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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
149
And
I
was
every
day
making
discoveries
about
life,
and
about
myself.
I
had
naturally
some
elements
of
the
recluse,
and
would
never,
of
my
own
choice,
have
lived
in
a
crowd.
I
loved
quietness.
The
noise
of
machinery
was
particularly
distasteful
to
me.
But
I
found
that
the
crowd
was
made
up
of
single
human
lives,
not
one
of
them
wholly
uninteresting,
when
separately
known.
I
learned
also
that
there
are
many
things
which
belong
to
the
whole
world
of
us
together,
that
no
one
of
us,
nor
any
few
of
us,
can
claim
or
enjoy
for
ourselves
alone.
I
discovered,
too,
that
I
could
so
accustom
myself
to
the
noise
that
it
became
like
a
silence
to
me.
And
I
defied
the
machinery
to
make
me
its
slave.
Its
incessant
discords
could
not
drown
the
music
of
my
thoughts
if
I
would
let
them
fly
high
enough.
Even
the
long
hours,
the
early
rising
and
the
regularity
enforced
by
the
clangor
of
the
bell
were
good
discipline
for
one
who
was
naturally
inclined
to
dally
and
to
dream,
and
who
loved
her
own
personal
liberty
with
a
willful
rebellion
against
control.
Perhaps
I
could
have
brought
myself
into
the
limitations
of
order
and
method
in
no
other
way.
Like
a
plant
that
starts
up
in
showers
and
sunshine
and
does
not
know
which
has
best
helped
it
to
grow,
it
is
difficult
to
say
whether
the
hard
things
or
the
pleasant
things
did
me
most
good.
But
when
I
was
sincerest
with
myself,
as
also
when
I
thought
least
about
it,
I
know
that
I
was
glad
to
be
alive,
and
to
be
just
where
I
was.
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