Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1893-05-06
LUCY LARCOM

ol ApIh passeu oFcE W tue kToht msJoIl
beyond" it has been we'll said that 'she
was a survivor of the New England era of
social equality, based upon plain living
and high thinking" She was true poet,
and her sympathy, ever free and abundant,
with every struggle, privation, sorrow, de-
light or aspiration of her fellow creatures,
gave spirit and feeling to all she wrote.
Her warm heart WAS ever youthful, her
earnest purpose never wearied.
For her own pleasure she wrote little
stories and poems when but child of
seven years. Her father died when she
was ten, and her mother, in order to sup
port large family, moved to Lowell and
opened boardinghouse for factory opera
tives. After few years Lucy went to
work in a cotton mill, as in that day many
other American girls of good families, in
telligent and well-bred, worked, and
thought no less of themselves for so doing
Here Miss Lsrcom continued her writing,
and edited "The Lowell Offering" her con-
tributors also being young men and women
in the factories. John g. Whittier, then
the editor of the National Era, was one of
the first to acknowledge the merit of her
writings, and the cordial friendship that
sprung up between them then lasted until
tuo uohbu VI Jul Suohck poSb. Aao was
associated with him in the compilation of
"Child Life" "Child Life in Prose-" and
"Songs of Three Csnturiee."
From the cotton mill 10 the school house
was not an unprecedented step for bright
New England girl Miss Larcom began
| teaching in Illinois, and took a course of
study at Monticello seminary. For six
years she taught in Wheaton seminary, at
| Norton, Massachusetts, giving up an occu-
| patton in which che WAS very successful
| only On account of ill health From 1865,
when "Our Young Folks" was founded,
until 1874, Miss Lsrcom WAS its editor.
| She wrote poems and stories that were
| full Of sweetness and power, her war
songs helping to keep alive New Englsnd's
| spirit of patriotism, and one at least of her
| poems has become a classic, s'Hannah Bind
| Ing Shoes" embodying the pathos and pa
| tience of many a New England woman's
| life, in finished and musical lines. Not
| only are all her writings good from the
literary point of view, but they are true
| and wholesome. ''She was lettered and
| cultivated woman" says ''The Listener, Vi
land never WAS anything else from the
| time she was a woman at all. Foreigners
| and latter-day Bostonians find 1t hard to
| understand this, hearing that Lucy Lar
| com was an operative in a cotton mill for
| tcu yeats in hok Soiiy lilc. Ahoio "eo
| nothing phenomenal in her cultivation,
though there may have been in her genius.
Plenty OF people of promising cultivation
worked in factories, in the field and at the
forge in those haloyon early days of the
present century"
| Miss Larcom was i'll for several months.
Knowing that the end was near she was
not dIsmayed or fearful, but passed hap
PLY on to what she believed to be n wider
field of loving endeavor. Her last poem
Dreaming or Waking" embodies the
creed by which she had lived, that love and
helpfolness are the best of life
/ Oh, comrade mine, thou dreamest in vain,
| OF heaven, IL here thou hast not found,
In soothing human grief and pain,
That earth itself is holy ground.
| Hillary.