A Drop Of Water, If It Could

Girls Especially Are Fond Of Exchanging Confidences With Those Whom They Think They Can Trust; It Is One Of The Most Charming Traits Of A Simple, Earnest-hearted Girlhood, And They Are The Happiest Women Who Never Lose It Entirely.

A Tattered Copy Of Johnson's Large Dictionary Was A Great Delight To Me, On Account Of The Specimens Of English Versifications Which I Found In The Introduction. I Learned Them As If They Were So Many Poems. I Used To Keep This Old Volume Close To My Pillow; And I Amused Myself When I Awoke In The Morning By Reciting Its Jingling Contrasts Of Iambic And Trochaic And Dactylic Metre, And Thinking What A Charming Occupation It Must Be To "make Up" Verses.

In The Older Times It Was Seldom Said To Little Girls, As It Always Has Been Said To Boys, That They Ought To Have Some Definite Plan, While They Were Children, What To Be And Do When They Were Grown Up. There Was Usually But One Path Open Before Them, To Become Good Wives And Housekeepers. And The Ambition Of Most Girls Was To Follow Their Mothers' Footsteps In This Direction; A Natural And Laudable Ambition. But Girls, As Well As Boys, Must Often Have Been Conscious Of Their Own Peculiar Capabilities,--must Have Desired To Cultivate And Make Use Of Their Individual Powers.

I Remember How Beautiful The Merrimac Looked To Me In Childhood, The First True River I Ever Knew; It Opened Upon My Sight And Wound Its Way Through My Heart Like A Dream Realized; Its Harebells, Its Rocks, And Its Rapids, Are Far More Fixed In My Memory Than Anything About The Sea.

A Drop Of Water, If It Could Write Out Its Own History, Would Explain The Universe To Us.