As for the
allegorical meaning, it went through her consciousness like a peck of
wheat through a bushel measure with the bottom out, without touching.

But the very first book she got hold of out of the hidden treasury threw
the "Pilgrim's Progress" quite into the shade. It was the story of a
youth who ran away and lived on an island,--one Crusoe,--a homely
narrative, but evidently true, though full of remarkable adventures.
There too was the history, coming much nearer home, of Deborah Sampson,
the young woman who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, with a
portrait of her in man's attire, looking intrepid rather than lovely. A
virtuous young female she was, and married well, as she deserved to, and
raised a family with as good a name as wife and mother as the best of
them. But perhaps not one of these books and stories took such hold of
her imagination as the tale of Rasselas, which most young persons find
less entertaining than the "Vicar of Wakefield," with which it is
nowadays so commonly bound up. It was the prince's discontent in the
Happy Valley, the iron gate opening to the sound of music, and closing
forever on those it admitted, the rocky boundaries of the imprisoning
valley, the visions of the world beyond, the projects of escape, and the
long toil which ended in their accomplishment, which haunted her sleeping
and waking. She too was a prisoner, but it was not in the Happy Valley.
Of the romances and the love-letters we must take it for granted that she
selected wisely, and read discreetly; at least we know nothing to the
contrary.

There were mysterious reminiscences and hints of her past coming over her
constantly. It was in the course of the long, weary spring before her
disappearance, that a dangerous chord was struck which added to her
growing restlessness. In an old closet were some seashells and
coral-fans, and dried star-fishes and sea, horses, and a natural mummy of
a rough-skinned dogfish. She had not thought of them for years, but now
she felt impelled to look after them. The dim sea odors which still
clung to them penetrated to the very inmost haunts of memory, and called
up that longing for the ocean breeze which those who have once breathed
and salted their blood with it never get over, and which makes the
sweetest inland airs seem to them at last tame and tasteless. She held a
tigershell to her ear, and listened to that low, sleepy murmur, whether
in the sense or in the so