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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
212
The
exhilaration
of
starting
off
on
one's
first
long
journey,
young,
ignorant,
buoyant,
expectant,
is
unlike
anything
else,
unless
it
be
youth
itself,
the
real
beginning
of
the
real
journey--life.
Annoyances
are
overlooked.
Everything
seems
romantic
and
dreamlike.
We
went
by
a
southerly
route,
on
account
of
starting
so
early
in
the
season
there
was
snow
on
the
ground
the
day
we
left.
On
the
second
day,
after
a
moonlight
night
on
Long
Island
Sound,
we
were
floating
down
the
Delaware,
between
shores
misty-green
with
budding
willows;
then
(most
of
us
seasick,
though
I
was
not)
we
were
tossed
across
Chesapeake
Bay;
then
there
was
a
railway
ride
to
the
Alleghanies,
which
gave
us
glimpses
of
the
Potomac
and
the
Blue
Ridge,
and
of
the
lovely
scenery
around
Harper's
Ferry;
then
followed
a
stifling
night
on
the
mountains,
when
we
were
packed
like
sardines
into
a
stagecoach,
without
a
breath
of
air,
and
the
passengers
were
cross
because
the
baby
cried,
while
I
felt
inwardly
glad
that
one
voice
among
us
could
give
utterance
to
the
general
discomfort,
my
own
part
of
which
I
could
have
borne
if
I
could
only
have
had
an
occasional
peep
out
at
the
mountain-side.
After
that
it
was
all
river-voyaging,
down
the
Monongahela
into
the
Ohio,
and
up
the
Mississippi.
As
I
recall
this
part
of
it,
I
should
say
that
it
was
the
perfection
of
a
Western
journey
to
travel
in
early
spring
by
an
Ohio
River
steamboat,--such
steamboats
as
they
had
forty
years
ago,
comfortable,
roomy,
and
well
ordered.
The
company
was
social,
as
Western
emigrants
were
wont
to
be
when
there
were
not
so
very
many
of
them,
and
the
shores
of
the
river,
then
only
thinly
populated,
were
a
constantly
shifting
panorama
of
wilderness
beauty.
I
have
never
since
seen
a
combination
of
spring
colors
so
delicate
as
those
shown
by
the
uplifted
forests
of
the
Ohio,
where
the
pure
white
of
the
dogwood
and
the
peach-bloom
tint
of
the
red-bud
(Judas
tree)
were
contrasted
with
soft
shades
of
green,
almost
endlessly
various,
on
the
unfolding
leafage.
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