large,
clear eyes that seemed to look far into one's heart, with an expression
at once penetrating and benignant. To my childish imagination she was
an embodiment of serene and lofty goodness. I wished and hoped that by
bearing her baptismal name I might become like her; and when I found
out its signification (I learned that "Lucy" means "with light"), I
wished it more earnestly still. For her beautiful character was just
such an illumination to my young life as I should most desire mine to
be to the lives of others.

My aunt, like my father, was always studying something. Some map or
book always lay open before her, when I went to visit her, in her
picturesque old house, with its sloping roof and tall well-sweep. And
she always brought out some book or picture for me from her quaint
old-fashioned chest of drawers. I still possess the "Children in the
Wood," which she gave me, as a keepsake, when I was about ten years old.

Our relatives form the natural setting of our childhood. We understand
ourselves best and are best understood by others through the persons
who came nearest to us in our earliest years. Those larger planets held
our little one to its orbit, and lent it their brightness. Happy indeed
is the infancy which is surrounded only by the loving and the good!

Besides those who were of my kindred, I had several aunts by courtesy,
or rather by the privilege of neighborhood, who seemed to belong to my
babyhood. Indeed, the family hearthstone came near being the scene of a
tragedy to me, through the blind fondness of one of these.

The adjective is literal. This dear old lady, almost sightless, sitting
in a low chair far in the chimney corner, where she had been placed on
her first call to see the new baby, took me upon her lap, and--so they
say--unconsciously let me slip off into the coals. I was rescued
unsinged, however, and it was one of the earliest accomplishments of my
infancy to thread my poor, half-blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her.
We were close neighbors and gossips until my fourth year. Many an hour
I sat by her side drawing a needle and thread through a bit of calico,
under the delusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of
juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my
entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my brothers and
sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use a reprehensible
word. One of her ditties began with the lines:--

"Miss Luc