Phemie Frost's Experiences

Unexpected and alternative spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation punctuation, possible typographer's errors and omitted words, and incorrectly numbered chapters and page numbers have been retained as they appear in the original publication.
AUTHOR OF FASHION AND FAMINE, REJECTED WIFE, OLD HOMESTEAD, ETC., ETC., ETC.
To Frank Leslie, Esq., One of the Best-tried and Most Valued Friends I Have, THIS VOLUME , THE LIGHT AMUSEMENT OF MY LEISURE HOURS, IS Respectfully Dedicated.
ANN S. STEPHENS.
St. Cloud Hotel, } New York, March , 1874. }
Thistle down, thistle down, cast to the wind So lightly and wildly, you scarcely can find A glimpse of it here, or a gleam of it there, As it trembles, a silvery mist, on the air.
Like the wide thorny leaves whence the mother root threw Up its crown of rich purple, bejewelled with dew, These feathery nothings, barbed, sparsely, with seeds, Must struggle for life with the brambles and weeds.
I HAVE made up my mind. Having put my hand to the plough, it isn't in me to back out of a duty when duty and one's own wishes sail amicably in the same canoe. I am going to give myself up to the good of mankind and the dissemination of great moral ideas.
Selected by the Society of Infinite Progress as its travelling missionary, with power to spread the most transcendental of New England ideas throughout the world, I shall take up my cross and go forth.
The evening after the Society had crowned me with this honor, I asked Aunt Kesiah and Uncle Ben Frost, who have been working the farm on shares ever since my father died, if they could not make out to do without me for some months, or weeks, or years, just as duty or my own feelings took a notion to stay.
Aunt Kesiah sat right down in the rocking-chair, and looked straight in my face for a whole minute without speaking.
What, says she at last, going away from home at your age—a female woman all alone in the world! You and the Society just take my breath away, Phœmie. Where on arth are you a going to?