The little boy who
surprised her into bliss one day by crying out "I 'dore you, I 'dore
you, granna! I love you every breff!" was the creature perhaps dearest
to her heart; but she loved them all, and talked and wrote of them
with abandonment of rejoicing. Writing to her friend Mrs. Rogers, she
says: "Little E. stayed with his 'granna,' who worships the ground he
walks on, and counted every beat of his quick-fluttering little heart.
Oh, I never meant, in my old age, to become subject to the thrall of a
love like this; it is almost dreadful, so absorbing, so stirring down
to the deeps. For the tiny creature is so old and wise and sweet, and
so fascinating in his sturdy common sense and clear intelligence; and
his affection for me is a wonderful, exquisite thing, the sweetest
flower that has bloomed for me in all my life through."
Her enjoyment of art could not fade nor lose its keenness. Her life
had been shut, as we have seen, into very narrow limits. She never had
seen the city of New York, and life outside the circle we have
described was an unknown world to her. She went to Europe once with
her eldest brother, when he was ill, for three months, and she has
left in her letters some striking descriptions of what she saw there;
but her days were closely bounded by the necessities we have
suggested. Nevertheless the great world of art was more to Celia
Thaxter than to others; perhaps for the very reason that her mind was
open and unjaded.
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