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

"The human mind! That lofty thing, The palace and the throne Where Reason sits, a sceptred king, And breathes his judgment-tone!" "The human soul! That startling thing, Mysterious and sublime; An angel sleeping on the wing, Worn by the scoffs of time. From heaven in tears to earth it stole-- That startling thing, the human soul." I was just beginning, in my questionings as to the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its true definition from the poets,--that it is love, service, the sacrifice of self for others' good. The lesson was slowly learned, but every hint of it went to my heart, and I kept in silent upon my window wall reminders like that of holy George Herbert:-- "Be useful where thou livest, that they may Both want and wish thy pleasing presence still. --Find out men's wants and will, And meet them there. All worldly joys go less To the one joy of doing kindnesses;" and that well-known passage from Talfourd,-- "The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter, Have their own season. It is a little thing to speak a phase Of common comfort, which, by daily use, Has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear Of him who thought to die unmourned 't will fall Like choicest music." A very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox, almost the only quotation made nowadays from his poems, was often on my sister Emilie's lips, whose heart seemed always to be saying to itself:-- "Pour blessings round thee like a shower of gold!"