The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1893-06-15
THE DEATH OF LUCY LAr,, M.
A New England Poet Who Came of Good
Blood Though She Was Mill Girl.


Blood Though She Was Mill Girl.
Another landmark Of New England
character and culture has been removed
by the death of Miss Larcom. She was
true poet, writing songs which were
not only good from the point of view of
literary workmanship, but which are
cherished by the people for the tender
ness and wholesomeness of their senti-
ment. She was lettered and cultivated
woman and never was anything else
from the time she was a woman at all.
Foreigners and latter Cay Bostonians
lind it hard to understand this, hearing
that Lucy Larcom was an operative in a
cotton mill for 10 years in her early life.
They think of her as a sort of phenome-
non or abnormal development, like Rob
ert Burns or Elihu Burritt, whereas there
was nothing phenomenal in her cultiva-
ton, though there may have been in her
genius. Plenty of people of promising
cultivation worked in factories, in the
field or at the forge in those halcyon
early days of the present century. Not
long since the Listener saw splendid
collection Of daguerreotypes taken from
the time these pictures We're first made
up to about the year 1885. They were
chiefly of persons belonging to or in
some way connected with one Vermont
family.
The portraits all showed remarkably
fine and interesting faces-the faces ap-
parently of persons of intelligence, cult
walton and spirit-as far as possible re-
moved from the face of the SNUG philis-
tine of the present day, and being some
what familiar with the history of that
period the Listener was not astonished
to learn that these people were all firm
ers, wagon makers, blacksmiths or work
ing men or women of some sort. There
were musicians and poets among those
high spirited Yankee laborers, and their
talk was of other things than bullocks
and stock reports.
Miss Larcom belonged to the genera.
ton which produced such people and
was proud to belong to it. She was no
monstrosity of cultivation springin !:
from an ignorant race. The New England
country people of the first half of the cen
fury were superior in intelligence and
cultivation-in real education-to the
mercantile society of the present day.
On IA hours of labor and less than 81 of
wages a day they maintained better
degree of cultivation than their childrcn
do with fine houses and plenty of money
You will find some relics of this sort of
old fashioned people in the country dis
tricts still, and if YOU go to them fresh
from the trials of pretentiU71tt -slburban
society about Boston you perceive that
you have had a considerable lift in tho
world.
What an enormous, prodigious, Devil
dering gain we made when we gave up
our old, simple cultivation based on wit
and wisdom for one founded upon the
dividends of shoddy mills and shipped
off our best native blood to western
farms and counting houses to make room
for foreign operatives, in trying to keep
down" whom we spend our time!
A lady III the best sense of the word,
equally lady in the kitchen, nursery,
schoolroom, factory or literary circles,
Miss Larcom was survivor of the New
England era of social equality based
upon plain living and high thinking
Let US hope that she was also type of
what may come again when humanity
grows wiser.-Boston Transcript.