EBOOK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY ***
Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections).
THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY.
A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.
VOL. XIII.--JUNE, 1864.--NO. LXXX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by TICKNOR
AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected. Footnotes have been
moved to the end of the article.
A TALK ABOUT GUIDES.
Talk about guides! Let Independence, Self-Conceit, and Go-ahead
undervalue them, if they will; but I, Sola Foemina, (for that is the
name I go by,) of Ignorance, (the place I hail from,) casting up my
unbalanced accounts, (with a view to settling,) find a large credit due
to this class of individuals, which (though I have not the means to
meet) I have no intention to repudiate.
Now and then, to be sure, I, S. F., have been reminded in my journeyings
of poor dear E., whose lively spirit was so chafed by the exactions made
upon his purse and his temper at the hands of this imperturbable race,
that at last he turned, like a stag at bay, and vented all his wrath in
the face of a startled old woman by the abrupt and emphatic query,
"What'll you take to clear out?"
Still, dogmatic and prosing as they sometimes proved, my experience on
the whole was favorable; and from the motherly old portress of the
English church at Honeybourne, who fed me with bread and butter under
her cottage-roof, and sent me away laden with garden-flowers and a
blessing, to faithful Michel, who held me over the blue fissures of the
glaciers that I might get a glimpse of their secret waterfalls, who
gathered violets for me on the margin of the icy sea, and, when I had
carelessly dropped them by the way, treasured up the faded things to
restore them to me at nightfall,--from the aged woman, with her "Good
bye till we meet in heaven," to the rough mountaineer, with his hearty
hand-pressure and God-speed at parting, I would not willingly lose one
link out of the chain of such fast friends which stretched along my way.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25