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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
160
And
no
comrades
are
so
dear
as
those
who
have
broken
with
us
a
pioneer
road
which
it
will
be
safe
and
good
for
others
to
follow;
which
will
furnish
a
plain
clue
for
all
bewildered
travelers
hereafter.
There
is
no
more
exhilarating
human
experience
than
this,
and
perhaps
it
is
the
highest
angelic
one.
It
may
be
that
some
such
mutual
work
is
to
link
us
forever
with
one
another
in
the
Infinite
Life.
The
girls
who
toiled
together
at
Lowell
were
clearing
away
a
few
weeds
from
the
overgrown
track
of
independent
labor
for
other
women.
They
practically
said,
by
numbering
themselves
among
factory
girls,
that
in
our
country
no
real
odium
could
be
attached
to
any
honest
toil
that
any
self-respecting
woman
might
undertake.
I
regard
it
as
one
of
the
privileges
of
my
youth
that
I
was
permitted
to
grow
up
among
those
active,
interesting
girls,
whose
lives
were
not
mere
echoes
of
other
lives,
but
had
principle
and
purpose
distinctly
their
own.
Their
vigor
of
character
was
a
natural
development.
The
New
Hampshire
girls
who
came
to
Lowell
were
descendants
of
the
sturdy
backwoodsmen
who
settled
that
State
scarcely
a
hundred
years
before.
Their
grandmothers
had
suffered
the
hardships
of
frontier
life,
had
known
the
horrors
of
savage
warfare
when
the
beautiful
valleys
of
the
Connecticut
and
the
Merrimack
were
threaded
with
Indian
trails
from
Canada
to
the
white
settlements.
Those
young
women
did
justice
to
their
inheritance.
They
were
earnest
and
capable;
ready
to
undertake
anything
that
was
worth
doing.
My
dreamy,
indolent
nature
was
shamed
into
activity
among
them.
They
gave
me
a
larger,
firmer
ideal
of
womanhood.
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