Those larger planets held our little one to its orbit, and lent
it their brightness. Happy indeed is the infancy which is
surrounded only by the loving and the good!

Besides those who were of my kindred, I had several aunts by
courtesy, or rather by the privilege of neighborhood, who seemed
to belong to my babyhood. Indeed, the family hearthstone came
near being the scene of a tragedy to me, through the blind
fondness of one of these.

The adjective is literal. This dear old lady, almost sightless,
sitting in a low chair far in the chimney corner, where she had
been placed on her first call to see the new baby, took me upon
her lap, and--so they say--unconsciously let me slip off into the
coals. I was rescued unsinged, however, and it was one of the
earliest accomplishments of my infancy to thread my poor, half-
blind Aunt Stanley's needles for her. We were close neighbors and
gossips until my fourth year. Many an hour I sat by her side
drawing a needle and thread through a bit of calico, under the
delusion that I was sewing, while she repeated all sorts of
juvenile singsongs of which her memory seemed full, for my
entertainment. There used to be a legend current among my
brothers and sisters that this aunt unwittingly taught me to use
a reprehensible word. One of her ditties began with the lines:--

"Miss Lucy was a charming child;
She never said, 'I won't.'"

After bearing this once or twice, the willful negative was
continually upon my lips; doubtless a symptom of what was dormant