JOHN A. GRAY, Agent,
TYPE-SETTING MACHINERY,
16 & 18 JACOB STREET,
NEW YORK.




PREFATORY NOTE.


Considerable portions of this work originally appeared in the _Atlantic
Monthly_, but there is added to these a large amount of new matter not
hitherto published, and the whole work has been thoroughly revised.




RECORDS OF A GIRLHOOD.

CHAPTER I.


A few years ago I received from a friend to whom they had been addressed
a collection of my own letters, written during a period of forty years,
and amounting to thousands--a history of my life.

The passion for universal history (_i.e._ any and every body's story)
nowadays seems to render any thing in the shape of personal