to the edge of the haymow. He never forgot the vision
of the startled little poetess, book in one mittened hand, pencil in
the other, dark hair all ruffled, with the picturesque addition of an
occasional glade of straw, her cheeks crimson, her eyes shining.

"A Sappho in mittens!" he cried laughingly, and at her eager question
told her to look up the unknown lady in the school encyclopedia, when
she was admitted to the Female Seminary at Wareham.

Now, all being ready, Rebecca went to a corner of the haymow, and
withdrew a thick blank-book with mottled covers. Out of her gingham
apron pocket came a pencil, a bit of rubber, and some pieces of brown
paper; then she seated herself gravely on the floor, and drew an
inverted soapbox nearer to her for a table.

The book was reverently opened, and there was a serious reading of the
extracts already carefully copied therein. Most of them were apparently
to the writer's liking, for dimples of pleasure showed themselves now
and then, and smiles of obvious delight played about her face; but
once in a while there was a knitting of the brows and a sigh of
discouragement, showing that the artist in the child was not wholly
satisfied.

Then came the crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to
be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were
no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting
needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton;
hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was
never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ink-pot were a horror
from early childhood to the end of time.

Not so with Rebecca; her pencil moved as easily as her tongue, and no
more striking simile could possibly be used. Her handwriting was not
Spencerian; she had neither time, nor patience, it is to be feared,
for copybook methods, and her unformed characters were frequently the
despair of her teachers; but write she could, write she would, write she
must and did, in season and out; from the time she made pothooks at six,
till now, writing was the easiest of all possible tasks; to be indulged
in as solace and balm when the terrors of examples in least common
multiple threatened to dethrone the reason, or the rules of grammar
loomed huge and unconquerable in the near horizon.

As to spelling, it came to her in the main by free grace, and not by
training, and though she slipped at times from the