Then I had an invitation from a schoolmate at Monticello, Illinois, who lives at Orange, New Jersey, and I stayed there several days. I went over New York and Brooklyn by the bridge and the elevated railway, but scarcely touched the metropolis. However, I saw my old friends, and a good many new people, and had a pleasant time. And now, I am urgently invited to my old Illinois seminary, in June, when it has its semi-centennial anniversary. I am afraid I shall have to go, as my Minnesota sister seconds the motion, and she expects to move to California, another year. What a moving world it is!... The “New England Girlhood,” published in 1889, was at once a success. Few facts of Miss Larcom’s life had been generally known up to this time: there had been, however, interesting biographical sketches printed from time to time, notably Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney’s sketch, in “American Women of Note,” and her own article, in the “Atlantic Monthly,” with the title “Among Lowell Mill-Girls.” But in this book she took her friends into her confidence, and showed such genuineness of feeling, and love for her modest beginnings in the old town of Beverly, with its lanes, its woods, and its seacoast, that her description stirred up the memory of similar days in the thought of New England people, at home, and in distant parts of the country. This account of her youth contains the best elements of her thought and life, in a story, charming for its simplicity and truthful portraiture of New England homes before any of the modern changes had taken place,--those changes that introduced stoves and shut up the great fireplaces, that substituted for the stage-coach the horse and electric car, put clocks on the mantelpiece, and relegated to the junk-shops the “tin kitchens” and the three-legged “trivet.” Its homely incident and the sincerity of its religious sentiment render it an excellent book to put into the hands of young girls; by reading it they are brought into connection with the refined and vigorous girlhood of an actual life. One critic remarked, “If there could be more biography like this, there would be less call for fiction.” Miss Larcom received numerous letters of thanks for having written the book. A gentleman sent her a check, as an evidence of his satisfaction. An aged man wrote,--“If it was written for the young, it certainly was for the old. I am now eighty-five years old and never was more delighted.” Mr. Whittier sent his approval: “I am reading the book for the second time, with increased pleasure; I recall my first meeting with thee at Lowell, after thy return from the West.” That she enjoyed these tokens of appreciation, this letter indicates. TO MRS. S. I. SPALDING. 214 COLUMBUS AVENUE, Saturday evening, December 28, 1889.