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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
137
Another
habit
of
hers
was
to
keep
always
beside
her
at
her
daily
work
something
to
study
or
to
think
about.
At
first
it
was
"Watts
on
the
Improvement
of
the
Mind,"
arranged
as
a
textbook,
with
questions
and
answers,
by
the
minister
of
Beverly
who
had
made
the
thought
of
the
millennium
such
a
reality
to
his
people.
She
quite
wore
this
book
out,
carrying
it
about
with
her
in
her
working-dress
pocket.
After
that,
"Locke
on
the
Understanding"
was
used
in
the
same
way.
She
must
have
known
both
books
through
and
through
by
heart.
Then
she
read
Combe
and
Abercrombie,
and
discussed
their
physics
and
metaphysics
with
our
girl
boarders,
some
of
whom
had
remarkably
acute
and
well-balanced
minds.
Her
own
seemed
to
have
turned
from
its
early
bent
toward
the
romantic,
her
taste
being
now
for
serious
and
practical,
though
sometimes
abstruse,
themes.
I
remember
that
Young
and
Pollock
were
her
favorite
poets.
I
could
not
keep
up
with
her
in
her
studies
and
readings,
for
many
of
the
books
she
liked
seemed
to
me
very
dry.
I
did
not
easily
take
to
the
argumentative
or
moralizing
method,
which
I
came
to
regard
as
a
proof
of
the
weakness
of
my
own
intellect
in
comparison
with
hers.
I
would
gladly
have
kept
pace
with
her
if
I
could.
Anything
under
the
heading
of
"Didactick,"
like
some
of
the
pieces
in
the
old
"English
Reader,"
used
by
school-children
in
the
generation
just
before
ours,
always
repelled
me.
But
I
though
it
necessary
to
discipline
myself
by
reading
such
pieces,
and
my
first
attempt
at
prose
composition,
"On
Friendship,"
was
stiffly
modeled
after
a
certain
"Didactick
Essay"
in
that
same
English
Reader.
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