How I wish I could have foreseen how very precious they would be to me now.
Head enlarged from a group taken about 1899
LUCY LARCOM—A MEMORY
By Mary Larcom Dow
Extracts from the Beacon, published in Beverly for a charity November 1, 1913.
I am proud to be asked to record some of my pleasant days with my mother's cousin, Lucy Larcom. It will, of course, be natural to me to speak principally of the six or seven years during which she lived at Beverly Farms, the only time in which she had a real home of her own. It has always seemed strange to me that Doctor Addison in his biography of her, should have dismissed that part of her life with so few words. I know that it meant a great deal to her.
My very first recollection of her was as a child, when she, as a young lady, came to my house (then owned by "Aunt Betsey") spoken of so affectionately in "A New England Girlhood." Afterward, when I bought the old house, she expressed her great pleasure and when I told her I had spent all my money for it, she said that was quite right; it was like the turtle with his shell, a retreat.