or it is a rehearsal of your own
experience, the thrill and wonder of which your own hearts have felt.

How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By
the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade.
When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of
Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early
days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study
had been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book,
that had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise
books, tools wherewith to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When
the teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I
sat rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped
on the edge of my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent
sighs of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts
between bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice
shook and the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the
name of George Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never
had I chanted the songs of David, never had I called upon the Most
Holy, in such utter reverence and worship as I repeated the simple
sentences of my child's story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration
at the portraits of George and Martha Washington, till I could see
them with my eyes shut. And whereas formerly my self-consciousness had
bordered on conceit, and I thought myself an uncommon person, parading
my schoolbooks through the streets, and swelling with pride when a
teacher detained me in conversation, now I grew humble all at once,
seeing how insignificant I was beside the Great.

As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save himself
from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant of my sins.
Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on the Day of
Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of my elders. I
had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of escaping
punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers in
Polotzk--all my world, in fact--strove together, by example and
precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in
about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could
not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that
mischief was much more fun than piety. Goodness, as