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.Its questions and conjectures were like a glimpse into the chaos of our own dimly developing inner life.
The fascination of "Festus"was that of wonder,doubt,and dissent,with great outbursts of an overmastering faith sweeping over our minds as we read.Some of our friends thought it not quite safe reading;but we remember it as one of the inspirations of our workaday youth.
We read books,also,that bore directly upon the condition of humanity in our time."The Glory and Shame of England"was one of them,and it stirred us with a wonderful and painful interest.
We followed travelers and explorers,--Layard to Nineveh,and Stephens to Yucatan.And we were as fond of good story-books as any girls that live in these days of overflowing libraries.One book,a character-picture from history,had a wide popularity in those days.It is a pity that it should be unfamiliar to modern girlhood,--Ware's "Zenobia."The Queen of Palmyra walked among us,and held a lofty place among our ideals of heroic womanhood,never yet obliterated from admiring remembrance.
We had the delight of reading Frederika Bremer's "Home"and "Neighbors"when they were fresh from the fountains of her own heart;and some of us must not be blamed for feeling as if no tales of domestic life half so charming have been written since.
Perhaps it is partly because the home-life of Sweden is in itself so delightfully unique.
We read George Borrow's "Bible in Spain,"and wandered with him among the gypsies to whom he seemed to belong.I have never forgotten a verse that this strange traveler picked up somewhere among the Zincali:--"I'll joyfully labor,both night and day,To aid my unfortunate brothers;As a laundress tans her own face in the ray To cleanse the garments of others."It suggested a somewhat similar verse to my own mind.Why should not our washerwoman's work have its touch of poetry also?--This thought flashed by like a ray of light That brightened my homely labor:--The water is making my own hands white While I wash the robes of my neighbor.
And how delighted we were with Mrs.Kirkland's "A New Home:
Who'll Follow?"the first real Western book I ever read.Its genuine pioneer-flavor was delicious.And,moreover,it was a prophecy to Sarah,Emilie,and myself,who were one day thankful enough to find an "Aunty Parshall's dish-kettle"in a cabin on an Illinois prairie.
So the pleasantly occupied years slipped on,I still nursing my purpose of a more systematic course of study,though I saw no near possibility of its fulfillment.It came in an unexpected way,as almost everything worth having does come.I could never have dreamed that I was going to meet my opportunity nearly or quite a thousand miles away,on the banks of the Mississippi.
And yet,with that strange,delightful consciousness of growth into a comprehension of one's self and of one's life that most young persons must occasionally have experienced,I often vaguely felt heavens opening for my half-fledged wings to try themselves in.Things about me were good and enjoyable,but I could not quite rest in them;there was more for me to be,to know,and to do.I felt almost surer of the future than of the present.
If the dream of the millennium which brightened the somewhat sombre close of the first ten years of my life had faded a little,out of the very roughnesses of the intervening road light had been kindled which made the end of the second ten years glow with enthusiastic hope.I had early been saved from a great mistake;for it is the greatest of mistakes to begin life with the expectation that it is going to be easy,or with the wish to have it so.What a world it would be,if there were no hills to climb!Our powers were given us that we might conquer obstacles,and clear obstructions from the overgrown human path,and grow strong by striving,led onward always by an Invisible Guide.
Life to me,as I looked forward,was a bright blank of mystery,like the broad Western tracts of our continent,which in the atlases of those days bore the title of "Unexplored Regions."It was to be penetrated,struggled through;and its difficulties were not greatly dreaded,for I had not lost "The dream of Doing,--The first bound in the pursuing."I knew that there was no joy like the joy of pressing forward.
