etly welling. I was ashamed of the tears
that _would_ gather into my eyes. I shook my hair forward to cover them,
and played with the green leaves within my reach.

The awful space between me and this tall, stern, learned man seemed
annihilated. I had never seen him before, divested of the insignia of
authority, beyond the walls of the academy. I had always been compelled
to look up to him before; now we were on a level, on the green sward of
the wild-wood. God above, nature around, no human faces near, no fear of
man to check the promptings of ingenuous feeling. Softly the folded
flower petals of the heart began to unfurl. The morning breeze caught
their fragrance and bore it up to heaven.

"You thought me harsh and unkind, Gabriella," said the master in a low,
subdued voice, "and I fear I was so yesterday. I intended to do you
good. I began sportively, but when I saw you getting excited and angry,
I became angry and excited too. My temper, which is by no means gentle,
had been previously much chafed, and, as is too often the case, the
irritation, caused by the offences of many, burst forth on one, perhaps
the most innocent of all. Little girl, you have been studying the
history of France; do you remember its Louises?--Louis the Fourteenth
was a profligate, unprincipled, selfish king. Louis the Fifteenth,
another God-defying, self-adoring sensualist. Louis the Sixteenth one of
the most amiable, just, Christian monarchs the world ever saw. Yet the
accumulated wrongs under which the nation had been groaning during the
reign of his predecessors, were to be avenged in his person,--innocent,
heroic sufferer that he was. This is a most interesting historic fact,
and bears out wonderfully the truth of God's words. But I did not mean
to give a lecture on history. It is out of place here. I meant to do you
good yesterday, and discourage you from becoming an idle rhymer--a vain
dreamer. You are not getting angry I hope, little girl, for I am kind
now."

"No, sir,--no, indeed, sir," I answered, with my face all in a glow.

"Your mother, I am told, wishes you to be educated for a teacher, a
profession which requires as much training as the Spartan youth endured,
when fitted to be the warriors of the land. Why, you should be preparing
yourself a coat of mail, instead of embroidering a silken suit. How do
you expect to get through the world, child,--and it is a hard world to
the poor, a cold world to the friendless,--how do you e