in the dark the
room seemed full of exquisite visions and voices that charmed her.

Cary had to go away the next morning. Uncle Win said he couldn't spare
her, and sent Cato over to tell Mrs. Leverett. A young man came in for
some instruction, and Doris followed the fate of the Vicar's household a
while, until she felt she ought to study, since there were so many
things she did not know.

Uncle Win found her in the chimney corner with a pile of books.

"What is it now?" he asked.

"I think I know _all_ my spelling. But I can't get some of the addition
tables right when I ask myself questions. I wish there had not been any
nine."

"The world couldn't get along without the nine. It is very necessary."

"Most of the good things _are_ hard," she said with a philosophic sigh.

He laughed.

"Eudora does not like tables either."

"I will tell you a famous thing about nine that you can't do with any
other figure. How much is ten and ten?"

"Why, twenty, and ten more are thirty, and so on. It is easy as turning
over your hand."

"Ten and nine."

Doris looked nonplused and began to draw her brow in perplexed lines.

"Nine is only one less than ten. Now, if you can remember that----"

"Nineteen! Why, that is splendid."

"Now sixteen and nine?"

"Twenty-five," rather hesitatingly.

He nodded. "And nine more."

"Thirty-four. Oh, we made a rhyme. Uncle Winthrop, is it very hard to
write verses? They are so beautiful."

"I think it is--rather," with his half-smile.

People had not had the leisure to be very poetical as yet. But through
these years some children were being born into the world whose verses
were to find a place by every fireside before the little girl said her
last good-night to it. So far there had been some bright witticisms and
sarcasms in rhyme, and the clergy had penned verses for wedding and
funeral occasions. The Rev. John Cotton had indulged in flowing
versification, and even Governor Bradford had interspersed his severer
cares with visions of softer strains. Anne Dudley, the wife of Governor
Bradstreet, with her eight children, had found time for study and
writing, and about 1650 had a volume of verse published in London
entitled "The Tenth Muse. Several poems compiled with a great variety of
wit and learning. By an American Gentlewoman." And she makes this
protest even then:

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who says my hand a needle better fits;
A poet's pen al