t her desk
until her head was hot and her feet were like ice, she would go and look
at the blooming young girls exercising in the gymnasium of the school,
and feel as if she would give all her knowledge, all her mathematics and
strange tongues and history, all those accomplishments that made her the
encyclopaedia of every class she belonged to, if she could go through
the series of difficult and graceful exercises in which she saw her
schoolmates delighting.

One among them, especially, was the object of her admiration, as she was
of all who knew her exceptional powers in the line for which nature had
specially organized her. All the physical perfections which Miss Lurida
had missed had been united in Miss Euthymia Tower, whose school name was
The Wonder. Though of full womanly stature, there were several taller
girls of her age. While all her contours and all her movements betrayed
a fine muscular development, there was no lack of proportion, and her
finely shaped hands and feet showed that her organization was one of
those carefully finished masterpieces of nature which sculptors are
always in search of, and find it hard to detect among the imperfect
products of the living laboratory.

This girl of eighteen was more famous than she cared to be for her
performances in the gymnasium. She commonly contented herself with
the same exercises that her companions were accustomed to. Only her
dumb-bells, with which she exercised easily and gracefully, were too
heavy for most of the girls to do more with than lift them from the
floor. She was fond of daring feats on the trapeze, and had to be
checked in her indulgence in them. The Professor of gymnastics at the
University came over to the Institute now and then, and it was a source
of great excitement to watch some of the athletic exercises in which the
young lady showed her remarkable muscular strength and skill in managing
herself in the accomplishment of feats which looked impossible at first
sight. How often The Terror had thought to herself that she would gladly
give up all her knowledge of Greek and the differential and integral
calculus if she could only perform the least of those feats which were
mere play to The Wonder! Miss Euthymia was not behind the rest in her
attainments in classical or mathematical knowledge, and she was one of
the very best students in the out-door branches,--botany, mineralogy,
sketching from nature,--to be found among the scholars of the Inst