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

I had a great admiration for this girl, because she had come from those wilderness-regions. The scent of pine-woods and checkerberry-leaves seemed to bang about her. I believe I liked her all the better because she said "daown" and "haow." It was part of the mountain-flavor. I tried, on my part, to impress her with stories of the sea; but I did not succeed very well. Her principal comment was, "They don't think much of sailors up aour way." And I received the impression, from her and others, and from my own imagination, that rural life was far more delightful than the life of towns. But there is something in the place where we were born that holds us always by the heartstrings. A town that still has a great deal of the country in it, one that is rich in beautiful scenery and ancestral associations, is almost like a living being, with a body and a soul. We speak of such a town, if our birthplace, as of a mother, and think of ourselves as her sons and daughters. So we felt, my sisters and I, about our dear native town of Beverly. Its miles of sea-border, almost every sunny cove and rocky headland of which was a part of some near relative's homestead, were only half a day's journey distant; and the misty ocean-spaces beyond still widened out on our imagination from the green inland landscape around us. But the hills sometimes shut us in, body and soul. To those who have been reared by the sea a wide horizon is a necessity, both for the mind and for the eye.