The Little Girl Who Was Taught by Experience

In Short

This juvenile fiction from 1827 follows Lucy, an orphaned girl left to the care of an indulgent father who spoils her. Growing vain, selfish, and obstinate, Lucy is sent to live with her sensible aunt and well-behaved cousin Emily in Boston for a year. Through a series of disastrous misadventures—including ruining a fine dress at a country visit and accidentally poisoning herself out of idle curiosity—Lucy repeatedly ignores wise counsel. She ultimately learns her moral lessons through severe personal suffering, reforming her character and finding genuine repentance.

The Story

Left motherless at an early age, Lucy grows up under a lenient father and indulgent servants who foster her vanity, obstinacy, and prying nature. Seeking to curb these worsening traits, her father sends her to Boston to live for a year with her sensible aunt and cousin Emily. Emily is an amiable, good-natured child who understands the peace that comes from self-control and charity, famously saving her money to buy a new gown for a poor old woman named Nurse Hooper.

One day, Lucy receives two crown pieces from her father, expected to share one with Emily. Instead of gladly giving it up for a charitable purpose like Emily's plan for Nurse Hooper, Lucy parts with it sullenly and spends her own money on expensive silk slippers and a rich silk dress to wear to a gathering in Brookline, hoping to outshine a proud acquaintance named Miss Prince.

Warning her that experience is a harsh instructor, her aunt advises Lucy to wear more sensible clothing. Lucy stubbornly refuses. At the Brookline estate, her hopes of meeting rivals are dashed, and her vanity immediately backfires. She stains her silk dress with fruit juice, tears the delicate trimmings on a briar bush while chasing gold fish, and finally ruins her lilac slippers and soils her gown when she tumbles into a muddy ditch while fleeing a loose, rearing horse. Rescued and disgraced, Lucy spends the day miserable by the kitchen fire while the other children play, realizing the painful cost of her wilfulness.

Months later, Lucy falls prey to another vice: uncurbed curiosity. Seeing her aunt hide a mysterious white package in a high closet trunk, Lucy cannot conquer her urge to know its contents. Ignoring her conscience, she stands on a chair and a cricket, unlocks her aunt's bureau to find the key, opens the trunk, and tastes what she believes to be sugar from the package. Just as her aunt enters, Lucy’s frantic movements cause the heavy trunk and furniture to crash down upon her.

Hearing the spilled powder, her aunt screams in terror that Lucy has tasted arsenic. Thrown into agonizing panic and suffering a broken leg, Lucy endures powerful emetics and a long, debilitating recovery that robs her of her beauty. Through months of devoted nursing by her aunt and patient kindness from Emily, Lucy breaks down in sincere contrition. She finally acknowledges her deep faults of pride, malice, and disobedience, resolving to heed the lessons of experience and permanently reform her heart.

How It Unfolds

• The orphaned girl — Lucy grows up vain and self-willed under an indulgent father, lacking a mother's guiding hand to check her developing faults.
• The Boston visit — Concerned for her future, Lucy's father sends her to live for a year with her sensible aunt and well-behaved cousin Emily.
• The crown pieces — Lucy receives two silver pieces from her father and behaves sourly about sharing, while Emily happily saves her money to buy poor Nurse Hooper a gown.
• The Brookline disaster — Ignoring her aunt's warnings, Lucy wears an elaborate silk dress and delicate slippers to the country, where she ruins them in a muddy ditch while fleeing a frightened horse.
• The hidden package — Months later, Lucy spots her aunt hiding a mysterious white package and gives in to an idle, prying desire to investigate it.
• The poison panic — Lucy unlocks her aunt's trunk, tastes the contents, and crashes down in a violent accident that leads her aunt to fear she has ingested arsenic.
• The long recovery — Confined to her bed with a broken leg and the aftermath of the poisoning scare, Lucy experiences deep repentance and truly reforms her character.

The People

• Lucy — A vain, selfish, and obstinate young girl who wants to please only herself and outshine others. She rejects wise advice, suffers severe physical accidents due to her poor choices, and ultimately transforms through deep repentance.
• Lucy's Aunt — A sensible, kind-hearted woman who provides firm guidance and allows Lucy to learn through natural consequences when warnings fail, nursing her patiently back to health.
• Emily — Lucy's gentle, obedient cousin who finds joy in self-control and helping others, such as providing a new gown for Nurse Hooper, and who consistently responds to Lucy with forgiveness and care.
• Nurse Hooper — A hardworking, poor old woman whose sole comfort is attending church, and whose life is brightened by Emily's selfless gift of a new dress.

In Its Own Voice

"Wicked passions like troublesome weeds, grow very fast, and they soon root out all the mild, gentle virtues which are just budding into beauty, if we do not take great pains to check them, and pluck them out of our hearts."

The narrator introduces the central moral metaphor regarding the dangers of unchecked youthful faults.

"Experience is an excellent instructer, but we often pay very dearly for her lessons."

Lucy's aunt issues a prophetic warning before the trip to Brookline about the painful price of stubbornness.

"I should like to have it to be sure, because I am saving all my money for a particular purpose, 'tis to get poor nurse Hooper a new gown."

Emily explains her altruistic motives to a reluctant and sullen Lucy regarding the gifted silver pieces.

What It's Really About

This didactic tale investigates the psychological and moral mechanics of temptation, self-will, and personal accountability. It argues that intellectual warnings from elders are insufficient for children who lack self-governance; instead, real moral growth requires experiencing the direct, often painful consequences of one's own vices. The narrative explores how small internal defects—such as vanity, envy, and idle curiosity—escalate into destructive actions that harm both the self and others. Ultimately, it measures true repentance not by passing sorrow, but by a humbled willingness to submit personal desires to higher moral and spiritual authority.

Why Read It Today

Modern readers seeking a glimpse into 19th-century juvenile morality will find this book a fascinating, transparent artifact of its era. Written with earnest didacticism, it immerses the reader in a pedagogical world where children's literature explicitly aimed to root out sin through dramatic moral parallelisms. Reading it feels like stepping into a Victorian parlour, complete with period attitudes toward obedience, strict lines between good and bad behavior, and high-stakes consequences for minor transgressions.

While its heavy-handed moralizing and lengthy didactic speeches can feel relentless to contemporary sensibilities, the book possesses a surprising narrative momentum driven by Lucy's escalating catastrophes. The sheer escalation from ruined silk slippers to a near-fatal arsenic scare gives the plot an almost surreal, cautionary intensity. What stays with the reader long after finishing is the striking psychological portrait of a child trapped by her own impulses, contrasting sharply with the serene, unflagging grace of cousin Emily. It is best appreciated by historians of childhood, collectors of early American children's literature, and readers curious about how past generations sought to mold the youthful conscience.