TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

The cover image has been created from the Title Page of the original and is entered into the public domain.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Archaic spelling that may have been used at the time of publication has been preserved.

Miss Larcom’s Books.

POETICAL WORKS. Household Edition. With Portrait, 12mo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00.

POEMS. 16mo, $1.25.

AN IDYL OF WORK. 16mo, $1.25.

WILD ROSES OF CAPE ANN, AND OTHER POEMS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.

CHILDHOOD SONGS. Illustrated, 12mo, $1.00.

EASTER GLEAMS. Poems. 16mo, parchment paper, 75 cents.

AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 16mo, $1.00.

AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE, and other Songs of Faith. 16mo, $1.00.

THE UNSEEN FRIEND. 16mo, $1.00.

A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD, outlined from Memory. In Riverside Library for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents.

Holiday Edition. 16mo, $1.25.

BREATHINGS OF THE BETTER LIFE. Edited by Lucy Larcom. 18mo, $1.25.

ROADSIDE POEMS FOR SUMMER TRAVELLERS. Selected by Lucy Larcom. 18mo, $1.00.

HILLSIDE AND SEASIDE IN POETRY. Selected by Lucy Larcom. 18mo, $1.00.

BECKONINGS FOR EVERY DAY. A Collection of Quotations for each day in the year. Compiled by Lucy Larcom. 16mo, $1.00.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
Boston and New York.

LUCY LARCOM
LIFE, LETTERS, AND DIARY

BY
DANIEL DULANY ADDISON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1895

Copyright, 1894,
By DANIEL DULANY ADDISON.
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

PREFACE

It was the purpose of Miss Larcom to write a sequel to her hook, “A New England Girlhood,” in which she intended to give some account of her life in the log-cabins on the Western prairies as a pioneer and schoolmistress, and her experiences as a teacher in Wheaton Seminary, and as an editor and literary woman. She also wished to trace the growth of her religious ideas by showing the process through which she was led to undergo changes that finally made her accept a less rigorous theology than the one in which she had been reared. Her fascinating style, with its wealth of reminiscence and interesting detail, would have characterized her later book, as it did the former, but she died before beginning it, and American literature has lost a valuable record of a woman’s life. A keen observer, her contact with famous men and women gave her an opportunity for a large knowledge of persons and events; deeply interested in the questions of the day, her comments would have been just and luminous; and her sensitiveness to impressions was such that the varied influences upon her life would have been most attractively presented. She was deeply spiritual, and the account of her religious experiences would have supplemented the moral power of her published works; but she was not permitted to give us, in autobiographical form, the rich fruits of a well-spent life.

The only preparation she had made for this book was a few notes suggesting a title and headings of the chapters. She proposed naming it, “Hitherward: A Life-Path Retraced.” The suggestions for chapters indicate the subjects that she intended to treat,—“The Charm of Elsewhere;” “Over the Prairies;” “Log-Cabin Experiences;” “A Pioneer Schoolmistress;” “Teacher and Student;” “Back to the Bay State;” “Undercurrents;” “Beneath Norton Elms;” “During the War;” “With ‘Our Young Folks;’” “Successful Failures;” and “Going On.”

After her death, her papers came into my possession. An examination showed that there was material enough in her letters and diary to preserve still some record of her later life, and possibly to continue the narrative which she had given in “A New England Girlhood.”

It will be noticed that some years are treated more at length than others, the reason for this being that more data have been accessible for those periods; and also, as is the case with most lives, there were epochs of intenser emotion, more lasting experiences, and deeper friendships, the account of which is of greater value to the general reader than the more commonplace incidents of her career.

Her life was one of thought, not of action. In their outward movement, her days flowed on very smoothly. She had no remarkable adventures; but she had a constant succession of mental vicissitudes, which are often more dramatic and real than the outward events of even a varied life. In her loves and sympathies, in her philosophy of living and her creed, in her literary labors,—her poetry and her prose,—in her studies of man, nature, and God, she revealed a mind continually venturing into the known and unknown, and bringing back trophies of struggles and victories, of doubts and beliefs, of despair and faith. My aim has been to present the character of a New England woman, as it was thus moulded by the intellectual and moral forces of American living for the last fifty years; and to show how she absorbed the best from all sides, and responded to the highest influences.

There are passages in her diaries that remind one of Pascal’s “Thoughts,” for their frankness and spiritual depth; there are others that recall Amiel’s Journal, with its record of emotions and longings after light. If such a singularly transparent and pure life had preserved for us its inner history, it would be more valuable than any record of mere outward events. Some such inner history I have attempted to give, by making selections from her journal and letters; and if, at times, I have allowed her inmost thoughts and motives to be disclosed, it has been with the feeling that such frankness would be helpful in portraying a soul stirred with love for the beautiful, a heart loving humanity, a spirit with the passion for God in it. She once said, “I am willing to make any part of my life public, if it will help others.”

One soon sees that the religious element predominated in her character. From her earliest years, these questions of the soul’s relation to man, to nature, and to God were uppermost in her mind. She was impelled to master them; and as Jacob wrestled with the angel, she could not let Life go until she had received from it a blessing. She found her rest and comfort in a Christianity which had its centre in no theory or dogma, no ecclesiastical system, but in the person of Jesus. For Him she had the most loyal love. He satisfied her soul; He interpreted life for her; He gave her the inspiration for her work; and with this belief, she went forth to live and to die, having the hope and confidence of a larger life beyond.

She was a prophetess to her generation, singing the songs of a newer faith, and breathing forth in hymns and lyrics, and even homely ballads, her belief in God and immortality. Her two books, “As It Is in Heaven” and “The Unseen Friend,” written in the last years of her life, when she had felt the presence of an invisible Power, and had caught glimpses of the spiritual world through the intimations of happiness given her in this life, are messages to human souls, that come with authority, and mark her as a strong spiritual force in our American Christianity. She will be known, I feel, not only as a woman with the most delicate perceptions of the sweetness of truth, and an appreciation of its poetry, but as one who could grasp the eternal facts out of the infinite, and clothe them with such beauty of imagery, and softness of music, that other lives could receive from her a blessing.

I must make public acknowledgment to those who have willingly rendered me assistance,—to Miss Lucy Larcom Spaulding (now Mrs. Clark), who gave me the privilege of using the rich material her aunt had left in her guardianship; to Mrs. James Guild, who furnished me with facts of great interest; to Mrs. I. W. Baker, the sister of Miss Larcom, whose advice has proved most valuable; to Miss Susan Hayes Ward, who put at my disposal the material used in the Memorial Number of “The Rushlight,” the magazine of Wheaton Seminary; to Mr. S. T. Pickard, for permitting me to use some of Mr. Whittier’s letters; to the Rev. Arthur Brooks, D. D., who consented to my using the letters of his brother, Bishop Brooks; to Prof. George E. Woodberry, whose sympathy and suggestions have been of the greatest service to me; and to all who have loaned the letters that so clearly illustrate the richness of Miss Larcom’s personality.

DANIEL DULANY ADDISON.

Beverly, Mass., June 19, 1894.

CONTENTS.

LUCY LARCOM.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY DAYS.
1824-1846.

Lucy Larcom was born on March 5, 1824, in the old seaside town of Beverly, Massachusetts. She was next to the youngest in a family of seven sisters and two brothers. Her father, Benjamin Larcom, a retired shipmaster who became a shopkeeper selling West India goods, was a man of strong natural ability, and her mother, Lois Barrett, “with bright blue eyes and soft dark curling hair, which she kept pinned up under her white lace cap,” was known for her sweetness. The Larcoms had lived for generations on the borders of the sea. Mordecai Larcom, born 1629, appeared in Ipswich in 1655, and soon after moved to Beverly, where he obtained a grant of land. His son, Cornelius Larcom, born 1658, purchased a place on the coast, in what is known as Beverly Farms. David Larcom was born 1701, and his son, Jonathan, born 1742, was the grandfather of Miss Larcom. The qualities of energy and self-reliance that come from the cultivation of Essex County soil and the winning of a livelihood as trader and sailor, were apparent in the branch of the family that lived in Wallace Lane,—one of the by-streets of the quaint village, that led in one direction through the fields to Bass River, “running with its tidal water from inland hills,” and in the other across the main street to the harbor, with its fishing schooners and glimpses of the sea.

Her sensitive nature quickly responded to the free surroundings of her childhood. The open fields with the wild flowers and granite ledges covered with vines, and the sandy beaches of the harbor, and the village streets with their quiet picturesque life, formed her playground. The little daily events happening around her were interesting: the stage-coach rattling down Cabot Street; the arrival of a ship returning from a distant voyage; the stately equipage driven from the doorway of Colonel Thorndike’s house; the Sunday services in the meeting-house; the companionship of other children, and the charm of her simple home life. These experiences are graphically recorded in “A New England Girlhood,” where she testifies to her love for her native town. “There is something in the place where we were born that holds us always by the heart-strings. A town that has a great deal of country in it, one that is rich in beautiful scenery and ancestral associations, is almost like a living being, with a body and a soul. We speak of such a town as of a mother, and think of ourselves as her sons and daughters. So we felt about our dear native town of Beverly.”

In her poems there are numerous references to the town:—

“Steady we’ll scud by the Cape Ann shore,

Then back to the Beverly Bells once more.

The Beverly Bells

Ring to the tide as it ebbs and swells.”

In another place she says:—

“The gleam of

Thacher’s Isle, twin-beaconed, winking back

To twinkling sister-eyes of Baker’s Isle.”

Her childhood was a period which she always looked back upon with fondness, for the deep impressions made upon her mind never were obliterated. The continued possession of these happy remembrances as she incorporated them into her womanhood, is shown by the way she entered into the lives of other children, whether in compiling a book of poems, like “Child Life,” known wherever there are nurseries, or in writing her own book, “Childhood Songs,” or in some of her many sketches in “Our Young Folks,” “St. Nicholas,” or the “Youth’s Companion.” She knew by an unerring instinct what children were thinking about, and how to interest them. She always took delight in the little rivulets in the fields, or the brown thrush singing from the tree, or the pussy-clover running wild, and eagerly watched for the red-letter days of children, the anniversaries and birthdays. She had happy memories of play in the old roomy barn, and of the improvised swing hung from the rafters. She recalled the fairy-tales and wonderful stories to which she listened with wide open eyes; the reflection of her face in the burnished brass of the tongs; and her child’s night-thoughts when she began to feel that there were mysteries around her, and to remember that the stars were shining when she was tucked in bed.

Lucy Larcom’s book-learning began very early. It seems almost incredible that she should have been able to read at two and a half years of age, but such is the general testimony of her family. She used to sit by the side of her old Aunt Stanley, and thread needles for her, listening to the songs and stories that the old lady told; and Aunt Hannah, in the school held in her kitchen, where she often let the children taste the good things that were cooking, managed not only to keep her out of mischief, by her “pudding-stick” ferule, or by rapping her on the head with a thimble, but taught her the “a, b, abs,” and parts of the Psalms and Epistles.

The strongest influence in her development was that of her sister Emeline, who inspired her with love for knowledge, and instilled in her the highest ideals of girlhood. This sister supplied her, as she grew older, with books, and guided her reading. Referring to this, she once said:—

“I wish to give due credit to my earliest educators,—those time-stained, thumb-worn books, that made me aware of living in a world of natural grandeur, of lofty visions, of heroic achievements, of human faithfulness, and sacrifice. I always feel like entering a protest when I hear people say that there was very little for children to read fifty years ago. There was very little of the cake and confectionery style of literature, which is so abundant now; but we had the genuine thing,—solid food, in small quantities, to suit our capacity,—and I think we were better off for not having too much of the lighter sort. What we had ‘stayed by.’”

The books that she read were “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Paul and Virginia,” “Gulliver’s Travels,” Sir Walter Scott’s novels; and in poetry, Spenser, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. She knew these volumes almost by heart.

Lucy’s first love for poetry was fostered by the hymns she used to read in church, during sermon time, when the minister from his lofty pulpit entered upon a series of “finallys,” which did not seem to be meant for her. Her fondness for hymns was so great that at one time she learned a hundred. The rhythm of the musical accompaniment and the flow of the words taught her the measured feet of verse before she ever heard of an iambus or a choriambus. Finding that her own thoughts naturally expressed themselves in rhyme, she used frequently to write little verses, and stuff them down the crack in the floor of the attic. The first poem that she read to the family was long remembered by them, as, wriggling with embarrassment, she sat on a stool. Referring to her poetry at this time, she says, “I wrote little verses, to be sure, but that was nothing; they just grew. They were the same as breathing or singing. I could not help writing them. They seemed to fly into my mind like birds going with a carol through the air.”

There is an incident worth repeating, that illustrates her sweetness and thoughtfulness of others. When her father died, she tried to comfort her mother: “I felt like preaching to her, but I was too small a child to do that; so I did the next best thing I could think of,—I sang hymns, as if singing to myself, while I meant them for her.”

These happy days in the country village came to an end in the year 1835, when necessity forced Mrs. Larcom, after the death of her husband, to seek a home in the manufacturing community of Lowell, where there were more opportunities for the various members of her family to assist in the general maintenance of the home.

In Lowell, there were corporation boarding-houses for the operatives, requiring respectable matrons as housekeepers, and positions in the mills offered a means of livelihood to young girls. Attracted by these inducements, many New England families left their homes, in the mountains of New Hampshire and along the seacoast, and went to Lowell. The class of the employees in the mills was consequently different from the ordinary factory hand of to-day. Girls of education and refinement, who had no idea of remaining in a mill all their lives, worked in them for some years with the object, often, of helping to send a brother to college or making money enough to continue their education, or to aid dear ones who had been left suddenly without support:—

“Not always to be here among the looms,—

Scarcely a girl she knew expected that;

Means to one end, their labor was,—to put

Gold nest-eggs in the bank, or to redeem

A mortgaged homestead, or to pay the way

Through classic years at some academy;

More commonly to lay a dowry by

For future housekeeping.”[1]

The intention of Mr. Francis Cabot Lowell and Mr. Nathan Appleton, when they conceived the idea of establishing the mills, was to provide conditions of living for operatives, as different as possible from the Old World ideals of factory labor. They wisely decided to regard the mental and religious education of the girls as of first importance, and those who followed these plans aimed to secure young women of intelligence from the surrounding towns, and stimulate them to seek improvement in their leisure hours.

Besides the free Grammar School there were innumerable night schools; and most of the churches provided, by means of “Social Circles,” opportunities for improvement. So in Lowell there was a wide-awake set of girls working for their daily bread, with a true idea of the dignity of labor, and with the determination to make the most of themselves. They reasoned thus, as Miss Larcom expressed it: “That the manufacture of cloth should, as a branch of feminine industry, ever have suffered a shadow of discredit, will doubtless appear to future generations a most ridiculous barbarism. To prepare the clothing of the world seems to have been regarded as womanly work in all ages. The spindle and the distaff, the picturesque accompaniments of many an ancient legend—of Penelope, of Lucretia, of the Fatal Sisters themselves—have, to be sure, changed somewhat in their modern adaptation to the machinery which robes the human millions; but they are, in effect, the same instruments, used to supply the same need, at whatever period of the world’s history.”

A few facts will show the character of these girls. One of the ministers was asked how many teachers he thought he could furnish from among the working-girls. He replied, “About five hundred.” A lecturer in the Lowell Lyceum stated that four fifths of his audience were factory girls, that when he entered the hall most of the girls were reading from books, and when he began his lecture every one seemed to be taking notes. Charles Dickens, after his visit to Lowell in 1842, wrote: “I solemnly declare that from all the crowd I saw in the different factories, I cannot recall one face that gave me a painful impression; not one young girl whom, assuming it to be a matter of necessity that she should gain her daily bread by the labor of her hands, I would have removed if I had the power.”

Mrs. Larcom kept a boarding-house for the operatives, and Lucy was thrown in close association with these strong young women. She had access to the little accumulation of books that one of them had made,—Maria Edgeworth’s “Helen,” Thomas à Kempis, Bunyan’s “Holy War,” Locke “On the Understanding,” and “Paradise Lost.” This formed good reading for a girl of ten.

Lucy’s sister Emeline started in the boarding-house two or three little fortnightly papers, to which the girls contributed. Each ran a troubled existence of a few months, and then gave place to its successor, bearing a new name. “The Casket,” for a time, held their jewels of thought; then “The Bouquet” gathered their full-blown ideas into a more pretentious collection. The most permanent of these literary productions was one that started with the intention of being very profound,—it was called “The Diving Bell.” The significance of the name was carefully set forth in the first number:—

“Our Diving Bell shall deep descend,

And bring from the immortal mind

Thoughts that to improve us tend,

Of each variety and kind.”

Lucy soon became a poetical contributor; and when the paper was read, and the guessing as to the author of each piece began—for they were anonymous—the other girls were soon able to tell her work by its music and thought. Among the yellow and worm-eaten pages of the once popular “Diving Bell,” we find the following specimen of her earliest poetry:—

“I sit at my window and gaze

At the scenery lovely around,

On the water, the grass, and the trees,

And I hear the brook’s murmuring sound.

“The bird warbles forth his soft lays,

And I smell the sweet fragrance of flowers,

I hear the low hum of the bees,

As they busily pass the long hours.

“These pleasures were given to man

To bring him more near to his God,

Then let me praise God all I can,

Until I am laid ’neath the sod.”

From the interest excited by these little papers, the desire of the girls became strong for more dignified literary expression; and by the advice and assistance of the Rev. Abel C. Thomas, of the Universalist Church, the “Lowell Offering” was started in October, 1840, and the “Operative’s Magazine” originated in the Literary Society of the First Congregational Church. These two magazines were united, in 1842, in the “Lowell Offering.” The editors of the “Offering,” Miss Hariett Farley and Miss Hariot Curtiss, factory girls, were women of superior culture and versatility, and made the magazine a unique experiment in our literature. In its pages were clever sketches of home life, humorous and pathetic tales, charming fairy stories, and poems. Its contributors, like the editors, were mill-girls. It was successful for five years, at one time having a subscription list as high as four thousand, which the girls tried to increase by traveling for it, as agents. This periodical attracted wide attention by reason of its unusual origin. Selections were made from it, and published in London, in 1849, called, “Mind Among the Spindles;” and a gentleman attending the literary lectures, in Paris, of Philarète Chasles, was surprised to hear one in which the significance and merit of the “Lowell Offering” was the sole theme. Our young author contributed to the “Offering,” over the signatures “Rotha,” or “L. L.,” a number of poems and short prose articles, proving herself to be of sufficient ability to stand as a typical Lowell factory girl.

The principle of the interest of manufacturers in the lives of their operatives was illustrated in Lowell, though it was not carried out always as intelligently as it should have been. Children were allowed to work too young. Lucy began to change the bobbins on the spinning frames at eleven years of age, and the hours of work were sometimes from five in the morning to seven at night. But the day passed pleasantly for her, the bobbins having to be changed only every three quarters of an hour; and the interval between these periods of work was occupied by conversation with the girls in the same room, or by sitting in the window overlooking the river. On the sides of one of these windows she had pasted newspaper clippings, containing favorite poems, which she committed to memory when she sat in this “poet’s corner.”

During these years of mill-work she formed some of the ruling ideas of her life, those that we can see influencing her later thoughts, in her poetry and prose, and, best of all, her living. Her sympathy for honest industry, without any regard for its fictitious position in so-called “society,” was developed by her acquaintance with those earnest girls who were struggling for their own support and education. Her capacity for friendship was continually tested; she opened her nature to the influence of the other lives around her.

The questions in relation to human life and its meaning became part of her deepest interests. In private conversations with her companions, in the meetings at the churches, and in her own meditations, these thoughts struggled for a hearing:—

“Oh, what questionings

Of fate, and freedom, and how evil came,

And what death is, and what the life to come,—

Passed to and fro among these girls!”[2]

The answers she gave were the truest. Her thought instinctively turned to the Invisible Power of the Universe, not solely as an explanation of things as they exist, or as a philosophical postulate, but as a Spirit whose presence could be felt in nature, in persons, and in her own heart. In other words, a love for God as a Being of Love began to take possession of her; it seized upon her at times like the rushing inspiration of the prophets; her trust was what is spoken of in theology as an experimental knowledge. Her early training by Puritan methods in the thought of a Sovereign Lord, deeply affected her, yet she seems to have rediscovered God for herself, in the beauty that her poet’s eye revealed to her—beauties of river and sea and sky, of flowers rejoicing in their color and perfume, and of human sympathies. Welling up in her own soul, she felt the waters troubled by the angel’s touch, and was confident of God.

With this faith as a guide, the answers to other questions became plain. Life itself was a gift which must be used in His service; no evil thought or purpose should be allowed to enter and interfere with the soul’s growth; duties were the natural outlets of the soul; through them the soul found its happiness. When she thought of death, there was only one logical way of looking at it: as a transition into a fuller life, where the immortal spirits of men could draw nearer to each other and to God. She seems never, from the very first, to have had any doubts as to what the end of life meant. There was always the portal ready to open into the richer Kingdom of Heaven.

The churches in Lowell stimulated her religious thought. At thirteen years of age, she stood up before her beloved minister, Dr. Amos Blanchard, and professed her belief in the Christian religion, and for many years found refreshment in the Sunday services. But as she grew older, she found many of the doctrines of Calvinistic Orthodoxy difficult for her to accept, and she regretted the step she had taken. The worship was not always helpful to her, especially the long prayer:—

“That long prayer

Was like a toilsome journey round the world,

By Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon,

To come at our own door-stone, where He stood

Waiting to speak to us, the Father dear,

Who is not far from any one of us.”[3]

She admired the picturesque Episcopal church of St. Ann’s, with its vine-wreathed stone walls, “an oasis amid the city’s dust.” The Church for which this venerable edifice stood was to be her final religious home, and in its stately services and sacred rites she was to find the spiritual nourishment of her later years.

She took an interest in the movements of politics, especially the question of slavery; she was an Abolitionist with the strongest feelings, from the first. She had some scruples about working on the cotton which was produced by slave labor:—

“When I have thought what soil the cotton plant

We weave is rooted in, what waters it—

The blood of souls in bondage—I have felt

That I was sinning against light, to stay

And turn the accursèd fibre into cloth

For human wearing. I have hailed one name—

You know it—‘Garrison’—as a soul might hail

His soul’s deliverer.”[4]

Whenever a petition for the abolition of slavery was circulated, to be sent to Congress, it was always sure to have the name of Lucy Larcom upon it. The poetry of Mr. Whittier had aroused her spirit, and though she does not seem to have written any of her stirring anti-slavery verses until years later, she was nursing the spark that during the Civil War blew into a flame.

It was in 1843, while in Lowell, that she first met Mr. Whittier, who was editing the “Middlesex Standard.” Being present at one of the meetings of the “Improvement Circle,” he heard her read one of her poems, “Sabbath Bells:”—

“List! a faint, a far-off chime!

’Tis the knell of holy time,

Chiming from the city’s spires,

From the hamlet’s altar fires,

Waking woods and lonely dells,

Pleasant are the Sabbath bells.”

This introduction began one of her most beautiful friendships; it lasted for half a century. She learned to know and love the poet’s sweet, noble sister, Elizabeth, and Lucy was treated by her like a sister. There was something in Miss Larcom’s nature not unlike Mr. Whittier’s,—the same love for the unobserved beauties of country life, the same energy and fire, the same respect for the honest and sturdy elements in New England life, the same affection for the sea and mountains, and a similar deep religious sense of the nearness of God.

Having worked five years in the spinning-room, she was transferred at her own request to the position of book-keeper, in the cloth-room of the Lawrence Mills. Here, having more time to herself, she devoted to study the minutes not required by her work, reading extracts from the best books, and writing many of the poems that appeared in the “Offering.”

It was her habit to carry a sort of prose sketch-book, not unlike an artist’s, in which she would jot down in words the exact impression made upon her by a scene or a natural object, using both as models from which to draw pictures in words. In this way she would describe, for instance, an autumn leaf, accurately giving its shape, color, number of ribs and veins, ending with a reflection on the decay of beauty. In turning over the leaves of this sketch-book, one finds descriptions of the gnarled tree with its bare branches thrusting themselves forth in spiteful crookedness; the butterfly lying helpless in the dust with its green robes sprinkled with ashes; the wind in the pines singing a melancholy tune in the summer sunlight; and other subjects of equal beauty. As an illustration of these prose-poems, the suggestion for which she derived from Jean Paul Richter, the following may be of interest: it is called, “Flowers beneath Dead Leaves:”—

“Two friends were walking together beside a picturesque mill-stream. While they walked they talked of mortal life, its meaning and its end; and, as is almost inevitable with such themes, the current of their thoughts gradually lost its cheerful flow.

“‘This is a miserable world,’ said one. ‘The black shroud of sorrow overhangs everything here.’

“‘Not so,’ replied the other. ‘Sorrow is not a shroud; it is only the covering Hope wraps about her when she sleeps.’

“Just then they entered an oak grove. It was early spring, and the trees were bare; but the last year’s leaves lay thick as snowdrifts upon the ground.

“‘The liverwort grows here, I think,—one of our earliest flowers,’ said the last speaker. ‘There, push away the leaves, and you will see it. How beautiful, with its delicate shades of pink, and purple and green, lying against the bare roots of the oak tree! But look deeper, or you will not find the flowers: they are under the dead leaves.’

“‘Now I have learned a lesson which I shall not forget,’ said her friend. ‘This seems to me to be a bad world; and there is no denying that there are bad things in it. To a sweeping glance it will sometimes seem barren and desolate; but not one buried germ of life and beauty is lost to the All-Seeing Eye. Having the weakness of human vision, I must believe where I cannot see. Henceforth, when I am tempted to despair on account of evil, I will say to myself, Look deeper; look under the dead leaves, and you will find flowers.’”

Lucy Larcom almost imperceptibly slipped into womanhood during these Lowell years. From being an eager and precocious child, she became an intelligent and thoughtful woman. The one characteristic which seemed most fully defined was her tendency to express her thoughts in verse and prose. As is the case with young authors, her early verses were artificial, the sentiments were often borrowed, and the emotions were not always genuine. It is not natural to find a healthy young girl writing on such themes as “Earthly joys are fleeting,” “Trust not the world, ’twill cheat thee.” “The murderer’s request” was—

“Bury me not where the breezes are sighing

O’er those whom I loved in my innocent days.”

But when she wrote out of her own experience, and recorded impressions she had felt, there was a touch of reality in her work that gave some prophecy of her future excellence. She could write understandingly about the boisterous March winds, or “school days,”—

“When I read old Peter Parley,

Like a bookworm, through and through,

Vainly shunned I Lindley Murray,

And dull Colburn’s ‘Two and Two.’”

One cannot find any evidence that she made a study of verse-making, not even possessing “Walker’s Rhyming Dictionary.” Her powers were cultivated mainly by reading the poetry of others and unconsciously catching their spirit and metre. Her ear for music helped her more than her knowledge of tetrameters or hexameters.

The most important results of these years were the development of her self-reliance and sweetness, the stirring up of her ambitions to win an education, and the dawnings of her spiritual life. She was laying up stores of impressions and memories, also, that were to be permanently preserved in her more finished poems of later years. The imagery of her maturer verse recalls her early days, when in the freedom of childhood she roamed the fields and the woods, and lived on the banks of the Merrimac. We see her youth again through her reminiscences of the barberry cluster sweetened by the frost; the evening primrose; roses wet with briny spray; the woodbine clambering up the cliff; heaps of clover hay; breezes laden with some rare wood scent; the varied intonations of the wind; hieroglyphic lichens on the rocks; the mower whistling from the land; the white feet of the children pattering on the sand; the one aged tree on the mountain-top, wrestling with the storm wind; the candles lighted at sunset in the gambrel-roofed houses; the lightning glaring in the face of the drowning sailor; the tragedy of unconscious widowhood; the mill-wheel, the hidden power of the mill, with its great dripping spokes; and the mystery of meeting and blending horizons.

In the spring of 1846 the scene of Lucy Larcom’s life was changed, when her sister Emeline married, and went to seek a home in the West, for she shared with the new family their pioneer life in Illinois. A few days before they started on their journey, she wrote some lines of farewell in her scribbling-book, which show that she was beginning to use real experiences for the subject of her verses.

“Farewell to thee, New England!

Thou mother, whose kind arm

Hath e’er been circled round me,

The stern and yet the warm.

Farewell! thou little village,

My birthplace and my home,

Along whose rocky border

The morning surges come.

Thy name shall memory echo,

As exiled shell its wave.

Art thou my home no longer?

Still keep for me a grave.”

CHAPTER II.

IN ILLINOIS.
1846-1852.

A journey from Massachusetts to Illinois, in 1846, was long, and filled with inconveniences. A little time-worn diary, written in pencil, kept by Lucy Larcom on the journey, is interesting for itself, and preserves the record of the difficulties that beset early travelers to the West.

Monday, April 13, 1846. Returned to Boston in the morning, and now, in the afternoon, we have really started. Passing through Massachusetts and Connecticut, we encountered a snowstorm, something quite unexpected at this season! Came on board the steamboat “Worcester,” in darkness. And here we are, three of us, squeezed into the queerest little cubby-hole of a state-room that could be thought of. We all sat down on the floor and laughed till we cried, to see ourselves in such close companionship! We had a dispute, just for the fun of it, as to who should occupy the highest shelf. It was out of the question to put E. and the baby up there, and for myself, I painted the catastrophe which would occur, should I come down with my full weight upon the rest, in such glowing colors, that they were willing to consign me to the second shelf; and here I lie while the rest are asleep (if they can sleep on their first steamboat trip) trying to write of my wonderful experiences as a traveler.

Tuesday. Alas! Must I write it? The boast of our house must cease. When it has been said with so much pride that a Larcom was never seasick!—I have proved the contrary. I only thought to eat a bit of “’lasses gingerbread,” on occasion of my departure from Yankee Land, and while I lay to-day in my berth, I was inwardly admonished that the angry Neptune was not pleased with my feasting, and I was obliged to yield up the precious morsel as a libation to him. Small sleep had I this night.

In the morning, S. and I rose long before daylight, and went out to peep at the sea by moonlight. It was strange and new to see the path of the great creature in the waters. After daylight most of the passengers came on deck. It was delightful sailing into New York by sunrise.

Passing through Hellgate, I was reminded of the worthy Dutch who went this way long ago, as Dick Knickerbocker records. Passed Blackwell’s Island,—saw prisoners at work,—looked like pigs. Also passed the fort on Frog’s Neck; small beauty in the great smoky city for me; an hour’s stay and a breakfast at the hotel were enough. Took the cars across New Jersey. Don’t like the appearance of this State at all. Reached Philadelphia about noon. Went immediately aboard the “Ohio”—a beautiful boat, and a lovely afternoon it was when we sailed down the Delaware. The city looked so pleasant with the sun shining on it, and the green waving trees about it, while the waves looked so smooth in their white fringes, that I could have jumped overboard for joy! Never shall I forget that afternoon. At evening, took the cars to—somewhere, on the Chesapeake Bay, and thence to Baltimore on another boat. Saw hedges, for the first time, in Maryland. Had an unpleasant sail in an unpleasant boat. Sister and S. wretchedly seasick; so was nearly everybody, but I redeemed my fame, dancing attendance from baby to the sick ones continually. The wind blew, the boat rocked, and the tide was against us. One poor little Irish woman, who was going with her baby to meet her husband, was terribly frightened. I tried to comfort her, but she said “she would pull every curl out of her old man’s head, for sending for her and the baby.” All the while, a queer-looking German couple were on deck; the man appeared as if intoxicated, first scolding and then kissing! The wind was cold, but the man shook his fists when one young lady asked the woman to come inside and get warm. She would cry when he scolded her, and “make up” again as soon as he was disposed to. Then they would promenade together very lovingly and very awkwardly.

Came into Baltimore between ten and eleven. S. had her pocket picked on the way! Stopped at the National Hotel for the night, and left B. again in the morning, in the cars. Glad enough, too, for I hate cities, and B. worst of all. Rode through Maryland. A very delightful state, but slavery spoils it. Saw the first log-cabin; it was quite decent-looking, in comparison with the idea I had formed of it. Stopped at a station where there were three little negroes sitting on a bench, sunning themselves, and combing each other’s wool meanwhile. They looked the picture of ignorance and happiness.

Were all day Thursday riding through the State of Maryland. Saw flowers and trees in blossom: delightful country, quite hilly, and well watered. Followed the course of the Potomac a long way, and at noon stopped at Harper’s Ferry, a wild-looking place, though I think not so romantic as a place we passed just before it, where the waters curve in gentle flow from between two bold hills. Now saw the mountains around Cumberland. At Cumberland, were squeezed into a stage, to cross the Alleghenies. Oh, what misery did we not endure that night! Nine, and a baby, in the little stage! I tried to reconcile myself to my fate, but was so cross if anybody spoke to me! When we got out of the stage in the morning I felt more like a snake crawling from a heap of rocks than anything else. We stretched ourselves, and took breakfast, such as we could get, at a poor-looking tavern. Then into the stage again, and over the mountains to Brownsville; never imagined mountains could be so high, when we were riding on mountains all the time. Reached Brownsville about twelve,—a dingy place down among the hills. Took a little walk here. Embarked for Pittsburgh; was glad enough to stow myself away into a berth and rest. Didn’t trouble the Monongahela with a glance after the boat started, for I was “used up.” Found ourselves at Pittsburgh in the morning, a dirty city indeed. Everything black and smoky. Should think the sun would refuse to shine upon it.

Friday noon. Here we take another boat—the “Clipper”—the prettiest one I have seen yet. Splendidly furnished, neat, comfortable berths, and all we could ask for. The Ohio is a beautiful stream. I sit in my state-room with the door open, “taking notes.” I am on the Ohio side; the banks are steep,—now and then we pass a little town. We have stopped at one, now; men and boys are looking down on us from a sand-bank far above our heads. Why the people chose a sand-bank, when they might have had a delightful situation almost anywhere, I wonder much! Oh, dear! nothing looks like home! but I must not think of that, now.

Saturday noon. We are passing through a delightful country. Peach-trees along the banks of the river, in full bloom, reflected in the water by sunrise, and surrounded by newly-leaved trees of every shade of green,—they were beautiful indeed. Have been perfectly charmed with the varied prospect. Hills stretching down to the margin of the river, covered with trees, and sunny little cottages nestled at their base, surrounded with every sort of fruit-tree,—old trees hanging over the river, their topmost boughs crowned with the dark green mistletoe. Think I should like to live here a little while. Sat on the deck this forenoon, and sang “Sweet Home,” and “I would not live alway,” with Mr. C. and S. Thunder-storm this afternoon; went on deck after tea to see the sunset—beautiful! Water still, and reflecting gold from motionless clouds. Went out again at dusk, and heard the frogs singing. It seemed a little like Saturday evening at home; but no! Passed North Bend before sunset. Beautiful place: large house, standing back from the road, half hid by trees; a small green hill near the house covered with young trees; and a fine orchard in bloom on another hill, near by. The river bends on the Ohio side.

21st. Stopped at St. Louis, about ten o’clock. Lay here till nearly dark, waiting for canal to be mended. Oppressively hot; could not sit still nor sleep. Going through the canal very slowly.

22d. Passed through the locks in the night. Morning,—found Illinois on the right. Dogwort looked sweet among the light green foliage. Stopped at Evansville in the afternoon, and took in a freight of mosquitoes. Cabin full. Retired early, to get out of their way.

23d. Played chess, forenoon. Came to the north of the bend about ten. Went on deck to see the meeting of the waters. Grand sight. Cairo, small town on the point, has been overflowed. So near my new home; begin to be homesick.

The new home was destined to be a log-cabin on Looking-Glass Prairie, St. Clair County, Illinois, with the broad rolling country all around, and a few houses in sight. This settlement was designated “Frogdom” by some of the residents.

The little family had to put up with great inconveniences, the house not even being plastered, and the furniture being of the most primitive kind. Soon after their arrival, they were all ill with malarial fever, commonly called “agey,” but their spirits never flagged. Lucy somewhere speaks of herself as having a cheerful disposition; it helped her, at this time, to deal with the discomforts of the novel surroundings. Her sister refers to her, in a letter to Beverly, as “our merry young sister Lucy.”

Some of the neighbors were not as comfortable as these new farmers. One of them, living not very far off, had for a home a hastily constructed shanty, with a bunk for a bed, and innumerable rat-holes to let the smoke out when he had a fire. Others were “right smart” folk from Pennsylvania. Her main object, however, was not to be a farmer, but to become a district-school teacher. She soon secured a position; and began the itinerant life of a teacher, spending a few months in many different places. She received her salary every three months. Once, when there was a little delay in the payment, she requested it. The forty dollars were paid with the remark that “it was a powerful lot of money for only three months’ teaching.”

The rough boys and untrained girls called forth all her patience, and the need of holding their attention forced her to adopt a straightforward method of expressing herself. Sometimes her experiences were ludicrous. One day, having to discipline a mischievous urchin, she put him on a stool near the fireplace, and then went on with the lessons, not noticing him very much. Looking to see what he was doing, she was surprised at his disappearance from the room. The question was, “Where has he gone?” It was answered by one of the scholars, “He’s gone up the chimney.” He had indeed crawled up the wide open fireplace, and, having thus escaped, was dancing a jig in front of the school-house.

Miss Larcom taught in many different places—Waterloo, Lebanon, Sugar Creek, Woodburn—and generally the rate of payment was fourteen dollars a month. Board and lodging cost her one dollar and twenty-five cents a week. She did her own washing and ironing. The frequent change of schools made her form attachments for the children that had to be quickly broken. Speaking of a farewell at one school, she said, “The children cried bitterly when I dismissed them, whether for joy or sorrow it isn’t for me to say.”

Her letters to Beverly were brimful of fun; they give, in an easy style, a vivid account of the hardships of these log-cabin days. The two following letters were written to her sisters, Abby and Lydia.

TO MRS. ABBY O. HASKELL.

Looking-Glass Prairie, May 19, 1846.

Dear Sister Abby,—I think it is your turn to have a letter now, so I’ve just snuffed the candle, and got all my utensils about me, and am going to see how quickly I can write a good long one.

Well, for my convenience, I beg that you will borrow the wings of a dove, and come and sit down here by me. There,—don’t you see what a nice little room we are in? To be sure, one side of it has not got any side to it, because the man couldn’t afford to lath and plaster it, but that patch curtain that Emeline has hung up makes it snug enough for summer time, and reminds us of the days of ancient tapestried halls, and all that. That door, where the curtain is, goes into the entry; and there, right opposite, is another one that goes into the parlor, but I shall not go in there with you, because there aren’t any chairs in there; you might sit on Emeline’s blue trunk, or Sarah’s green one, though; but I’m afraid you’d go behind the sheet in the corner, and steal some of Emeline’s milk that she’s saving to make butter of; and then, just as likely as not, you’d want to know why that square piece of board was put on the bottom of the window, with the pitchfork stuck into it to keep it from falling; of course, we shouldn’t like to tell you that there’s a square of glass out, and I suppose you don’t know about that great tom-cat’s coming in, two nights, after we had all gone to bed, and making that awful caterwauling. So you had better stay here in the kitchen, and I’ll show you all the things; it won’t take long. That door at the top of three steps leads upstairs; the little low one close to it is the closet door,—you needn’t go prying in there, to see what we’ve got to eat, for you’ll certainly bump your head if you do; pass by the parlor door and the curtain, and look out of that window on the front side of the house; if it was not so dark, you might see the beautiful flower-beds that Sarah has made,—a big diamond in the centre, with four triangles to match it. As true as I live, she has been making her initials right in the centre of the diamond! There’s a great S, and an M, but where’s the H? Oh! you don’t know how that dog came in and scratched it all up, and laid down there to sun himself, the other day. We tell her there’s a sign to it,—losing her maiden name so soon. She declares she won’t have it altered by a puppy, though. These two windows look (through the fence) over to our next neighbor’s; that’s our new cooking-stove between them; isn’t it a cunning one? the funnel goes up clear through Emeline’s bedroom, till it gets to “outdoors.” We keep our chimney in the parlor. Then that door on the other side looks away across the prairie, three or four miles; and that brings us to where we started from.

As to furniture, this is the table, where I am writing; it is a stained one, without leaves, large enough for six to eat from, and it cost just two dollars and a quarter. There are a half dozen chairs, black, with yellow figures, and this is the rocking-chair, where we get baby to sleep. That is E.’s rag mat before the stove, and George fixed that shelf for the water-pail in the corner. The coffee-mill is close to it, and that’s all. Now don’t you call us rich? I’m sure we feel grand enough.

Now, if you would only just come and make us a visit in earnest, Emeline would make you some nice corn-meal fritters, and you should have some cream and sugar on them; and I would make you some nice doughnuts, for I’ve learned so much; and you should have milk or coffee, just as you pleased; it is genteel to drink coffee for breakfast, dinner, and supper, here. Then, if you didn’t feel satisfied, we should say that it was because you hadn’t lived on johnny-cakes and milk a week, as we did.

I have got to begin to be very dignified, for I am going to begin to keep school next Monday, in a little log-cabin, all alone. One of the “committee men” took me to Lebanon, last Saturday, in his prairie wagon, to be examined. You’ve no idea how frightened I was, but I answered all their questions, and didn’t make any more mistakes than they did. They told me I made handsome figures, wrote a good hand, and spoke correctly, so I begin to feel as if I knew most as much as other folks.

Emeline does not gain any flesh, although she has grown very handsome since she came to the land of “hog and hominy.” Your humble servant is as fat as a pig, as usual, though she has not tasted any of the porkers since her emigration, for the same reason that a certain gentleman would not eat any of Aunt Betsey’s cucumbers,—“not fit to eat.” That’s my opinion, and if you had seen such specimens of the living animal as I have, since I left home, you’d say so, too.

Lucy.

---

TO MRS. I. W. BAKER.

Looking-Glass Prairie, June 9, 1846.

Dear Sister,—Here I am, just got home from school; all at once a notion takes me that I want to write to you, and I’m doing it. I’m sitting in our parlor, or at least, what we call our parlor, because the cooking-stove is not in it, and because Emeline has laid her pretty rag mat before the hearth, and because the sofa is in here. There! you didn’t think we’d get a sofa out here, did you? Well, to be sure, it isn’t exactly like your sofa, because it isn’t stuffed, nor covered, nor has it any back, only the side of the house; nor any legs, only red ones, made of brick; dear me! I’m afraid you’ll “find out,” after all,—but it certainly did come all the way from St. Louis, in the wagon with the other furniture. We keep our “cheers” in the kitchen, and we find that Becky Wallis’s definition of them, i. e., “to sit on,” don’t tell the whole story now.

But don’t you want to hear how we like it, out here, in this great country? Oh, happy as clams! and we haven’t been homesick, either, only once in a while, when it seemed so queer getting “naturalized,” that we couldn’t help “keepin’ up a terrible thinkin’.” By the way, we were all sick last week,—no, not all; Emeline and the baby were not. George and Sarah and I all had the doctor at once. I was taken first, and had the most violent attack, and got well soonest. Our complaint was remittent fever, which is only another name for chills and fever, I suspect. I felt ashamed to get “the chills” so soon after coming here, and I believe the doctor was kind enough to call it something else. I did have one regular “chill,” though; the blood settled under my nails, and though I didn’t shake, I shivered “like I had the agey.” That’s our Western phraseology. Blue pills and quinine I thought would be the death of me; but I believe they cured me after all. I had to leave school for a week, but yesterday I commenced again.

My school! Oh, the times I do have there with the young Suckers! I have to walk rather more than a mile to it, and it is in just the most literal specimen of a log-cabin that you can form any idea of. ’Tis built of unhewn logs, laid “criss-cross,” as we used to say down in the lane; the chinks filled up with mud, except those which are not filled up “at all, at all,” and the chimney is stuck on behind the house. The floor lies as easy as it can on the ground, and the benches are, some of them (will you believe it?), very much like our sofa. They never had a school in this district before, and my “ideas” are beginning to “shoot” very naturally, most of them. I asked one new scholar yesterday how old she was. “Don’t know,” she said, “never was inside of a school-house before.” Another big girl got hold of my rubbers the other day, “Ouch,” said she, “be them Ingin robbers? I never seen any ’fore.” Some of them are bright enough to make up for all this, and on the whole I enjoy being “schoolma’am” very much. I have not seen a snake since I came here, and if I didn’t have to pass through such a sprinkling of cattle on my way to school, I shouldn’t have a morsel of trouble. Everybody turns his “cattle-brutes” out on the open prairie to feed, and they will get right into my path, and such a mooing and bellowing as they make! George has three big cows and two little ones, and two calves, and a horse, and ten hens, and a big pig and a little one: only the big pig has dug a subterranean passage, and “runned away.” And I don’t milk the cows, and I won’t learn to, if I can help it, because they will be so impolite as to turn round and stare me in the face always when I go near them.

Talk to me about getting married and settling down here in the West! I don’t do that thing till I’m a greater goose than I am now, for love nor money. It is a common saying here, that “this is a fine country for men and dogs, but women and oxen have to take it.” The secret of it is that farmers’ wives have to do all their work in one room, without any help, and almost nothing to work with. If ever I had the mind to take the vestal vow, it has been since I “emigrated.” You’ll see me coming back one of these years, a “right smart” old maid, my fat sides and cheeks shaking with “the agey,” to the tune of “Oh, take your time, Miss Lucy!”

I’ve a good mind to give you a picture, for the sun is setting, and it makes me feel “sort o’ romantic.” Well, in the first place, make a great wide daub of green, away off as far as the sunset; streak it a little deeper, half-way there, for the wheat fields. A little to the right make a smooth, bluish green hill, as even as a potato hill,—that’s the Blue Mound. A little one side, make a hundred little red, black, and white specks on the grass,—them’s the “cattle-brutes.” Right against the sun, you may make a little bit of a house, with one side of the roof hanging over like an umbrella,—that’s Mr. Merritt’s. And here, right before you, make a little whitewashed log-cabin, with a Virginia fence all round it ever so far, and a bank on one side sloping down to a little brook, where honey-locust trees a-plenty grow. Make it green in a great circle all round, just as if you were out at sea, where it’s all blue; then put on a great round blue sky for a cover, throw in a very few clouds, and have a “picter,” or part of one, of our prairie. There now, don’t you think I should have been an artist, if circumstances had only developed my natural genius? All send love. Your everlasting sister,

Lucy.

The pioneer family found it necessary to move their main headquarters, for Mr. Spaulding, the husband of Emeline, decided to give up farming, and become a minister. Ministers were scarce in that region, and seeing the need, he carried out a cherished plan of his youth by being ordained as a preacher of the gospel. Consequently they deserted their home, and went to Woodburn, with all their newly acquired furniture on three wagons, each drawn by three yoke of oxen that splashed through the mud, until they came to a cottage possessing more rooms than the house they had left, though the doors were made of rough boards. These rooms were papered by Lucy, with Boston “Journals.” She grew to love this cottage, for it represented home to her on the prairie.

In spite of cares and unpoetical methods of living, her pen was not idle. She wrote of the little prairie rose:—

“Flowers around are thick and bright,

The purple phlox and orchis white,

The orange lily, iris blue,

And painted cups of flaming hue.

Not one among them grows,

So lovely as the little prairie rose.”

The spirit of a jolly ride over the snow she caught in some lines called “A Prairie Sleigh-Ride:”—

“Away o’er the prairies, the wide and the free,

Away o’er the glistening prairies with me;

The last glance of day lights a blush on the snow,

While away through the twilight our merry steeds go.”

She also felt the awe inspired by the silence and immensity of the land, with the blue heavens arching over.

“But in its solemn silence,

Father, we feel thou art

Filling alike this boundless sea,

And every humble heart.”

When Lucy had been teaching district school for two years, she was conscious of her deficiencies, and longed for a chance to acquire a more thorough education. She wished to fit herself for promotion in her calling, and ambitions to become a writer were not absent from her thoughts. An opportunity for study presented itself in Monticello Female Seminary, Alton, Illinois, which was about twenty miles away from her home. This institution, founded by Captain B. Godfrey, was one of the first established in the country for the higher education of women. The prospectus of 1845, adorned with a stiff engraving of the grounds and large stone building, offered in its antiquated language, attractions which seemed to suit her needs: “The design of the Institution, is to furnish Young Ladies with an education, substantial, extensive and practical,—that shall at the same time develop harmoniously their physical, intellectual, and moral powers, and prepare them for the sober realities and duties of life.” All this was to be had for a sum less than one hundred dollars, in a situation so healthful that there “had never been a death in the institution.”

TO MRS. I. W. BAKER.

Woodburn, November 23, 1848.

... I have a new notion in my head, and I suppose I may as well broach it at once. There is a certain Seminary in the neighborhood at which I am very anxious to pass a year or so. It is one of the best of its kind. I want a better education than I have. Now I am only a tolerable sort of a “schoolma’am” for children; but if I could teach higher branches, I could make it more profitable, with less labor. I suppose I must call teaching my trade; and though I don’t like it the “very best kind,” I want to understand it as well as possible. And then if I don’t always keep school I may be able to depend on my pen for a living....

As Lucy was not able to pay the full tuition, the principal, Miss Fobes, arranged that she should be both student and teacher, thus helping to defray her expenses. She entered the school in September, 1849, and studied, in earnest, history, metaphysics, English literature, and higher mathematics, and laid the foundation for a thorough education.

Her schoolmates remember with pleasure the beauty of her lite at Monticello. They speak of the gentleness and peculiar sweetness of her character. Nothing coarse or mean could be associated with her. Being older than the other girls she was looked up to with reverence by them. Her singular purity of mind was illustrated by a remark to one of her companions, when they were talking about the Christian life,—“I never knew there was any other way to live.” One of her schoolmates writes: “I felt homesick, until one day I was introduced to a large, fair-faced woman, and looked up to meet a pair of happy blue eyes smiling down upon me, so full of sweet human kindness that the clouds fell straight away. And from that day the kindness never failed me—I think it never failed anyone. ‘The sunshine of her face’ were words that went out in many of my letters in those days.”

She studied industriously each subject of the course. Her note-books contain full extracts from the authors she was reading, with long comments by herself. Those on philosophy indicate a mind naturally delighting in speculative questions; and when her reasoning touches upon theology, she seems especially in earnest. History appealed to her imagination, and she seized upon the more dramatic incidents for comment. English literature opened a new world of thought to her, and she studied enthusiastically the origin and growth of poetry. In these studies of English it was first suggested to her that there was an art of versification, which could be cultivated. From this time her lines conform more to poetic rules, her ear for music being supplemented by a knowledge of metre.

There was one subject she could not master,—mathematics: “I am working on spherical trigonometry, just now. I don’t fancy it much; it needs a clearer head than mine to take in such abstract matters as the sides and angles of the triangle that can be imagined, but not seen.” She would exclaim, when studying Conic Sections, that she could see all the beauty, and feel all the poetry, but could not take the steps. When, however, after great work, she did understand a proposition, she accepted it as an eternal fact which God used for infinite purposes.

The girls at Monticello had a debating society. They gained confidence in speaking on such questions as,—“The blind man has more enjoyment in life, than the dumb man,” or, “Does the development of science depend more upon genius than industry?” Youthful wits were sharpened as a result of affirming and denying these momentous propositions, in arguments as strong as could be had. Does not the following extract from one of Lucy’s speeches present a typical picture of the fortunes of war in debate, when members are sometimes overcome by the weight of their own wisdom? “The member from Otter Creek arose and said that immigrants to this country were not the lowest classes, that they were quite a decent sort of people—but upon uttering these words, she was shaken by a qualm of conscience, or some sudden indisposition, and compelled to take her seat.”

There were also compositions to be written. The subjects assigned for these monthly tests of literary ability were as artificial as those for debate. The object of the teacher in our early schools seems to have been the selection of topics for essays as far removed from anything usual or commonplace as possible. One can very easily imagine what would be the style of an essay on the topic, “It is the high prerogative of the heroic soul to propagate its own likeness.” Lucy managed to get a little humor into the discussion of the question,—“Was the building of Bunker Hill Monument a wise expenditure of funds?” She argued: “Is there a use in monuments? Perhaps not, literally. We have heard of no process by which Bunker Hill Monument might be converted into a lodging-house, and though we are aware that our thrifty brethren of Yankee-land have made it yield its quota of dollars and cents, so that any aspirant may step into a basket and be swung to the pinnacle of a nation’s glory for ninepence, we are not in the habit of considering this its sole productive principle, unless gratitude and patriotism are omitted.”

Miss Larcom remained at Monticello Seminary until her graduation in June, 1852. Miss Fobes says: “When she left the institution, with her diploma, and the benediction of her Alma Mater, we felt sure that, with her noble equipment for service, the result should be success in whatever field she should find her work.” Her improvement had been so great that it was noticeable to the members of the family, who referred to her as “our learned sister.”

TO MRS. ABBY O. HASKELL.

Monticello Seminary, May 14th, 1850.

... But pray don’t call me your “learned sister” any more; for if I deserved the title, it would make me feel like a something on a pedestal, and not plain Lucy Larcom: the sister of some half-dozen worthy matrons.

I think it must be a mistake about my having improved so very much; though I should be sorry to have lived all these years and made no advancement. Folks tell me that I am dignified, sometimes, but I don’t know what it means. I have never tried to be, and I seem just as natural to myself as anything.

I don’t know how I could ever get along with all your cares. I should like tending the babies well enough, but when it came to washing, baking, brewing, and mending, my patience would take “French leave.” Still I don’t believe that any married woman’s trials are much worse than a “schoolma’am’s.”...

There was an event in her life in the West to be touched on. It relates to her one serious love affair. A deep attachment sprang up between Lucy and a young man who had accompanied her sister’s family to Illinois, and for a time lived with them during their log-cabin experiences, but afterwards went to California. When he left, though they could hardly be called engaged, there was an understanding between them that, when he returned during the last days of her school life, they were to decide the matter finally. After three years of separation, they were no nearer a conclusion. Some years after this, it became clear to Miss Larcom that their marriage would not be for the best interests of either.

In 1852, her thoughts turned again to her native town of Beverly. Equipped with her Monticello education, she felt prepared to support herself by teaching in her congenial home in the East. The memories of her childhood drew her back in thought to her old home. She wrote to her brother Benjamin in March, “The almanac says I am twenty-eight years old, but really, Ben, I do believe it fibs, for I don’t feel half so old. It seems only the other day that Lydia and I were sitting by the big kitchen fireplace, down the lane, and you opposite us, puffing cigar-smoke into our hair, and singing, ‘My name is Apollyon.’”

To her sister Lydia, whose birthday was on the same day of the month as her own, she sent some verses recalling her childhood.

“In childhood we looked gayly out,

To see this blustering dawn begin

And hailed the wind whose noisy shout

Our mutual birthday ushered in.

“For cakes, beneath our pillow rolled,

We laughing searched, and wondered, too,

How mother had so well foretold

What fairy people meant to do.”

CHAPTER III.

LIFE AT NORTON.
1853-1859.

In the autumn of 1853, Miss Larcom, having returned to Beverly, lived for a year with her sister, Mrs. Baker, in the pretty old-fashioned house on Cabot Street. Securing a few rooms in an unoccupied house not far away, she fitted them up as schoolroom and studio. Here she taught a little school with ten scholars. Most of these young girls were as far advanced as the second class at Monticello, and having already been instructed in the fundamental studies, they were not so difficult to teach as her untrained pupils in the West. The impression she made upon each of these young lives was strong, for, as a little family, she not only taught them the lessons, but gave them generously from her enthusiasm and faith. She imparted to them her love for all things true and beautiful. When the school year closed, she asked each girl to choose her favorite flower, upon which she wrote a few lines of verse,—on the hyacinth, signifying jealousy,—on the lily of the valley, meaning innocence.

“The fragrance Sarah would inhale

Is the lily of the vale:

‘Humility,’ it whispers low;

Ah! let that gentle breathing flow

Deep within, and then will you

Be a lily of the valley too.”

One of these pupils wrote to her years after: “Among the teachers of my girlhood, you are the one who stands out as my model of womanhood.”

While teaching, she still considered herself a scholar. Nor did she ever in after life overcome this feeling, for she was always eager to learn. When she was imparting her best instruction, and writing her most noteworthy books, she studied with great fidelity. At this time she took lessons in French and drawing; her love for color and form was always great. Often she had attempted in crude ways to preserve the spirit of a landscape, and so reproduce the color of the green ferns and variegated flowers; but now she set about the task in earnest. She had no special talent for painting, so she did nothing worthy of special notice, but some water-color sketches of autumn leaves, the golden-rod’s “rooted sunshine,” woodland violets, and the coral of the barberry, and apple-blossoms, “flakes of fragrance drifting everywhere,” are very pretty. This study of painting, however, trained her observation, and prepared her to appreciate works of art by giving her some knowledge of the use of the palette. This early attempt at artist’s work strengthened her love for pictures; and it was a special treat to her to visit the different galleries in Boston, where she was sure to be one of the first to see a celebrated painting.

It was a pleasure to her to be once more with her family, for the members of which she had the deepest affection. Writing to Miss Fobes, she expressed herself thus: “I am glad I came home, for I never realized before what a treasure my family circle was, nor how much I loved them. Then why do I not wish to stay? Simply because it does not seem to me that I can here develop the utmost that is in me. Ought I to be contented while that feeling remains?”

The feeling that she must develop “the utmost that is in me,” impelled her through life, as a duty that she must regard. She was not without opportunities for cultivation in Beverly. There were the two weekly Lyceum lectures, with good speakers—Miss Lucy Stone had advocated woman’s rights so ably that “even in this conservative town many became converts.” However, she longed for a larger work, and was ready to accept the call to be a teacher in Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Massachusetts.

In the early winter of 1854, she began her work at Wheaton Seminary, the large school for girls, founded through the generosity of Judge Wheaton, in memory of his daughter. The subjects given her to teach were history, moral philosophy, literature, and rhetoric, including the duty of overlooking the greater part of the compositions.

Her spirit on entering upon this new work, is indicated by this letter:—

TO MISS P. FOBES.

Wheaton Seminary, Norton, Mass.,
January 10, 1855.

Dear Miss Fobes:—When I look back upon my life I think I see it divided into epochs similar to geological ages, when, by slow or sudden upheavings, I have found myself the wondering possessor of a new life in a new world. My years at Monticello formed such an epoch, and it is no flattery to say that to you I owe much of the richness and beauty of the landscape over which I now exult. For your teaching gave me intellectually a broader scope and firmer footing than I ever had ventured upon.

I know that I have done almost nothing as yet to show that I have received so much good. Life here seems to me not much more than “a getting ready to do.” But in the consciousness of what it is to be a human being, created in the image of the divine,—in the gradual developing of new inner powers like unfolding wings,—in the joy of entering into the secrets of beauty in God’s universe,—in the hopefulness of constant struggling and aspiring, I am rich.

I have been in this place only a few weeks and suppose the length of my stay will depend upon the satisfaction I give and receive. It is a pleasant school.

Yours truly,Lucy Larcom.

The length of her stay in Norton extended over eight important years of her life, from 1854 to 1862. These years were full of intellectual and religious struggles, of hard student life, of sweet companionships, of the beginnings of literary success, and of deep friendships. Earnestness and sincerity here became her characteristic traits; while her gentleness and patience, though sorely tried at times by the misconduct or failure of her scholars, became habitual with her.

One cannot think of the quiet life she led under the Norton elms, without picturing the tall graceful woman with her sweet face, low broad forehead, and soft blue eyes, moving about among the girls as a continual inspiration, always leading them by her presence and words into some region of sentiment, or beauty, or religion. In the schoolroom, ever dignified, she spoke in a low voice with the emphasis of real interest. In her own room, with its green carpet and white curtains, where she liked to retire for thought and work, surrounded by her books, a few pictures, and shells and pressed sea-weed, she would prepare her lectures, and write her letters to her friends. There were sure to be flowers on her table, sent either by some loving scholar, or plucked by her own hand,—“I have some pretty things in my room; and flowers, so alive! As I look into their deep cups, I am filled with the harmonies of color and form. How warm a bright rose-pink carnation makes the room on a wintry day!” A scholar tells how, venturing into this retreat, she saw Miss Larcom quietly sitting in a rocking-chair, knitting stockings for the soldiers, during the War.

She was a conscientious student in preparing her lessons; she read the best books she could find in the school library, or could borrow from her friends. The notes of her lectures show great labor by their exhaustiveness. As a teacher, some of her power was derived from the clearness with which she presented the theme, and her picturesque style of expression. She invested the most lifeless topics with interest by the use of original and appropriate illustrations,—as will be seen in the following passage from a lecture on Anglo-Saxon poetry, in which she describes the minstrels:—

“The minstrels would sing, and the people would listen; and if the monks had listened too, they would sometimes have heard the irregularities of their lives chanted for the derision of the populace. For the bards assumed perfect independence in their choice of themes; liberty of the lyre seems to have been what liberty of the press is in these days. We can imagine the excitement in some quaint village, when the harp of one of these strollers was heard; how men and women would leave their work, and listen to these ballads. Those who have seen the magnetic effect of a hand-organ on village children, may have some idea of it; if the organ-grinder were also a famous story-teller, the effect would be greater. And this is something like what these ballad singers were to our elder brethren of Angle-land, in the childhood of civilization.”

What excellent advice this is to girls, on the subject of their compositions,—“Get rid, if you can, of that formal idea of a composition to write, that stalks like a ghost through your holiday hours. Interest yourself in something, and just say your simple say about it. One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.”

The recitations in her class-room were of an unconventional character. Dealing with topics in the largest and most interesting way, she often used up the time in discussion, so that the girls who did not know their lessons sometimes took advantage of this peculiarity by asking questions, for the sole purpose of needlessly prolonging her explanation. It was often a joke among the scholars that she did not know where the lesson was; but so soon as she found the place, she made clear the portion assigned, and brought all her knowledge to bear so fully on the subject, that the scholars caught glimpses of unexplored fields of thought, which were made to contribute something to illustrate the theme in hand.

She did more for the girls than by simply teaching them in the class-room. She enlarged their intellectual life by founding a paper, called “The Rushlight,” by which they not only gained confidence, but centralized the literary ability of the school. She explained the origin of the paper thus: “I said to myself, as I glanced over the bright things from the pile of compositions that rose before me semi-weekly, ‘Why cannot we have a paper?’ I said it to the girls, and to the teachers also, and everybody was pleased with the idea.” She also founded the Psyche Literary Society, to stimulate the girls’ studies in literature and art.

Another element in her power as a teacher was her personal interest in the girls. It was not solely an intellectual or literary interest, but she thought of their characters and religious training. To one of the girls she wrote, “I never felt it an interruption for you to come into my room; how we used to talk about everything!” When they were in trouble, they came naturally to her with their confidences. She was sometimes called “Mother Larcom,” and she earned the title, for she acted like a mother to the homesick girl, and quieted by her gentle persuasiveness the tears of repentance, or bitter weeping of sorrow, of some of the more unfortunate of her pupils. Writing about one of the girls whose religious development she had watched, she said, “She is unfolding from the heart to God most openly, now. I am sure there is a deep life opening in her. I have rejoiced over her.”

She discovered, through their moods—as in the case of one who was crying a great deal—or by the frequency of a permitted correspondence, their real or fancied love-affairs. After winning their confidence she could wisely advise them. Thus in one instance she wrote: “If such intimacy is true friendship, it will be a benefit to both; yet it is not without danger. I have seen the severest sufferings from the struggle between duty and feeling in such relations. I have seen life embittered by reason of the liberty allowed to a cousinly love, left unwatched. It is hard to keep the affections right in quantity and quality. But I need not say that a true love needs no limits; it is only falsehood that embitters every sweet and pure cup.”

When the girls left school, they carried her love with them; and by correspondence and visits to their homes, where she was always a welcome guest, she followed them through the deepest experiences of their lives. One of her scholars said, “If I were to sum up the strong impression she made upon me, I should say it all in ‘I loved her.’” Another wrote, “Miss Larcom was to me a peerless star, unattainable in the excellence and purity of her character. She stood as the ideal woman, whom I wished to be like.”

When death invaded a home, she knew how to write:—

Norton, October 7, 1855.

... Why is it we dread the brief parting of death so much? Do we really doubt meeting them again? Will they have lost themselves in the great crowd of immortals, so that when our time comes to follow them we cannot find them? I am just reading for the first time, “In Memoriam,” and it fills my mind with these questions. I think I should be homesick in a mansion filled with angels, if my own precious friends whom I loved were not within call....

The following letter shows her intimacy with the girls:—

TO MISS SUSAN HAYES WARD.

Norton, April 2, 1855.

My Dear Susie,—I find it almost impossible to feel at home in a boarding-school; and then I know I never was made for a teacher,—a schoolmistress I mean. Still, among so many, one feels an inspiration in trying to do what is to be done, though the feeling that others would do it better is a drawback. And then, at such a place, I always find somebody to remember forever. For that I am thankful for my winter’s experience. There are buds opening in the great human garden, which are not to be found at our own hearthstone: and it is a blessed task to watch them unfolding, and shield them from blight. And yet what can one mortal do for another? There is no such thing as helping, or blessing, except by becoming a medium for the divine light, and that is blessedness in itself.

It seems to me that to be a Christian is just to look up to God, and be blessed by his love, and then move through the world quietly, radiating as we go....

The development of her own religious life was marked by many radical changes. She was no longer satisfied by the theology in which she had been reared. She sought new foundations for her belief. Her classes in philosophy led her into the world of controversy. Plato was constantly by her side, and she refreshed herself by reading Coleridge’s “Aids to Reflection,” from which she gained more nutriment than from any other religious book, except the Bible. Swedenborg taught her that “to grow old in heaven is to grow young.” Sears’s “Foregleams and Foreshadows” made her feel the joy of living, as presented in the chapter on “Home.” She also read “Tauler’s Sermons,” and Hare’s “Mission of the Comforter.”

Interwoven with her religious thought were the life and influence of one of the dearest friends she ever knew, Miss Esther S. Humiston of Waterbury, Connecticut, a woman of rare powers, and wonderful sweetness of character. The two women were not unlike. They had the same spiritual longings, similar views of life, and equal intellectual attainments. Miss Larcom looked up to Esther for guidance, and such was the perfect accord between them, that she wrote to her fully about her deepest thoughts, and most sacred experiences.

In the spring of 1858, she wrote thus to Esther:—“You do not realize how very unorthodox I am. I do not think a bond of church-membership ought to be based upon intellectual belief at all, but that it should simply be a union in the divine love and life. Now I do not formally belong to any particular church,—that is, I have a letter from a little Congregational church on the prairies, which I have never used, and I know not how, honestly I can. For should I not be required virtually to say I believe certain things? I believe the Bible, but not just as any church I know explains it, and so I think I must keep aloof until I can find some band, united simply as Christian, without any ‘ism’ attached. We all do belong to Christ’s Church who love Him, so I do not feel lost or a wanderer, even though I cannot externally satisfy others.”

TO ESTHER S. HUMISTON.

Beverly, Mass., August 2d, 1858.

... I regard Christianity as having to do with the heart and life, and not with the opinions; and my own opinions are not definite on many points. The disputed doctrines of total depravity, predestination, etc., with some of those distinctly called “evangelical,” such as the atonement, and the duration of suffering after death, I find more and more difficulty in thinking about; so that I cannot yet say what “views” I “hold.” There,—will you be my “sister confessor”? As I see things now, the “atonement” is to me, literally, the “at-one-ment,”—our fallen natures lifted from the earthly by redeeming love, and brought into harmony with God; Jesus, the Mediator, is doing it now, in every heart that receives Him, and I think our faith should look up to Him as He is, the living Redeemer, and not merely back to the dead Christ,—for “He is not dead.” Then, as to the future state of those who die unrepentant: after probing my heart, I find that it utterly refuses to believe that there is any corner in God’s universe where “hope never comes.” There must be suffering, anguish, for those who choose sin, so long as they choose it; but can a soul, made in the image of God, who is Light, choose darkness forever? There is but one God, whose is the “kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever;” is there any depth of darkness, which this sovereign radiance shall not at last pierce? I know the Bible testimony, and it seems to me that the inmost meaning, even of those fearfully denunciatory passages, would confirm this truth. Now, you can imagine how these sentiments would be received by an Orthodox Church....

---

TO THE SAME.

Norton, September 2, 1860.

... I enjoyed being with my friends. I told you that they were Universalists, but theirs is a better-toned piety than that of some Orthodox friends. Still, there was a want in it, a something that left me longing; it was as if they were looking at the sunlit side of a mountain, and never thought of the shadows which must be beyond. The mystery of life is in its shadows, and its beauty, in great part, too. There isn’t shadow enough in Universalism to make a comprehensible belief for me. And yet I believe there is no corner of God’s universe where His love is not brooding, and seeking to penetrate the darkest abyss....

The question about her marriage was definitely settled while she was at Norton. She decided, in the first place, on general grounds, that it would be best for her not to marry. There were various reasons for this. She had many premonitions of the breaking down of her health, which finally came in 1862, when she had to give up teaching; and owing to some exaggeration of her symptoms—for at times she felt that her mind might give way—she thought it unwise for her to take up the responsibilities of matrimony. In addition to this, she grew fond of her independence, and as her ability asserted itself, she seemed to see before her a career as an authoress, which she felt it her duty to pursue. Special reasons, of course, one cannot go into fully, though there are some features of them that may be mentioned; to Esther she stated an abundantly sufficient one,—“I am almost sure there are chambers in my heart that he could not unlock.” She also differed radically from her lover on the subject of slavery. Her feelings as an abolitionist were so strong that she knew where there was such a division of sentiments a household could not be at peace within itself. This difference of opinion concerning all the questions that culminated in the Civil War resulted in a final refusal, which afterwards found public expression in her noted poem, “A Loyal Woman’s No,” an energetic refusal of a loyal woman to a lover who upheld slavery:—

“Not yours,—because you are not man enough

To grasp your country’s measure of a man,

If such as you, when Freedom’s ways are rough,

Cannot walk in them,—learn that women can!”

The poem was not written entirely out of her own experience. In making a confession about it to a friend, she says, “I have had a thousand tremblings about its going into print, because I feel that some others might feel hurt by the part that is not from my own experience. If it is better for the cause, let me and those old associations be sacrificed.” The publication of the poem was justified by the way it was received everywhere. It was quoted in the newspapers all over the North. An answer was printed in “The Courier,” called “A Young Man’s Reply.” This interested Miss Larcom, and she referred to it as “quite satisfactory, inasmuch as it shows that somebody whom the coat fitted put it on! If it does make unmanly and disloyal men wince, I am glad I wrote it.”

TO ESTHER S. HUMISTON.

Norton, June 1, 1858.

... I shall probably never marry. I can see reasons why it would be unwise for me; and yet I will freely tell you that I believe I should have been very happy, “if it might have been.” A true marriage (the is the word I should have used) is the highest state of earthly happiness,—the flowing of the deepest life of the soul into a kindred soul, two spirits made one,—to be a double light and blessing to other souls has, I doubt not, been sometimes, though seldom, realized on earth....

This touch of real romance in her life shows that she had a woman’s true nature, and that she did not escape the gentle grasping of the divine passion, though she shook herself free from it, deciding that it was better for her to walk alone. Some lines of her poem, “Unwedded,” suggest the reasons for her decision:—

“And here is a woman who understood

Herself, her work, and God’s will with her,

To gather and scatter His sheaves of good,

And was meekly thankful, though men demur.

“Would she have walked more nobly, think,

With a man beside her, to point the way,

Hand joining hand in the marriage link?

Possibly, Yes: it is likelier, Nay.”

---

TO MISS ESTHER S. HUMISTON.

Norton, January 15, 1859.

... The books came through the post-office, with the note separate; they were brought to me while I was having a class recite logic in my room,—the dryest and most distasteful of all subjects to me, but it is a select class, and that makes up for the study. The young ladies who compose it are on quite familiar terms with me, and when the messenger said, “Three books and two letters for Miss Larcom,” their curiosity was greatly excited, and there was so much sly peeping at corners and picking at strings that they were not, on the whole, very logical. They asked to hold them for me till I was ready to open them, and I believe in letting “young ladies” act like children while they can.... I was thinking how much I should enjoy a quiet forenoon writing to you, when the words, “Study hour out”—accompanied the clang of the bell, and a Babel of voices broke into the hall outside my door.

I am trying not to hear—to get back into the quiet places of thought where your letters, open before me, were leading me, but I cannot; there is a jar, a discord,—and I suppose it is selfish in me not to be willing to be thus disturbed. How I long for a quiet place to live in! I never found a place still enough yet. But all kinds of natural sounds, as winds, waters, and even the crying of a baby, if not too loud and protracted, are not noises to me. Is it right to feel the sound of human voices a great annoyance? One who loved everybody would always enjoy the “music of speech,” I suppose, and would find music where I hear only discord.

---

TO THE SAME.

Sabbath evening.

... I read in school yesterday morning, something from the “Sympathy of Christ.” We have had some very naughty girls here, and have had to think of expulsion; but one of them ran away, and so saved us the trouble. How hard it is to judge the erring rightly—Christianly. I am always inclined to be too severe, for the sake of the rest; one corrupt heart that loves to roll its corruption about does so much evil. I do not think that a school like this is the place for evil natures—the family is the place, it seems to me, or even something more solitary. And yet there have been such reforms here, that sometimes I am in doubt. When there is a Christian, sympathizing heart to take the erring home, and care for her as a mother would, that is well. But we are all so busy here, with the everythings. I am convinced that I have too much head-employment altogether; I get hardly breathing time for heart and home life....

In 1854, Miss Larcom published her first book,—“Similitudes from the Ocean and the Prairie.” It was a little volume of not more than one hundred pages, containing brief prose parables drawn from nature, with the purpose of illustrating some moral truth. The titles of the Similitudes suggest their meaning: “The Song before the Storm;” “The Veiled Star;” “The Wasted Flower;” and “The Lost Gem.” Though the conception was somewhat crude, yet her desire to find in all things a message of a higher life and a greater beauty, showed the serious beginnings of the poet’s insight, which in after years was to reveal to her so many hidden truths. She characterized the book as “a very immature affair, often entirely childish.”

Her first distinct literary success was the writing of the Kansas Prize Song, in 1855. When Kansas was being settled, the New England Emigrant Aid Company offered a prize of fifty dollars for the best song, written with the object of inspiring in the emigrants the sentiments of freedom. The power of a popular melody was to be used in maintaining a free soil. She gained this prize; and her stirring words were sung all through the West. They were printed, with the appropriate music of Mr. E. Norman, on cotton handkerchiefs, which were given away by the thousand.

“Yeomen strong, hither throng,

Nature’s honest men;

We will make the wilderness

Bud and bloom again;

Bring the sickle, speed the plough,

Turn the ready soil;

Freedom is the noblest pay

For a true man’s toil.

“Ho, brothers! come, brothers!

Hasten all with me;

We’ll sing upon the Kansas plains

A song of liberty.”

Her next little book, “Lottie’s Thought-book,” was published by the American Sunday School Union, Philadelphia, in 1858. Not unlike the Similitudes in its method of teaching by parables, it gave the thoughts of a clever child, as they would be suggested by such scenes as a beautiful spring morning in the country, “when glad thoughts praise God;” the first snow, typifying the purity of the earth; or the thought of the joy of living, in the chapter “Glad to be alive” that recalls an exclamation she uses in one of her letters, “Oh! how happy I am, that I did not die in childhood!” These little books are like the inner biography of her youth, a pure crystal stream of love, reflecting the sunlight in every ripple and eddy.

She also wrote for various magazines, notably “The Crayon,” in which appeared some criticisms of poetry, especially Miss Muloch’s, and some of her poems, like “Chriemhild,” a legend of Norse romance. The only payment she received was the subscription to the magazine. Her famous poem, “Hannah Binding Shoes,” was first printed in the “Knickerbocker,” without her knowledge,—then a few months later, in “The Crayon.” This fact gave rise to the accusation of plagiarism which, though it greatly annoyed her, brought her poem into general notice. Having sent the poem to the “Knickerbocker,” but not receiving any answer about its acceptance, she concluded that it had been rejected. She then sent it to “The Crayon,” where it appeared, but in the mean time it had been printed in the “Knickerbocker.” The editor of the last-named paper wrote a letter to the “New York Tribune,” in which he accused Lucy Larcom of being “a literary thiefess,” and claimed the “stolen goods.” In answer to this, Miss Larcom wrote immediately a reply to the “Tribune.”