If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone,
save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much
of the matter would seem to the captious critic better adapted to the
body of the book than to the title page, but Rebecca was apparently
anxious that the principal personages in her chronicle should be well
described at the outset.
She seems to have had a conviction that heredity plays its part in the
evolution of genius, and her belief that the world will be inspired
by the possession of her Thoughts is too artless to be offensive. She
evidently has respect for rich material confided to her teacher, and
one can imagine Miss Dearborn's woe had she been confronted by Rebecca's
chosen literary executor and bidden to deliver certain “Valuable Poetry
and Thoughts,” the property of posterity “unless carelessly destroyed.”
THOUGHT BOOK
of
Rebecca Rowena Randall
Really of
Sunnybrook Farm
But temporily of
The Brick House Riverboro.
Own niece of Miss Miranda and Jane Sawyer
Second of seven children of her father, Mr. L. D. M. Randall
(Now at rest in Temperance cemmetary and there will be a
monument as soon as we pay off the mortgage on the farm)
Also of her mother Mrs. Aurelia Randall
In case of Death the best of these Thoughts
May be printed in my Remerniscences
For the Sunday School Library at Temperance, Maine
Which needs more books fearfully
And I hereby
Will and Testament them to Mr. Adam Ladd
Who bought 300 cakes of soap from me
And thus secured a premium
A Greatly Needed Banquet Lamp
For my friends the Simpsons.
He is the only one that incourages
My writing Remerniscences and
My teacher Miss Dearborn will
Have much valuable Poetry and Thoughts
To give him unless carelessly destroyed.
The pictures are by the same hand that
Wrote the Thoughts.
_It is not now decided whether Rebecca Rowena Randall will be a painter
or an author, but after her death it will be known which she has been,
if any._