tories formed the basis of my first publicly recognized
literary effort."

Reared by people who constantly pointed out every natural beauty, using
it wherever possible to drive home a precept, the child lived
out-of-doors with the wild almost entirely. If she reported promptly
three times a day when the bell rang at meal time, with enough clothing
to constitute a decent covering, nothing more was asked until the
Sabbath. To be taken from such freedom, her feet shod, her body
restricted by as much clothing as ever had been worn on Sunday, shut up
in a schoolroom, and set to droning over books, most of which she
detested, was the worst punishment ever inflicted upon her she
declares. She hated mathematics in any form and spent all her time on
natural science, language, and literature. "Friday afternoon," writes
Mrs. Porter, "was always taken up with an exercise called
'rhetoricals,' a misnomer as a rule, but let that pass. Each week
pupils of one of the four years furnished entertainment for the
assembled high school and faculty. Our subjects were always assigned,
and we cordially disliked them. This particular day I was to have a
paper on 'Mathematical Law.'

"I put off the work until my paper had been called for several times,
and so came to Thursday night with excuses and not a line. I was told
to bring my work the next morning without fail. I went home in hot
anger. Why in all this beautiful world, would they not allow me to do
something I could do, and let any one of four members of my class who
revelled in mathematics do my subject? That evening I was distracted.
'I can't do a paper on mathematics, and I won't!' I said stoutly; 'but
I'll do such a paper on a subject I can write about as will open their
foolish eyes and make them see how wrong they are.'"

Before me on the table lay the book I loved, the most wonderful story
in which was 'Picciola' by Saintine. Instantly I began to write.
Breathlessly I wrote for hours. I exceeded our limit ten times over.
The poor Italian Count, the victim of political offences, shut by
Napoleon from the wonderful grounds, mansion, and life that were his,
restricted to the bare prison walls of Fenestrella, deprived of books
and writing material, his one interest in life became a sprout of
green, sprung, no doubt, from a seed dropped by a passing bird, between
the stone flagging of the prison yard before his window. With him I had
watched over it through all the years since I firs