Priscilla had now grown to be a very pretty girl, and still kept budding and blossoming, and daily putting on some new charm, which you no sooner became sensible of than you thought it worth all that she had previously possessed.  So unformed, vague, and without substance, as she had come to us, it seemed as if we could see Nature shaping out a woman before our very eyes, and yet had only a more reverential sense of the mystery of a woman’s soul and frame.  Yesterday, her cheek was pale, to-day, it had a bloom.  Priscilla’s smile, like a baby’s first one, was a wondrous novelty.  Her imperfections and shortcomings affected me with a kind of playful pathos, which was as absolutely bewitching a sensation as ever I experienced.  After she had been a month or two at Blithedale, her animal spirits waxed high, and kept her pretty constantly in a state of bubble and ferment, impelling her to far more bodily activity than she had yet strength to endure.  She was very fond of playing with the other girls out of doors.  There is hardly another sight in the world so pretty as that of a company of young girls, almost women grown, at play, and so giving themselves up to their airy impulse that their tiptoes barely touch the ground.

Girls are incomparably wilder and more effervescent than boys, more untamable and regardless of rule and limit, with an ever-shifting variety, breaking continually into new modes of fun, yet with a harmonious propriety through all.  Their steps, their voices, appear free as the wind, but keep consonance with a strain of music inaudible to us.  Young men and boys, on the other hand, play, according to recognized law, old, traditionary games, permitting no caprioles of fancy, but with scope enough for the outbreak of savage instincts.  For, young or old, in play or in earnest, man is prone to be a brute.

Especially is it delightful to see a vigorous young girl run a race, with her head thrown back, her limbs moving more friskily than they need, and an air between that of a bird and a young colt.  But Priscilla’s peculiar charm, in a foot-race, was the weakness and irregularity with which she ran.  Growing up without exercise, except to her poor little fingers, she had never yet acquired the perfect use of her legs.  Setting buoyantly forth, therefore, as if no rival less swift than Atalanta could compete with her, she ran falteringly, and often tumbled on the grass.  Such an incident—­though it seems too slight to think of—­was a thing to laugh at, but which brought the water into one’s eyes, and lingered in the memory after far greater joys and sorrows were wept out of it, as antiquated trash.  Priscilla’s life, as I beheld it, was full of trifles that affected me in just this way.