t--for they had never seen anything better
or worse in all their lives, and were no judges of acting--as I swept to
and fro in that magnificent robe, with outstretched arms and uplifted
eyes, when I came to passages like the following, where an apostrophe was
called for:

"And near him the she wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper snake breathed in his ear,
Till he, starting, cried, from his dream awake,
'Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake,
And the white canoe of my dear'!'"

Or like this:

"On beds of green sea flowers thy limbs shall be laid;
Around thy white bones the red coral shall grow,
Of thy fair yellow locks, threads of amber be made,
And every part suit to thy mansion below;"--

throwing up my arms, and throwing them out in every possible direction as
the spirit moved me, or the sentiment prompted; for I always encouraged my
limbs and features to think for themselves, and to act for themselves, and
never predetermined, never forethought, a gesture nor an intonation in my
life; and should as soon think of counterfeiting another's look or step or
voice, or of modulating my own by a pitch pipe (as the ancient orators
did, with whom oratory was acting elocution, a branch of the dramatic
art), as of adopting or imitating the gestures and tones of the most
celebrated rhetorician I ever saw.

The result was rather encouraging. My mother and sister were both
satisfied. At any rate, they said nothing to the contrary. Being only in
my nineteenth year, what might I not be able to accomplish after a little
more experience!

How little did I think, while rehearsing before my mother and sister, that
anything serious would ever come of it, or that I was laying the
foundations of character for life, or that I was beginning what I should
not be able to finish within the next forty or fifty years following. Yet
so it was. I had broken the ice without knowing it. These things were but
the foreshadowing of what happened long afterward.

Notes.--Brunswick, Maine, is the seat of Bowdoin College.

"The Mariner's Dream" is a poem by 'William Dimond.

"The Lake of the Dismal Swamp" is by Thomas Moore.

XVII. ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. (108)

Thomas Gray, 1716-1771, is often spoken of as "the author of the
Elegy,"--this simple yet highly finished and beautiful poem being by far
the best known of an his writings. It was finished in 1749,--seven years
from the time it was commenced. Prob