One of the most curious phases in the life of New England, and one that must always puzzle the historian of its literature, is its sudden intellectual blossoming half a century ago. [Illustration: LOWELL OFFERING December, 1845. _Is Saul also among the prophets._ A REPOSITORY OF ORIGINAL ARTICLES, WRITTEN BY “FACTORY GIRLS.” LOWELL: MISSES CURTIS & FARLEY. BOSTON: JORDAN & WILEY, 121 Washington street. 1845. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.] Emerson says, “The children of New England between 1820 and 1840 were born with knives in their brains;” and this would seem to be true, since during or very near that time, were born the majority of those writers and thinkers whose lives have been so recently and so nobly rounded out,--Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, John Pierpont,--they whose influence cannot be overestimated in bringing an ideal element into our hitherto prosaic New England life. The seeds of this intellectual growth came suddenly, as if blown from some far-off cultured land, and were sown broadcast. Some found a resting-place in this little corner of New England, where were gathered together these daughters of Puritan ancestors, and they, too, feeling the intellectual impetus, were impelled to put in writing their own crude thoughts. Their desire for self-improvement had been to some extent gratified, and they now began to feel the benefit of the educational advantages which had been opened to them. As in “Mary Barton,” they “threw the shuttle with increasing sound, although Newton’s ‘Principia’ lay open before them, to be snatched at in work-hours, but revelled over at meal-time or at night.” And the “literary” girls among us would often be seen writing on scraps of paper which we hid “between whiles” in the waste-boxes upon which we sat while waiting for the looms or frames to need attention. Some of these studious ones kept note-books, with abstracts of their reading and studies, or jotted down what they were pleased to call their “thoughts.” It was natural that such a thoughtful life should bear fruit, and this leads me to speak of _The Lowell Offering_, a publication which was the natural outgrowth of the mental habit of the early mill-girls, for many of the pieces that were printed there were thought out amid the hum of the wheels, while the skilful fingers and well-trained eyes of the writers tended the loom or the frame. The idea of organization for literary and educational purposes was first proposed in 1837 by Miss Harriot F. Curtis, perhaps the most progressive of all the mill-girls. She with her immediate associates conceived the idea of forming a little society for mental improvement. In _The Lowell Offering_ of January, 1845, is the following account of its formation written by Miss Maria Currier. “IMPROVEMENT CIRCLE.