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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
193
What
a
foolish
dread
it
is,--showing
unripeness
rather
than
youth,--the
dread
of
growing
old!
For
how
can
a
life
be
beautified
more
than
by
its
beautiful
years?
A
living,
loving,
growing
spirit
can
never
be
old.
Emerson
says:
"Spring
still
makes
spring
in
the
mind,
When
sixty
years
are
told;"
and
some
of
us
are
thankful
to
have
lived
long
enough
to
bear
witness
with
him
to
that
truth.
The
few
others
who
measured
cloth
with
us
were
nice,
bright
girls,
and
some
of
them
remarkably
pretty.
Our
work
and
the
room
itself
were
so
clean
that
in
summer
we
could
wear
fresh
muslin
dresses,
sometimes
white
ones,
without
fear
of
soiling
them.
This
slight
difference
of
apparel
and
our
fewer
work-hours
seemed
to
give
us
a
slight
advantage
over
the
toilers
in
the
mills
opposite,
and
we
occasionally
heard
ourselves
spoken
of
as
"the
cloth-room
aristocracy."
But
that
was
only
in
fun.
Most
of
us
had
served
an
apprenticeship
in
the
mills,
and
many
of
our
best
friends
were
still
there,
preferring
their
work
because
it
brought
them
more
money
than
we
could
earn.
For
myself,
no
amount
of
money
would
have
been
a
temptation,
compared
with
my
precious
daytime
freedom.
Whole
hours
of
sunshine
for
reading,
for
walking,
for
studying,
for
writing,
for
anything
that
I
wanted
to
do!
The
days
were
so
lovely
and
so
long!
and
yet
how
fast
they
slipped
away!
I
had
not
given
up
my
dream
of
a
better
education,
and
as
I
could
not
go
to
school,
I
began
to
study
by
myself.
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