Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
217
The
course
was
somewhat
elective,
but
her
advice
to
me
was,
not
to
omit
anything
because
I
did
not
like
it.
I
had
a
natural
distaste
for
mathematics,
and
my
recollections
of
my
struggles
with
trigonometry
and
conic
sections
are
not
altogether
those
of
a
conquering
heroine.
But
my
teacher
told
me
that
my
mind
had
need
of
just
that
exact
sort
of
discipline,
and
I
think
she
was
right.
A
habit
of
indiscriminate,
unsystematized
reading,
such
as
I
had
fallen
into,
is
entirely
foreign
to
the
scholarly
habit
of
mind.
Attention
is
the
secret
of
real
acquirement;
but
it
was
months
before
I
could
command
my
own
attention,
even
when
I
was
interested
in
the
subject
I
was
examining.
It
seemed
as
if
all
the
pages
of
all
the
books
I
had
ever
read
were
turning
themselves
over
between
me
and
this
one
page
that
I
wanted
to
understand.
I
found
that
mere
reading
does
not
by
any
means
make
a
student.
It
was
more
to
me
to
come
into
communication
with
my
wise
teacher
as
a
friend
than
even
to
receive
the
wisdom
she
had
to
impart.
She
was
dignified
and
reticent,
but
beneath
her
reserve,
as
is
often
the
case,
was
a
sealed
fountain
of
sympathy,
which
one
who
had
the
key
could
easily
unlock.
Thinking
of
her
nobleness
of
character,
her
piety,
her
learning,
her
power,
and
her
sweetness,
it
seems
to
me
as
if
I
had
once
had
a
Christian
Zenobia
or
Hypatia
for
my
teacher.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
