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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
131
This
was
the
plan
that
indefinitely
shaped
itself
in
my
mind
as
I
returned
to
my
work
in
the
spinning-room,
and
which
I
followed
out,
not
without
many
breaks
and
hindrances
and
neglects,
during
the
next
six
or
seven
years,--to
learn
all
I
could,
so
that
I
should
be
fit
to
teach
or
to
write,
as
the
way
opened.
And
it
turned
out
that
fifteen
or
twenty
of
my
best
years
were
given
to
teaching.
VIII.
BY
THE
RIVER.
IT
did
not
take
us
younger
ones
long
to
get
acquainted
with
our
new
home,
and
to
love
it.
To
live
beside
a
river
had
been
to
me
a
child's
dream
of
romance.
Rivers,
as
I
pictured
them,
came
down
from
the
mountains,
and
were
born
in
the
clouds.
They
were
bordered
by
green
meadows,
and
graceful
trees
leaned
over
to
gaze
into
their
bright
mirrors.
Our
shallow
tidal
creek
was
the
only
river
I
had
known,
except
as
visioned
on
the
pages
of
the
"Pilgrim's
Progress,"
and
in
the
Book
of
Revelation.
And
the
Merrimack
was
like
a
continuation
of
that
dream.
I
soon
made
myself
familiar
with
the
rocky
nooks
along
Pawtucket
Falls,
shaded
with
hemlocks
and
white
birches.
Strange
new
wild
flowers
grew
beside
the
rushing
waters,--among
them
Sir
Walter
Scott's
own
harebells,
which
I
had
never
thought
of
except
as
blossoms
of
poetry;
here
they
were,
as
real
to
me
as
to
his
Lady
of
the
Lake!
I
loved
the
harebell,
the
first
new
flower
the
river
gave
me,
as
I
had
never
loved
a
flower
before.
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