A Child's Journey with Dickens

When I was a little girl (I always think that these words, in precisely this juxtaposition, are six of the most charming in the language) when I was a little girl, I lived, between the ages of six and sixteen, in a small village in Maine. My sister and I had few play mates, but I cannot remember that we were ever dull, for dullness in a child, as in a grown person, means lack of dreams and visions, and those we had a plenty. We were fortunate, too, in that our house was on the brink of one of the loveliest rivers in the world. When we chambered down the steep bank to the little cove that was just beneath our bedroom windows, we found ourselves facing a sheet of crystal water as quiet as a lake, a lake from the shores of which we could set any sort of adventure afloat; yet scarcely three hundred feet away was a roaring waterfall, a baby Niagara, which, after dashing over the dam in a magnificent tawny torrent, spent itself in a wild stream that made a path between rocky clifls until it reached the sea, eight miles away. No child could be lonely who lived on the brink of such a river; and then we had, beside our studies and our country sports, our books, which were the dearest of all our friends. It is a long time ago, but I can see very clearly a certain set of black walnut book-shelves, hanging on the wall of the family sitting-room.