A Man May Make A Misanthrope Of

I Am Willing To Make Any Part Of My Life Public, If It Will Help Others.

When I Heard That There Were Artists, I Wished I Could Some Time Be One. If I Could Only Make A Rose Bloom On Paper, I Thought I Should Be Happy! Or If I Could At Last Succeed In Drawing The Outline Of Winter-stripped Boughs As I Saw Them Against The Sky, It Seemed To Me That I Should Be Willing To Spend Years In Trying.

We Might All Place Ourselves In One Of Two Ranks The Women Who Do Something, And The Women Who Do Nothing; The First Being Of Course The Only Creditable Place To Occupy.

A Tattered Copy Of Johnson's Large Dictionary Was A Great Delight To Me, On Account Of The Specimens Of English Versifications Which I Found In The Introduction. I Learned Them As If They Were So Many Poems. I Used To Keep This Old Volume Close To My Pillow; And I Amused Myself When I Awoke In The Morning By Reciting Its Jingling Contrasts Of Iambic And Trochaic And Dactylic Metre, And Thinking What A Charming Occupation It Must Be To "make Up" Verses.

I Remember How Beautiful The Merrimac Looked To Me In Childhood, The First True River I Ever Knew; It Opened Upon My Sight And Wound Its Way Through My Heart Like A Dream Realized; Its Harebells, Its Rocks, And Its Rapids, Are Far More Fixed In My Memory Than Anything About The Sea.