n every boy
and girl this truth: that it is not one's surroundings that can help
or hinder--it is having a growing purpose in one's life to make the
most of whatever is in one's reach.

If you have but a few good books, learn those to the very heart of
them. Don't for one moment believe that if you had different
surroundings and opportunities you would find the upward path any
easier to climb. One condition is like another, if you have not the
determination and the power to grow in yourself.

I was still a child when I began to write down the things I was
thinking about, but at first I always made rhymes and found prose so
difficult that a school composition was a terror to me, and I do not
remember ever writing one that was worth anything. But in course of
time rhymes themselves became difficult and prose more and more
enticing, and I began my work in life, most happy in finding that I
was to write of those country characters and rural landscapes to which
I myself belonged, and which I had been taught to love with all my
heart.

I was between nineteen and twenty when my first sketch was accepted by
Mr. Howells for the _Atlantic_. I already counted myself as by no
means a new contributor to one or two other magazines--_Young Folks_
and _The Riverside_--but I had no literary friends "at court."

I was very shy about speaking of my work at home, and even sent it to
the magazine under an assumed name, and then was timid about asking
the post-mistress for those mysterious and exciting editorial letters
which she announced upon the post-office list as if I were a stranger
in the town.

* * * * *

_The Passing of Sister Barsett_

Mrs. Mercy Crane was of such firm persuasion that a house is meant to
be lived in, that during many years she was never known to leave her
own neat two-storied dwelling-place on the Ridge road. Yet being very
fond of company, in pleasant weather she often sat in the side doorway
looking out on her green yard, where the grass grew short and thick
and was undisfigured even by a path toward the steps. All her faded
green blinds were securely tied together and knotted on the inside by
pieces of white tape; but now and then, when the sun was not too hot
for her carpets, she opened one window at a time for a few hours,
having pronounced views upon the necessity of light and air. Although
Mrs. Crane was acknowledged by her best friends to be a peculiar
person