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 ten of A New England Girlhood by Lucy Larcom.
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 Dorian Marcott, A New
England Girlhood, Chapter ten Mill Girl's Magazine. There was a
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passage from Cowper that my sister used to quote to us,
because she said she often repeated it to herself and
found that it did her good. In such a world
so thorny, and where none finds happiness unblighted, or if
found without some thistly sorrow at its side, it seems
a part of wisdom, and no sin against the law
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of love, to measure lots with less distinguished than ourselves,
that thus we may with patience bear our moderate ills,
sympathizes others suffering more. I think she made us feel.
She certainly made me feel, that our lot was, in
many ways an unusually fortunate one, and full of responsibilities.
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She herself was always thinking what she could do for others,
not only immediately about her, but in the farthest corners
of the earth. She had her sabbath school class and
visited all the children in it. She sat up all night,
very often watching by a sick girl's bed in the
hospital or in some distant boarding house. She gave money
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to send the missionaries or to help build new churches
in the city. When she was earning only eight or
ten dollars a month clear of her board and could
afford herself but one best truss besides her working clothes.
That best trust was often nothing but a merrimac print,
but she insisted that it was a great favor of
trouble to have just this one, because she was not
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obliged to think what she should wear if you were
invited out to spend an evening. And she kept track
of all the great philanthropic movements of the day. She
felt deeply the shame and wrong of American slavery, and
tried to make her workmates see and feel it too.
Petitions to Congress for the appolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia were circulated nearly every year among the
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mill girls and received thousands of signatures. Whenever she was
not occupied with their work or her reading, or was
looking after us younger ones, two or three hours a
day was all the time she could call her own.
She was sure to be away on some errand of
friendliness or mercy. Those who do most for others are
always those who are called upon continually to do a
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little more, and who find a way to do it.
People go to them as to a bank that never fails.
And surely they who have an abundance of life in themselves,
and who give their life out freely to others, are
the only really rich. Two dollars a week seems very small,
but in Emily's hands it went farther than many, a
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princely fortune of today, because she managed to visit to
make so many people. But then she wanted absolutely nothing
for herself, nothing but the privilege of helping others. I
seemed to be eulogizing my sister, though I am simply
relating matters of fact. I could not, however, illustrate my
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own early experience, except by the lives around me which
most influenced mine. And it was true that our smaller
and more self suttered natures. In touching hers, caught something
of her spirit. The contagion of her warm heart and
healthy energy for help is more contagious than disease, and
lives that exhaled sweetness around them from the inner heaven
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of their souls keep the world wholesome. I tried to
follow her in my faltering way, and was gratified when
she would set me to look up whatever stray children,
or let me watch with her at night by a
sick bed. I think it was partly for the sake
of keeping us close to her as I could, though
not without a sincere desire to consecrate myself to the
best that I became at about thirteen a member of
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the church which we attended. Our minister was a scholarly
man of refined tastes and a sensitive organization, fervently spiritual,
and earnestly devoted to his work. It was an education
to grow up under his influence. I shall never forget
the effect left by the tones of his voice when
he first spoke to me, a child of ten years,
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at a neighborhood prayer meeting in my mother's sitting room.
He had been inviting his listeners to the friendship of Christ,
and turning to my little sister and me, he said,
and these little children too, won't they come? The words
and of manner of saying them brought the tears to
my eyes once only before, far back in my earlier childhood.
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I have already mentioned the incident. Had I heard that
name spoken so tenderly and familiarly, yet so reverently. It
was as if he had been gazing into the face
of an invisible friend, and it just turned from him
to look into ours while he gave us his message
that he loved us. In that moment, I again caught
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a glimpse of one who I had always known but
had often forgotten, one who claimed me as his father's
child and would never let me go. It was a
real face that I saw, a real voice that I heard,
a real person who was calling me. I could not
mistake the presence that had so often drawn near me
and shone with sun like eyes into my soul. The
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words Lord, lift though up the light of thy countenance
upon us had always given me the feeling that a
beautiful sunrise does. It is indeed a sunrise text, for
is not he the light of the world? And peaceful
sunshine seemed pouring in at the windows of my life.
On the day when I stood in the aisle before
the pulpit with the group who, though young, were all
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much older than myself, and took with them the vows
that bound us to His service. Of what was then
said and read, I scarcely remember more than the words
of heavenly welcome in the epist So now therefore ye
are no more strangers and foreigners. It was like coming home,
like stepping a little farther behind the threshold in at
the open door of our father's house. Perhaps I was
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too young to assume those bows. Had I deferred it
for a few years, there would have been serious intellectual hindrances.
But it was not the articles of faith that I
was thinking of, although there was a long list of them,
to which we all bowed assent, as was the custom.
It was the home coming to the house not made
with hands, the gladness of signifying that I belonged to
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God's spiritual family and was being drawn closer to His heart,
with whom none of us are held as strangers and foreigners.
I have felt that I was taken up again the
clue which had been put into my childish hand at baptism,
and was being led on by it into the unfolding
mysteries of life. Should I ever let it flit from
me and lose the weight to the many mansions that
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now seemed so open and so near. I could not think.
So it is well that we cannot foresee our falterins
and failures. At least I can never forget that I
had once felt my own and other lives bound together
with the eternal life by an invisible thread, the vague,
fitful desire I had felt for my childhood to be
something to the world I lived in, to give it
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something of the inexpressible sweetness that often seemed pouring through me.
I knew not whence now began to shape itself into
a definite outreach towards the source of all spiritual life,
to draw nearer to the one all beautiful being Christ,
to know him as our spirits may know the spirit,
to receive the breath of his infinitely loving life into mine,
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that I might breathe out that fragrance again into the
lives around me. This was the longing wish that, half
hidden from myself, lay deep beneath all other desires of
my soul. This was what religion grew to mean to me,
what it is still growing to mean, more simply and
more clearly as the years go on. The heart must
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be very humble to which this heavenly approach is permitted.
It knows that it has nothing in itself, nothing for
others which it has not received. The loving voice of
him who gives his friends his errands to do, whispers
to them constantly, Ye are not your own. There may
be those who would think my narrative more entertaining if
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I admitted these inner experiences and related only lighter incidents.
But one thing I was aware of from the time
I began to think and to wonder about my own life,
that what I felt and thought was far more real
to me than the things that happened. Circumstances are only
the keys that unlock for us the secret of ourselves.
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And I learned very early that though there is much
to enjoy this beautiful outside world, there is much more
to love, to believe in, and to seek in the
invisible world out of which it all grows. What has
best revealed our true selves to ourselves must be most
helpful to others, and one could willingly sacrifice some natural
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reserves to such an end. Besides, if we tell our
own story at all, we naturally wish to tell the
truest part of it. Work study and worship were interblended
in our life. Their church was really the home center
to many, perhaps in most of us, and it was
one of the mill regulations that everybody should go to
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church somewhere. There must have been an earnest group of
ministers at Lowell, since nearly all the girls attended public
worship from choice. Our minister joined us in our social gatherings,
often inviting us to his own house, visiting us at
our work, accompanying us on our picnics down the river bank.
A walk of a mile or so took us into
charmingly picturesque scenery, and we always walked, suggesting books for
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our reading, and assisting us in our studies. The two
magazines published by the Mill Girls, the low and the
Operatuose Magazine, originated with literary meetings in the vestry of
two religious societies, the first in the Universalist Church, the
second and the first congregational to which my sister and
I belonged. On account of our belonging there, our contributions
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were given to the Operatuse Magazine, the first periodical for
which I ever wrote, issued by the literary society of
which our minister took charge. He met us on regular evenings,
read alouder poems and sketches, and made such critical suggestions
as he thought desirable. This magazine was edited by two
young women, both of whom had been employed in the mills,
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although at that time there were teachers in the public schools,
a change which was often made by mill girls after
a few months residence at Lowell, A great many of
them were district school teachers at their homes in the summer,
but in only the winters at their work. The two
magazines went on side by side for a year or two,
and then reunited in the Lowell Offering, which had made
the first excipt speriment of the kind by publishing a
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trial number or two at a regular intervals. My sister
had sent some verses of mine on request to be
published in one of those specimen numbers, but we were
not acquainted with the editor of the Offering, and we
knew only a few of its contributors. The Universalist Church
in the Vestry of which they met was in a
distant part of the city. Socially, the place where we
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worshiped was the place where we naturally came together. In
other ways, the churches were all filled or overflowing, so
that the grouping together of the girls by their denominational
preferences was almost unavoidable. It was in some such way
as this that two magazines were started instead of one.
If the girls who enjoyed writing had not been so
many and so scattered, they might have made the better
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arrangement of joining their forces from the beginning. I was
too young a contributor to be at first of much
value to either periodical. They began their regular issues, I
think while I was a nursemaid of my little nephews
at Beverly. When I returned to Lowell at about sixteen,
I found my sister Emily interested in the Offerator's magazine,
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and we both contributed to it regularly until it was
merged in the Lowell Offering, to which we then transferred
our writing efforts. It did not occur to us to
call these efforts literary. I know that I wrote just
as I did for our little diving bill, as a
sort of pastime, and because my daily toil was mechanical
and furnished no occupation for my thoughts. Perhaps the fact
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that most of us wrote in this way accounted for
the rather sketchy and fragmentary character of our magazine. It
gave evidence that we thought, and that we thought upon
solid and serious matters. But the criticism of one of
our superintendents upon it, very kindly given, was undoubtedly just.
It has plenty of pits, but it lacks point. The
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Offering had always more of the literary spirit and touch.
It was, indeed, for the first two years edited by
a gentleman of acknowledged literary ability, but people seem to
be more interested in it after it passed entirely into
the hands of the girls themselves. The Offerter's magazine had
a decidedly religious tone. We who wrote for it were
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loyal to our Puritanic antecedents, and considered it all important
that our lightest actions should be moved by some earnest
impulse from behind. We might write playfully, but there must
be conscious and reverence somewhere within it. All we had
been taught, and we believed that idle words were a sin,
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whether spoken or written. This, no doubt gave us a
gravity of expression rather unnatural to use. In looking over
the bound volume of this magazine, I am amused at
their grown up style of thought assumed by myself probably
as very young at contributor, I wrote a dissertation on fame,
quoting from Pollock, Cowper, and Milton, and ending with Detrict
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Knickerbocker's definition of immortal fame half a page of dirty paper.
For other titles, I had thoughts on beauty, gentility, sympathy,
et cetera. And in one longish poem entitled My Childhood,
written when I was about fifteen, I find verses like
these which are seen to have come out of a
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mature experience. My childhood. Oh those pleasant days when everything
seemed free, and in the broad and verdant fields, I
frolic merrily, when joy came to my bounding heart with
every wild bird's song, and nature's music in my ears
was ringing all day long, and yet I would not
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call them back. Those blessed times of yore, For riper
years are fraught with joy as I dreamed not of before.
The labyrinth of science ops with wonders every day, and
friendship hath full many a flower to cheer life's dreary way.
And glancing through the pages of the Lowell Offering a
year or two later, I see that I continued to
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desmalize myself at times quite unnecessarily. The title of one
string of morbid verses is the complaint of a nobody,
in which I compare myself to a weed growing up
in a garden, And the conclusion of it all is
a stanza. When the fierce storms are raging, I will
not repine though I'm heedlessly crushed into strife, for surely
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it will be better oblivion were mine than a worthlessinglorious life. Now,
I did not suppose that I really considered myself a weed,
though I did sometimes fancy that a different kind of
cultivation would tend to make me a more useful plant.
I am glad to remember that these discontented fits were
only occasional, for certainly they were unreasonable. I was not unhappy.
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This was an affectation of unhappiness, and half conscious that
it was, I hid it behind a different signature from
a usual one. How truly, Woodsworths describes this face of
undeveloped feeling in youth sad fancies we affect in luxury
of disrespect to our own prodigal excess of too familiar happiness.
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It is a very useful weakness to exaggerate passing moods
into deep experiences, and if we put them down on paper,
we get a fine opportunity of laughing at ourselves. If
you live to outgrosap as most of us do. I
think I must have had a frequent fancy that I
was not long for this world. Perhaps I thought an
early death rather picturesque, many young people do. There is
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a certain kind of poetry that fosters this ideal, that
delights in imaginary youthful victims. It has reciprocally its useful defoties.
One of my blank verse poems in the offering is
entitled the Early Doomed. It begins and must I die?
The world is bright to me, and everything that looks
upon me smiles. Another amos headed a mental Maury, and
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another entitled A Song in June, which ought to be cheerful,
goes off into the doleful request to somebody or anybody
to weave me a shroud in the month of June.
I was perhaps healthier than the average girl, and had
no predisposition to a premature decline. And in reviewing these
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absurdities of my pen I feel like saying to any
young girl who inclines to rhyme, don't sit to mental eye.
Write more of what you see than of what you feel,
and let your feelings realize themselves to others in the
shape of worthy actions. Then they will be natural and
will furnish you with something worth writing. It is fair
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to myself to explain, however, that many of these verses
of mine were written cheaply as exercises in rhythmic expression.
I remember this distinctly about one of my poems with
a terrible title, The Murderer's Request, in which I made,
and imagine very criminal pose for me, telling me where
he would not and where he would like to be buried.
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I modeled my verses hurry me on some storm rifted mountain,
or hanging the depths of a yawning abyss upon byrons,
no yease the land where the cypress and myrtle, or
elblens of deeds that are done in their climb, And
I was only trying to see how near I could
approach to his exquisite meter. I did not think I
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felt at all murderous in writing it, but a more
innocent subject would have been in better taste and would
have met the exegetacies of the dactyl quite as well.
It is also only fair to myself to say that
my rhyming was usually a more wholesome kind. I loved
nature as I knew her in our stern, blustering, stimulating
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New England, and I chanted the praise of the winter,
of snowstorms and of March winds. I always took pride
in my birth month March, with hearty delight. Claris had
begun to bring me messages from their own world when
I was a very small child, and they never withdrew
their companionship for my thoughts. For there came summers when
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I could only look out of the mill window and
dream about them. I had one pet window plant of
my own, a red rose bush, almost a perpetual bloomer,
that it kept beside me at my work for years.
I parted with it only when I went away to
the West, and then with regret, for it had it
been to me like a human little friend. But the
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wildflowers had my heart. I lived and breathed with them
out under the free winds of heaven, and when I
could not see them, I wrote about them. Much said
I contributed to those mill magazine pages. They suggested my
mute teachers, comforters and inspirers. It seems to me that
anyone who does not care for wildflowers, missus hath the
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sweetness of this mortal life. Horace Smiths hymned the flowers
with a continual delight to me, And after I made
its acquaintance, it seemed as if all the wild blossoms
of the wood had wandered in and retwining themselves around
the whirring spindles as I repeated it, verse after verse.
Better still, they drew me out in fancy to their
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own forest haunts, under cloistered boughs, where each swinging floral
bell was ringing a call to prayer and making sabbath
in the field. Byron's forest hymn did me an equally
beautiful service. I knew every word of it. It seemed
to me that Bryant understood the very heart and soul
of the flowers as hardly anybody else did. He made
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me feel as if they were really related to us
human beings. In fancy, my feet pressed the turf where
they grew, and I knew them as my little sisters,
while my thoughts touched them one by one, saying with
him that delicate forest flower with scented breaths, and looked
so like a smile seams as issues from the shapeless mold,
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an emanation of the indwelling life, a visible token of
the appoll love that are the soul of this wide universe.
I suppose that most of my readers will scarcely be
older than I was when I wrote my sermonish little
poems under the inspiration of the flowers at my factory work,
and perhaps they will be interested reading a specimen or
twothe in the lower offering. Live like the flowers, cheerfully,
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wave they o'er valley and mountain, glad in the desert,
and smile by the fountain, pale discontent in no young blossom.
Lowers live like the flowers, meekly their buds in the
heavy rain, bending softly their hues with the mellow light,
blending gratefully welcoming sunlight. And showers live like the flowers,
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freely their sweets on the wild breezes, flinging, while in
their depths are new odors upspringing. Bless the twofold of
Love's holy dowers live like the flowers, gladly they heed
who their brightness has given, glooming on Earth. Look they
all up to heaven, humbly look up from their loveliest powers.
Live like the flowers, peacefully droop they when autumnus sign
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breathing mild fragrance around them. In dying sleep, they, in
hope of spring freshening hours, die like the flowers. The
prose poem that follows was put into a rhymed version
by several unknown hands and periodicals of that day, so
that at last I also wrote one in self defense
to claim my own way. But it was a prose
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poem that I intended it to be, and I think
it is better, So bring back my flowers. On the
bank of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap
was filled with flowers, and a garland of rosebuds was
twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as
the sunshine that fell upon it, and her voice was
as clear as that of the bird which warbled at
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her side. The little stream went singing on, and with
every gush of its music, the child lifted a flower
in a dimpled hand, and with a merry laugh, threw
it upon the water. In her she forgot that her
treasures were growing less, and with the swift notion of childhood.
She flung them upon the sparkling tide until every bud
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and blossom had disappeared. Then, seeing her loss, she sprang
to her feet, and, bursting into tears, called aloud to
the stream, bring back my flowers. But the stream danced
along regardless of her sorrow, and as it bore the
blooming burden away, her words came back in a taunting
echo along its reading margin. And long after, amid the
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wailing of the breeze and the fitful births of childish grief,
was heard their fruitless cry, bring back my flowers, Mary maiden,
who are at idly wasting their precious moments, so beuntifully
bestowed upon thee. Seeing the thoughtless child and emblem of thyself.
Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be
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diffused in blessings around thee and ascend a sweet incense
to the beneficent giver. Else, when thou hast carelessly flung
them from thee and seized them receding on the swift
matters of time, thou wilt cry, in tones more sorrowful
than those of the weeping child, bring back my flowers.
And they only answer will be an echo from the
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shadowy past bring back my flowers. In the above, a
reminiscence of un given studies comes back to me. I
was an admirer of John Paul, and one of my
earliest attempts at translation was This New Year's Knight of
an Unhappy Man, with its yet haunting glimpse of a
fair long paradise beyond the mountains. I am not sure,
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but the idea of trying my hand at a prose
poem came to me from Richter, though it may have
been from Herder or Kumacher, whom I also enjoyed and
attempted to translate. I have a manuscript book still filled
with these youthful efforts. I even undertook to put German
verse into English verse, not once, not the greatest Grita
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and Schiller. These studies were pursued in the pleasant days
of cloth room leisure, when I work claimed me only
seven or eight hours in a day. I suppose I
should have tried to write. Perhaps I could not very
well have helped attempting it. Under any circumstances, my early
efforts would not probably have found their way into print. However,
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but for the coincident publication of the two mill Girls
magazines just as they entered my teens. I fanted that
almost everything any of us offered them was published. Ardev
was led into editorial secrets. The editors of both magazines
were my seniors, and I felt greatly honored by their
approval of my contributions. One of the Offering editors was
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a Unitarian clergyman's daughter and had received excellent education. The
other was a remarkably brilliant and original young woman who
wrote novels that were published by the Harpers of New York.
While she was employed at Lowell. The two had rooms
together for a time where the members of the improvement circle,
chiefly composed of Offering writers, were hospitably received. The Operator's Magazine
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and the Lowell Offering reunited in the year eighteen forty
two under the title of Lowal Offering and Magazine. And
to correct a mistake which has crept into print, I
will say that I never attained the honor of being
editor of either of these magazines. I was only one
of their youngest contributors. The Lowell Offering closed its existence
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when I was little more than twenty years old. The
only continuous editing I have ever been engaged in, was
upon our young folks about twenty years ago. I was
editor in charge of that magazine for a year or more,
and I had previously been its assistant editor from its beginning.
These explanatory items, however, do not quite belong to my narrative,
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and I returned to our magazines. We did not receive
much criticism. Perhaps it would have been better for us
if we had, but then we did not set ourselves
up to be literary, so we enjoyed the freedom of
writing what we pleased and seeing how it looked in print.
It was good practice for us, and that was all
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that we desired. We were complimented and quoted. When a
Philadelphia paper copied one of my little poems, suggesting some
verbal improvements and predicting recognition for me in the future,
I felt for the first time that there might be
such a thing as public opinion worth caring for in
addition to doing one's best for its own sake. Fame indeed,
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never had much attraction for me, except as it took
the form of friendly recognition and the sympathetic approval of
worthy judges. I wished to do good and true things,
but not such as would subject me to the stare
of coldly curious eyes. I could never imagine a girl's
feeling any pleasure in placing herself before the public. The
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privilege of seclusion must be the last one a woman
can willingly sacrifice. And indeed what we wrote was not remarkable,
perhaps no more so than the usual school compositions of
intelligent girls. It would hardly be worth while to refer
to it, particularly, had not the Lowell Girls and their
magazines been so frequently spoken of as something phenomenal. But
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it was a perfectly natural outgrowth of those girls' previous life.
For what were we girls who were working in a
factory for the time, to be sure, but none of
us had the least idea of continuing at that kind
of work permanently. Our composite photograph, had it been taken,
would have been the representative New England girlhood of those days.
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We had all been fairly educated at public or private schools,
and many of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining the
better education. Very few were among us without some discinct
plan for better in the condition of themselves than those
they loved. For the first time, our young woman had
come forth from their home retirement in a throng, each
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with her own individual purpose. For twenty years or so,
Lowell might have been looked upon as a rather select
industrial school for young people. The girls there were just
such girls as the knocking at the doors of young
women's colleges today. They had come to work with their hands,
but they could not hinder the working of their minds. Also,
their mental activity was overflowing at every possible outlet. Many
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of them were supporting themselves at schools like Bradford Academy
or Ipswich Seminary half the year by working in the mills.
The other half. Mount Holyoak Seminary broke upon the thoughts
of many of them as a vision of hope. I
remember being dazzled by it myself for a while, and
Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the
Lowell Mill girls. Meanwhile, they were improving themselves and preparing
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for their future in every possible way, by purchasing and
reading standard books, by attending lectures and evening classes of
their own getting up, and by me eating each other
for reading and conversation. That they should write was no
more strange than they should study, or read, or think.
And yet there were those to whom it seemed incredible
that a girl could, in the pauses of her work,
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put together words with her pen that it would do
to print. And after a while the assertion was circulated
through some distant newspaper that our magazine was not written
by ourselves at all, but by Lowell Lawyers. This seemed
almost too foolish a suggestion to contradict, but the editor
of the offering thought it best to give the name
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an occupation of some of the writers by way of refutation.
It was for this reason, much against my own wish,
that my real name was first attached to anything I wrote.
I was an bookkeeper in the cloth room of the
Lawrence Mills. We had all used any fancible fignature we chose,
varying it as we pleased. After I began to read
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and love Wordsworth, my favorite nom de plume was Rotha.
In the later numbers of the magazine, the editor more
frequently made use of my initials. One day I was
surprised by seeing my name in full in Griswold's Female Poets.
No great distinction, however, since there were a hundred names
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or so Besides it, it seemed necessary to give those
gossip items about myself. But the really interest of every
separate life story is involved in the larger life history
which is going on around it. We do not know
ourselves without our companions and surroundings. I cannot narrt my
work made separate experiences, but I know that because of
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having lived among them, and because of having felt the
beauty and power of their lives, I am different from
what I should otherwise have been, And it is my
own fault if I am not better for my life
with them. In recalling those years of my girlhood at Lowell,
I often think that I knew then what real society is,
better perhaps than ever since, For in the large gathering
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together of young womanhood there were many choice natures. Some
of the choices in all are excellent New England, and
there were no false social standards to hold them apart.
It is the best society when people meet sincerely on
the ground of their deep o sympathies and highest aspirations,
without conventionality or cliques or affectation. And it was in
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that way that these young girls met and became acquainted
with each other, almost of necessity. There were all varieties
of woman nature among them, all degrees of refinement and cultivation,
and of course many sharp contrasts of agreeable and disagreeable.
It was not always the most cultivated, however, who were
the most companionable. There were gentle, untaught girls, as fresh
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and simple as wild flowers, whose unpretending goodness of heart
was better to have than bookishness. Girls who loved everybody
and were loved by everybody. Those the girls that I
remember best, and their memory is sweet as the breeze
from the clover fields, as I recall the throngs of
unknown girlish forms that used to pass and repass me
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on the familiar road to the mill gates. And also
the few that I knew so well, those with whom
I worked, thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped My thoughts.
Send a heartfelt greeting to them all, wherever in God's
beautiful busy uniforse they may not be scattered. I am
glad I have lived in the world with you. End
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of Chapter ten Mill Girls Magazines. I want see not
the greatest
Chapter ten of A New England Girlhood by Lucy Larcom.
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 Dorian Marcott, A New
England Girlhood, Chapter ten Mill Girl's Magazine. There was a
(00:22):
passage from Cowper that my sister used to quote to us,
because she said she often repeated it to herself and
found that it did her good. In such a world
so thorny, and where none finds happiness unblighted, or if
found without some thistly sorrow at its side, it seems
a part of wisdom, and no sin against the law
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of love, to measure lots with less distinguished than ourselves,
that thus we may with patience bear our moderate ills,
sympathizes others suffering more. I think she made us feel.
She certainly made me feel, that our lot was, in
many ways an unusually fortunate one, and full of responsibilities.
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She herself was always thinking what she could do for others,
not only immediately about her, but in the farthest corners
of the earth. She had her sabbath school class and
visited all the children in it. She sat up all night,
very often watching by a sick girl's bed in the
hospital or in some distant boarding house. She gave money
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to send the missionaries or to help build new churches
in the city. When she was earning only eight or
ten dollars a month clear of her board and could
afford herself but one best truss besides her working clothes.
That best trust was often nothing but a merrimac print,
but she insisted that it was a great favor of
trouble to have just this one, because she was not
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obliged to think what she should wear if you were
invited out to spend an evening. And she kept track
of all the great philanthropic movements of the day. She
felt deeply the shame and wrong of American slavery, and
tried to make her workmates see and feel it too.
Petitions to Congress for the appolition of slavery in the
District of Columbia were circulated nearly every year among the
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mill girls and received thousands of signatures. Whenever she was
not occupied with their work or her reading, or was
looking after us younger ones, two or three hours a
day was all the time she could call her own.
She was sure to be away on some errand of
friendliness or mercy. Those who do most for others are
always those who are called upon continually to do a
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little more, and who find a way to do it.
People go to them as to a bank that never fails.
And surely they who have an abundance of life in themselves,
and who give their life out freely to others, are
the only really rich. Two dollars a week seems very small,
but in Emily's hands it went farther than many, a
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princely fortune of today, because she managed to visit to
make so many people. But then she wanted absolutely nothing
for herself, nothing but the privilege of helping others. I
seemed to be eulogizing my sister, though I am simply
relating matters of fact. I could not, however, illustrate my
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own early experience, except by the lives around me which
most influenced mine. And it was true that our smaller
and more self suttered natures. In touching hers, caught something
of her spirit. The contagion of her warm heart and
healthy energy for help is more contagious than disease, and
lives that exhaled sweetness around them from the inner heaven
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of their souls keep the world wholesome. I tried to
follow her in my faltering way, and was gratified when
she would set me to look up whatever stray children,
or let me watch with her at night by a
sick bed. I think it was partly for the sake
of keeping us close to her as I could, though
not without a sincere desire to consecrate myself to the
best that I became at about thirteen a member of
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the church which we attended. Our minister was a scholarly
man of refined tastes and a sensitive organization, fervently spiritual,
and earnestly devoted to his work. It was an education
to grow up under his influence. I shall never forget
the effect left by the tones of his voice when
he first spoke to me, a child of ten years,
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at a neighborhood prayer meeting in my mother's sitting room.
He had been inviting his listeners to the friendship of Christ,
and turning to my little sister and me, he said,
and these little children too, won't they come? The words
and of manner of saying them brought the tears to
my eyes once only before, far back in my earlier childhood.
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I have already mentioned the incident. Had I heard that
name spoken so tenderly and familiarly, yet so reverently. It
was as if he had been gazing into the face
of an invisible friend, and it just turned from him
to look into ours while he gave us his message
that he loved us. In that moment, I again caught
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a glimpse of one who I had always known but
had often forgotten, one who claimed me as his father's
child and would never let me go. It was a
real face that I saw, a real voice that I heard,
a real person who was calling me. I could not
mistake the presence that had so often drawn near me
and shone with sun like eyes into my soul. The
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words Lord, lift though up the light of thy countenance
upon us had always given me the feeling that a
beautiful sunrise does. It is indeed a sunrise text, for
is not he the light of the world? And peaceful
sunshine seemed pouring in at the windows of my life.
On the day when I stood in the aisle before
the pulpit with the group who, though young, were all
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much older than myself, and took with them the vows
that bound us to His service. Of what was then
said and read, I scarcely remember more than the words
of heavenly welcome in the epist So now therefore ye
are no more strangers and foreigners. It was like coming home,
like stepping a little farther behind the threshold in at
the open door of our father's house. Perhaps I was
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too young to assume those bows. Had I deferred it
for a few years, there would have been serious intellectual hindrances.
But it was not the articles of faith that I
was thinking of, although there was a long list of them,
to which we all bowed assent, as was the custom.
It was the home coming to the house not made
with hands, the gladness of signifying that I belonged to
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God's spiritual family and was being drawn closer to His heart,
with whom none of us are held as strangers and foreigners.
I have felt that I was taken up again the
clue which had been put into my childish hand at baptism,
and was being led on by it into the unfolding
mysteries of life. Should I ever let it flit from
me and lose the weight to the many mansions that
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now seemed so open and so near. I could not think.
So it is well that we cannot foresee our falterins
and failures. At least I can never forget that I
had once felt my own and other lives bound together
with the eternal life by an invisible thread, the vague,
fitful desire I had felt for my childhood to be
something to the world I lived in, to give it
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something of the inexpressible sweetness that often seemed pouring through me.
I knew not whence now began to shape itself into
a definite outreach towards the source of all spiritual life,
to draw nearer to the one all beautiful being Christ,
to know him as our spirits may know the spirit,
to receive the breath of his infinitely loving life into mine,
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that I might breathe out that fragrance again into the
lives around me. This was the longing wish that, half
hidden from myself, lay deep beneath all other desires of
my soul. This was what religion grew to mean to me,
what it is still growing to mean, more simply and
more clearly as the years go on. The heart must
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be very humble to which this heavenly approach is permitted.
It knows that it has nothing in itself, nothing for
others which it has not received. The loving voice of
him who gives his friends his errands to do, whispers
to them constantly, Ye are not your own. There may
be those who would think my narrative more entertaining if
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I admitted these inner experiences and related only lighter incidents.
But one thing I was aware of from the time
I began to think and to wonder about my own life,
that what I felt and thought was far more real
to me than the things that happened. Circumstances are only
the keys that unlock for us the secret of ourselves.
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And I learned very early that though there is much
to enjoy this beautiful outside world, there is much more
to love, to believe in, and to seek in the
invisible world out of which it all grows. What has
best revealed our true selves to ourselves must be most
helpful to others, and one could willingly sacrifice some natural
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reserves to such an end. Besides, if we tell our
own story at all, we naturally wish to tell the
truest part of it. Work study and worship were interblended
in our life. Their church was really the home center
to many, perhaps in most of us, and it was
one of the mill regulations that everybody should go to
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church somewhere. There must have been an earnest group of
ministers at Lowell, since nearly all the girls attended public
worship from choice. Our minister joined us in our social gatherings,
often inviting us to his own house, visiting us at
our work, accompanying us on our picnics down the river bank.
A walk of a mile or so took us into
charmingly picturesque scenery, and we always walked, suggesting books for
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our reading, and assisting us in our studies. The two
magazines published by the Mill Girls, the low and the
Operatuose Magazine, originated with literary meetings in the vestry of
two religious societies, the first in the Universalist Church, the
second and the first congregational to which my sister and
I belonged. On account of our belonging there, our contributions
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were given to the Operatuse Magazine, the first periodical for
which I ever wrote, issued by the literary society of
which our minister took charge. He met us on regular evenings,
read alouder poems and sketches, and made such critical suggestions
as he thought desirable. This magazine was edited by two
young women, both of whom had been employed in the mills,
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although at that time there were teachers in the public schools,
a change which was often made by mill girls after
a few months residence at Lowell, A great many of
them were district school teachers at their homes in the summer,
but in only the winters at their work. The two
magazines went on side by side for a year or two,
and then reunited in the Lowell Offering, which had made
the first excipt speriment of the kind by publishing a
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trial number or two at a regular intervals. My sister
had sent some verses of mine on request to be
published in one of those specimen numbers, but we were
not acquainted with the editor of the Offering, and we
knew only a few of its contributors. The Universalist Church
in the Vestry of which they met was in a
distant part of the city. Socially, the place where we
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worshiped was the place where we naturally came together. In
other ways, the churches were all filled or overflowing, so
that the grouping together of the girls by their denominational
preferences was almost unavoidable. It was in some such way
as this that two magazines were started instead of one.
If the girls who enjoyed writing had not been so
many and so scattered, they might have made the better
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arrangement of joining their forces from the beginning. I was
too young a contributor to be at first of much
value to either periodical. They began their regular issues, I
think while I was a nursemaid of my little nephews
at Beverly. When I returned to Lowell at about sixteen,
I found my sister Emily interested in the Offerator's magazine,
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and we both contributed to it regularly until it was
merged in the Lowell Offering, to which we then transferred
our writing efforts. It did not occur to us to
call these efforts literary. I know that I wrote just
as I did for our little diving bill, as a
sort of pastime, and because my daily toil was mechanical
and furnished no occupation for my thoughts. Perhaps the fact
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that most of us wrote in this way accounted for
the rather sketchy and fragmentary character of our magazine. It
gave evidence that we thought, and that we thought upon
solid and serious matters. But the criticism of one of
our superintendents upon it, very kindly given, was undoubtedly just.
It has plenty of pits, but it lacks point. The
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Offering had always more of the literary spirit and touch.
It was, indeed, for the first two years edited by
a gentleman of acknowledged literary ability, but people seem to
be more interested in it after it passed entirely into
the hands of the girls themselves. The Offerter's magazine had
a decidedly religious tone. We who wrote for it were
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loyal to our Puritanic antecedents, and considered it all important
that our lightest actions should be moved by some earnest
impulse from behind. We might write playfully, but there must
be conscious and reverence somewhere within it. All we had
been taught, and we believed that idle words were a sin,
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whether spoken or written. This, no doubt gave us a
gravity of expression rather unnatural to use. In looking over
the bound volume of this magazine, I am amused at
their grown up style of thought assumed by myself probably
as very young at contributor, I wrote a dissertation on fame,
quoting from Pollock, Cowper, and Milton, and ending with Detrict
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Knickerbocker's definition of immortal fame half a page of dirty paper.
For other titles, I had thoughts on beauty, gentility, sympathy,
et cetera. And in one longish poem entitled My Childhood,
written when I was about fifteen, I find verses like
these which are seen to have come out of a
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mature experience. My childhood. Oh those pleasant days when everything
seemed free, and in the broad and verdant fields, I
frolic merrily, when joy came to my bounding heart with
every wild bird's song, and nature's music in my ears
was ringing all day long, and yet I would not
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call them back. Those blessed times of yore, For riper
years are fraught with joy as I dreamed not of before.
The labyrinth of science ops with wonders every day, and
friendship hath full many a flower to cheer life's dreary way.
And glancing through the pages of the Lowell Offering a
year or two later, I see that I continued to
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desmalize myself at times quite unnecessarily. The title of one
string of morbid verses is the complaint of a nobody,
in which I compare myself to a weed growing up
in a garden, And the conclusion of it all is
a stanza. When the fierce storms are raging, I will
not repine though I'm heedlessly crushed into strife, for surely
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it will be better oblivion were mine than a worthlessinglorious life. Now,
I did not suppose that I really considered myself a weed,
though I did sometimes fancy that a different kind of
cultivation would tend to make me a more useful plant.
I am glad to remember that these discontented fits were
only occasional, for certainly they were unreasonable. I was not unhappy.
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This was an affectation of unhappiness, and half conscious that
it was, I hid it behind a different signature from
a usual one. How truly, Woodsworths describes this face of
undeveloped feeling in youth sad fancies we affect in luxury
of disrespect to our own prodigal excess of too familiar happiness.
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It is a very useful weakness to exaggerate passing moods
into deep experiences, and if we put them down on paper,
we get a fine opportunity of laughing at ourselves. If
you live to outgrosap as most of us do. I
think I must have had a frequent fancy that I
was not long for this world. Perhaps I thought an
early death rather picturesque, many young people do. There is
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a certain kind of poetry that fosters this ideal, that
delights in imaginary youthful victims. It has reciprocally its useful defoties.
One of my blank verse poems in the offering is
entitled the Early Doomed. It begins and must I die?
The world is bright to me, and everything that looks
upon me smiles. Another amos headed a mental Maury, and
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another entitled A Song in June, which ought to be cheerful,
goes off into the doleful request to somebody or anybody
to weave me a shroud in the month of June.
I was perhaps healthier than the average girl, and had
no predisposition to a premature decline. And in reviewing these
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absurdities of my pen I feel like saying to any
young girl who inclines to rhyme, don't sit to mental eye.
Write more of what you see than of what you feel,
and let your feelings realize themselves to others in the
shape of worthy actions. Then they will be natural and
will furnish you with something worth writing. It is fair
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to myself to explain, however, that many of these verses
of mine were written cheaply as exercises in rhythmic expression.
I remember this distinctly about one of my poems with
a terrible title, The Murderer's Request, in which I made,
and imagine very criminal pose for me, telling me where
he would not and where he would like to be buried.
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I modeled my verses hurry me on some storm rifted mountain,
or hanging the depths of a yawning abyss upon byrons,
no yease the land where the cypress and myrtle, or
elblens of deeds that are done in their climb, And
I was only trying to see how near I could
approach to his exquisite meter. I did not think I
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felt at all murderous in writing it, but a more
innocent subject would have been in better taste and would
have met the exegetacies of the dactyl quite as well.
It is also only fair to myself to say that
my rhyming was usually a more wholesome kind. I loved
nature as I knew her in our stern, blustering, stimulating
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New England, and I chanted the praise of the winter,
of snowstorms and of March winds. I always took pride
in my birth month March, with hearty delight. Claris had
begun to bring me messages from their own world when
I was a very small child, and they never withdrew
their companionship for my thoughts. For there came summers when
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I could only look out of the mill window and
dream about them. I had one pet window plant of
my own, a red rose bush, almost a perpetual bloomer,
that it kept beside me at my work for years.
I parted with it only when I went away to
the West, and then with regret, for it had it
been to me like a human little friend. But the
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wildflowers had my heart. I lived and breathed with them
out under the free winds of heaven, and when I
could not see them, I wrote about them. Much said
I contributed to those mill magazine pages. They suggested my
mute teachers, comforters and inspirers. It seems to me that
anyone who does not care for wildflowers, missus hath the
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sweetness of this mortal life. Horace Smiths hymned the flowers
with a continual delight to me, And after I made
its acquaintance, it seemed as if all the wild blossoms
of the wood had wandered in and retwining themselves around
the whirring spindles as I repeated it, verse after verse.
Better still, they drew me out in fancy to their
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own forest haunts, under cloistered boughs, where each swinging floral
bell was ringing a call to prayer and making sabbath
in the field. Byron's forest hymn did me an equally
beautiful service. I knew every word of it. It seemed
to me that Bryant understood the very heart and soul
of the flowers as hardly anybody else did. He made
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me feel as if they were really related to us
human beings. In fancy, my feet pressed the turf where
they grew, and I knew them as my little sisters,
while my thoughts touched them one by one, saying with
him that delicate forest flower with scented breaths, and looked
so like a smile seams as issues from the shapeless mold,
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an emanation of the indwelling life, a visible token of
the appoll love that are the soul of this wide universe.
I suppose that most of my readers will scarcely be
older than I was when I wrote my sermonish little
poems under the inspiration of the flowers at my factory work,
and perhaps they will be interested reading a specimen or
twothe in the lower offering. Live like the flowers, cheerfully,
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wave they o'er valley and mountain, glad in the desert,
and smile by the fountain, pale discontent in no young blossom.
Lowers live like the flowers, meekly their buds in the
heavy rain, bending softly their hues with the mellow light,
blending gratefully welcoming sunlight. And showers live like the flowers,
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freely their sweets on the wild breezes, flinging, while in
their depths are new odors upspringing. Bless the twofold of
Love's holy dowers live like the flowers, gladly they heed
who their brightness has given, glooming on Earth. Look they
all up to heaven, humbly look up from their loveliest powers.
Live like the flowers, peacefully droop they when autumnus sign
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breathing mild fragrance around them. In dying sleep, they, in
hope of spring freshening hours, die like the flowers. The
prose poem that follows was put into a rhymed version
by several unknown hands and periodicals of that day, so
that at last I also wrote one in self defense
to claim my own way. But it was a prose
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poem that I intended it to be, and I think
it is better, So bring back my flowers. On the
bank of a rivulet sat a rosy child. Her lap
was filled with flowers, and a garland of rosebuds was
twined around her neck. Her face was as radiant as
the sunshine that fell upon it, and her voice was
as clear as that of the bird which warbled at
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her side. The little stream went singing on, and with
every gush of its music, the child lifted a flower
in a dimpled hand, and with a merry laugh, threw
it upon the water. In her she forgot that her
treasures were growing less, and with the swift notion of childhood.
She flung them upon the sparkling tide until every bud
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and blossom had disappeared. Then, seeing her loss, she sprang
to her feet, and, bursting into tears, called aloud to
the stream, bring back my flowers. But the stream danced
along regardless of her sorrow, and as it bore the
blooming burden away, her words came back in a taunting
echo along its reading margin. And long after, amid the
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wailing of the breeze and the fitful births of childish grief,
was heard their fruitless cry, bring back my flowers, Mary maiden,
who are at idly wasting their precious moments, so beuntifully
bestowed upon thee. Seeing the thoughtless child and emblem of thyself.
Each moment is a perfumed flower. Let its fragrance be
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diffused in blessings around thee and ascend a sweet incense
to the beneficent giver. Else, when thou hast carelessly flung
them from thee and seized them receding on the swift
matters of time, thou wilt cry, in tones more sorrowful
than those of the weeping child, bring back my flowers.
And they only answer will be an echo from the
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shadowy past bring back my flowers. In the above, a
reminiscence of un given studies comes back to me. I
was an admirer of John Paul, and one of my
earliest attempts at translation was This New Year's Knight of
an Unhappy Man, with its yet haunting glimpse of a
fair long paradise beyond the mountains. I am not sure,
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but the idea of trying my hand at a prose
poem came to me from Richter, though it may have
been from Herder or Kumacher, whom I also enjoyed and
attempted to translate. I have a manuscript book still filled
with these youthful efforts. I even undertook to put German
verse into English verse, not once, not the greatest Grita
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and Schiller. These studies were pursued in the pleasant days
of cloth room leisure, when I work claimed me only
seven or eight hours in a day. I suppose I
should have tried to write. Perhaps I could not very
well have helped attempting it. Under any circumstances, my early
efforts would not probably have found their way into print. However,
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but for the coincident publication of the two mill Girls
magazines just as they entered my teens. I fanted that
almost everything any of us offered them was published. Ardev
was led into editorial secrets. The editors of both magazines
were my seniors, and I felt greatly honored by their
approval of my contributions. One of the Offering editors was
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a Unitarian clergyman's daughter and had received excellent education. The
other was a remarkably brilliant and original young woman who
wrote novels that were published by the Harpers of New York.
While she was employed at Lowell. The two had rooms
together for a time where the members of the improvement circle,
chiefly composed of Offering writers, were hospitably received. The Operator's Magazine
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and the Lowell Offering reunited in the year eighteen forty
two under the title of Lowal Offering and Magazine. And
to correct a mistake which has crept into print, I
will say that I never attained the honor of being
editor of either of these magazines. I was only one
of their youngest contributors. The Lowell Offering closed its existence
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when I was little more than twenty years old. The
only continuous editing I have ever been engaged in, was
upon our young folks about twenty years ago. I was
editor in charge of that magazine for a year or more,
and I had previously been its assistant editor from its beginning.
These explanatory items, however, do not quite belong to my narrative,
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and I returned to our magazines. We did not receive
much criticism. Perhaps it would have been better for us
if we had, but then we did not set ourselves
up to be literary, so we enjoyed the freedom of
writing what we pleased and seeing how it looked in print.
It was good practice for us, and that was all
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that we desired. We were complimented and quoted. When a
Philadelphia paper copied one of my little poems, suggesting some
verbal improvements and predicting recognition for me in the future,
I felt for the first time that there might be
such a thing as public opinion worth caring for in
addition to doing one's best for its own sake. Fame indeed,
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never had much attraction for me, except as it took
the form of friendly recognition and the sympathetic approval of
worthy judges. I wished to do good and true things,
but not such as would subject me to the stare
of coldly curious eyes. I could never imagine a girl's
feeling any pleasure in placing herself before the public. The
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privilege of seclusion must be the last one a woman
can willingly sacrifice. And indeed what we wrote was not remarkable,
perhaps no more so than the usual school compositions of
intelligent girls. It would hardly be worth while to refer
to it, particularly, had not the Lowell Girls and their
magazines been so frequently spoken of as something phenomenal. But
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it was a perfectly natural outgrowth of those girls' previous life.
For what were we girls who were working in a
factory for the time, to be sure, but none of
us had the least idea of continuing at that kind
of work permanently. Our composite photograph, had it been taken,
would have been the representative New England girlhood of those days.
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We had all been fairly educated at public or private schools,
and many of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining the
better education. Very few were among us without some discinct
plan for better in the condition of themselves than those
they loved. For the first time, our young woman had
come forth from their home retirement in a throng, each
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with her own individual purpose. For twenty years or so,
Lowell might have been looked upon as a rather select
industrial school for young people. The girls there were just
such girls as the knocking at the doors of young
women's colleges today. They had come to work with their hands,
but they could not hinder the working of their minds. Also,
their mental activity was overflowing at every possible outlet. Many
(29:26):
of them were supporting themselves at schools like Bradford Academy
or Ipswich Seminary half the year by working in the mills.
The other half. Mount Holyoak Seminary broke upon the thoughts
of many of them as a vision of hope. I
remember being dazzled by it myself for a while, and
Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the
Lowell Mill girls. Meanwhile, they were improving themselves and preparing
(29:51):
for their future in every possible way, by purchasing and
reading standard books, by attending lectures and evening classes of
their own getting up, and by me eating each other
for reading and conversation. That they should write was no
more strange than they should study, or read, or think.
And yet there were those to whom it seemed incredible
that a girl could, in the pauses of her work,
(30:13):
put together words with her pen that it would do
to print. And after a while the assertion was circulated
through some distant newspaper that our magazine was not written
by ourselves at all, but by Lowell Lawyers. This seemed
almost too foolish a suggestion to contradict, but the editor
of the offering thought it best to give the name
(30:34):
an occupation of some of the writers by way of refutation.
It was for this reason, much against my own wish,
that my real name was first attached to anything I wrote.
I was an bookkeeper in the cloth room of the
Lawrence Mills. We had all used any fancible fignature we chose,
varying it as we pleased. After I began to read
(30:56):
and love Wordsworth, my favorite nom de plume was Rotha.
In the later numbers of the magazine, the editor more
frequently made use of my initials. One day I was
surprised by seeing my name in full in Griswold's Female Poets.
No great distinction, however, since there were a hundred names
(31:18):
or so Besides it, it seemed necessary to give those
gossip items about myself. But the really interest of every
separate life story is involved in the larger life history
which is going on around it. We do not know
ourselves without our companions and surroundings. I cannot narrt my
work made separate experiences, but I know that because of
(31:39):
having lived among them, and because of having felt the
beauty and power of their lives, I am different from
what I should otherwise have been, And it is my
own fault if I am not better for my life
with them. In recalling those years of my girlhood at Lowell,
I often think that I knew then what real society is,
better perhaps than ever since, For in the large gathering
(32:01):
together of young womanhood there were many choice natures. Some
of the choices in all are excellent New England, and
there were no false social standards to hold them apart.
It is the best society when people meet sincerely on
the ground of their deep o sympathies and highest aspirations,
without conventionality or cliques or affectation. And it was in
(32:23):
that way that these young girls met and became acquainted
with each other, almost of necessity. There were all varieties
of woman nature among them, all degrees of refinement and cultivation,
and of course many sharp contrasts of agreeable and disagreeable.
It was not always the most cultivated, however, who were
the most companionable. There were gentle, untaught girls, as fresh
(32:48):
and simple as wild flowers, whose unpretending goodness of heart
was better to have than bookishness. Girls who loved everybody
and were loved by everybody. Those the girls that I
remember best, and their memory is sweet as the breeze
from the clover fields, as I recall the throngs of
unknown girlish forms that used to pass and repass me
(33:10):
on the familiar road to the mill gates. And also
the few that I knew so well, those with whom
I worked, thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped My thoughts.
Send a heartfelt greeting to them all, wherever in God's
beautiful busy uniforse they may not be scattered. I am
glad I have lived in the world with you. End
(33:34):
of Chapter ten Mill Girls Magazines. I want see not
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