thing of
individual flavor about them, and here and there there was an image or an
epithet which showed the footprint of a passionate nature, as a fallen
scarlet feather marks the path the wild flamingo has trodden.

The young lady-teacher read them with a certain indifference of manner,
as one reads proofs--noting defects of detail, but not commonly arrested
by the matters treated of. Even Miss Charlotte Ann Wood's poem,
beginning--

"How sweet at evening's balmy hour,"

did not excite her. She marked the inevitable false rhyme of Cockney and
Yankee beginners, morn and dawn, and tossed the verses on the pile of
papers she had finished. She was looking over some of the last of them
in a rather listless way,--for the poor thing was getting sleepy in spite
of herself,--when she came to one which seemed to rouse her attention,
and lifted her drooping lids. She looked at it a moment before she would
touch it. Then she took hold of it by one corner and slid it off from
the rest. One would have said she was afraid of it, or had some
undefined antipathy which made it hateful to her. Such odd fancies are
common enough in young persons in her nervous state. Many of these young
people will jump up twenty times a day and run to dabble the tips of
their fingers in water, after touching the most inoffensive objects.

This composition was written in a singular, sharp-pointed, long, slender
hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something strangely
suggestive about the look of it, but exactly of what, Miss barley either
could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The
Mountain,--the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It
showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the
region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its
wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well as by day.
As the teacher read on, her color changed, and a kind of tremulous
agitation came over her. There were hints in this strange paper she did
not know what to make of. There was something in its descriptions and
imagery that recalled,--Miss Darley could not say what,--but it made her
frightfully nervous. Still she could not help reading, till she came to
one passage which so agitated her, that the tired and over-wearied girl's
self-control left her entirely. She sobbed once or twice, then laughed
convulsively; and flung herself on the bed, where