Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/287

 schools should be to prepare people to do without them. At all events the life of the young girl ought to be divided between the school and home, so that the school may have but a small part of it. The good home is the true high school.

But I almost reproach myself for saying so much against an institution where I experienced so much of the young heart's warmth as I did here. Certain it is that I embraced and was embraced, that I kissed and was kissed, by daughters, and nieces, and mammas, and aunts, so that there was almost—too much of it. But the warm-heartedness there warmed my own heart, and I bore away with me many lively memories of it.

I am now preparing for my departure, and in the mean time have taken the portraits of my friends and their children, “the rose-coloured family,” in a little group of heads, which I leave with them as a memorial of me. I was very sorry to part with it. I should like to have had it always with me. But I shall see them again, for I am returning here. Great part of my books and clothes, as well as my one chest, I shall leave at their house. When I look at the former, and see the thick volumes of Hegel's Philosophy and Scandinavian Mythology, which I intended to have studied during my visit to this country, I cannot but smile. I have not once thought of opening them.

March 24th.—Yesterday Channing was here, the amiable W. H. Channing! He came in the morning, fresh and dewy as a morning in May. We had during the winter exchanged a couple of letters, and in them had got a little atwist. Emerson was the apple of discord between us. Channing set up Emerson, and I set up—myself. And thus we both became silent. When we now met he was most cordial and beaming, gave me a volume of Wordsworth's, the “Excursion”—and was perfectly kind and amiable. With such men one breathes the air of spring.