fifty years is not at all the New England that
our fathers knew. We speak of having been reared under Puritanic
influences, but the traditionary sternness of these was much modified,
even in the childhood of the generation to which I belong. We did not
recognize the grim features of the Puritan, as we used sometimes to
read about him, in our parents or relatives. And yet we were children
of the Puritans.

Everything that was new or strange came to us at Lowell. And most of
the remarkable people of the day came also. How strange it was to see
Mar Yohannan, a Nestorian bishop, walking through the factory yard in
his Oriental robes with more than a child's wonder on his face at the
stir and rush of everything! He came from Boston by railroad, and was
present at the wedding at the clergyman's house where he visited. The
rapidity of the simple Congregational service astonished him.

"What? Marry on railroad, too?" he asked.

Dickens visited Lowell while I was there, and gave a good report of
what he saw in his "American Notes." We did not leave work even to gaze
at distinguished strangers, so I missed seeing him. But a friend who
did see him sketched his profile in pencil for me as he passed along
the street. He was then best known as "Boz."

Many of the prominent men of the country were in the habit of giving
Lyceum lectures, and the Lyceum lecture of that day was a means of
education, conveying to the people the results of study and thought
through the best minds. At Lowell it was more patronized by the
mill-people than any mere entertainment. We had John Quincy Adams,
Edward Everett, John Pierpont, and Ralph Waldo Emerson among our
lecturers, with numerous distinguished clergymen of the day. Daniel
Webster was once in the city, trying a law case. Some of my girl
friends went to the court-room and had a glimpse of his face, but I
just missed seeing him.

Sometimes an Englishman, who was studying our national institutions,
would call and have a friendly talk with us at work. Sometimes it was a
traveler from the South, who was interested in some way. I remember
one, an editor and author from Georgia, who visited our Improvement
Circle, and who sent some of us "Offering" contributors copies of his
book after he had returned home.

One of the pleasantest visitors that I recall was a young Quaker woman
from Philadelphia, a school-teacher, who came to see for herself how
the Lowell girls lived, of whom she had heard so m