life. I think a person can
scarcely have too many such, provided they are kept in their proper
place, I have often seen her, when sadly tired or tried, sit down, with
a moisture that was more like rain than dew in her eyes, and paint it
all away, till she seemed to be looking sunshine over her lifelike
blossoms. Then she would pin them up against the wall, for a week or
two, for us to enjoy them with her; and, afterwards, she would give them
away to any one who had done her any favor. Her spirit was in that like
Fanny's,--she shrank so painfully from the weight of any obligation! She
wished to teach me to paint, when I was a child. I wished to learn; and
many of her directions were still fresh in my memory. But the
inexperienced eye and uncertain hand of thirteen disheartened me. I
thought I had no _talent_. My mother was not accustomed to force any
task upon me in my play-hours. The undertaking was given up.

But I suppose many persons, like me not precocious in the nursery or the
school-room, but naturally fond, as I was passionately, of beautiful
forms and colors, would be surprised, if they would try their baffled
skill again in aftertimes, to find how much the years had been
unwittingly preparing for them, in the way of facility and accuracy of
outline and tint, while they supposed themselves to be exclusively
occupied with other matters. What the physiologists call "unconscious
cerebration" has been at work. Scatter the seeds of any accomplishment
in the mind of a little man or woman, and, even if you leave them quite
untended, you may in some after summer or autumn find the fruit growing
wild. Accordingly, when, within the last twelvemonth, I had been called
upon to teach the elements of drawing in my school, it astonished me to
discover the ease with which I could either sketch or copy. And now it
occurred to me that perhaps, if I would take enough time and pains, I
could paint something worthy of a place on Miss Mehitable's table.

Fanny's gladness at the plan, and interest in watching the work, in her
own enforced inaction, were at once reward and stimulus. I succeeded,
better than we either of us expected, in copying the frontispiece of a
"picture-book," as Dr. Physick called it, which he had brought up from
his office to amuse her. It was a scientific volume, sent him by the
author,--an old fellow-student,--from the other side of the world.
Lovely ferns, flowers, shells, birds, butterflies, and insects, that