rted girlhood, and they
are the happiest women who never lose it entirely.

I should like far better to listen to my girl-readers' thoughts about
life and themselves than to be writing out my own experiences. It is to
my disadvantage that the confidences, in this case, must all be on one
side. But I have known so many girls so well in my relation to them of
schoolmate, workmate, and teacher, I feel sure of a fair share of their
sympathy and attention.

It is hardly possible for an author to write anything sincerely without
making it something of an autobiography. Friends can always read a
personal history, or guess at it, between the lines. So I sometimes
think I have already written mine, in my verses. In them, I have found
the most natural and free expression of myself. They have seemed to set
my life to music for me, a life that has always had to be occupied with
many things besides writing. Not, however, that I claim to have written
much poetry: only perhaps some true rhymes: I do not see how there
could be any pleasure in writing insincere ones.

Whatever special interest this little narrative of mine may have is due
to the social influences under which I was reared, and particularly to
the prominent place held by both work and religion in New England half
a century ago. The period of my growing-up had peculiarities which our
future history can never repeat, although something far better is
undoubtedly already resulting thence. Those peculiarities were the
natural development of the seed sown by our sturdy Puritan ancestry.
The religion of our fathers overhung us children like the shadow of a
mighty tree against the trunk of which we rested, while we looked up in
wonder through the great boughs that half hid and half revealed the
sky. Some of the boughs were already decaying, so that perhaps we began
to see a little more of the sky, than our elders; but the tree was
sound at its heart. There was life in it that can never be lost to the
world.

One thing we are at last beginning to understand, which our ancestors
evidently had not learned; that it is far more needful for theologians
to become as little children, than for little children to become
theologians. They considered it a duty that they owed to the youngest
of us, to teach us doctrines. And we believed in our instructors, if we
could not always digest their instructions. We learned to reverence
truth as they received it and lived it, and to feel that the