ren about whom there is no fuss made. But Miss Dillingham was not
discouraged. She saw that I had no idea of metre, so she proceeded to
teach me. We repeated miles of poetry together, smooth lines that sang
themselves, mostly out of Longfellow. Then I would go home and
write--oh, about the snow in our back yard!--but when Miss Dillingham
came to read my verses, they limped and they lagged and they dragged,
and there was no tune that would fit them.

At last came the moment of illumination: I saw where my trouble lay. I
had supposed that my lines matched when they had an equal number of
syllables, taking no account of accent. Now I knew better; now I could
write poetry! The everlasting snow melted at last, and the mud puddles
dried in the spring sun, and the grass on the common was green, and
still I wrote poetry! Again I wish I had some example of my springtime
rhapsodies, the veriest rubbish of the sort that ever a child
perpetrated. Lizzie McDee, who had red hair and freckles, and a
Sunday-school manner on weekdays, and was below me in the class, did a
great deal better. We used to compare verses; and while I do not
remember that I ever had the grace to own that she was the better
poet, I do know that I secretly wondered why the teachers did not
invite her to stay after school and study poetry, while they took so
much pains with me. But so it was always with me: somebody did
something for me all the time.

Making fair allowance for my youth, retarded education, and
strangeness to the language, it must still be admitted that I never
wrote good verse. But I loved to read it. My half-hours with Miss
Dillingham were full of delight for me, quite apart from my new-born
ambition to become a writer. What, then, was my joy, when Miss
Dillingham, just before locking up her desk one evening, presented me
with a volume of Longfellow's poems! It was a thin volume of
selections, but to me it was a bottomless treasure. I had never owned
a book before. The sense of possession alone was a source of bliss,
and this book I already knew and loved. And so Miss Dillingham, who
was my first American friend, and who first put my name in print, was
also the one to start my library. Deep is my regret when I consider
that she was gone before I had given much of an account of all her
gifts of love and service to me.

About the middle of the year I was promoted to the grammar school.
Then it was that I walked on air. For I said to myself that