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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
82
Most
of
our
every-day
reading
also
came
to
us
over
the
sea.
Miss
Edgworth's
juvenile
stories
were
in
general
circulation,
and
we
knew
"Harry
and
Lucy"
and
"Rosamond"
almost
as
well
as
we
did
our
own
playmates.
But
we
did
not
think
those
English
children
had
so
good
a
time
as
we
did;
they
had
to
be
so
prim
and
methodical.
It
seemed
to
us
that
the
little
folks
across
the
water
never
were
allowed
to
romp
and
run
wild;
some
of
us
may
have
held
a
vague
idea
that
this
freedom
of
ours
was
the
natural
inheritance
of
republican
children
only.
Primroses
and
cowslips
and
daisies
bloomed
in
these
pleasant
story-books
of
ours,
and
we
went
a-Maying
there,
with
our
transatlantic
playmates.
I
think
we
sometimes
started
off
with
our
baskets,
expecting
to
find
those
English
flowers
in
our
own
fields.
How
should
children
be
wiser
than
to
look
for
every
beautiful
thing
they
have
heard
of,
on
home
ground?
And,
indeed,
our
commonest
field-flowers
were,
many
of
them,
importations
from
the
mother-country--clover,
and
dandelions,
and
ox-eye
daisies.
I
was
delighted
when
my
mother
told
me
one
day
that
a
yellow
flower
I
brought
her
was
a
cowslip,
for
I
thought
she
meant
that
it
was
the
genuine
English
cowslip,
which
I
had
read
about.
I
was
disappointed
to
learn
that
it
was
a
native
blossom,
the
marsh-marigold.
My
sisters
had
some
books
that
I
appropriated
to
myself
a
great
deal:
"Paul
and
Virginia;"
"Elizabeth,
or
the
Exiles
of
Siberia;"
"Nina:
an
Icelandic
Tale;"
with
the
"Vicar
of
Wakefield;"
the
"Tour
to
the
Hebrides;"
"Gulliver's
Travels;"
the
"Arabian
Nights;"
and
some
odd
volumes
of
Sir
Walter
Scott's
novels.
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