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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
35
"My
father
and
mother
Shall
come
unto
the
land,"
sometimes
varying
it
with,
"My
brothers
and
sisters
Shall
come
unto
the
land;"
Nobody
knew
where
I
had
caught
the
words,
but
I
chanted
them
so
constantly
that
my
brother
wrote
them
down,
with
chalk,
on
the
under
side
of
a
table,
where
they
remained
for
years.
My
thought
about
that
other
land
may
have
been
only
a
baby's
dream;
but
the
dream
was
very
real
to
me.
I
used
to
talk,
in
sober
earnest,
about
what
happened
"before
I
was
a
little
girl,
and
came
here
to
live";
and
it
did
seem
to
me
as
if
I
remembered.
But
I
was
hearty
and
robust,
full
of
frolicsome
health,
and
very
fond
of
the
matter-of-fact
world
I
lived
in.
My
sturdy
little
feet
felt
the
solid
earth
beneath
them.
I
grew
with
the
sprouting
grass,
and
enjoyed
my
life
as
the
buds
and
birds
seemed
to
enjoy
theirs.
It
was
only
as
if
the
bud
and
the
bird
and
the
dear
warm
earth
knew,
in
the
same
dumb
way
that
I
did,
that
all
their
joy
and
sweetness
came
to
them
out
of
the
sky.
These
recollections,
that
so
distinctly
belong
the
baby
Myself,
before
she
could
speak
her
thoughts,
though
clear
and
vivid,
are
difficult
to
put
into
shape.
But
other
grown-up
children,
in
looking
back,
will
doubtless
see
many
a
trailing
cloud
of
glory,
that
lighted
their
unconscious
infancy
from
within
and
from
beyond.
I
was
quite
as
literal
as
I
was
visionary
in
my
mental
renderings
of
the
New
Testament,
read
at
Aunt
Hannah's
knee.
I
was
much
taken
with
the
sound
of
words,
without
any
thought
of
their
meaning--a
habit
not
always
outgrown
with
childhood.
The
"sounding
brass
and
tinkling
cymbals,"
for
instance,
in
the
Epistle
to
the
Corinthians,
seemed
to
me
things
to
be
greatly
desired.
"Charity"
was
an
abstract
idea.
I
did
not
know
what
it
meant.
But
"tinkling
cymbals"
one
could
make
music
with.
I
wished
I
could
get
hold
of
them.
It
never
occurred
to
me
that
the
Apostle
meant
to
speak
of
their
melody
slightingly.
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