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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
198
She
was
an
ambitious
scholar,
and
she
persuaded
me
into
studying
the
German
language
with
her.
A
native
professor
had
formed
a
class
among
young
women
connected
with
the
mills,
and
we
joined
it.
We
met,
six
or
eight
of
us,
at
the
home
of
two
of
these
young
women,--a
factory
boarding-house,--in
a
neat
little
parlor
which
contained
a
piano.
The
professor
was
a
music-teacher
also,
and
he
sometimes
brought
his
guitar,
and
let
us
finish
our
recitation
with
a
concert.
More
frequently
he
gave
us
the
songs
of
Deutschland
that
we
begged
for.
He
sang
the
"Erl-King"
in
his
own
tongue
admirably.
We
went
through
Follen's
German
Grammar
and
Reader:--what
a
choice
collection
of
extracts
that
"Reader"
was!
We
conquered
the
difficult
gutturals,
like
those
in
the
numeral
"acht
und
achtzig"
(the
test
of
our
pronouncing
abilities)
so
completely
that
the
professor
told
us
a
native
really
would
understand
us!
At
his
request,
I
put
some
little
German
songs
into
English,
which
he
published
as
sheet-music,
with
my
name.
To
hear
my
words
sung
quite
gave
me
the
feeling
of
a
successful
translator.
The
professor
had
his
own
distinctive
name
for
each
of
his
pupils.
Eliza
was
"Naivete,"
from
her
artless
manners;
and
me
he
called
"Etheria,"
probably
on
account
of
my
star-gazing
and
verse-writing
habits.
Certainly
there
was
never
anything
ethereal
in
my
visible
presence.
A
botany
class
was
formed
in
town
by
a
literary
lady
who
was
preparing
a
school
text-book
on
the
subject,
and
Eliza
and
I
joined
that
also.
The
most
I
recall
about
that
is
the
delightful
flower-hunting
rambles
we
took
together.
The
Linnaean
system,
then
in
use,
did
not
give
us
a
very
satisfactory
key
to
the
science.
But
we
made
the
acquaintance
of
hitherto
unfamiliar
wild
flowers
that
grew
around
us,
and
that
was
the
opening
to
us
of
another
door
towards
the
Beautiful.
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