New York, Ninth Street, Thursday, November 15. On
Wednesday I was conducted to a ladies’
academy, called Rutgers Institute from the name of
the founder, and here I saw four hundred and sixty
young girls, and some excellent arrangements for
their instruction and cultivation. I also heard
and read several compositions by the young girls,
both in prose and verse; and I could not but
admire the perspicuity of thought, the perfection
of the language, and, above all, the living and
beautiful feeling for life which these productions
displayed. Genius, properly so called, I did not
find in them; and I question the wisdom of that
publicity which is given to such youthful efforts. I
fear that it may awaken ambition and an inclination
to overrate literary activity, which befools many
young minds, while so few are possessed of the
divine gift of genius which alone makes literature,
as well as authors, good for anything. These young
girls have hardly lived, thought, or known enough to
write of their own experience, their own faith and
conviction. They write, as people sing, by ear. It
is good, nay excellent, that they should learn early
to disentangle their thoughts, to express themselves
well and clearly, and for this purpose these trials
of authorship are commendable. But the publicity, the
printing, the trumpeting abroad, and the rewarding of
them—can that also be good for the young, for any one,
or for anything? True genius will in its own way and
its
own time make for itself a path to praise and renown.
This evening Miss Lynch was going to have a large
party, where I was to be introduced to people,
and people were to be introduced to me, and I drove
therefore to the house to act the parrot in a large
crowd till toward midnight. These introductions are
very wearisome; a hundred times I must reply to the
same questions, and these for the most part of an
unmeaning, trivial character, just as people would
put to a parrot, whose answers are known beforehand;
for example: Had you a good passage from England? How
do you like New York? How do you like America? How
long have you been here? How long do you expect to
remain? Where are you going from here? and such like.
Such fêtes as these are one’s ruin! And, in the
meantime, I am taken up with visits, letters,
notes, invitations, and autographs, so that I have
no time for myself. This morning I had a charming
visit from a little lady doctor, that is to say,
a lady who practices the healing art, a Miss Hunt,
"female physician," as she calls herself, from Boston,
who invited me to her home, insisted that I must come,
would not let me escape until I had promised, and was
all the time so full of animation and so irresistibly
merry that we, she and I and the whole
company, burst into one peal of laughter after
another. There was besides so much that was excellent
and really sensible in what she said, and I felt
that there was so much heart in the zealous little
creature, that I could not help liking her, and gave
her the promise she wished for. With her was another
lady, as quiet as she was active, a female professor
of phrenology, who wished to get hold of my head. But
my poor head has now enough to do to hold itself up
in the whirl of society life.
The above contents can be inspected in scanned images:
32, 33, 34, 35
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