I think it must be a mistake about my having improved so _very_ much; though I should be sorry to have lived all these years and made no advancement. Folks tell me that I am dignified, sometimes, but I don’t know what it means. I have never tried to be, and I seem just as natural to myself as anything. I don’t know how I could ever get along with all your cares. I should like tending the babies well enough, but when it came to washing, baking, brewing, and mending, my patience would take “French leave.” Still I don’t believe that any married woman’s trials are much worse than a “schoolma’am’s.”... There was an event in her life in the West to be touched on. It relates to her one serious love affair. A deep attachment sprang up between Lucy and a young man who had accompanied her sister’s family to Illinois, and for a time lived with them during their log-cabin experiences, but afterwards went to California. When he left, though they could hardly be called engaged, there was an understanding between them that, when he returned during the last days of her school life, they were to decide the matter finally. After three years of separation, they were no nearer a conclusion. Some years after this, it became clear to Miss Larcom that their marriage would not be for the best interests of either. In 1852, her thoughts turned again to her native town of Beverly. Equipped with her Monticello education, she felt prepared to support herself by teaching in her congenial home in the East. The memories of her childhood drew her back in thought to her old home. She wrote to her brother Benjamin in March, “The almanac says I am twenty-eight years old, but really, Ben, I do believe it fibs, for I don’t feel half so old. It seems only the other day that Lydia and I were sitting by the big kitchen fireplace, down the lane, and you opposite us, puffing cigar-smoke into our hair, and singing, ‘My name is Apollyon.’” To her sister Lydia, whose birthday was on the same day of the month as her own, she sent some verses recalling her childhood. “In childhood we looked gayly out, To see this blustering dawn begin And hailed the wind whose noisy shout Our mutual birthday ushered in. “For cakes, beneath our pillow rolled, We laughing searched, and wondered, too, How mother had so well foretold What fairy people meant to do.” CHAPTER III. LIFE AT NORTON. 1853-1859.