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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
128
If
I
could
only
make
a
rose
bloom
on
paper,
I
thought
I
should
be
happy!
or
if
I
could
at
last
succeed
in
drawing
the
outline
of
winter-stripped
boughs
as
I
saw
them
against
the
sky,
it
seemed
to
me
that
I
should
be
willing
to
spend
years
in
trying.
I
did
try
a
little,
and
very
often.
Jack
Frost
was
my
most
inspiring
teacher.
His
sketches
on
the
bedroom
window-pane
in
cold
mornings
were
my
ideal
studies
of
Swiss
scenery,
crags
and
peaks
and
chalets
and
fir-trees,--and
graceful
tracery
of
ferns,
like
those
that
grew
in
the
woods
where
we
went
huckleberrying,
all
blended
together
by
his
touch
of
enchantment.
I
wondered
whether
human
fingers
ever
succeeded
in
imitating
that
lovely
work.
The
taste
has
followed
me
all
my
life
through,
but
I
could
never
indulge
it
except
as
a
recreation.
I
was
not
to
be
an
artist,
and
I
am
rather
glad
that
I
was
hindered,
for
I
had
even
stronger
inclinations
in
other
directions;
and
art,
really
noble
art,
requires
the
entire
devotion
of
a
lifetime.
I
seldom
thought
seriously
of
becoming
an
author,
although
it
seemed
to
me
that
anybody
who
had
written
a
book
would
have
a
right
to
feel
very
proud.
But
I
believed
that
a
person
must
be
exceedingly
wise
before
presuming
to
attempt
it:
although
now
and
then
I
thought
I
could
feel
ideas
growing
in
my
mind
that
it
might
be
worth
while
to
put
into
a
book,--if
I
lived
and
studied
until
I
was
forty
or
fifty
years
old.
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