One advantage, however, I possessed over all competitors. I took drawing lessons, and so did Julia Reynolds. Twice a week I sat at a table near her, and spent an hour and a half very pleasantly and profitably in watching all she did. I could not draw. My mother seemed to think that because I had no musical talent, and never in my life was able to tell one note--nor indeed one tune--from another, I must, by way of adjustment, have artistic qualities. Mr. James Payn was wont to say that his gift for mathematics consisted mainly of distaste for the classics. On precisely the same principle, I was put to draw because I could not play or sing. An all-round incapacity was, in those primitive days, a thing not wholly understood. The only branch of my art I acquired to perfection was the sharpening of pencils and crayons; and, having thoroughly mastered this accomplishment, I ventured in a moment of temerity to ask Julia if I might sharpen hers. At first she decisively refused; but a week or two later, seeing the deftness of my work, and having a regard for her own hands, she relented, and allowed me this privilege. Henceforward I felt that my drawing lessons were not given in vain. Even Dr. Eckhart's unsparing condemnation of my sketches--which were the feeblest of failures--could not destroy my content. Love was with me a stronger emotion than vanity. I used to look forward all week to those two happy afternoons when I was graciously permitted to waste my time and blacken my fingers in humble and unrequited service. Julia drew beautifully. She excelled in every accomplishment, as in every branch of study. She sang, she played, she painted, she danced, with bewildering ease and proficiency. French and Latin presented no stumbling-blocks to her. The heights and abysses of composition were for her a level and conquered country. Logic and geometry were, so to speak, her playthings. We were bewildered by such universality of genius,--something like Michael Angelo's,--and when I remember that, in addition to these legitimate attainments, she was the most gifted actress on our convent stage, I am at a loss now to understand why the world is not ringing with her name. Certain it is that she was the pride of Dr. Eckhart's heart, the one solace of his harassed and tormented life. He was an elderly German, irascible in disposition, and profane in speech. His oaths were Teutonic oaths, but were not, on that account, the less thunderous. He taught music and drawing,--those were not the days of specialists,--so all the time that his ears were not vexed with weak and tremulous discords, his eyes were maddened by crippled lines, and sheets of smutty incompetence. The result of such dual strain was that his spirit, which could hardly have been gentle at the outset, had grown savage as a Tartar's. When Christopher North ventured to say that the wasp is the only one of God's creatures perpetually out of temper, it was because he never knew Carlyle or Dr. Eckhart.