ll spring.
But the snow which drove away all these pretty and happy things,
try, (as I think) not to make us at all unhappy; they covered up
the branches of the trees, the fields, the gardens and houses,
and the whole world looks like dressed in a beautiful
white--instead of green--dress, with the sky looking down on it
with a pale face.

And so the people can find some joy in it, too, without the
happy summer.

MARY ANTIN.

And now that it stands there, with _her_ name over it, I am ashamed of
my flippant talk about vanity. More to me than all the praise I could
hope to win by the conquest of fifty languages is the association of
this dear friend with my earliest efforts at writing; and it pleases
me to remember that to her I owe my very first appearance in print.
Vanity is the least part of it, when I remember how she called me to
her desk, one day after school was out, and showed me my
composition--my own words, that I had written out of my own
head--printed out, clear black and white, with my name at the end!
Nothing so wonderful had ever happened to me before. My whole
consciousness was suddenly transformed. I suppose that was the moment
when I became a writer. I always loved to write,--I wrote letters
whenever I had an excuse,--yet it had never occurred to me to sit down
and write my thoughts for no person in particular, merely to put the
word on paper. But now, as I read my own words, in a delicious
confusion, the idea was born. I stared at my name: MARY ANTIN. Was
that really I? The printed characters composing it seemed strange to
me all of a sudden. If that was my name, and those were the words out
of my own head, what relation did it all have to _me_, who was alone
there with Miss Dillingham, and the printed page between us? Why, it
meant that I could write again, and see my writing printed for people
to read! I could write many, many, many things: I could write a book!
The idea was so huge, so bewildering, that my mind scarcely could
accommodate it.

I do not know what my teacher said to me; probably very little. It was
her way to say only a little, and look at me, and trust me to
understand. Once she had occasion to lecture me about living a shut-up
life; she wanted me to go outdoors. I had been repeatedly scolded and
reproved on that score by other people, but I had only laughed, saying
that I was too happy to change my ways. But when Miss Dillingham spoke
to me,