Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
125
I
never
cared
much
for
machinery.
The
buzzing
and
hissing
and
whizzing
of
pulleys
and
rollers
and
spindles
and
flyers
around
me
often
grew
tiresome.
I
could
not
see
into
their
complications,
or
feel
interested
in
them.
But
in
a
room
below
us
we
were
sometimes
allowed
to
peer
in
through
a
sort
of
blind
door
at
the
great
water-wheel
that
carried
the
works
of
the
whole
mill.
It
was
so
huge
that
we
could
only
watch
a
few
of
its
spokes
at
a
time,
and
part
of
its
dripping
rim,
moving
with
a
slow,
measured
strength
through
the
darkness
that
shut
it
in.
It
impressed
me
with
something
of
the
awe
which
comes
to
us
in
thinking
of
the
great
Power
which
keeps
the
mechanism
of
the
universe
in
motion.
Even
now,
the
remembrance
of
its
large,
mysterious
movement,
in
which
every
little
motion
of
every
noisy
little
wheel
was
involved,
brings
back
to
me
a
verse
from
one
of
my
favorite
hymns:--
"Our
lives
through
various
scenes
are
drawn,
And
vexed
by
trifling
cares,
While
Thine
eternal
thought
moves
on
Thy
undisturbed
affairs."
There
were
compensations
for
being
shut
in
to
daily
toil
so
early.
The
mill
itself
had
its
lessons
for
us.
But
it
was
not,
and
could
not
be,
the
right
sort
of
life
for
a
child,
and
we
were
happy
in
the
knowledge
that,
at
the
longest,
our
employment
was
only
to
be
temporary.
When
I
took
my
next
three
months
at
the
grammar
school,
everything
there
was
changed,
and
I
too
was
changed.
The
teachers
were
kind,
and
thorough
in
their
instruction;
and
my
mind
seemed
to
have
been
ploughed
up
during
that
year
of
work,
so
that
knowledge
took
root
in
it
easily.
It
was
a
great
delight
to
me
to
study,
and
at
the
end
of
the
three
months
the
master
told
me
that
I
was
prepared
for
the
high
school.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
