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by Unknown

LUCY LARCOM.

AUTHOR OF “HANNAH BINDING SHOES.”

AD we visited the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, sixty years ago, we perhaps would not have noticed anything peculiar or different from other girls in the busy little body known as Lucy Larcom. She had left school in her early teens to help support the family by serving as an ordinary operative in a cotton factory. Yet this is where Lucy Larcom did her first work; and to the experiences she gained there can be traced the foundation of the literature—both prose and poetry—with which she has delighted and encouraged so many readers.

Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1826. Her father, a sea captain, died while she was a child, and her mother removed with her several children to Lowell, Massachusetts. For a while Lucy attended the public schools and at the age of ten years showed a talent for writing verses. In the cotton mill, she tells us, her first work was “doffing and replacing the bobbins in the machine. Next,” she says, “I entered the spinning-room, then the dressing-room, where I had a place beside pleasant windows looking toward the river. Later I was promoted to the cloth-room, where I had fewer hours of confinement, without the noisy machinery, and it was altogether neater.” The last two years, of her eight years’ work in the mill, she served as book-keeper, and, during her leisure hours, pursued her studies in mathematics, grammar and English and German literature.

The female operatives in the Lowell mills published a little paper entitled “Offering,” and it was to this that Miss Larcom contributed her first literary production, which was in the shape of a poem entitled “The River;” and many of her verses and essays, both grave and gay, may be found in the old files of this paper. Her first volume, “Similitudes,” was compiled from essays which appeared originally in “Offering.” Since then her name has found an honored place among the women writers of America. Among her early and best poems are “Hannah Binding Shoes” and “The Rose Enthroned,” the latter being Miss Larcom’s first contribution to the “Atlantic Monthly.” She did not sign her name to the contribution and it was of such merit that one of the reviewers attributed it to the poet Emerson. Both Mr. Lowell, the editor of “The Atlantic Monthly,” and the poet, Whittier, to whose papers she also contributed, praised her ability. Miss Larcom studied at Monticello Female Seminary, Illinois, and afterwards taught in some of the leading female schools in her native State. In 1859 appeared her book entitled “Ships in the Mist and Other Stories,” and in 1866 was published “Breathings of a Better Life.” From 1866 to 1874 she was editor of “Our Young Folks,” and in 1875 “An Idyl of Work, a Story in Verse,” appeared. In 1880 “Wild Roses of Cape Ann and Other Poems” was published, and in 1881 “Among Lowell Mill Girls” appeared. In 1885 her poetical works were gathered and published in one volume. Of late, Miss Larcom’s writings have assumed deeply religious tones in which the faith of her whole life finds ample expression. This characteristic is strongly noticeable in “Beckonings” (1886), and especially so in her last two books “As It Is In Heaven” (1891) and “The Unseen Friend” (1892), both of which embody her maturest thought on matters concerning the spiritual life.

One of the most admirable characteristics of Miss Larcom’s life and her writings is the marked spirit of philanthropy pervading every thing she did. She was in sentiment and practically the working woman’s friend. She came from among them, had shared their toils, and the burning and consuming impulse of her life was to better their condition. In this, she imitated the spirit of Him, who, being lifted up, would draw all men after Him.

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HANNAH BINDING SHOES.

OOR lone Hannah,

Sitting at the window, binding shoes!

Faded, wrinkled,

Sitting stitching, in a mournful muse!

Bright-eyed beauty once was she,

When the bloom was on the tree:

Spring and winter

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.

Not a neighbor

Passing nod or answer will refuse

To her whisper,

“Is there from the fishers any news?”

Oh, her heart’s adrift with one

On an endless voyage gone!

Night and morning

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.

Fair young Hannah

Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos;

Hale and clever,

For a willing heart and hand he sues.

May-day skies are all aglow,

And the waves are laughing so!

For the wedding

Hannah leaves her window and her shoes.

May is passing:

Mid the apple-boughs a pigeon coos.

Hannah shudders,

For the mild south-wester mischief brews.

Round the rocks of Marblehead,

Outward bound, a schooner sped:

Silent, lonesome,

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.

’Tis November.

Now no tears her wasted cheek bedews.

From Newfoundland

Not a sail returning will she lose,

Whispering hoarsely, “Fisherman,

Have you, have you heard of Ben?”

Old with watching,

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.

Twenty winters

Bleach and tear the ragged shore she views.

Twenty seasons;—

Never has one brought her any news.

Still her dim eyes silently

Chase the white sail o’er the sea:

Hopeless, faithless,

Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.

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