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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
213
Contrasted
with
the
Ohio,
the
Mississippi
had
nothing
to
show
but
breadth
and
muddiness.
More
than
one
of
us
glanced
at
its
level
shores,
edged
with
a
monotonous
growth
of
cottonwood,
and
sent
back
a
sigh
towards
the
banks
of
the
Merrimack.
But
we
did
not
let
each
other
know
what
the
sigh
was
for,
until
long
after.
The
breaking-up
of
our
little
company
when
the
steamboat
landed
at
Saint
Louis
was
like
the
ending
of
a
pleasant
dream.
We
had
to
wake
up
to
the
fact
that
by
striking
due
east
thirty
or
forty
miles
across
that
monotonous
Greenness,
we
should
reach
our
destination,
and
must
accept
whatever
we
should
find
there,
with
such
grace
as
we
could.
What
we
did
find,
and
did
not
find,
there
is
not
room
fully
to
relate
here.
Ours
was
at
first
the
roughest
kind
of
pioneering
experience;
such
as
persons
brought
up
in
our
well-to-do
New
England
could
not
be
in
the
least
prepared
for,
though
they
might
imagine
they
were,
as
we
did.
We
were
dropped
down
finally
upon
a
vast
green
expense,
extending
hundreds
of
miles
north
and
south
through
the
State
of
Illinois,
then
known
as
Looking-Glass
Prairie.
The
nearest
cabin
to
our
own
was
about
a
mile
away,
and
so
small
that
at
that
distance
it
looked
like
a
shingle
set
up
endwise
in
the
grass.
Nothing
else
was
in
sight,
not
even
a
tree,
although
we
could
see
miles
and
miles
in
every
direction.
There
were
only
the
hollow
blue
heavens
above
us
and
the
level
green
prairie
around
us,--an
immensity
of
intense
loneliness.
We
seldom
saw
a
cloud
in
the
sky,
and
never
a
pebble
beneath
our
feet.
If
we
could
have
picked
up
the
commonest
one,
we
should
have
treasured
it
like
a
diamond.
Nothing
in
nature
now
seemed
so
beautiful
to
us
as
rocks.
We
had
never
dreamed
of
a
world
without
them;
it
seemed
like
living
on
a
floor
without
walls
or
foundations.
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