“ In the "Idyl" the mill-life of forty or fifty years ago is portrayed, and, in following the career of some of those bright spirits, watching their success in their varied pathways through life, it is very pleasant to know that the culture, the self-sacrifice and the effort begun in that hard school have developed characters so noble and prepared them so well for their appointed life-work. ”

“ Miss Larcom's first work as a Lowell operative was in a spinning-room, doffing and replacing the bobbins, after which she tended a spinning-frame and then a dressing-frame, beside pleasant windows looking towards the river. Later she was employed in a "cloth-room," a more agreeable working-place, on account of its fewer hours of confinement, its cleanliness and the absence of machinery. The last two years of her Lowell life, which covered in all a period of about ten years, were spent in that room, not in measuring cloth, but as book-keeper, recording the number of pieces and bales. ”

“ Since then Lucy Larcom's name has found an honored place among the women poets of America. Of late her writings have assumed a deeply religious tone, in which the faith of her whole life finds complete expression. Among her earlier and best-known poems are " Hannah Binding Shoes," and "The Rose Enthroned," Miss Larcom's earliest contribution to the "Atlantic Monthly," when the poet Lowell was its editor, a poem that in the absence of signature was attributed to Emerson by one reviewer; also "A Loyal Woman's No." ”