If The World 's A

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.

Whatever With The Past Has Gone, The Best Is Always Yet To Come.

I Defied The Machinery To Make Me Its Slave. Its Incessant Discords Could Not Drown The Music Of My Thoughts If I Would Let Them Fly High Enough.

The Religion Of Our Fathers Overhung Us Children Like The Shadow Of A Mighty Tree Against The Trunk Of Which We Rested, While We Looked Up In Wonder Through The Great Boughs That Half Hid And Half Revealed The Sky. Some Of The Boughs Were Already Decaying, So That Perhaps We Began To See A Little More Of The Sky Than Our Elders; But The Tree Was Sound At Its Heart.

I Regard A Love For Poetry As One Of The Most Needful And Helpful Elements In The Life-outfit Of A Human Being. It Was The Greatest Of Blessings To Me, In The Long Days Of Toil To Which I Was Shut In Much Earlier Than Most Young Girls Are, That The Poetry I Held In My Memory Breathed Its Enchanted Atmosphere Through Me And Around Me, And Touched Even Dull Drudgery With Its Sunshine.