“The worst of it was that Aunt Ruth had seen the packet before I got home from school and had opened it. It was humiliating to have her know of my failure.
“‘I hope this will convince you that you’d better waste no more stamps on such nonsense, Em’ly. The idea of your thinking you could write a story fit to be published.’
“‘I’ve had two poems published,’ I cried.
“Aunt Ruth sniffed.
“‘Oh, poems. Of course they have to have something to fill up the corners.’
“Perhaps it’s so. I felt very flat as I crawled off to my room with my poor story. I was quite ‘content to fill a little space’ then. You could have packed me in a thimble.
“My story is all dog-eared and smells of tobacco. I’ve a notion to burn it.
“No, I won’t!! I’ll copy it out again and try somewhere else. I will succeed!
“I think, from glancing over the recent pages of this journal, that I am beginning to be able to do without italics, But sometimes they are necessary.
| · | · | · | · | · | · | · |
“May 24, 19—
“‘For lo, the winter is past: the rain is over and gone: the flowers appear on the earth: the time of the singing of birds has come.’
“I’m sitting on the sill of my open window in my own dear room. It’s so lovely to get back to it every now and then. Out there, over Lofty John’s bush, is a soft yellow sky and one very white little star is just visible where the pale yellow shades off into paler green. Far off, down in the south ‘in regions mild of calm and serene air’ are great cloud-palaces of rosy marble. Leaning over the fence is a choke-cherry tree that is a mass of blossoms like creamy caterpillars. Everything is so lovely—‘the eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing.’
