Miss Larcom’s Books. POETICAL WORKS. _Household Edition._ With Portrait, 12mo, $1.50; full gilt, $2.00. POEMS. 16mo, $1.25. AN IDYL OF WORK. 16mo, $1.25. WILD ROSES OF CAPE ANN, AND OTHER POEMS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. CHILDHOOD SONGS. Illustrated, 12mo, $1.00. EASTER GLEAMS. Poems. 16mo, parchment paper, 75 cents. AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. 16mo, $1.00. AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE, AND OTHER SONGS OF FAITH. 16mo, $1.00. THE UNSEEN FRIEND. 16mo, $1.00. A NEW ENGLAND GIRLHOOD, outlined from Memory. In Riverside Library for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents. _Holiday Edition._ 16mo, $1.25. BREATHINGS OF THE BETTER LIFE. Edited by LUCY LARCOM. 18mo, $1.25. ROADSIDE POEMS FOR SUMMER TRAVELLERS. Selected by LUCY LARCOM. 18mo, $1.00. HILLSIDE AND SEASIDE IN POETRY. Selected by LUCY LARCOM. 18mo, $1.00. BECKONINGS FOR EVERY DAY. A Collection of Quotations for each day in the year. Compiled by LUCY LARCOM. 16mo, $1.00. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, BOSTON AND NEW YORK. [Illustration] LUCY LARCOM LIFE, LETTERS, AND DIARY BY DANIEL DULANY ADDISON [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1895 Copyright, 1894, BY DANIEL DULANY ADDISON. _All rights reserved._ _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. PREFACE It was the purpose of Miss Larcom to write a sequel to her hook, “A New England Girlhood,” in which she intended to give some account of her life in the log-cabins on the Western prairies as a pioneer and schoolmistress, and her experiences as a teacher in Wheaton Seminary, and as an editor and literary woman. She also wished to trace the growth of her religious ideas by showing the process through which she was led to undergo changes that finally made her accept a less rigorous theology than the one in which she had been reared. Her fascinating style, with its wealth of reminiscence and interesting detail, would have characterized her later book, as it did the former, but she died before beginning it, and American literature has lost a valuable record of a woman’s life. A keen observer, her contact with famous men and women gave her an opportunity for a large knowledge of persons and events; deeply interested in the questions of the day, her comments would have been just and luminous; and her sensitiveness to impressions was such that the varied influences upon her life would have been most attractively presented. She was deeply spiritual, and the account of her religious experiences would have supplemented the moral power of her published works; but she was not permitted to give us, in autobiographical form, the rich fruits of a well-spent life.