And I smell the sweet fragrance of flowers,
I hear the low hum of the bees,
As they busily pass the long hours.
“These pleasures were given to man
To bring him more near to his God,
Then let me praise God all I can,
Until I am laid ’neath the sod.”
From the interest excited by these little papers, the desire of the girls became strong for more dignified literary expression; and by the advice and assistance of the Rev. Abel C. Thomas, of the Universalist Church, the “Lowell Offering” was started in October, 1840, and the “Operative’s Magazine” originated in the Literary Society of the First Congregational Church. These two magazines were united, in 1842, in the “Lowell Offering.” The editors of the “Offering,” Miss Hariett Farley and Miss Hariot Curtiss, factory girls, were women of superior culture and versatility, and made the magazine a unique experiment in our literature. In its pages were clever sketches of home life, humorous and pathetic tales, charming fairy stories, and poems. Its contributors, like the editors, were mill-girls. It was successful for five years, at one time having a subscription list as high as four thousand, which the girls tried to increase by traveling for it, as agents. This periodical attracted wide attention by reason of its unusual origin. Selections were made from it, and published in London, in 1849, called, “Mind Among the Spindles;” and a gentleman attending the literary lectures, in Paris, of Philarète Chasles, was surprised to hear one in which the significance and merit of the “Lowell Offering” was the sole theme. Our young author contributed to the “Offering,” over the signatures “Rotha,” or “L. L.,” a number of poems and short prose articles, proving herself to be of sufficient ability to stand as a typical Lowell factory girl.
The principle of the interest of manufacturers in the lives of their operatives was illustrated in Lowell, though it was not carried out always as intelligently as it should have been. Children were allowed to work too young. Lucy began to change the bobbins on the spinning frames at eleven years of age, and the hours of work were sometimes from five in the morning to seven at night. But the day passed pleasantly for her, the bobbins having to be changed only every three quarters of an hour; and the interval between these periods of work was occupied by conversation with the girls in the same room, or by sitting in the window overlooking the river. On the sides of one of these windows she had pasted newspaper clippings, containing favorite poems, which she committed to memory when she sat in this “poet’s corner.”
During these years of mill-work she formed some of the ruling ideas of her life, those that we can see influencing her later thoughts, in her poetry and prose, and, best of all, her living. Her sympathy for honest industry, without any regard for its fictitious position in so-called “society,” was developed by her acquaintance with those earnest girls who were struggling for their own support and education. Her capacity for friendship was continually tested; she opened her nature to the influence of the other lives around her.