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

I wrote more rhymes than anything else, because they came more easily. But I always felt that the ability to write good prose was far more desirable, and it seems so to me still. I will give my little girl readers a single specimen of my twelve-year-old "Diving Bell" verses, though I feel as if I ought to apologize even for that. It is on a common subject, "Life like a Rose":-- "Childhood's like a tender bud That's scarce been formed an hour, But which erelong will doubtless be A bright and lovely flower. "And youth is like a full-blown rose Which has not known decay; But which must soon, alas! too soon! Wither and fade away. "And age is like a withered rose, That bends beneath the blast; But though its beauty all is gone, Its fragrance yet may last." This, and other verses that I wrote then, serve to illustrate the child's usual inclination to look forward meditatively, rather than to think and write of the simple things that belong to children. Our small venture set some of us imagining what larger possibilities might be before us in the far future. We talked over the things we should like to do when we should be women out in the active world; and the author of the shoe-story horrified us by declaring that she meant to be distinguished when she grew up for something, even if it was for something bad! She did go so far in a bad way as to plagiarize a long poem in a subsequent number of the "Diving Bell" but the editor found her out, and we all thought that a reproof from Emilie was sufficient punishment.