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Larcom, Lucy, 1824-1893

"A New England girlhood, outlined from memory (Beverly, MA)"


The good begun by thee shall onward flow.
The pure, sweet stream shall deeper, wider grow.
The seed that in these few and fleeting hours
Thy hands, unsparing and unwearied sow,
Shall deck thy grave with amaranthine flowers,
And yield thee fruits divine in heaven's immortal bowers."
One great advantage which came to these many stranger girls
through being brought together, away from their own homes, was
that it taught them to go out of themselves, and enter into the
lives of others. Home-life, when one always stays at home, is
necessarily narrowing. That is one reason why so many women are
petty and unthoughtful of any except their own family's
interests. We have hardly begun to live until we can take in the
idea of the whole human family as the one to which we truly
belong. To me, it was an incalculable help to find myself among
so many working-girls, all of us thrown upon our own resources,
but thrown much more upon each others' sympathies.
And the stream beside which we toiled added to its own
inspirations human suggestions drawn from our acquaintance with
each other.


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