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WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
WHEN I WAS A LITTLE
GIRL
BY
ZONA GALE
AUTHOR OF “THE LOVES OF PELLEAS AND ETARRE,”
“FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
AGNES PELTON
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
Copyright, 1911, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1913,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
TO
THE LITTLE GIRL ON CONANT STREET
AND TO THE
MEMORY OF HER GRANDMOTHER
HARRIET BEERS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER | PAGE | |
I. | In Those Days | 1 |
II. | In No Time | 16 |
III. | One for the Money | 35 |
IV. | The Picnic | 53 |
V. | The King’s Trumpeter | 77 |
VI. | My Lady of the Apple Tree | 103 |
VII. | The Princess Romancia | 118 |
VIII. | Two for the Show | 147 |
IX. | Next Door | 159 |
X. | What’s Proper | 173 |
XI. | Dolls | 192 |
XII. | Bit-Bit | 211 |
XIII. | Why | 228 |
XIV. | King | 247 |
XV. | King (continued) | 281 |
XVI. | The Walk | 307 |
XVII. | The Great Black Hush | 315 |
XVIII. | The Decoration of Independence | 329 |
XIX. | Earth-Mother | 354 |
XX. | Three to Make Ready | 375 |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Somewhere beyond sealed doors | Frontispiece |
FACING PAGE | |
Sat on a rock in the landscape and practised | 32 |
Little by little she grew silent and refused to join in the games | 128 |
But the minute folk left the room—ah, then! | 168 |
She settled everything in that way; she counted the petals of fennel daisies and blew thistle from dandelions | 196 |
Then out of the valley a great deev arose | 216 |
To see what running away is really like | 316 |
There used to be a little girl who does not come here any more. She is not dead, for when certain things happen, she stirs slightly where she is, perhaps deep within the air. When the sun falls in a particular way, when graham griddle cakes are baking, when the sky laughs sudden blue after a storm, or the town clock points in its clearest you-will-be-late way at nine in the morning, when the moonlight is on the midnight and nothing moves—then, somewhere beyond sealed doors, the little girl says something, and it is plain that she is here all the time.
You little child who never have died, in these stories I am trying to tell you that now I come near to understanding you. I see you still, with your over-long hair and your over-much chattering, your naughtiness and your dreams. I know the qualities that made you disagreeable and those that made you dear, and I look on you somewhat as spirit looks on spirit, understanding from within. I wish that we could live it again, you and I—not all of it, by any means, and not for a serious business; but now and then, for a joy and for an idleness. And this book is a way of trying to do it over again, together.
Will you care to come from the quiet where you are, near to me and yet remote? I think that you will come, for you were wont untiringly to wonder about me. And now here I am, come true, so faintly like her whom you dreamed, yet so like you yourself, your child, fruit of your spirit, you little shadowy mother. . . .
And I knew where they fly,
I’d make a tale of time itself
To tell you by and bye.
That let us by for pearls,
I’d make a story ocean-strange
For little boys and girls.
I summon all I may.
Oh, see—they try to spell out Life!
Let’s act it, like a play.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1961, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 62 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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