One thing she planned for us, her younger housemates,--a dozen or
so of cousins, friends, and sisters, some attending school, and
some at work in the mill,--was a little fortnightly paper, to be
filled with our original contributions, she herself acting as
editor.
I do not know where she got the idea, unless it was from Mrs.
Lydia Maria Child's "Juvenile Miscellany," which had found its
way to us some years before,--a most delightful guest, and, I
think, the first magazine prepared for American children, who
have had so many since then.(I have always been glad that I knew
that sweet woman with the child's heart and the poet's soul, in
her later years, and could tell her how happy she had helped to
make my childhood.) Our little sheet was called "The Diving
Bell," probably from the sea-associations of the name. We kept
our secrets of authorship very close from everybody except the
editor, who had to decipher the handwriting and copy the pieces.
It was, indeed, an important part of the fun to guess who wrote
particular pieces.
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