August 18, 2025 • 33 mins
Step back into the 1800s and experience the life of a seaside country girl in New England. Discover her dreams, aspirations, and the realities of her education and opportunities as she navigates a world shaped by her familys needs. At just 11 years old, she begins working in the Lowell Textile Mills in Massachusetts to support her family—a journey that leads her to edit magazines, teach at Wheaton College, and pen enchanting books filled with her hopes, memories, poetry, and profound insights on life. As she beautifully reflects, “Every little thread must take its place as warp or woof, and keep in it steadily... that we are entirely separate, while yet we entirely belong to the Whole, is a truth that we learn to rejoice in.” The preface, positioned at the end, serves as a fascinating historical afterward that enhances Lucys vivid narratives from the very first page. (Summary by Michele Fry, Book Coordinator)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eight of A New England Girlhood by Lucy Larcombe.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Elsie Selwyn, A New
England Girlhood, Chapter eight, By the River. It did not
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take us younger ones long to get acquainted with our
new home and to love it. To live beside a
river had been to me a child's dream of romance. Rivers,
as I pictured them, came down from the mountains and
were born in the clouds. They were bordered by green meadows,
and graceful trees leaned over to gaze into their bright mirrors.
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Our shallow tidal creek was the only river I had known,
except as visioned on the pages of the Pilgrim's Progress
and in the Book of Revelation, And the Merrimack was
like a continuation of that dream. I soon made myself
familiar with the rocky nooks along Pawtucket Falls, shaded with
hemlocks and white birches. Strange new wild flowers grew beside
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the rushing waters. Among them Sir Walter Scott's own harebells,
which I had never thought of except as blossoms of poetry.
Here they were as real to me as to his
lady of the lake. I loved the harebell, the first
new flower the river gave me, as I had never
loved a flower before. There was but one summer holiday
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for us who worked in the mills, the fourth of July.
We made a point of spending it out of doors,
making excursions down the river to watch the meeting of
the slow Concord and the swift Merrymack, or around by
the old canal path to explore the mysteries of the
guard locks, or across the bridge, clambering up dracket heights
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to look away to the dim blue mountains. On that morning,
it was our custom to wake one another at four
o'clock and start off on a tramp together over some
retired road whose its chief charm was its unfamiliarity, returning
to a very late breakfast with draggled gowns and aprons
full of dewy wild roses. No matter, if we must
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get up at five the next morning and go back
to our hundrum toil, we should have the roses to
take with us for company, and the sweet air of
the woodland, which lingered about them, would scent our thoughts
all day and make us forget the oily smell of
the machinery. We were children still, whether at school or
at work, and Nature still held us close to her
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motherly heart. Nature came very close to the mill gates too.
In those days. There was green grass all around them.
Violets and wild geraniums grew by the canals, and long
stretches of open land between the corporation buildings and the
street made the town seem country. Like the slope behind
our mills the Lawrence Mills was a green lawn, and
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in front of some of them the overseers had gay
flower gardens. We passed into our work through a splendor
of dahlias and hollyhocks. The gray stone walls of Saint
Anne's Church and Rectory made a picturesque spot in the
middle of the town, remaining still as a lasting monument
to the religious purpose which animated the first manufacturers. The
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church arose close to the oldest corporation, the Merrimack, and
seemed a part of it, and a part also of
the original idea of the place itself, which was always
a city of worshippers, although it came to be filled
with a population which preferred meeting houses to churches. I
admired the church greatly. I had never before seen a
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real one, never anything but a plain frame meeting house,
and it, in its benign, apostolic looking rector, were like
a leaf out of an English story book. And so
also was the tiny white cottage nearly opposite, set in
the middle of a pretty flower garden that sloped down
to the canal. In the garden there was almost always
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a sweet little girl in a pink gown and white
sunbonnet gathering flowers when I passed that way, and I
often went out of my path to do so. These
relieved the monotony of the shanty like shops which bordered
the main street. The town had sprung up with a
mushroom rapidity, and there was no attempt at veiling the
newness of its bricks and mortar, its boards and paint.
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But there were buildings that had their own individuality and
asserted it. One of these was a mud cabin with
a thatched roof that looked as if it had emigrated
bodily from the bogs of Ireland. It had settled itself
down into a green hollow by the roadside, and it
looked as much at home with the lilac tinted crane's
bill and yellow buttercups, as if it had never lost
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sight of the shamrocks of Erin. Now too, my childish
desire to see a real beggar was gratified. Straggling petitioners
for cold victuals hung around our back yard, always of
a Hibernian extraction, and a slice of bread was rewarded
with a shower of benedictions that lost itself upon us,
and the flood of its own incomprehensible. Some time every summer,
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a fleet of canoes would glide noiselessly up the river,
and a company of Panobscot Indians would land at a
green point almost in sight from our windows. Pottucket Falls
had always been one of their favorite camping places. Their
strange endeavors to combine civilization with savagery were a great
source of amusement to US. Men and women clad alike
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in loose gowns, stove pipe hats, and moccasins, grotesque relics
of Aboriginal forest life. The sight of these uncouth looking
red men made the romance fade entirely out of the
Indian stories we had heard. Still, their Wigwam camp was
a show we would not willingly have missed. The transition
from childhood to girlhood, when a little girl has had
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an almost unlimited freedom of outdoor life, is practically the
toning down of a mild sort of barbarianism, and is
often attended by a painfully awkward self consciousness. I had
an innate dislike of conventionalities. I clung to the child
aliable privilege of running half wild, and when I found
that I really was growing up, I felt quite rebellious.
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I was as tall as a woman at thirteen, and
my older sisters insisted upon lengthening my dresses and putting
up my mop of hair with a comb. I felt
injured and almost outraged because my protestations against this treatment
were unheeded, And when the transformation in my visible appearance
was effected, I went away by myself and had a
good cry, which I would not for the world have
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had them know about, as that would have added humiliation
to my distress. And the greatest pity about it was
that I too soon became accustomed to the situation. I
felt like a child, but considered it my duty to
think and behave like a woman. I began to look
upon it as a very serious thing to live. The
untried burden seemed already to have touched my shoulders. For
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a time, I was morbidly self critical and at the
same time extremely reserved. The associates I chose were usually
grave young women ten or five fifteen years older than myself,
but I think I felt older and appeared older than
they did. Childhood, however, is not easily defrauded of its birthright,
and mine soon reasserted itself. At home, I was among
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children of my own age. For some cousins and other
acquaintances had come to live and work with us. We
had our evening frolics and entertainments together, and we always
made the most of our brief holiday hours. We had
also with us now the sister Emily of my fairy
tale memories, who had grown into a strong, earnest hearted woman.
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We all looked up to her as our model and
the ideal of our heroine worship. For our deference to
her in every way did amount to that She watched
over us gave us needed reproof and commendation, rarely cousetted us,
but rather made us laugh at what many would have
considered the hardships of our lot. She taught us not
only to accept the circumstances in which we found ourselves,
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but to win from them courage and strength. When we
came in shivering from our work through a snowstorm, complaining
of numb hands and feet, she would say, cheerily, but
it doesn't make you any warmer to say you are cold.
And this was typical of the way she took life
generally and tried to have us take it. She was
constantly denying herself for our sakes, without making us feel
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that she was doing so. But she did not let
us get into the bad habit of pitying ourselves because
we were not as well off as many other children,
and indeed we considered ourselves pleasantly situated. But the best
of it all was that we had her. Her theories
for herself, and her practice too, were rather severe, but
we tried to follow them according to our weaker abilities.
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Her custom was, for instance, to take a full cold
bath every morning before she went to her work, even
though the water was chiefly broken ice, and we did
the same whenever we could be resolute enough. It required
both nerve and will to do this at five o'clock
on a zero morning and a room without a fire,
but it helped us to harden ourselves while we formed
a good habit. The working day in winter began at
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the very earliest daylight and ended at half past seven
in the evening. Another habit of hers was to keep
always beside her at her daily work, something to study
or to think about. At first it was Watts on
the Improvement of the Mind, arranged as a text book
with questions and answers by the Minister of Beverly, who
had made the thought of the millennium such a reality
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to his people. She quite wore this book out, carrying
it about with her in her working dress pocket. After that,
Locke on the Understanding was used in the same way.
She must have known both books through and through by heart.
Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their physics
and metaphysics with our girl Borders, some of whom had
remarkably acute and well balanced minds. Her own seemed to
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have turned from its early bent toward the romantic, her
taste being now for serious and practical, though sometimes abstruse themes.
I remember that Young and po were her favorite poets.
I could not keep up with her in her studies
and readings, for many of the books she liked seemed
to me very dry. I did not easily take to
the argumentative or moralizing method, which I came to regard
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as a proof of the weakness of my own intellect
in comparison with hers. I would gladly have kept pace
with her if I could. Anything under the heading of didactic.
Like some of the pieces in the old English Reader
used by school children in the generation just before hours,
always repelled me. But I thought it necessary to discipline
myself by reading such pieces, and my first attempt at
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prose composition on friendship was stiffly modeled after a certain
didactic essay and that same English reader. 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
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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
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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
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with our original contributions, she herself acting as editor. I
do not know where she got the idea, unless it
was from missus 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
America children, who have had so many since then. I
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have always been glad that I knew that sweet woman
with the child's heart in 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
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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's sister excelling in her versifying as she did
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in almost everything. It was a cluster of very conscious
looking little girls that assembled one evening in the attic room,
chosen on account of its remoteness from intruders, for we
did not admit even the family a public The writers
themselves were the only audience to listen to the reading
of our first paper. We took Saturday evening because that
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was longer than the other workday evenings, the mills being
closed earlier. Such guessing and wondering and admiring as we had,
but nobody would acknowledge her own work, for that would
have spoiled the pleasure. Only there were certain wise hints
and maxims that we knew never came from any juvenile
head among us, and those we set down as editorials.
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Some of the stories contained rather remarkable incidents. One, written
to illustrate a little girl's habit of carelessness about her
own special belongings, told of her rising one morning and,
after hunting around for her shoes half an hour or so,
finding them in the bookcase where she had accidentally locked
them up the night before. To convince myself that I
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could write something besides rhymes, I had attempted an essay
of half a column on a very extensive subject my
It began loftily, what a noble and beautiful thing as mind,
and it went on in the same high flown strain
to no particular end. But the editor praised it, after
having declined the verdict of the audience that she was
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its author, and I felt sufficiently flattered by both judgments.
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
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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 ere long will
doubtless be a bright and lovely flower. And youth is
like a full blown rose which has not known decay,
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but which must soon alas too soon whither and fade away.
An 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 served to illustrate the child's usual inclination to
look forward minitatively, rather than to think and write of
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the simple things that belonged to children. Our small adventure
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
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it was for something bad. She did go so far
in a bad way as to plagiarize a little poem
and a subsequent number of the Diving Bell. But the
editor found her out, and we all thought that a
reproof from Emily was sufficient punishment. I do not know
whether it was fortunate or unfortunate for me that I
had not but nature what is called literary ambition. I
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knew that I had a knack at rhyming, and I
knew that I enjoyed nothing better than to try to
put thoughts and words together in any way. But I
did it for the pleasure of rhyming and writing, indifferent
as to what might come of it. For anyone who
could take hold of every day practical work and carry
it on successfully. I had a profound respect. To be
what is called capable seemed to me better worth while
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than merely to have a taste or talent for writing,
perhaps because I was conscious of my deficiencies and the
former respect. But certainly the world needs deeds more than
it needs words. I should never have been willing to
be only a writer without using my hands to some
good purpose. Besides, my sister, however, told me that here
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was a talent which I had no right to neglect,
and which I ought to make the most of. I
believed in her. I thought she understood me better than
I understood myself, and it was a comfort to be
assured that my scribbling was not wholly waste of time.
So I used pencil and paper and every spare minute
I could find. Our little home journal went bravely on
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through twelve numbers. Its yellow manuscript pages occasionally meet my
eyes when I am rummaging among my old papers, with
a half conscious look of a waif that knows it
has no right to its escape from the waters of oblivion.
While it was in progress, my sister Emily became acquainted
with a family of bright girls near neighbors of ours,
who proposed that we should join with them and form
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a little society of writing and discussion, to meet fortnightly
at their house. We met, I think I was the
youngest of the group, prepared a constitution and by laws,
and named ourselves the Improvement Circle. If I remember rightly,
my sister was our first president. The older ones talked
and wrote on many subjects quite above me. I was
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shrinkingly bashful, as half grown girls usually are, but I
wrote my little essays and read them, and listened to
the rest, and enjoyed it all exceedingly. Out of this
little improvement circle grew the larger one Whence issued the
Lowell Offering a year or two later. At this time
I had learned to do a spinner's work, and I
obtained permission to tend some frames that stood directly in
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front of the river windows, with only them in the
wall behind me, extending half the length of the mill,
and one young woman beside me at the farther end
of the row. She was a sober, mature person who
scarcely thought it worth her while to speak often to
a child like me. And I was, when with strangers,
rather a reserved girl. So I kept myself occupied with
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the river, my work and my thoughts. And the river
and my thoughts flowed on together the happiest of companions,
like a loitering pilgrim. It sparkled up to me in
recognition as it glided along, and bore away my little
frets and fatigues on its bosom. When the work went well,
I sat in the window seat and let my fancies
fly whither they would, downward to the sea or upward
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to the hills that hid the mountain cradle of the mare.
The printed regulations forbade us to bring books into the mill.
So I made my window seat into a small library
of poetry, pasting its side all over with newspaper clippings.
In those days we had only weekly papers, and they
had always a poet's corner, where standard writers were well represented,
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with anonymous ones. Also, I was, not, of course, much
of a critic. I chose my verses for their sentiment
and because I wanted to commit them to memory. Sometimes
it was a long poem, sometimes a hymn, sometimes only
a stray verse. Missus Hemmons sang with me far away
o'er the blue hills, far away, and I learned and
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loved her better land. And if thou hast crushed a
flower in kindred hearts, I wonder if miss Landon really
did write that fine poem to mont Blanc, which was
printed in her volume, but which sounds so entirely unlike
everything else she wrote. This was one of my window gems.
It ended with the appeal alas for thy past mystery,
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for thine untrodden snow, nurse of the tempest, hast thou
none to guard thine outraged brow. And it contained a
stanza that I often now repeat to myself. We know
too much. Scroll after scroll weighs down our weary shells.
Our only point of ignorance is centered in ourselves. There
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was one anonymous waif in my collection that I was
very fond of. I have never seen it since, nor
ever had the least clue to its authorship. It stirred
me and haunted me, and it often comes back to
me now and snatches like these. The human mind, that
lofty thing, the palace and the throne where reason sits
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a sceptred king and breathes his judgment tone. The human soul,
that startling thing, mysterious and sublime, and angel sleeping on
the wing worn by the scoffs of time from heaven
and tears to earth. It stole that startling thing, the
human soul. I was just beginning in my questionings as
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to the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its
true definition from the poet that it is love, service,
the sacrifice of self for others good. The lesson was
slowly learned, but every hint of it went my heart,
and I kept in sight upon my window wall reminders
like that of Holy George Herbert. Be useful where thou'st livest,
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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 Talford, The
blessings which the weak and poor can scatter have their
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own season. It is a little thing to speak a
phrase of common comfort, which by daily use has almost
lost it. Since yet on the ear of him who
thought to die unmourned, twill fall like choicest music. A
very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox. Almost the only quotation
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made nowadays from his poems was often on my sister
Emily's lips, whose heart seemed always to be saying to itself,
poor blessings round thee like a shower of gold. I
had that beside me too, and I copy part of
it here for her sake, and because it will be
good for my girl readers to keep in mind. One
of the noblest utterances of an almost forgotten American poet,
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roused to some work of high and holy love and
thou an angel's happiness, shalt know, shalt bless the earth.
While in the world above the good begun by thee
shall onward flow the pure, sweet stream, shall deeper, wider
grow the seed that, in these few and fleeting hours
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thy hand, unsparing and unwearied, so shall deck thy grave
with amaranthan flowers, and yield thee fruits divine and Heaven's
immortal bowers. One great advantage which came to these many
stranger girls through being brought together away from their own homes,
was that it taught them to go out of themselves
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and enter into the lives of others. Home life when
one always stays at home as necessarily narrowing. That is
one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful
of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly
begun to live until we can take in the idea
of the whole human family as the one to which
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we truly belong. To me, it was an incalculable help
to find myself among so many working girls, all of
us thrown upon our own resources, but thrown much more
upon each other's sympathies. In the stream beside which we toiled,
added to its own inspirations, human suggestions drawn from our
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acquaintance with each other, It blended itself with the flow
of our lives. Almost the first of my poemlets in
the Lowell Offering was entitled the River. These are some
lines of it, gently flowed, a river bright on its
path of liquid light, gleaming now soft banks between winding
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now through valleys, green, cheering, with its presence mild cultured
fields and woodlands wild. Is not such a pure one's life, ever,
Shunning pride and strife, noiselessly along she goes, known by
gentle deeds she does, often wandering far to bless and
do others kindnesses. Thus by her own virtue shaded, while
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pure thoughts like starbeams lie mirrored in her heart and eye,
she content to be unknown, all serenely moveth on till
released from time's commotion, self as lost and love's wide ocean.
There was many a young girl near me whose life
was like the beautiful course of the river. In my
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ideal of her, the merrymac had blent its music with
the onward song of many A lovely soul that clad
and plain working clothes moved heavenward beside its waters. One
of the loveliest persons I ever knew was a young
girl who worked opposite to me in the spinning room.
Our eyes made us friends long before we spoke to
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each other. She was an orphan, well bred and well educated,
about twenty years old, and she had brought with her
to her place of toil, the orphan child of her sister,
left to her as a death bed legacy. They boarded
with a relative. The factory boarding houses were often managed
by families of genuine refinement, as in this case, and
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the one comfort of Caroline's life was her beautiful little niece,
to whom she could go home when the day's work
was over. Her bereavements had given an appealing sadness to
her whole expression, but she had accepted them and her
changed circumstances with the submission of profound faith, which everybody
about her felt. And everything she said and did, I
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think I first knew through her how character can teach
without words. To see her and her little niece together
was almost like looking at a picture of the Madonna.
Caroline afterwards became an inmate of my mother's family, and
we were warm friends until her death a few years ago.
Some of the girls could not believe that the Bible
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was meant to be counted among forbidden books. We all
thought that the scriptures had a right to go wherever
we went, and that if we needed them anywhere, it
was at our work. I evaded the law by carrying
some leaves from a torn Testament in my pocket. The overseer,
caring more for law than gospel, confiscated all he found.
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He had his desk full of Bibles. It sounded oddly
to hear him say to the most religious girl in
the room when he took hers away, I did think
you had more conscience than to bring that book here.
But we had some close ethical questions to settle. In
those days. It was a rigid code of morality under
which we lived. Nobody complained of it, however, and we
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were doubtless better off for its strictness. In the end,
the last window in the row behind me was filled
with flourishing house plants, fragrant leaved geraniums, the overseer's pets.
They gave that corner a bowery look. The perfume and
freshness tempted me there. Often, standing before that window, I
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could look across the room and see girls moving backwards
and forwards among the spinning frames, sometimes stooping, sometimes reaching
up their arms as their work required, with ease and
not ungraceful movements. On the whole, it was far from
being a disagreeable place to stay in. The girls were
bright looking and neat, and everything was kept clean and shining.
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The effect of the whole was rather attractive to strangers.
My grandfather came to see my mother once at about
this time and visited the mills. When he had entered
our room and looked around for a moment, he took
off his hats and made a low bow to the girls,
first toward the right and then toward the left. We
were familiar with his courteous habits, partly due to his
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French descent, but we had never seen anybody bow to
a room full of mill girls in that polite way,
and some one of the family afterwards asked him why
he did so. He looked a little surprised at the question,
but answered promptly and with dignity. I always take off
my hat to ladies. His courtesy was genuine. Still, we
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did not call ourselves ladies. We did not forget that
we were working girls, wearing coarse aprons suitable to our work,
and that there was some danger of our becoming drudges.
I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became
very wearisome to me, and the sweet june weather I
would lean far out of the window and try not
to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside. Looking away
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to the hills, my whole stifled being would cry out,
Oh that I had wings. Still. I was there from choice,
and the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is,
and I was every day making discoveries about life and
about myself. I had naturally some elements of the recluse,
and would never of my own choice have lived in
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a crowd. I loved quietness. The noise of machinery was
particularly distasteful to me. But I found that the crowd
was made up of single human lives, not one of
them wholly uninteresting when separately known. I learned also that
there are many things which belonged to the whole world
of us together, that no one of us, nor any
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few of us, can claim or enjoy for ourselves alone.
I discovered too that I could so accustom myself to
the noise that it became like a silence to me,
and I defied the machinery to make me its slave.
Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my
thoughts if I would let them fly high enough. Even
the long hours, the early rising, and the regularity enforced
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by the clangor of the bell were good discipline for
one who was naturally inclined to dally and to dream,
and who loved her own personal liberty. With a willful
rebellion against control. Perhaps I could have brought myself into
the limitations of order and method in no other way.
Like a plant that starts up in showers in sunshine
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and does not know which has best helped it to grow,
it is difficult to say whether the hard things or
the pleasant things did me most good. But when I
was sincerest with myself, as also what I thought least
about it, I know that I was glad to be
alive and to be just where I was. It is
a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances
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of circumstances over which we have no control. But it
is a greater victory when we can make those circumstances
our helpers when we can appreciate the good there is
in them. It has often seemed to me as if
life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, child,
you must learn to like me and the form in
which you see me, before I can offer myself to
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you in any other aspect. It was so with this
disagreeable necessity of living among many people. There is nothing
more miserable than to lose the feeling of our own distinctiveness,
since that is our only clue to the purpose behind
us and the end before us. But when we have
discovered that human beings are not a mere mass, but
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an orderly whole of which we are a part, it
is all so different. This we working girls might have
learned from the webs of cloth we saw woven around us.
Every little thread must take its place as warp or wolf,
and keep in it steadily. Left to itself, it would
be only a loose, useless filament trying to wander in
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an independent or disconnected way among the other threads. It
would make of the whole web an inextricable snarl. Yet
each little thread must be as firmly spun as if
it were the only one, or the result would be
a worthless fabric that we are entirely separate, while yet
we entirely belong to the whole. Is the truth that
we learn to rejoice in as we come to understand
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more and more of ourselves and of this human life
of ours, which seems so complicated and yet is so simple.
And when we once get a glimpse of the divine
plan in it all and know that to be just
where we are doing, just what we are doing, just
at this hour, because it is our appointed hour. When
we become aware that this is the very best thing
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possible for us in God's universe, the hard task grows easy,
the tiresome employment welcome and delightful. Having fitted ourselves to
our present work in such a way as this, we
are usually prepared for better work and are sent to
take a better place. Perhaps this is one of the
unfailing laws of progress in our being. Perhaps the master
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of life always rewards those who do their little faithfully
by giving them some greater opportunity for faithfulness. Certainly it
is a comfort wherever we are to say to ourselves,
thou camest not to thy place by accident, It is
the very place God meant for thee end of Chapter
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eight By the River read by Elsie Selwyn,
Chapter eight of A New England Girlhood by Lucy Larcombe.
This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
visit LibriVox dot org. Read by Elsie Selwyn, A New
England Girlhood, Chapter eight, By the River. It did not
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take us younger ones long to get acquainted with our
new home and to love it. To live beside a
river had been to me a child's dream of romance. Rivers,
as I pictured them, came down from the mountains and
were born in the clouds. They were bordered by green meadows,
and graceful trees leaned over to gaze into their bright mirrors.
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Our shallow tidal creek was the only river I had known,
except as visioned on the pages of the Pilgrim's Progress
and in the Book of Revelation, And the Merrimack was
like a continuation of that dream. I soon made myself
familiar with the rocky nooks along Pawtucket Falls, shaded with
hemlocks and white birches. Strange new wild flowers grew beside
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the rushing waters. Among them Sir Walter Scott's own harebells,
which I had never thought of except as blossoms of poetry.
Here they were as real to me as to his
lady of the lake. I loved the harebell, the first
new flower the river gave me, as I had never
loved a flower before. There was but one summer holiday
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for us who worked in the mills, the fourth of July.
We made a point of spending it out of doors,
making excursions down the river to watch the meeting of
the slow Concord and the swift Merrymack, or around by
the old canal path to explore the mysteries of the
guard locks, or across the bridge, clambering up dracket heights
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to look away to the dim blue mountains. On that morning,
it was our custom to wake one another at four
o'clock and start off on a tramp together over some
retired road whose its chief charm was its unfamiliarity, returning
to a very late breakfast with draggled gowns and aprons
full of dewy wild roses. No matter, if we must
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get up at five the next morning and go back
to our hundrum toil, we should have the roses to
take with us for company, and the sweet air of
the woodland, which lingered about them, would scent our thoughts
all day and make us forget the oily smell of
the machinery. We were children still, whether at school or
at work, and Nature still held us close to her
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motherly heart. Nature came very close to the mill gates too.
In those days. There was green grass all around them.
Violets and wild geraniums grew by the canals, and long
stretches of open land between the corporation buildings and the
street made the town seem country. Like the slope behind
our mills the Lawrence Mills was a green lawn, and
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in front of some of them the overseers had gay
flower gardens. We passed into our work through a splendor
of dahlias and hollyhocks. The gray stone walls of Saint
Anne's Church and Rectory made a picturesque spot in the
middle of the town, remaining still as a lasting monument
to the religious purpose which animated the first manufacturers. The
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church arose close to the oldest corporation, the Merrimack, and
seemed a part of it, and a part also of
the original idea of the place itself, which was always
a city of worshippers, although it came to be filled
with a population which preferred meeting houses to churches. I
admired the church greatly. I had never before seen a
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real one, never anything but a plain frame meeting house,
and it, in its benign, apostolic looking rector, were like
a leaf out of an English story book. And so
also was the tiny white cottage nearly opposite, set in
the middle of a pretty flower garden that sloped down
to the canal. In the garden there was almost always
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a sweet little girl in a pink gown and white
sunbonnet gathering flowers when I passed that way, and I
often went out of my path to do so. These
relieved the monotony of the shanty like shops which bordered
the main street. The town had sprung up with a
mushroom rapidity, and there was no attempt at veiling the
newness of its bricks and mortar, its boards and paint.
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But there were buildings that had their own individuality and
asserted it. One of these was a mud cabin with
a thatched roof that looked as if it had emigrated
bodily from the bogs of Ireland. It had settled itself
down into a green hollow by the roadside, and it
looked as much at home with the lilac tinted crane's
bill and yellow buttercups, as if it had never lost
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sight of the shamrocks of Erin. Now too, my childish
desire to see a real beggar was gratified. Straggling petitioners
for cold victuals hung around our back yard, always of
a Hibernian extraction, and a slice of bread was rewarded
with a shower of benedictions that lost itself upon us,
and the flood of its own incomprehensible. Some time every summer,
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a fleet of canoes would glide noiselessly up the river,
and a company of Panobscot Indians would land at a
green point almost in sight from our windows. Pottucket Falls
had always been one of their favorite camping places. Their
strange endeavors to combine civilization with savagery were a great
source of amusement to US. Men and women clad alike
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in loose gowns, stove pipe hats, and moccasins, grotesque relics
of Aboriginal forest life. The sight of these uncouth looking
red men made the romance fade entirely out of the
Indian stories we had heard. Still, their Wigwam camp was
a show we would not willingly have missed. The transition
from childhood to girlhood, when a little girl has had
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an almost unlimited freedom of outdoor life, is practically the
toning down of a mild sort of barbarianism, and is
often attended by a painfully awkward self consciousness. I had
an innate dislike of conventionalities. I clung to the child
aliable privilege of running half wild, and when I found
that I really was growing up, I felt quite rebellious.
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I was as tall as a woman at thirteen, and
my older sisters insisted upon lengthening my dresses and putting
up my mop of hair with a comb. I felt
injured and almost outraged because my protestations against this treatment
were unheeded, And when the transformation in my visible appearance
was effected, I went away by myself and had a
good cry, which I would not for the world have
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had them know about, as that would have added humiliation
to my distress. And the greatest pity about it was
that I too soon became accustomed to the situation. I
felt like a child, but considered it my duty to
think and behave like a woman. I began to look
upon it as a very serious thing to live. The
untried burden seemed already to have touched my shoulders. For
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a time, I was morbidly self critical and at the
same time extremely reserved. The associates I chose were usually
grave young women ten or five fifteen years older than myself,
but I think I felt older and appeared older than
they did. Childhood, however, is not easily defrauded of its birthright,
and mine soon reasserted itself. At home, I was among
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children of my own age. For some cousins and other
acquaintances had come to live and work with us. We
had our evening frolics and entertainments together, and we always
made the most of our brief holiday hours. We had
also with us now the sister Emily of my fairy
tale memories, who had grown into a strong, earnest hearted woman.
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We all looked up to her as our model and
the ideal of our heroine worship. For our deference to
her in every way did amount to that She watched
over us gave us needed reproof and commendation, rarely cousetted us,
but rather made us laugh at what many would have
considered the hardships of our lot. She taught us not
only to accept the circumstances in which we found ourselves,
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but to win from them courage and strength. When we
came in shivering from our work through a snowstorm, complaining
of numb hands and feet, she would say, cheerily, but
it doesn't make you any warmer to say you are cold.
And this was typical of the way she took life
generally and tried to have us take it. She was
constantly denying herself for our sakes, without making us feel
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that she was doing so. But she did not let
us get into the bad habit of pitying ourselves because
we were not as well off as many other children,
and indeed we considered ourselves pleasantly situated. But the best
of it all was that we had her. Her theories
for herself, and her practice too, were rather severe, but
we tried to follow them according to our weaker abilities.
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Her custom was, for instance, to take a full cold
bath every morning before she went to her work, even
though the water was chiefly broken ice, and we did
the same whenever we could be resolute enough. It required
both nerve and will to do this at five o'clock
on a zero morning and a room without a fire,
but it helped us to harden ourselves while we formed
a good habit. The working day in winter began at
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the very earliest daylight and ended at half past seven
in the evening. Another habit of hers was to keep
always beside her at her daily work, something to study
or to think about. At first it was Watts on
the Improvement of the Mind, arranged as a text book
with questions and answers by the Minister of Beverly, who
had made the thought of the millennium such a reality
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to his people. She quite wore this book out, carrying
it about with her in her working dress pocket. After that,
Locke on the Understanding was used in the same way.
She must have known both books through and through by heart.
Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and discussed their physics
and metaphysics with our girl Borders, some of whom had
remarkably acute and well balanced minds. Her own seemed to
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have turned from its early bent toward the romantic, her
taste being now for serious and practical, though sometimes abstruse themes.
I remember that Young and po were her favorite poets.
I could not keep up with her in her studies
and readings, for many of the books she liked seemed
to me very dry. I did not easily take to
the argumentative or moralizing method, which I came to regard
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as a proof of the weakness of my own intellect
in comparison with hers. I would gladly have kept pace
with her if I could. Anything under the heading of didactic.
Like some of the pieces in the old English Reader
used by school children in the generation just before hours,
always repelled me. But I thought it necessary to discipline
myself by reading such pieces, and my first attempt at
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prose composition on friendship was stiffly modeled after a certain
didactic essay and that same English reader. 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
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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
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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
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with our original contributions, she herself acting as editor. I
do not know where she got the idea, unless it
was from missus 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
America children, who have had so many since then. I
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have always been glad that I knew that sweet woman
with the child's heart in 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
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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's sister excelling in her versifying as she did
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in almost everything. It was a cluster of very conscious
looking little girls that assembled one evening in the attic room,
chosen on account of its remoteness from intruders, for we
did not admit even the family a public The writers
themselves were the only audience to listen to the reading
of our first paper. We took Saturday evening because that
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was longer than the other workday evenings, the mills being
closed earlier. Such guessing and wondering and admiring as we had,
but nobody would acknowledge her own work, for that would
have spoiled the pleasure. Only there were certain wise hints
and maxims that we knew never came from any juvenile
head among us, and those we set down as editorials.
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Some of the stories contained rather remarkable incidents. One, written
to illustrate a little girl's habit of carelessness about her
own special belongings, told of her rising one morning and,
after hunting around for her shoes half an hour or so,
finding them in the bookcase where she had accidentally locked
them up the night before. To convince myself that I
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could write something besides rhymes, I had attempted an essay
of half a column on a very extensive subject my
It began loftily, what a noble and beautiful thing as mind,
and it went on in the same high flown strain
to no particular end. But the editor praised it, after
having declined the verdict of the audience that she was
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its author, and I felt sufficiently flattered by both judgments.
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
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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 ere long will
doubtless be a bright and lovely flower. And youth is
like a full blown rose which has not known decay,
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but which must soon alas too soon whither and fade away.
An 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 served to illustrate the child's usual inclination to
look forward minitatively, rather than to think and write of
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the simple things that belonged to children. Our small adventure
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
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it was for something bad. She did go so far
in a bad way as to plagiarize a little poem
and a subsequent number of the Diving Bell. But the
editor found her out, and we all thought that a
reproof from Emily was sufficient punishment. I do not know
whether it was fortunate or unfortunate for me that I
had not but nature what is called literary ambition. I
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knew that I had a knack at rhyming, and I
knew that I enjoyed nothing better than to try to
put thoughts and words together in any way. But I
did it for the pleasure of rhyming and writing, indifferent
as to what might come of it. For anyone who
could take hold of every day practical work and carry
it on successfully. I had a profound respect. To be
what is called capable seemed to me better worth while
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than merely to have a taste or talent for writing,
perhaps because I was conscious of my deficiencies and the
former respect. But certainly the world needs deeds more than
it needs words. I should never have been willing to
be only a writer without using my hands to some
good purpose. Besides, my sister, however, told me that here
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was a talent which I had no right to neglect,
and which I ought to make the most of. I
believed in her. I thought she understood me better than
I understood myself, and it was a comfort to be
assured that my scribbling was not wholly waste of time.
So I used pencil and paper and every spare minute
I could find. Our little home journal went bravely on
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through twelve numbers. Its yellow manuscript pages occasionally meet my
eyes when I am rummaging among my old papers, with
a half conscious look of a waif that knows it
has no right to its escape from the waters of oblivion.
While it was in progress, my sister Emily became acquainted
with a family of bright girls near neighbors of ours,
who proposed that we should join with them and form
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a little society of writing and discussion, to meet fortnightly
at their house. We met, I think I was the
youngest of the group, prepared a constitution and by laws,
and named ourselves the Improvement Circle. If I remember rightly,
my sister was our first president. The older ones talked
and wrote on many subjects quite above me. I was
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shrinkingly bashful, as half grown girls usually are, but I
wrote my little essays and read them, and listened to
the rest, and enjoyed it all exceedingly. Out of this
little improvement circle grew the larger one Whence issued the
Lowell Offering a year or two later. At this time
I had learned to do a spinner's work, and I
obtained permission to tend some frames that stood directly in
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front of the river windows, with only them in the
wall behind me, extending half the length of the mill,
and one young woman beside me at the farther end
of the row. She was a sober, mature person who
scarcely thought it worth her while to speak often to
a child like me. And I was, when with strangers,
rather a reserved girl. So I kept myself occupied with
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the river, my work and my thoughts. And the river
and my thoughts flowed on together the happiest of companions,
like a loitering pilgrim. It sparkled up to me in
recognition as it glided along, and bore away my little
frets and fatigues on its bosom. When the work went well,
I sat in the window seat and let my fancies
fly whither they would, downward to the sea or upward
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to the hills that hid the mountain cradle of the mare.
The printed regulations forbade us to bring books into the mill.
So I made my window seat into a small library
of poetry, pasting its side all over with newspaper clippings.
In those days we had only weekly papers, and they
had always a poet's corner, where standard writers were well represented,
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with anonymous ones. Also, I was, not, of course, much
of a critic. I chose my verses for their sentiment
and because I wanted to commit them to memory. Sometimes
it was a long poem, sometimes a hymn, sometimes only
a stray verse. Missus Hemmons sang with me far away
o'er the blue hills, far away, and I learned and
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loved her better land. And if thou hast crushed a
flower in kindred hearts, I wonder if miss Landon really
did write that fine poem to mont Blanc, which was
printed in her volume, but which sounds so entirely unlike
everything else she wrote. This was one of my window gems.
It ended with the appeal alas for thy past mystery,
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for thine untrodden snow, nurse of the tempest, hast thou
none to guard thine outraged brow. And it contained a
stanza that I often now repeat to myself. We know
too much. Scroll after scroll weighs down our weary shells.
Our only point of ignorance is centered in ourselves. There
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was one anonymous waif in my collection that I was
very fond of. I have never seen it since, nor
ever had the least clue to its authorship. It stirred
me and haunted me, and it often comes back to
me now and snatches like these. The human mind, that
lofty thing, the palace and the throne where reason sits
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a sceptred king and breathes his judgment tone. The human soul,
that startling thing, mysterious and sublime, and angel sleeping on
the wing worn by the scoffs of time from heaven
and tears to earth. It stole that startling thing, the
human soul. I was just beginning in my questionings as
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to the meaning of life, to get glimpses of its
true definition from the poet that it is love, service,
the sacrifice of self for others good. The lesson was
slowly learned, but every hint of it went my heart,
and I kept in sight upon my window wall reminders
like that of Holy George Herbert. Be useful where thou'st livest,
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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 Talford, The
blessings which the weak and poor can scatter have their
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own season. It is a little thing to speak a
phrase of common comfort, which by daily use has almost
lost it. Since yet on the ear of him who
thought to die unmourned, twill fall like choicest music. A
very familiar extract from Carlos Wilcox. Almost the only quotation
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made nowadays from his poems was often on my sister
Emily's lips, whose heart seemed always to be saying to itself,
poor blessings round thee like a shower of gold. I
had that beside me too, and I copy part of
it here for her sake, and because it will be
good for my girl readers to keep in mind. One
of the noblest utterances of an almost forgotten American poet,
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roused to some work of high and holy love and
thou an angel's happiness, shalt know, shalt bless the earth.
While in the world above the good begun by thee
shall onward flow the pure, sweet stream, shall deeper, wider
grow the seed that, in these few and fleeting hours
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thy hand, unsparing and unwearied, so shall deck thy grave
with amaranthan flowers, and yield thee fruits divine and Heaven's
immortal bowers. One great advantage which came to these many
stranger girls through being brought together away from their own homes,
was that it taught them to go out of themselves
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and enter into the lives of others. Home life when
one always stays at home as necessarily narrowing. That is
one reason why so many women are petty and unthoughtful
of any except their own family's interests. We have hardly
begun to live until we can take in the idea
of the whole human family as the one to which
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we truly belong. To me, it was an incalculable help
to find myself among so many working girls, all of
us thrown upon our own resources, but thrown much more
upon each other's sympathies. In the stream beside which we toiled,
added to its own inspirations, human suggestions drawn from our
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acquaintance with each other, It blended itself with the flow
of our lives. Almost the first of my poemlets in
the Lowell Offering was entitled the River. These are some
lines of it, gently flowed, a river bright on its
path of liquid light, gleaming now soft banks between winding
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now through valleys, green, cheering, with its presence mild cultured
fields and woodlands wild. Is not such a pure one's life, ever,
Shunning pride and strife, noiselessly along she goes, known by
gentle deeds she does, often wandering far to bless and
do others kindnesses. Thus by her own virtue shaded, while
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pure thoughts like starbeams lie mirrored in her heart and eye,
she content to be unknown, all serenely moveth on till
released from time's commotion, self as lost and love's wide ocean.
There was many a young girl near me whose life
was like the beautiful course of the river. In my
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ideal of her, the merrymac had blent its music with
the onward song of many A lovely soul that clad
and plain working clothes moved heavenward beside its waters. One
of the loveliest persons I ever knew was a young
girl who worked opposite to me in the spinning room.
Our eyes made us friends long before we spoke to
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each other. She was an orphan, well bred and well educated,
about twenty years old, and she had brought with her
to her place of toil, the orphan child of her sister,
left to her as a death bed legacy. They boarded
with a relative. The factory boarding houses were often managed
by families of genuine refinement, as in this case, and
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the one comfort of Caroline's life was her beautiful little niece,
to whom she could go home when the day's work
was over. Her bereavements had given an appealing sadness to
her whole expression, but she had accepted them and her
changed circumstances with the submission of profound faith, which everybody
about her felt. And everything she said and did, I
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think I first knew through her how character can teach
without words. To see her and her little niece together
was almost like looking at a picture of the Madonna.
Caroline afterwards became an inmate of my mother's family, and
we were warm friends until her death a few years ago.
Some of the girls could not believe that the Bible
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was meant to be counted among forbidden books. We all
thought that the scriptures had a right to go wherever
we went, and that if we needed them anywhere, it
was at our work. I evaded the law by carrying
some leaves from a torn Testament in my pocket. The overseer,
caring more for law than gospel, confiscated all he found.
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He had his desk full of Bibles. It sounded oddly
to hear him say to the most religious girl in
the room when he took hers away, I did think
you had more conscience than to bring that book here.
But we had some close ethical questions to settle. In
those days. It was a rigid code of morality under
which we lived. Nobody complained of it, however, and we
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were doubtless better off for its strictness. In the end,
the last window in the row behind me was filled
with flourishing house plants, fragrant leaved geraniums, the overseer's pets.
They gave that corner a bowery look. The perfume and
freshness tempted me there. Often, standing before that window, I
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could look across the room and see girls moving backwards
and forwards among the spinning frames, sometimes stooping, sometimes reaching
up their arms as their work required, with ease and
not ungraceful movements. On the whole, it was far from
being a disagreeable place to stay in. The girls were
bright looking and neat, and everything was kept clean and shining.
(27:59):
The effect of the whole was rather attractive to strangers.
My grandfather came to see my mother once at about
this time and visited the mills. When he had entered
our room and looked around for a moment, he took
off his hats and made a low bow to the girls,
first toward the right and then toward the left. We
were familiar with his courteous habits, partly due to his
(28:20):
French descent, but we had never seen anybody bow to
a room full of mill girls in that polite way,
and some one of the family afterwards asked him why
he did so. He looked a little surprised at the question,
but answered promptly and with dignity. I always take off
my hat to ladies. His courtesy was genuine. Still, we
(28:41):
did not call ourselves ladies. We did not forget that
we were working girls, wearing coarse aprons suitable to our work,
and that there was some danger of our becoming drudges.
I know that sometimes the confinement of the mill became
very wearisome to me, and the sweet june weather I
would lean far out of the window and try not
to hear the unceasing clash of sound inside. Looking away
(29:05):
to the hills, my whole stifled being would cry out,
Oh that I had wings. Still. I was there from choice,
and the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is,
and I was every day making discoveries about life and
about myself. I had naturally some elements of the recluse,
and would never of my own choice have lived in
(29:26):
a crowd. I loved quietness. The noise of machinery was
particularly distasteful to me. But I found that the crowd
was made up of single human lives, not one of
them wholly uninteresting when separately known. I learned also that
there are many things which belonged to the whole world
of us together, that no one of us, nor any
(29:47):
few of us, can claim or enjoy for ourselves alone.
I discovered too that I could so accustom myself to
the noise that it became like a silence to me,
and I defied the machinery to make me its slave.
Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my
thoughts if I would let them fly high enough. Even
the long hours, the early rising, and the regularity enforced
(30:10):
by the clangor of the bell were good discipline for
one who was naturally inclined to dally and to dream,
and who loved her own personal liberty. With a willful
rebellion against control. Perhaps I could have brought myself into
the limitations of order and method in no other way.
Like a plant that starts up in showers in sunshine
(30:30):
and does not know which has best helped it to grow,
it is difficult to say whether the hard things or
the pleasant things did me most good. But when I
was sincerest with myself, as also what I thought least
about it, I know that I was glad to be
alive and to be just where I was. It is
a conquest when we can lift ourselves above the annoyances
(30:52):
of circumstances over which we have no control. But it
is a greater victory when we can make those circumstances
our helpers when we can appreciate the good there is
in them. It has often seemed to me as if
life stood beside me, looking me in the face, and saying, child,
you must learn to like me and the form in
which you see me, before I can offer myself to
(31:14):
you in any other aspect. It was so with this
disagreeable necessity of living among many people. There is nothing
more miserable than to lose the feeling of our own distinctiveness,
since that is our only clue to the purpose behind
us and the end before us. But when we have
discovered that human beings are not a mere mass, but
(31:35):
an orderly whole of which we are a part, it
is all so different. This we working girls might have
learned from the webs of cloth we saw woven around us.
Every little thread must take its place as warp or wolf,
and keep in it steadily. Left to itself, it would
be only a loose, useless filament trying to wander in
(31:57):
an independent or disconnected way among the other threads. It
would make of the whole web an inextricable snarl. Yet
each little thread must be as firmly spun as if
it were the only one, or the result would be
a worthless fabric that we are entirely separate, while yet
we entirely belong to the whole. Is the truth that
we learn to rejoice in as we come to understand
(32:19):
more and more of ourselves and of this human life
of ours, which seems so complicated and yet is so simple.
And when we once get a glimpse of the divine
plan in it all and know that to be just
where we are doing, just what we are doing, just
at this hour, because it is our appointed hour. When
we become aware that this is the very best thing
(32:41):
possible for us in God's universe, the hard task grows easy,
the tiresome employment welcome and delightful. Having fitted ourselves to
our present work in such a way as this, we
are usually prepared for better work and are sent to
take a better place. Perhaps this is one of the
unfailing laws of progress in our being. Perhaps the master
(33:02):
of life always rewards those who do their little faithfully
by giving them some greater opportunity for faithfulness. Certainly it
is a comfort wherever we are to say to ourselves,
thou camest not to thy place by accident, It is
the very place God meant for thee end of Chapter
(33:23):
eight By the River read by Elsie Selwyn,
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