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A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
65
Besides
the
tales
that
the
child-world
of
all
ages
is
familiar
with,--Red
Riding-Hood,
the
Giant-Killer,
Cinderella,
Aladdin,
the
"Sleeping
Beauty,"
and
the
rest,--she
had
picked
up
somewhere
most
of
the
folk-stories
of
Ireland
and
Scotland,
and
also
the
wild
legends
of
Germany,
which
latter
were
not
then
made
into
the
compact
volumes
known
among
juvenile
readers
of
to-day
as
Grimm's
"Household
Tales."
Her
choice
was
usually
judicious;
she
omitted
the
ghosts
and
goblins
that
would
have
haunted
our
dreams;
although
I
was
now
and
then
visited
by
a
nightmare-consciousness
of
being
a
bewitched
princess
who
must
perform
some
impossible
task,
such
as
turning
a
whole
roomful
of
straws
into
gold,
one
by
one,
or
else
lose
my
head.
But
she
blended
the
humorous
with
the
romantic
in
her
selections,
so
that
we
usually
dropped
to
sleep
in
good
spirits,
if
not
with
a
laugh.
That
old
story
of
the
fisherman
who
had
done
the
"Man
of
the
Sea"
a
favor,
and
was
to
be
rewarded
by
having
his
wish
granted,
she
told
in
so
quaintly
realistic
a
way
that
I
thought
it
might
all
have
happened
on
one
of
the
islands
out
in
Massachusetts
Bay.
The
fisherman
was
foolish
enough,
it
seemed,
to
let
his
wife
do
all
his
wishing
for
him;
and
she,
unsatisfied
still,
though
she
had
been
made
first
an
immensely
rich
woman,
and
then
a
great
queen,
at
last
sent
her
husband
to
ask
that
they
two
might
be
made
rulers
over
the
sun,
moon,
and
stars.
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