Is it the sweetness of flowers? she asked. No, said her teacher. Is it the warm
sun? Not exactly. It can not be touched, "'but you feel the sweetness that it pours
into everything. Without love, you would not be happy or want to play.' The
beautiful truth burst upon my mind. I felt that there were invisible lines stretched
between my spirit and the spirit of others." This period seems to have came
gradually and naturally to this wonderful child, whose life has been perhaps the
purest ever lived and one of the sweetest. None has ever loved every aspect of
nature accessible to her more passionately, or felt more keenly the charm of
nature or of beautiful sentiments. The unhappy Frost King episode has been
almost the only cloud upon her life, which unfortunately came at about the dawn
of this period, that is perhaps better marked by the great expansion of mind
which she experienced at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893, when she was
thirteen. About this time, too, her great ambition of going to college and
enjoying all the advantages that other girls did, which, considering her handicap,
was one of the greatest human resolutions, was strengthened and deepened. The
fresh, spontaneous, and exquisite reactions of this pellucid mind, which felt that
each individual could comprehend all the experiences and emotions of the race
and that chafed at every pedagogical and technical obstacle between her soul and
nature, and the great monuments of literature, show that she has conserved to a
remarkable degree, which the world will wish may be permanent, the best
impulses of this golden age.
Marie Bashkirtseff,[27] who may be taken as one of the best types of
exaggerated adolescent confessionalists, was rich and of noble birth, and began
in 1873, at the age of twelve, to write a journal that should be absolutely true and
frank, with no pretense, affectation, or concealment. The journal continues until
her death, October, 1884, at the age of twenty-three. It may be described as in
some sense a feminine counterpart of Rousseau's confessions, but is in some
respects a more precious psychological document than any other for the
elucidation of the adolescent ferment in an unusually vigorous and gifted soul.
Twice I have read it from cover to cover and with growing interest.
At twelve she is passionately in love with a duke, whom she sometimes saw
pass, but who had no knowledge of her existence, and builds many air castles
about his throwing himself at her feet and of their life together. She prays
passionately to see him again, would dazzle him on the stage, would lead a
perfect life, develop her voice, and would be an ideal wife. She agonizes before