Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 23, February, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
She repeated the word after him.
"Now find it all over the page whereever it occurs."
With some mistakes she finally succeeded in recognizing the word
again.
"Don't you forget it."
"Yes."
"No, you must _not_."
"I mean I won't."
"All right! Here is another: it is called _the_. Now find it."
Many times she went through the same process. In his pride of teaching
Danby did not let his pupil flag. When he was going she asked timidly,
"Shall you come again?"
"Of course I shall, Ignoramus, but don't you forget your lesson."
"No, no," she answered brightening. "I will think of it all the time I
am asleep."
"That is a good girl," he said patronizingly, and bade her good-bye.
It was thus she learned to read, not remarkably well, but well enough
to content Danby, which was sufficient to content Nellie also; and the
ambitious boy was not satisfied until she could write as well.
An end came to this peaceful life when the youth left home for
college. The girl's eyes seemed to grow larger from intense gazing at
him during the last few weeks that preceded his departure, but that
was her only expression of feeling. The morning after he left, the
nurse, not finding her appear at her usual time, went to her chamber
to look for her. She lay on the bed, as she had been lying all the
night, sleepless, with pale face and red lips. Nurse asked her what
was the matter.
"Nothing," was the reply.
"Come get up, Beauty," coaxed the nurse.
But Nellie turned her face to the wall and did not answer. She lay
thus for a week, scarcely eating or sleeping, sick in mind and body,
struggling with a grief that she hardly knew was grief. At the end
of that time she tottered from the bed, and, clothing herself with
difficulty, crept to the library.
The instinct that sends a sick animal to the plant that will cure
it seemed to teach Nellie where to find comfort. Danby was gone, but
memory remained, and the place where he had been was to her made
holy and possessed healing power, as does the shrine of a saint for a
believer. Her shrine was the reading-desk, and the chair on which he
had sat during those happy lessons. To make all complete, she lifted
the heavy book from the shelf and opened it at the page from which she
had first learned. She put herself in his chair and caressed the words
with her thin hand, her fingers trembling over the place that his had
touched, then dropping her head on the desk where his arm had lain,
she smiling slept.
She awoke with the nurse looking down on her, saying, "Beauty, you are
better."
And so she was: she drank the broth and ate the bread and grapes that
had been brought her, and from that day grew stronger. But the shadow
in her eyes was deeper now, and the veins in her temples were bluer,
as if the blood had throbbed and pained there. Every morning found
her at her post: she had no need to roam the woods and fields now--her
world lay within her. It was sad for one so young to live on memory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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