Lives of Girls Who Became Famous | Page 8

She promised, and exacted from him also a pledge that if it were
possible, he would come back from the other world to talk with his
mother. He never came, and Mrs. Hunt could have no faith in
spiritualism, because what Rennie could not do, she believed to be
impossible.
For months she shut herself into her own room, refusing to see her
nearest friends. "Any one who really loves me ought to pray that I may
die, too, like Rennie," she said. Her physician thought she would die of
grief; but when her strong, earnest nature had wrestled with itself and
come off conqueror, she came out of her seclusion, cheerful as of old.
The pictures of her husband and boy were ever beside her, and these
doubtless spurred her on to the work she was to accomplish.
Three months after Rennie's death, her first poem, Lifted Over,
appeared in the Nation:--
"As tender mothers, guiding baby steps, When places come at which
the tiny feet Would trip, lift up the little ones in arms Of love, and set
them down beyond the harm, So did our Father watch the precious boy,
Led o'er the stones by me, who stumbled oft Myself, but strove to help
my darling on: He saw the sweet limbs faltering, and saw Rough ways
before us, where my arms would fail; So reached from heaven, and
lifting the dear child, Who smiled in leaving me, He put him down
Beyond all hurt, beyond my sight, and bade Him wait for me! Shall I
not then be glad, And, thanking God, press on to overtake!"
The poem was widely copied, and many mothers were comforted by it.
The kind letters she received in consequence were the first gleam of
sunshine in the darkened life. If she were doing even a little good, she
could live and be strong.

And then began, at thirty-four, absorbing, painstaking literary work.
She studied the best models of composition. 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 God's message in the
sun, 'Thou poor blind spinner, work is done."
After this came two other small books, Bits of Travel and _Bits of Talk
about Home Matters_. She paid for the plates of the former. Fame did
not burst upon Helen Hunt; it came after years of work, after it had
been fully earned. The