I do not even know that one can call them more “serious” than their city sisters—­for we were a merry lot; at least, my lot were.  But they were, I believe, especially open-hearted, gentle-minded girls.

If they were “out of the world” to a certain extent, they were, to another, out of the evil of it.  As I look back upon the little drama between twelve and twenty—­I might rather say, between two and twenty—­Andover young people seem to me to have been as truly and naturally innocent as one may meet anywhere in the world.  Some of these private records of girl-history were so white, so clear, so sweet, that to read them would be like watching a morning-glory open.  The world is full, thank Heaven, of lovely girls; but though other forms or phases of gentle society claim their full quota, I never saw a lovelier than those I knew on Andover Hill.

One terrible tragedy, indeed, befell our little “set;” for we had our sets in Andover, as well as they of Newport or New York.

A high-bred girl of exceptional beauty was furtively kissed one evening by a daring boy (not a native of Andover, I hasten to explain), and the furore which followed this unprecedented enormity it would be impossible to describe to a member of more complicated circles of society.  Fancy the reception given such a commonplace at any of our fashionable summer resorts to-day!

On Andover Hill the event was a moral cataclysm.  Andover girls were country girls, but not of rustic (any more than of metropolitan) social training.  Which of them would have suffered an Academy boy, walking home with her from a lecture or a prayer-meeting, any little privilege which he might not have taken in her father’s house, and with her mother’s knowledge?  I never knew one.  The case of which I speak was historic, and as far as I ever knew, unique, and was that of a victim, not an offender.

The little beauty to whom this atrocity happened cried all night and all the next day; she was reported not to have stopped crying for twenty-six hours.  Her pretty face grew wan and haggard.  She was too ill to go to her lessons.

The teachers—­to whom she had promptly related the circumstance—­condoled with her; the entire school vowed to avenge her; we were a score of as disturbed and indignant girls as ever wept over woman’s wrongs, or scorned a man’s depravity.

Yet, for aught I know to the contrary, this abandoned young man may have grown up to become a virtuous member of society; possibly even an exemplary husband and father.  I have never been able to trace his history; probably the moral repulsion was too great.

Yet they were no prigs, for their innocence!  Andover girls, in the best and brightest sense of the word, led a gay life.

The preponderance of young men on the Hill gave more than ample opportunity for well-mannered good times; and we made the most of them.

[Illustration:  VIEW LOOKING FROM THE FRONT OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS’S HOME IN ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.]