haping out a woman before our
very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a
woman's soul and frame. Yesterday, her cheek was pale,--to-day it had
a bloom. Priscilla's smile, like a baby's first one, was a wondrous
novelty. Her imperfections and short-comings affected me with a kind of
playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I
experienced. After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal
spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble
and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet
strength to endure. She was very fond of playing with the other girls
out of doors. There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as
that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so
giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely
touch the ground.

Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more
untamable, and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting
variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a
harmonious propriety through all. Their steps, their voices, appear free
as the wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us.
Young men and boys, on the other hand, play according to recognized law,
old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with
scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts....

Especially it is delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race,
with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than
they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt. But
Priscilla's peculiar, charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and
irregularity with which she ran....

When she had come to be quite at home among us, I used to fancy that
Priscilla played more pranks, and perpetrated more mischief, than any
other girl in the community. For example, I once heard Silas Foster,
in a very gruff voice, threatening to rivet three horse-shoes round
Priscilla's neck, and chain her to a post, because she, with some other
young people, had clambered upon a load of hay, and caused it to slide
off the cart. How she made her peace I never knew; but very soon
afterwards I saw old Silas, with his brawny hands round Priscilla's
waist, swinging her to and fro, and finally depositing her on one of the
oxen, to take her first lessons in riding. She met with terrible mishaps
in her efforts to