her long-lost home? I might have been the
priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered
burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and
found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I
might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though
circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom
with unquenchable fire.

I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words
I have written.

"Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name?
Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that
this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that
opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to
secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over
the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and
glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not
understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!"

Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into
slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron
wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think _I_ can, by the
experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and
panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his
left hand, pointing _at_ it with the forefinger of his right.

"He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me
boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will
die sooner. He may insult _my_ poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her
sorrows too."

I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing _her_
name associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the
manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the
elephant.

"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you
try that again. You had better keep quiet."

A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with
secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.

I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong
grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps
through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or
left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight
and open air.

"Come back, this moment!"