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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
80
The
book
that
I
loved
first
and
best,
and
lived
upon
in
my
childhood,
was
"Pilgrim's
Progress."
It
was
as
a
story
that
I
cared
for
it,
although
I
knew
that
it
meant
something
more,--something
that
was
already
going
on
in
my
own
heart
and
life.
Oh,
how
I
used
to
wish
that
I
too
could
start
off
on
a
pilgrimage!
It
would
be
so
much
easier
than
the
continual,
discouraging
struggle
to
be
good!
The
lot
I
most
envied
was
that
of
the
contented
Shepherd
Boy
in
the
Valley
of
Humiliation,
singing
his
cheerful
songs,
and
wearing
"the
herb
called
Heart's
Ease
in
his
bosom";
but
all
the
glorious
ups
and
downs
of
the
"Progress"
I
would
gladly
have
shared
with
Christiana
and
her
children,
never
desiring
to
turn
aside
into
any
"By-Path
Meadow"
while
Mr.
Great-Heart
led
the
way,
and
the
Shining
Ones
came
down
to
meet
us
along
the
road.
It
was
one
of
the
necessities
of
my
nature,
as
a
child,
to
have
some
one
being,
real
or
ideal,
man
or
woman,
before
whom
I
inwardly
bowed
down
and
worshiped.
Mr.
Great-Heart
was
the
perfect
hero
of
my
imagination.
Nobody,
in
books
or
out
of
them,
compared
with
him.
I
wondered
if
there
were
really
any
Mr.
Great-Hearts
to
be
met
with
among
living
men.
I
remember
reading
this
beloved
book
once
in
a
snow-storm,
and
looking
up
from
it
out
among
the
white,
wandering
flakes,
with
a
feeling
that
they
had
come
down
from
heaven
as
its
interpreters;
that
they
were
trying
to
tell
me,
in
their
airy
up-and-down-flight,
the
story
of
innumerable
souls.
I
tried
to
fix
my
eye
on
one
particular
flake,
and
to
follow
its
course
until
it
touched
the
earth.
But
I
found
that
I
could
not.
A
little
breeze
was
stirring
an
the
flake
seemed
to
go
and
return,
to
descend
and
then
ascend
again,
as
if
hastening
homeward
to
the
sky,
losing
itself
at
last
in
the
airy,
infinite
throng,
and
leaving
me
filled
with
thoughts
of
that
"great
multitude,
which
no
man
could
number,
clothed
with
white
robes,"
crowding
so
gloriously
into
the
closing
pages
of
the
Bible.
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