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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
155
The
tie
between
my
lovely
baby-nephew
and
myself
became
very
close.
The
first
two
years
of
a
child's
life
are
its
most
appealing
years,
and
call
out
all
the
latent
tenderness
of
the
nature
on
which
it
leans
for
protection.
I
think
I
should
have
missed
one
of
the
best
educating
influences
of
my
youth,
if
I
had
not
had
the
care
of
that
baby
for
a
year
or
more
just
as
I
entered
my
teens.
I
was
never
so
happy
as
when
I
held
him
in
my
arms,
sleeping
or
waking;
and
he,
happy
anywhere,
was
always
contented
when
he
was
with
me.
I
was
as
fond
as
ever
of
reading,
and
somehow
I
managed
to
combine
baby
and
book.
Dickens's
"Old
Curiosity
Shop"
was
just
then
coming
out
in
a
Philadelphia
weekly
paper,
and
I
read
it
with
the
baby
playing
at
my
feet,
or
lying
across
my
lap,
in
an
unfinished
room
given
up
to
sea-chests
and
coffee-bags
and
spicy
foreign
odors.
(My
cherub's
papa
was
a
sea-captain,
usually
away
on
his
African
voyages.)
Little
Nell
and
her
grandfather
became
as
real
to
me
as
my
darling
charge,
and
if
a
tear
from
his
nurse's
eyes
sometimes
dropped
upon
his
cheek
as
he
slept,
he
was
not
saddened
by
it.
When
he
awoke
he
was
irrepressible;
clutching
at
my
hair
with
his
stout
pink
fists,
and
driving
all
dream-people
effectually
out
of
my
head.
Like
all
babies,
he
was
something
of
a
tyrant;
but
that
brief,
sweet
despotism
ends
only
too
soon.
I
put
him
gratefully
down,
dimpled,
chubby,
and
imperious,
upon
the
list
of
my
girlhood's
teachers.
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