Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/34

Rh me the next day at four o'clock, and I was put on a short commons of novels. Bulwer was entirely forbidden, and I read Napoleon at St. Helena. I was allowed Walter Scott (God bless him!) and Miss Austen. God bless her a thousand times! She lighted the weary way of a poor little girl for a very dreary winter.

I think the Reverend Mr. Livermore came in about this time to teach me a little German, to soften the asperities of Mrs. Selden and Mrs. Brown, and even to give me a lift up the ladder of literature, for he accepted my first story, sent anonymously to the Social Gazette, a periodical read in his dear clerical parlor, where I first experienced the exhilarating thrill of hearing my own writings read to an appreciative circle. Mr. Prentiss said, "That is a capital story." I, the unknown author, sat burning in the background. My mother (O rapture!) applauded it. Dear woman, it was the only time!

When I got home I told her I had written it. "Go to bed, my dear; it was a very poor story indeed," said she, sternly.

My mother thought flattery of any kind was wicked, and so had the early teaching of her Puritan, Calvinistic parents steeled her tender heart that she allowed my youth to pass without a caress and without praise. The word love was never mentioned. I wonder we did not all grow up Shakeresses. In fact, the fault of all New England education was a certain hardness. Our minds were cultivated more than our hearts.

There was a blue lookout for my dreamy shirkmg of the boundaries of Pennsylvania. Never, however, did so slight a fault lead to so useful a punishment. To go to Mr. Emerson's school, to be a "Boston girl" — even in name — was a vision of majesty. I determmed that I