I could never observe
a tithe of its instructions. It was something to know there was a path
especially laid out for the student, if he could not always keep it. It
prompted the searching of one's self, and in consequence, many of us
began to keep a diary, which, I think in my own case, stimulated
observation and reflection. Feeble as the young child's first effort to
walk were my entries in my first diary. How is one to write without a
definite subject, or one selected for him? But with each day's practice
it became easier, and at last a pleasure to hold a silent intercourse
with myself, to recover and merely to catalogue the day's doings and try
to discriminate them. In vain thus far were my attempts at logic in the
debating club, and the sentences in my diary seemed even more wanting in
connection. Conjunctions would not join, nor any therefores and
wherefores tie the sentences. It was merely chance that I landed a verb
in the right place, and did not altogether lose the noun. I seemed to
know what I wanted to say but it would not form itself on the pen, and
what I wrote one day I had an infinite disrelish for the next. I have
heard something in my time about rising upon our dead selves. I know of
nothing so dead and so precipitating as the look into an early youthful
diary. Not much more encouraging is the book one has written and
published, and some time after has the temerity to open.

SCHOOLMASTER

After a few terms at Worcester Academy, during which I contrived in
different ways to support myself on a single meal a day, at one time by
ringing the bell for morning prayers and sweeping the general recitation
room, at another by delivering a daily newspaper, the _Worcester Spy_,
to one hundred and twenty-five subscribers, I thought myself competent
to teach a common school, by which I hoped to earn enough to carry me
through another year of study. I was examined as to my qualifications
for teaching by the chairman of the school committee of the town of
Grafton, having applied for one of the district schools. Between fright
and incompetency I passed a most inadequate examination. What little I
did know deserted me at the pinch. The reverend gentleman, who conducted
me through questions in the various common school studies, was one of
the most amiable souls in the world, as I had many subsequent
opportunities of knowing, for he continued my friend as long as he
lived. He told me frankly that he was hardly w