It
would hardly be worth while to refer to it particularly, had not
the Lowell girls and their magazines been so frequently spoken of
as something phenomenal. But it was a perfectly natural out-
growth of those girls' previous life. For what were we? Girls
who were working in a factory for the time, to be sure; but none
of us had the least idea of continuing at that kind of work
permanently. Our composite photograph, had it been taken, would
have been the representative New England girlhood of those days.
We had all been fairly educated at public or private schools, and
many of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining a better
education. Very few were among us without some distinct plan for
bettering the condition of themselves and those they loved. For
the first time, our young women had come forth from their home
retirement in a throng, each with her own individual purpose.
For twenty years or so, Lowell might have been looked upon as a
rather select industrial school for young people.
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