Carlyle's "Hero-Worship" brought us a startling and keen
enjoyment. It was lent me by a Dartmouth College student, the
brother of one of my room-mates, soon after it was first
published in this country. The young man did not seem to know
exactly what to think of it, and wanted another reader's opinion.
Few persons could have welcomed those early writings of Carlyle
more enthusiastically than some of us working-girls did. The very
ruggedness of the sentences had a fascination for us, like that
of climbing over loose bowlders in a mountain scramble to get
sight of a wonderful landscape.
My room-mate, the student's sister, was the possessor of an
electrifying new poem,--"Festus,"--that we sat up nights to read.
It does not seem as if it could be more than forty years since
Sarah and I looked up into each other's face from the page as the
lamplight grew dim, and said, quoting from the poem,--
"Who can mistake great thoughts?"
She gave me the volume afterwards, when we went West together,
and I have it still.
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