A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

My sister, however, cared more to watch the natural development of our minds than to make us follow the direction of hers. She was really our teacher, although she never assumed that position. Certainly I learned more from her about my own capabilities, and how I might put them to use, than I could have done at any school we knew of, had it been possible for me to attend one. I think she was determined that we should not be mentally defrauded by the circumstances which had made it necessary for us to begin so early to win our daily bread. This remark applies especially to me, as my older sisters (only two or three of them had come to Lowell) soon drifted away from us into their own new homes or occupations, and she and I were left together amid the whir of spindles and wheels. One thing she planned for us, her younger housemates,--a dozen or so of cousins, friends, and sisters, some attending school, and some at work in the mill,--was a little fortnightly paper, to be filled with our original contributions, she herself acting as editor. I do not know where she got the idea, unless it was from Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's "Juvenile Miscellany," which had found its way to us some years before,--a most delightful guest, and, I think, the first magazine prepared for American children, who have had so many since then.(I have always been glad that I knew that sweet woman with the child's heart and the poet's soul, in her later years, and could tell her how happy she had helped to make my childhood.) Our little sheet was called "The Diving Bell," probably from the sea-associations of the name. We kept our secrets of authorship very close from everybody except the editor, who had to decipher the handwriting and copy the pieces. It was, indeed, an important part of the fun to guess who wrote particular pieces. After a little while, however, our mannerisms betrayed us. One of my cousins was known to be the chief story-teller, and I was recognized as the leading rhymer among the younger contributors; the editor-sister excelling in her versifying, as she did in almost everything.