And,indeed,what we wrote was not remarkable,--perhaps no more so than the usual school compositions of intelligent girls.It would hardly be worth while to refer to it particularly,had not the Lowell girls and their magazines been so frequently spoken of as something phenomenal.But it was a perfectly natural out-growth of those girls'previous life.For what were we?Girls who were working in a factory for the time,to be sure;but none of us had the least idea of continuing at that kind of work permanently.Our composite photograph,had it been taken,would have been the representative New England girlhood of those days.
We had all been fairly educated at public or private schools,and many of us were resolutely bent upon obtaining a better education.Very few were among us without some distinct plan for bettering the condition of themselves and those they loved.For the first time,our young women had come forth from their home retirement in a throng,each with her own individual purpose.
For twenty years or so,Lowell might have been looked upon as a rather select industrial school for young people.The girls there were just such girls as are knocking at the doors of young women's colleges to-day.They had come to work with their hands,but they could not hinder the working of their minds also.Their mental activity was overflowing at every possible outlet.
Many of them were supporting themselves at schools like Bradford Academy or Ipswich Seminary half the year,by working in the mills the other half.Mount Holyoke Seminary broke upon the thoughts of many of them as a vision of hope,--I remember being dazzled by it myself for a while,--and Mary Lyon's name was honored nowhere more than among the Lowell mill-girls.Meanwhile they were improving themselves and preparing for their future in every possible way,by purchasing and reading standard books,by attending lectures,and evening classes of their own getting up,and by meeting each other for reading and conversation.
That they should write was no more strange than that they should study,or read,or think.And yet there were those to whom it seemed incredible that a girl could,in the pauses of her work,put together words with her pen that it would do to print;and after a while the assertion was circulated,through some distant newspaper,that our magazine was not written by ourselves at all,but by "Lowell lawyers."This seemed almost too foolish a suggestion to contradict,but the editor of the "Offering"thought it best to give the name and occupation of some of the writers by way of refutation.It was for this reason (much against my own wish)that my real name was first attached to anything I wrote.I was then book-keeper in the cloth-room of the Lawrence Mills.We had all used any fanciful signature we chose,varying it as we pleased.After I began to read and love Wordsworth,my favorite nom de plume was "Rotha."In the later numbers of the magazine,the editor more frequently made us of my initials.One day I was surprised by seeing my name in full in Griswold's "Female Poet's;"--no great distinction,however,since there were a hundred names or so,besides.
It seemed necessary to give these gossip items about myself;but the real interest of every separate life-story is involved in the larger life-history which is going on around it.We do not know ourselves without our companions and surroundings.I cannot narrate my workmates'separate experiences,but I know that because of having lived among them,and because of having felt the beauty and power of their lives,I am different from what Ishould otherwise have been,and it is my own fault if I am not better for my life with them.
In recalling those years of my girlhood at Lowell,I often think that I knew then what real society is better perhaps than ever since.For in that large gathering together of young womanhood there were many choice natures---some of the choicest in all our excellent New England,and there were no false social standards to hold them apart.It is the best society when people meet sincerely,on the ground of their deepest sympathies and highest aspirations,without conventionality or cliques or affectation;and it was in that way that these young girls met and became acquainted with each other,almost of necessity.
There were all varieties of woman-nature among them,all degrees of refinement and cultivation,and,of course,many sharp contrasts of agreeable and disagreeable.It was not always the most cultivated,however,who were the most companionable.There were gentle,untaught girls,as fresh and simple as wild flowers,whose unpretending goodness of heart was better to have than bookishness;girls who loved everybody,and were loved by everybody.Those are the girls that I remember best,and their memory is sweet as a breeze from the clover fields.
As I recall the throngs of unknown girlish forms that used to pass and repass me on the familiar road to the mill-gates,and also the few that I knew so well,those with whom I worked,thought,read,wrote,studied,and worshiped,my thoughts send a heartfelt greeting to them all,wherever in God's beautiful,busy universe they may now be scattered:--"I am glad I have lived in the world with you!"
