch-Book" all reading people were supposed to have read, and I recall the pleasure it was to me when one of my sisters came into possession of "Knickerbocker's History of

"Magnalia," which I had brought from the public library, with a desire to know something of the early history of New England. He looked a little surprised at the archaeological turn my mind had taken, but his only comment was, "A valuable old book that." It was a satisfaction to have a superintendent like him, whose gra

work, and we had our frolics among the heaps of cloth, as if we were both children. She had also the same love of hymns that I had as a child, and she would sit by my side and repeat to me one after another that she had le

int of sympathy between my own family and hers. It was, indeed, a bond of neighborly union between a great many households in the young manufacturing city. Anna's manners and language were those of a lady, though she had come from the wilds of Maine, somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Desert, the very name of which seemed in those days to carry one into a wilderness of mountains and waves. We chatted toget

ooked a little worn; but I knew that it was from care for others, strangers as well as her own relatives; and

d of growing old! For how can a life be beautified more than by its beauti

makes spring

y years a

have lived long enough to bear

hout fear of soiling them. This slight difference of apparel and our fewer work-hours seemed to give us a slight advantage over the toilers in the mills opposite, and we occasionally heard ourselves spoken of as "the cloth

eading, for walking, for studying, for writing, for anything that I wanted to do! The days were so lovely and so long! and yet how fa

athematics. My first wish was to learn about English Literature, to go back to its very beginnings. It was not then studied even in the higher schools, and I knew no one who could give me any assistance in it, as a teacher. "Percy's Reliques"

ttraction for me, though of a different kind. But it was easy for me to forget that I was trying to be a literary student, and slip off from Belmont to Venice with Portia to witness the discomfiture of Shylock; although I did pity the miserable Jew, and thought

preference. My friend Angeline and I (another of my cloth-room associates) made the "Paradise Lost" a languag

one of royal s

wealth of Orm

orgeous east w

kings barbaric

ace out-lined through that magnificence, i

erit

bad em

ellent, energetic, and studious young woman. I

bub-tha

pt, none h

matical rules,-not altogeth

g compilations. Dryden and the eighteenth century poets generally did not interest me, though I tried to read them from a sense of dut

led "The Young Man's Book of Poetry." It was given me by one of my sisters when I was about a dozen years old, who ra

into an ecstasy. That red morocco book was my treasure. It traveled with me to the West, and I meant to keep it as long as I lived. But alas! it was borrowed by a little girl out on the Illinois prairies, who never brought it back. I do not know that I have ever quite forgiven her. I have

f Burns were in the air. Through him I best learned to know poetry as song. I think that I heard the "Cotter's Sa

dinburgh" reviews, and they lent them to me. These, and Macaulay's "Essays," were a great help and delight. I had

e in my readings of English poetry, I was enjoying it

son. It was a great experience to read "Locksley Hall" for the first time while it was yet a new poe

uch like what is called a "school-girl friendship," a kind of intimacy sup

y, while I would help her to put her compositions for the "Offering" into proper style. She had not begun to go to school at two years old, repeating the same routine of study every year of her childhood, as I had. When a child, I should have thought it almost as much of a disgrace to spell a word wrong, or make

h a concert. More frequently he gave us the songs of Deutschland that we begged for. He sang the "Erl-King" in his own tongue admirably. We went through Follen's German Grammar and Reader:-what a choice collection of extracts that "Reader" was! We conquered the difficult gutturals, like those in the numeral "acht und achtzig" (the test of our pronouncing abilities) so completely that the professor told us a native really would understand us! At his

about that is the delightful flower-hunting rambles we took together. The Linnaean system, then in use, did not give us a very satisfactory key to the scien

d myself were among his pupils. We came to regard Wayland's "Moral Science" (our text-book) as mos

ntry. The young man did not seem to know exactly what to think of it, and wanted another reader's opinion. Few persons could have welcomed those early writings of Carlyle more enthusiastically than

at up nights to read. It does not seem as if it could be more than forty years since Sarah and I looke

stake great

r own dimly developing inner life. The fascination of "Festus" was that of wonder, doubt, and dissent, with great outbursts of an overmastering faith swee

umanity in our time. "The Glory and Shame of England" was one o

rflowing libraries. One book, a character-picture from history, had a wide popularity in those days. It is a pity that it should be unfamiliar to modern girlhood,-W

f her own heart; and some of us must not be blamed for feeling as if no tales of domestic life half so charming h

the gypsies to whom he seemed to belong. I have never forgotten a ve

y labor, both

unfortunat

tans her own

the garment

my own mind. Why should not our washerwom

lashed by like

ened my hom

making my o

the robes o

read. Its genuine pioneer-flavor was delicious. And, moreover, it was a prophecy to Sarah, Emilie, and myself

was going to meet my opportunity nearly or quite a thousand miles away, on the banks of the Mississippi. And yet, with that strange, delightful consciousness of growth into a comprehension of one's self and of one's life that most young persons must occasionally have expe

econd ten years glow with enthusiastic hope. I had early been saved from a great mistake; for it is the greatest of mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to have it so. What a wo

ur continent, which in the atlases of those days bore the title of "Unexplored Regions." It was to

eam of

ound in the

s no joy like the jo

I

RIMACK TO TH

. People were guessing and experimenting and wondering and prophesying about a great many things,-about almost everything. We were only beginnin

of cranial "bumps." This was profitable business to them for a while, as almost everybody who invested in a "character" received

, who entertained the stronger portion of their audiences by showing the

d of the world was coming in the year 1842; though the date was postponed from year to year, as the prophesy failed of fulfillment. The idea in it

in the spinning-room made a string of

h dear! wha

hundred an

dear! where

hundred and

dear! we sh

hundred an

dear! we sh

hundred and

would come to an end some time, in some way, for every one of us. I said to myself tha

t crimson-reddest at the zenith, and paling as it radiated towards the horizon. The snow was fresh on the ground, and that, too, was of a brilliant red. Cold as it was, windows were thrown up all around us for people to loo

't stand

t grea

were omens of the approaching catastrophe. And it was said that some of them did go so far

too great a marvel to be believed. While it was yet only a rumor that such a thing had been done, somewhere across the

if thus ou

ored on

line of ou

otyped o

to have our daguerreotypes taken just before we started fo

titude-the attitude of the time-was that of children climbing their dooryard fence, to watch an approaching show, and to conjecture what more remarkable spectacle could be following behind. New Eng

of having been reared under Puritanic influences, but the traditionary sternness of these was much modified, even in the childhood of the generation to which I belon

rian bishop, walking through the factory yard in his Oriental robes with more than a child's wonder on his face at the stir and rush of everything! He came from

on railroad,

did not leave work even to gaze at distinguished strangers, so I missed seeing him. But a friend who did s

ugh the best minds. At Lowell it was more patronized by the mill-people than any mere entertainment. We had John Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, John Pierpont, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among our lecturers, with

times it was a traveler from the South, who was interested in some way. I remember one, an editor and author from Georgia, who

p grew up between us two. I wrote some verses for her when we parted, and she sent me one cordial, charmingly-written letter. In a few weeks I answered it; but the response was from another person, a near relative. She

they were old acquaintances. It was a warm, summer evening. I recall the circumstance that a number of us wore white dresses; also that I shrank back into myself, and felt much abashed when some verses of mine were read by the editor,-with others so much better, however, that mine received little attention. I felt relieved; for I was not fond of having

the friend who had accompanied me do my part of the talking for I was too much overawed by the presence of one whose poetry I had so long admired,

-our own free nation! But antislavery sentiments were then regarded by many as traitorous heresies; and those who held them did not expect to win popularity. If the vote of the mill-girls had been

soon changing it for that of teaching and studying art. Those who came as she did were usually disappointed. Instead of an Arcadia, they found a place of matter-of-fact toil, filled with a company of industrious, wide-awake girls, who were faithfully improving their opportunities, while looking throug

e Western Home Missionary preachers. There was something almost pathetic in the readiness with which this was done by young girls who were longing to fit themselves for teachers, but had not the means. Many a girl at Lowell was working to send her brother to college, who had far more talent and character than he; but a man could preach, and it was not "orthodox" to think that a woman could. And in her devotion to

right qualifications for that work; but I had a desire to see the prairies and the

ill-girl who had worked beside her among the looms. They were at an Indian mission-to the Cherokees and Choctaws. I seemed to breathe the air of that far Southwest,

work, and had gone to western Virginia to take charge of a school. She wrote alluring l

ear, for a very brief visit, however,-and with a husband. Another acquaintance was in Wisconsin, teaching a pioneer s

r own little family, of which she had really been the "houseband," the return of my mother to my sisters at Beverly, and my

ed upon my sister. I had really let her do most of my thinking for me. Henceforth I was to trust to my own resources. I was no longer the "little sister" who could ask what to do, and do as she was told. It often brought me a feeling of dismay

he announcement of this decision came an invitation to me to accompany them. I had no difficulty as to my response. It was just what I wanted to do. I was to teach a district school; but what there was beyond that, I could not guess. I liked to feel that it was a

estations I was afraid that I might not. The West was very far off then, a full week's journey. It would be hard getting back. Those I loved might die; I might die myself. These thoughts passed through my mind,

personally. I am afraid that I received it all in a dumb, undemonstrative way, for I could not make it seem real that I was the person meant, or tha

y, and did not know how to look upon it so. I took it gratefully, however, as a token of their appreciation, and twenty dollars was no small help toward my outfit. Friends

expectant, is unlike anything else, unless it be youth itself, the real beginning of t

cross Chesapeake Bay; then there was a railway ride to the Alleghanies, which gave us glimpses of the Potomac and the Blue Ridge, and of the lovely scenery around Harper's Ferry; then followed a stifling night on the mountains, when we were packed like sardines into a stagecoach, without a breath of air, and the passengers were cr

, as Western emigrants were wont to be when there were not so very many of them, and the shores of the river, then only thinly populated, were a constantly shifting panorama of wilderness beauty. I have never since seen a combination of spring color

nks of the Merrimack. But we did not let each other know what the sigh was for, until long after. The breaking-up of our little company when the steamboat landed at Saint Louis was like the ending of a pleasant dream. W

h through the State of Illinois, then known as Looking-Glass Prairie. The nearest cabin to our own was about a mile away, and so small that at that distance it looked like a shingle set up endwise in the grass. Nothing else was in sight, not even a tree, although we could see miles and miles in every direction. There were only the hollow blue heavens above us and the level green

y. And there were times when it filled us with emotions of grandeur. Boundlessness in itsel

or it was a sea of living and growing things. The Spirit of God was moving upon the face of the earth, and breathing everything into life. We were but specks on the great landscape. But Go

ete contrast to the moving crowds and the whir and dust of

th would bear the test of this great, solitary stillness. As the prairies lay open to the sunshine, my heart seemed to lie bare beneath the piercing eye of the All-Seeing. I may say with gratitude that on

emained a year or more, fairly reveling in a return to the familiar, thrifty ways that seem to me to shape a more comfortable style of living than any under the sun. "Vine Lodge" (so

West. It had originated about a dozen years before, in a plan for Western collegiate education, organized by Yale College graduates. It was thought that women as well as men ought to share in the benefits of such a plan, and the res

her. We talked about the matter which had been in my thoughts so long, and she gave me not only a cordial but an urgent invitation to come and enroll myself as a student. There were arrangements for those who could not incur the current expenses, to meet them by doing part of the domestic work, and of these I gladly availed myself. The stately limestone edif

l and modern history, and of the history of modern philosophy, especially, opened new vistas to me. In these our Principal was also our teacher, and her method was to show us the tendencies of thoug

aste for mathematics, and my recollections of my struggles with trigonometry and conic sections are not altogether those of a co

ement; but it was months before I could command my own attention, even when I was interested in the subject I was examining. It seemed as if all the pages of all the bo

cent, but beneath her reserve, as is often the case, was a sealed fountain of sympathy, which one who had the key could easily unlock. Thinking of her nobl

on our difficult path until they had done for us all they could? It seems to me as if one had succeeded another by my side all through the years,-always some one whose influence ma

hing she gave her pupils,-scope, often quite left out of woman's education,-I especially thank her. The true education is to go on forever. But how can there be any hopeful going on without outlook?

r forty girls,-with the opportunity to go on with my studies at the same time. It was a little hard, but I was very glad

I most needed to know. I had learned that the book-knowledge I so much craved was not itself education, was not even culture, but only a help, an adjunct to both. As I studied more earnestly, I cared for fe

ing higher into life, as well as making continually wider explorations; the rounding of the whole human being out of its nebulous elements into form, as p

of young girls in seminaries much like my own Alma Mater. The best result to me of that exper

the story of my youth for the young, though I think many a one among them might tell a story far more interesting than mine. The most be

onging for the dear old State of Massachusetts. I came back in the summer of 1852, and the unwritten remainder of my sketch is chiefly that of a tea

t for which I received remuneration-five dollars. Several poems written for the manuscript school journal at Monticello Seminary are in the "Household" collection of my verses, among them those entitled "Eureka," "Hand

f stealing it, by the editor of the magazine to which I had sent it with a request for the usual remuneration, if accepted. Accidentally or otherwise, this editor lost my note and signature, and then denounced me by name in a n

er small; and every one who has tried it knows how uncertain a support one's pen is, unless it has become very famous indeed. My life as a teacher, however, I regard as part of my best preparation for whatever I have since written. I do not know but I should recommend

and of finding expression easier. It is something to have won the privilege of going on. Sympathy and recognition are worth a great deal; the power to t

, "The Loyal Woman's No," written early in the War of the Rebellion, were each attributed to a different person among our prominent poets, the "Atlantic" at that time not giving authors' signatures. Of course I knew the unlikeness; nevertheless, those who made the mistake paid me an u

t of our best possibilities from within outward; and it cannot be carried on as it should be except in a school, just such a school as we all find ourselves in-this world of human beings by whom we are surrounded. The beauty of belonging to this school is that we cannot learn any

accept their training. The real satisfaction of living is, and must forever be, the education of all for each, and of each for all. S

s. In the words of one of our honored elder writers, given in reply to a youthful as