for itself except through humble, even menial services, or
through unselfish devotion whose silent song is audible to God
alone; yet such music as this might rise to heaven from every
young girl's heart and character if she would set it free. In
such ways it was meant that the world should be filled with the
true poetry of womanhood.

It is one of the most beautiful facts in this human existence of
ours, that we remember the earliest and freshest part of it most
vividly. Doubtless it was meant that our childhood should live on
in us forever. My childhood was by no means a cloudless one. It
had its light and shade, each contributing a charm which makes it
wholly delightful in the retrospect.

I can see very distinctly the child that I was, and I know how
the world looked to her, far off as she is now. She seems to me
like my little sister, at play in a garden where I can at any
time return and find her. I have enjoyed bringing her back, and
letting her tell her story, almost as if she were somebody else.
I like her better than I did when I was really a child, and I
hope never to part company with her.

I do not feel so much satisfaction in the older girl who comes
between her and me, although she, too, is enough like me to be my
sister, or even more like my young, undisciplined mother; for the
girl is mother of the woman. But I have to acknowledge her faults
and mistakes as my own, while I sometimes feel like reproving her
severely for her carelessly performed tasks, her habit of lapsing
into listless reveries, her cowardly shrinking from
responsibility and vigorous endeavor, and many other faults that