It was not always the
most cultivated, however, who were the most companionable. There
were gentle, untaught girls, as fresh and simple as wild flowers,
whose unpretending goodness of heart was better to have than
bookishness; girls who loved everybody, and were loved by
everybody. Those are the girls that I remember best, and their
memory is sweet as a breeze from the clover fields.
As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish forms that used to
pass and repass me on the familiar road to the mill-gates, and
also the few that I knew so well, those with whom I worked,
thought, read, wrote, studied, and worshiped, my thoughts send a
heartfelt greeting to them all, wherever in God's beautiful, busy
universe they may now be scattered:--
"I am glad I have lived in the world with you!"
XI.
READING AND STUDYING.
My return to mill-work involved making acquaintance with a new
kind of machinery. The spinning-room was the only one I had
hitherto known anything about. Now my sister Emilie found a place
for me in the dressing-room, beside herself.
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