e-embroidery; another had a knack at
cutting and fitting her doll's clothing so perfectly that the wooden
lady was always a typical specimen of the genteel doll-world; and
another was an expert at fine stitching, so delicately done that it was
a pleasure to see or to wear anything her needle had touched. I had
none of these gifts. I looked on and admired, and sometimes tried to
imitate, but my efforts usually ended in defeat and mortification.

I did like to knit, however, and I could shape a stocking tolerably
well. My fondness for this kind of work was chiefly because it did not
require much thought. Except when there was "widening" or "narrowing"
to be done, I did not need to keep my eyes upon it at all. So I took a
book upon my lap and read, and read, while the needles clicked on,
comforting me with the reminder that I was not absolutely unemployed,
while yet I was having a good time reading.

I began to know that I liked poetry, and to think a good deal about it
at my childish work. Outside of the hymn-book, the first rhymes I
committed to memory were in the "Old Farmer's Almanac," files of which
hung in the chimney corner, and were an inexhaustible source of
entertainment to us younger ones.

My father kept his newspapers also carefully filed away in the garret,
but we made sad havoc among the "Palladiums" and other journals that we
ought to have kept as antiquarian treasures. We valued the anecdote
column and the poet's corner only; these we clipped unsparingly for our
scrap-books.

A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to
me, on account of the specimens of English versification which I found
in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I
used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself
when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of
iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming
occupation it must be to "make up" verses.

I made my first rhymes when I was about seven years old. My brother
John proposed "writing poetry" as a rainy-day amusement, one afternoon
when we two were sent up into the garret to entertain ourselves without
disturbing the family. He soon grew tired of his unavailing attempts,
but I produced two stanzas, the first of which read thus:--

"One summer day, said little Jane,
We were walking down a shady lane,
When suddenly the wind blew high,
And the red lightning flashed