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.
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