Oh! had he addressed me in indulgent words as these, who knows but that, like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who knows but that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have opened to admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might have been the priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world have offered burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves. I might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the bosom with unquenchable fire. I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined words I have written. "Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name? Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know that this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries over the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!" Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut into slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the iron wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think _I_ can, by the experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek, and panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished in his left hand, pointing _at_ it with the forefinger of his right. "He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will die sooner. He may insult _my_ poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her sorrows too." I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing _her_ name associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the elephant. "Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you try that again. You had better keep quiet." A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza. I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight and open air. "Come back, this moment!" The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone, threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with constantly accelerating speed. "Go back,--never!"