For whatever
reason, the weeklies gave me all I could do at this sort of thing. In
its course I formed some pleasant acquaintances; among others that of
Jean Ingelow. I have never seen this poet, whom I honor now as much as
I admired then; but charming little notes, and books of her own, with
her autograph, reached me from time to time for years. I remember
when "The Gates Ajar" appeared, that she frankly called it "Your most
strange book."
This brings me to say: I have been so often and so urgently asked to
publish some account of the history of this book, that perhaps I need
crave no pardon of whatever readers these papers may command, for
giving more of our space to the subject than it would otherwise occur
to one to do to a book so long behind the day.
Of what we know as literary ambition, I believe myself to have been
as destitute at that time as any girl who ever put pen to paper. I was
absorbed in thought and feeling as far removed from the usual class
of emotions or motives which move men and women to write, as Wachusett
was from the June lilies burning beside the moonlit cross in my
father's garden. Literary ambition is a good thing to possess; and I
do not at all suggest that I was superior to it, but simply apart from
it. Of its pangs and ecstasies I knew little, and thought less.
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