Part 16 (1/2)

The little streaush of its music the child lifted a flower in her dih, threw it upon the water In her glee she forgot that her treasures were growing less, and with the swifttide, until every bud and blosso to her feet, and bursting into tears, called aloud to the streaardless of her sorrow; and as it bore the bloo echo, along its reedyof the breeze and the fitful bursts of childish grief, was heard the fruitless cry, ”Bring backthe precious htless child an emblem of thyself!

Each rance be diffused in blessings around thee, and ascend as sweet incense to the beneficent Giver!

Else, when thou hast carelessly flung the on the saters of Time, thou wilt cry, in tonesback my flowers!” And thy only ansill be an echo fro back my flowers!”

In the above, a reminiscence of my German studies comes back to me I was an admirer of Jean Paul, and one of ht of an Unhappy Man,” with its yet haunting gli paradise beyond theh it may have been from Herder or Krummacher, whom I also enjoyed and attempted to translate

I have a manuscript-book still, filled with these youthful efforts I even undertook to put Gerreatest--Goethe and Schiller These studies were pursued in the pleasant days of cloth-rooht hours in a day

I suppose I should have tried to write,--perhaps I could not very well have helped atte it,--under any circumstances My early efforts would not, probably, have found their way into print, however, but for the coincident publication of the two azines, just as I enteredany of us offered theh I never was let in to editorial secrets The editors of both reatly honored by their approval of ” editors was a Unitarian clergyhter, and had received an excellent education The other was a re woman, rote novels that were published by the Harpers of New York while she was eether for a time, where the members of the ”I” writers, were hospitably received

The ”Operatives' Magazine” and the ”Lowell Offering” were united in the year 1842, under the title of the ”Lowell Offering and Magazine”

(And--to correct a mistake which has crept into print--I will say that I never attained the honor of being editor of either of these est contributors The ”Lowell Offering” closed its existence when I was a littleI have ever been engaged in was upon ”Our Young Folks” About twenty years ago I was editor-in-charge of that azine for a year or more, and I had previously been its assistant-editor fro These explanatory ite to azines)

We did not receive much criticism; perhaps it would have been better for us if we had But then we did lot set ourselves up to be literary; though we enjoyed the freedo 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 ofsonition for ht be such a thing as public opinion worth caring for, in addition to doing one's best for its own sake

Fame, indeed, never had much attraction for nition and the syood and true things, but not such as would subject ine a girl feeling any pleasure in placing herself ”before the public” The privilege of seclusion ly sacrifice

And, indeed, rote was not remarkable,--perhaps no irls It would hardly be worth while to refer to it particularly, had not the Lowell girls and theirphenorowth of those girls' previous life

For e? Girls orking in a factory for the time, to be sure; but none of us had the least idea of continuing at that kind of work perraph, 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, anda better education Very feere a the condition of the wo, each with her own individual purpose For twenty years or so, Lowell ht have been looked upon as a rather select industrial school for young people The girls there were just such girls as are knocking at the doors of young woes to-day They had come to ith their hands, but they could not hinder the working of theirat every possible outlet

Many of the themselves at schools like Bradford Acade in the mills the other half Mount Holyoke Sehts ofdazzled by it myself for a while,--and Mary Lyon's nairls Meanwhile they were i for their future in every possible way, by purchasing and reading standard books, by attending lectures, and evening classes of their own getting up, and byand conversation

That they should write was no e than that they should study, or read, or think And yet there were those to whoirl could, in the pauses of her work, put together words with her pen that it would do to print; and after a while the assertion was circulated, through soazine was not written by ourselves at all, but by ”Lowell lawyers”

This seeestion 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 (ainstI wrote I was then book-keeper in the cloth-roonature we chose, varying it as we pleased After I began to read and love Wordsworth, my favorite noazine, the editor more frequentlyreat distinction, however, since there were a hundred naossip items about myself; but the real interest of every separate life-story is involved in the larger life-history which is going on around it We do not know ourselves without our cos I cannot narrate my workmates'

separate experiences, but I know that because of having lived a felt the beauty and power of their lives, I am different from what I should otherwise have been, and it is my own fault if I a those years of irlhood at Lowell, I often think that I knew then what real society is better perhaps than ever since For in that large gathering together of young womanhood there were many choice natures---soland, and there were no false social standards to hold them apart It is the best society when people round of their deepest syhest aspirations, without conventionality or cliques or affectation; and it was in that way that these young girls met and became acquainted with each other, almost of necessity

There were all varieties of worees of refinement and cultivation, and, of course, reeable It was not always the most cultivated, however, ere the irls, as fresh and sioodness of heart was better to have than bookishness; girls who loved everybody, and were loved by everybody Those are the girls that I remember best, and their memory is sweet as a breeze fros of unknown girlish forms that used to pass and repass ates, and also the few that I kneell, those hoht, read, wrote, studied, and worshi+ped,to them all, wherever in God's beautiful, busy universe they lad I have lived in the world with you!”

XI

READING AND STUDYING

My return toacquaintance with a new kind of -roo about Now -rooirls were in the rooe, clureat deal of space Mine seerown spoilt child It had to be watched in a dozen directions everyitself and me into trouble I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great, groaning joints and whizzing fan, are of ainst me I contracted an unconquerable dislike to it; indeed, I had never liked, and never could learn to like, any kind of machinery And this , but I had to acknowledge that there were sos I could not do, and I retired fros I had enjoyed in this room were that my sister ith me, and that our s looked toward the west When the as running sether and quoted to each other all the sunset-poetry we could reree