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222
A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)
·
Lucy Larcom
96
When
the
others
started
homeward,
I
followed.
I
did
not
mind
their
calling
me
lazy,
nor
that
my
father
gave
me
only
one
tarnished
copper
cent,
while
Lida
received
two
or
three
bright
ones.
I
had
had
what
I
wanted
most.
I
would
rather
sit
under
the
apple-trees
and
hear
the
birds
sing
than
have
a
whole
handful
of
bright
copper
pennies.
It
was
well
for
my
father
and
his
garden
that
his
other
children
were
not
like
me.
The
work
which
I
was
born
to,
but
had
not
begun
to
do,
was
sometimes
a
serious
weight
upon
my
small,
forecasting
brain.
One
of
my
hymns
ended
with
the
lines,--
"With
books,
and
work,
and
healthful
play,
May
my
first
years
be
passed,
That
I
may
give,
for
every
day,
Some
good
account
at
last."
I
knew
all
about
the
books
and
the
play;
but
the
work,--how
should
I
ever
learn
to
do
it?
My
father
had
always
strongly
emphasized
his
wish
that
all
his
children,
girls
as
well
as
boys,
should
have
some
independent
means
of
self-support
by
the
labor
of
their
hands;
that
every
one
should,
as
was
the
general
custom,
"learn
a
trade."
Tailor's
work--the
finishing
of
men's
outside
garments--was
the
trade
learned
most
frequently
by
women
in
those
days,
and
one
or
more
of
my
older
sisters
worked
at
it;
I
think
it
must
have
been
at
home,
for
I
somehow
or
somewhere
got
the
idea,
while
I
was
a
small
child,
that
the
chief
end
of
woman
was
to
make
clothing
for
mankind.
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