ics, and the choicest specimens of modern literature. There were
light, airy, movable steps, so as to reach to the topmost shelves, and
there I loved to poise myself, like a bird on the spray, peeping into
this book and that, gathering here and there a golden grain or sweet
scented flower for the garner of thought, or the bower of imagination.

There were statues in niches made to receive them,--the gods and
goddesses of Greece and Rome, in their cold, severe beauty, all
passionless and pure, in spite of the glowing mythology that called them
into existence. There were paintings, too, that became a part of my
being, I took them in with such intense, gazing eyes. Indeed, the house
was lined with them. I could not walk through a room without stopping to
admire some work of genius, some masterpiece of art.

I over-heard Dr. Harlowe say to Mrs. Linwood, that it was a pity I were
not at school, I was so very young. As if I were not at school all the
time! As if those grand old books were not teachers; those breathing
statues, those gorgeous paintings were not teachers; as if the noble
edifice itself, with its magnificent surroundings, the billowy heave of
the distant mountains, the glimpses of the sublime sea, the fair expanse
of the beautiful valley, were not teachers!

Oh! they little knew what lessons I was learning. They little knew how
the soul of the silent orphan girl was growing within her,--how her
imagination, like flowers, was nourished in stillness and secrecy by the
air and the sunshine, the dew and the shower.

I had other teachers, too, in the lonely churchyard; very solemn they
were, and gentle too, and I loved their voiceless instructions better
than the sounding eloquence of words.

Mr. Regulus thought with Dr. Harlowe, that it was a pity I was not at
school. He called to see Mrs. Linwood and asked her to use her influence
to induce me to return as a pupil to the academy. She left it to my
decision, but I shrunk from the thought of contact with the rude village
children. I felt as if I had learned all Mr. Regulus could teach me. I
was under greater masters now. Yet I was grateful for the interest he
manifested in me. I had no vindictive remembrance of the poem he had so
ruthlessly murdered. Innumerable acts of after kindness had obliterated
the impression, or rather covered it with a growth of pleasant memories.

"Have you given up entirely the idea of being a teacher yourself?" he
asked, in a low voic