For fifteen months, I thus spent the noon hour with him in the schoolroom, receiving lessons in logic and reasoning upon concrete and abstract matters that have since proved of far more psychologic value to me than ten years of reading on the same subjects. A strong attachment grew up between us: he became a necessity to me, and I revered him like an oracle. But his health failed, and he left the school at the end of these fifteen months in a consumption. Shortly after, he sent to the school for me one morning to ask me to visit him on his deathbed. I was not permitted to leave the class until noon; when, just as I was preparing to go, a messenger came to inform the principal that he had died at eleven. This blow fell so heavily upon me that I wished to leave the school at once. I was forced to stay three weeks longer, until the end of the quarter, when I left the schoolroom on the first of April, 1843, at the age of thirteen years and seven months, and never entered it again. CHAPTER V _Training in all details of housework--After mastering them, spends most of time reading in father’s library--Gradually begins assisting mother in care of patients--Contact with the heights and depths of human nature, from dens to palaces--Nurses two aunts and keeps house for their family--Dr. Arthur Lutze guides her reading in homeopathy and mesmerism--Attack of “brain fever”--Father burns books from Dr. Lutze--Marie learns French, plain sewing, dressmaking and the management of the household, while continuing to assist in mother’s practice. (Fourteen to eighteen years of age: 1843-1847.)_ On the same day that I quitted my school, an aunt with whom I was a favorite was attacked with a violent hemorrhage from the lungs, and wished me to come to stay with her. This suited my taste. I went, and for a fortnight was her sole nurse. Upon my return home, my father told me that, having quitted school, I must now become a thorough housekeeper of whom he might be proud, as this was the only thing for which girls were intended by nature. I cheerfully entered upon my new apprenticeship, and learned how to sweep, to scrub, to wash and to cook. This work answered very well as long as the novelty lasted, but as soon as this wore off, it became highly burdensome. Many a forenoon when I was alone, instead of sweeping and dusting, I passed the hours in reading books from my father’s library, until it grew so late that I was afraid that my mother, who had commenced practice, would come home and scold me for not attending to my work, when I would hurry to get through, doing everything so badly that I had to hear daily that I was good for nothing and a nuisance in the world; and that it was not at all surprising that I was not liked in school, for nobody could ever like or be satisfied with me.