cause of having lived among
them, and because of having felt the beauty and power of their lives, I
am different from what I should otherwise have been, and it is my own
fault if I am not better for my life with them.

In recalling those years of my girlhood at Lowell, I often think that I
knew then what real society is better perhaps than ever since. For in
that large gathering together of young womanhood there were many choice
natures---some of the choicest in all our excellent New England, and
there were no false social standards to hold them apart. It is the best
society when people meet sincerely, on the ground of their deepest
sympathies and highest aspirations, without conventionality or cliques
or affectation; and it was in that way that these young girls met and
became acquainted with each other, almost of necessity.

There were all varieties of woman-nature among them, all degrees of
refinement and cultivation, and, of course, many sharp contrasts of
agreeable and disagreeable. It was not always the most cultivated,
however, who were the most companionable. There were gentle, untaught
girls, as fresh and simple as wild flowers, whose unpretending goodness
of heart was better to have than bookishness; girls who loved
everybody, and were loved by everybody. Those are the girls that I
remember best, and their memory is sweet as a breeze from the clover
fields.

As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish forms that used to pass and
repass me on the familiar road to the mill-gates, and also the few that
I knew so well, those with whom I worked, thought, read, wrote,
studied, and worshiped, my thoughts send a heartfelt greeting to them
all, wherever in God's beautiful, busy universe they may now be
scattered:--

"I am glad I have lived in the world with you!"

XI.

READING AND STUDYING.

My return to mill-work involved making acquaintance with a new kind of
machinery. The spinning-room was the only one I had hitherto known
anything about. Now my sister Emilie found a place for me in the
dressing-room, beside herself. It was more airy, and fewer girls were
in the room, for the dressing-frame itself was a large, clumsy affair,
that occupied a great deal of space. Mine seemed to me as unmanageable
as an overgrown spoilt child. It had to be watched in a dozen
directions every minute, and even then it was always getting itself and
me into trouble. I felt as if the half-live creature, with its great,
groan