. She said to a friend,
years after, "Have you ever tested the advantages of an analytical
reading of some writer of finished style? There is a little book
called _Out-Door Papers_, by Wentworth Higginson, that is one of
the most perfect specimens of literary composition in the English
language. It has been my model for years. I go to it as a text-book,
and have actually spent hours at a time, taking one sentence after
another, and experimenting upon them, trying to see if I could take
out a word or transpose a clause, and not destroy their perfection."
And again, "I shall never write a sentence, so long as I live, without
studying it over from the standpoint of whether you would think it
could be bettered."

Her first prose sketch, a walk up Mt. Washington from the Glen House,
appeared in the _Independent_, Sept. 13, 1866; and from this time she
wrote for that able journal three hundred and seventy-one articles.
She worked rapidly, writing usually with a lead-pencil, on large
sheets of yellow paper, but she pruned carefully. Her first poem in
the _Atlantic Monthly_, entitled _Coronation_, delicate and full of
meaning, appeared in 1869, being taken to Mr. Fields, the editor, by a
friend.

At this time she spent a year abroad, principally in Germany and
Italy, writing home several sketches. In Rome she became so ill that
her life was despaired of. When she was partially recovered and went
away to regain her strength, her friends insisted that a professional
nurse should go with her; but she took a hard-working young Italian
girl of sixteen, to whom this vacation would be a blessing.

On her return, in 1870, a little book of _Verses_ was published. Like
most beginners, she was obliged to pay for the stereotyped plates.
The book was well received. Emerson liked especially her sonnet,
_Thought_. He ranked her poetry above that of all American women,
and most American men. Some persons praised the "exquisite musical
structure" of the _Gondolieds_, and others read and re-read her
beautiful _Down to Sleep_. But the world's favorite was _Spinning_:--

"Like a blind spinner in the sun,
I tread my days;
I know that all the threads will run
Appointed ways;
I know each day will bring its task,
And, being blind, no more I ask.

* * * * *

"But listen, listen, day by day,
To hear their tread
Who bear the finished web away,
And cut the thread,
And bring