Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and DiaryAddison, Daniel Dulany
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Lucy Larcom: Life, Letters, and Diary
Addison, Daniel Dulany
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Larcom, Lucy, 1824-1893
Her schoolmates remember with pleasure the beauty of her lite at
Monticello. They speak of the gentleness and peculiar sweetness of her
character. Nothing coarse or mean could be associated with her. Being
older than the other girls she was looked up to with reverence by them.
Her singular purity of mind was illustrated by a remark to one of her
companions, when they were talking about the Christian life,--“I never
knew there was any other way to live.” One of her schoolmates writes:
“I felt homesick, until one day I was introduced to a large, fair-faced
woman, and looked up to meet a pair of happy blue eyes smiling down
upon me, so full of sweet human kindness that the clouds fell straight
away. And from that day the kindness never failed me--I think it never
failed anyone. ‘The sunshine of her face’ were words that went out in
many of my letters in those days.”
She studied industriously each subject of the course. Her note-books
contain full extracts from the authors she was reading, with long
comments by herself. Those on philosophy indicate a mind naturally
delighting in speculative questions; and when her reasoning touches
upon theology, she seems especially in earnest. History appealed to
her imagination, and she seized upon the more dramatic incidents for
comment. English literature opened a new world of thought to her, and
she studied enthusiastically the origin and growth of poetry. In these
studies of English it was first suggested to her that there was an art
of versification, which could be cultivated. From this time her lines
conform more to poetic rules, her ear for music being supplemented by a
knowledge of metre.
There was one subject she could not master,--mathematics: “I am
working on spherical trigonometry, just now. I don’t fancy it much; it
needs a clearer head than mine to take in such abstract matters as the
sides and angles of the triangle that can be imagined, but not seen.”
She would exclaim, when studying Conic Sections, that she could see
all the beauty, and feel all the poetry, but could not take the steps.
When, however, after great work, she did understand a proposition, she
accepted it as an eternal fact which God used for infinite purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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