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

It was hard to leave the dear little fellow I had taught to walk and to talk, but I knew he would not be inconsolable. So I only said "I must go,"--and turned my back upon the sea, and my face to the banks of the Merrimack. When I returned I found that I enjoyed even the familiar, unremitting clatter of the mill, because it indicated that something was going on. I liked to feel the people around me, even those whom I did not know, as a wave may like to feel the surrounding waves urging it forward, with or against its own will. I felt that I belonged to the world, that there was something for me to do in it, though I had not yet found out what. Something to do; it might be very little, but still it would be my own work. And then there was the better something which I had almost forgotten--to be! Underneath my dull thoughts the old aspirations were smouldering, the old ideals rose and beckoned to me through the rekindling light. It was always aspiration rather than ambition by which I felt myself stirred. I did not care to outstrip others, and become what is called "distinguished," were that a possibility, so much as I longed to answer the Voice that invited, ever receding, up to invisible heights, however unattainable they might seem. I was conscious of a desire that others should feel something coming to them out of my life like the breath of flowers, the whisper of the winds, the warmth of the sunshine, and the depth of the sky. That, I felt, did not require great gifts or a fine education. We might all be that to each other. And there was no opportunity for vanity or pride in receiving a beautiful influence, and giving it out again.