Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

’Twas in her thirteenth June;

And with her, as the rules required,

“Two towels and a spoon.”

They braced my aunt against a board,

To make her straight and tall;

They laced her up, they starved her down,

To make her light and small;

They pinch’d her feet, they singed her hair,

They screw’d it up with pins,—

Oh, never mortal suffer’d more