This over-sensitiveness—what a curse it is! I lay no claims to genius, and yet I have often thought it hard that I should have the quality which makes the “fatal gift” so dangerous, and not the gift. My little sister Virginia, who had been my playmate for weeks, cried bitterly when I left her. I dwelt upon her swimming eye with mine, tearless and stony as death. The waters of bitterness had gathered around my heart, but had not yet found an outlet from their icy thrall, ’neath which they flowed dark and deep. Belle Air, at the time I write of, was a little village of some twenty-five or more houses, six of which were taverns. It was and is a county town, and court was regularly held there, to which the Baltimore lawyers used to flock in crowds; and many mad pranks have I known them play there for their own amusement, if not for the edification of the pupils of Mr. Sears. My father drew up at Mr. Kenny’s tavern, and as it was about twelve when we arrived, and the pupils were dismissed to dinner, he sent his card to the principal, who in a few minutes made his appearance. Talk of a lover watching the movements and having impressed upon his memory the image of her whom he loveth!—the schoolboy has a much more vivid recollection of his teacher. Mr. Sears was a tall, stout man, with broad stooping shoulders, he carried a large cane, and his step was as decided as ever was Doctor Busby’s, who would not take his hat off when the king visited his school, for the reason, as he told his majesty afterwards, that if his scholars thought that there was a greater man in the kingdom than himself, he never could control them. The face of Mr. Sears resembled much the likeness of Alexander Hamilton, though his features were more contracted, and his forehead had nothing like the expansion of the great statesman; yet it projected very similarly at the brows. He welcomed my father to the village with great courtesy, and me to his pupilage with greater dignity. He dined with my father, with me by his side, and every now and then he would pat me on the head and ask me a question. I stammered out monosyllabic answers, when the gentleman would address himself again to his plate with renewed gusto. Mr. Sears recommended my father to board me at the house of a Mr. Hall, who had formerly been the sheriff of the county, and whose wife and daughters, he said, were very fine women. He repented, he said, when he first took charge of the academy, that there was not some general place attached to it where the pupils could board in common, but after reflection had taught him that to board them about among the towns-people would be as well. He remarked that I was one of his smallest pupils, but that he could look on me _in loco parentis_, and doubted not that he could make a man of me.