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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
219
I
believe
that
the
postponement
of
these
maturer
studies
to
my
early
womanhood,
after
I
had
worked
and
taught,
was
a
benefit
to
me.
I
had
found
out
some
of
my
special
ignorances,
what
the
things
were
which
I
most
needed
to
know.
I
had
learned
that
the
book-knowledge
I
so
much
craved
was
not
itself
education,
was
not
even
culture,
but
only
a
help,
an
adjunct
to
both.
As
I
studied
more
earnestly,
I
cared
for
fewer
books,
but
those
few
made
themselves
indispensable.
It
still
seems
to
me
that
in
the
Lowell
mills,
and
in
my
log-cabin
schoolhouse
on
the
Western
prairies,
I
received
the
best
part
of
my
early
education.
The
great
advantage
of
a
seminary
course
to
me
was
that
under
my
broad-minded
Principal
I
learned
what
education
really
is:
the
penetrating
deeper
and
rising
higher
into
life,
as
well
as
making
continually
wider
explorations;
the
rounding
of
the
whole
human
being
out
of
its
nebulous
elements
into
form,
as
planets
and
suns
are
rounded,
until
they
give
out
safe
and
steady
light.
This
makes
the
process
an
infinite
one,
not
possible
to
be
completed
at
any
school.
Returning
from
the
West
immediately
after
my
graduation,
I
was
for
ten
years
or
so
a
teacher
of
young
girls
in
seminaries
much
like
my
own
Alma
Mater.
The
best
result
to
me
of
that
experience
has
been
the
friendship
of
my
pupils,--a
happiness
which
must
last
as
long
as
life
itself.
A
book
must
end
somewhere,
and
the
natural
boundary
of
this
narrative
is
drawn
with
my
leaving
New
England
for
the
West.
I
was
to
outline
the
story
of
my
youth
for
the
young,
though
I
think
many
a
one
among
them
might
tell
a
story
far
more
interesting
than
mine.
The
most
beautiful
lives
seldom
find
their
way
into
print.
Perhaps
the
most
beautiful
part
of
any
life
never
does.
I
should
like
to
flatter
myself
so.
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