The pupil begins by supplying the missing words, which most children who are able to keep out of fire and water can accomplish after a certain number of trials. When the poet that is to be has got so as to perform this task easily, a skeleton verse, in which two or three words of each line are omitted, is given the child to fill up. By and by the more difficult forms of metre are outlined, until at length a feebleminded child can make out a sonnet, completely equipped with its four pairs of rhymes in the first section and its three pairs in the second part. Number Seven interrupted my discourse somewhat abruptly, as is his wont; for we grant him a license, in virtue of his eccentricity, which we should hardly expect to be claimed by a perfectly sound Teacup. “That's the way,--that 's the way!” exclaimed he. “It's just the same thing as my plan for teaching drawing.” Some curiosity was shown among The Teacups to know what the queer creature had got into his mind, and Number Five asked him, in her irresistible tones, if he wouldn't oblige us by telling us all about it. He looked at her a moment without speaking. I suppose he has often been made fun of,--slighted in conversation, taken as a butt for people who thought themselves witty, made to feel as we may suppose a cracked piece of china-ware feels when it is clinked in the company of sound bits of porcelain. I never saw him when he was carelessly dealt with in conversation,--for it would sometimes happen, even at our table,--without recalling some lines of Emerson which always struck me as of wonderful force and almost terrible truthfulness:-- “Alas! that one is born in blight, Victim of perpetual slight When thou lookest in his face Thy heart saith, 'Brother, go thy ways None shall ask thee what thou doest, Or care a rush for what thou knowest, Or listen when thou repliest, Or remember where thou liest, Or how thy supper is sodden;' And another is born To make the sun forgotten.” Poor fellow! Number Seven has to bear a good deal in the way of neglect and ridicule, I do not doubt. Happily, he is protected by an amount of belief in himself which shields him from many assailants who would torture a more sensitive nature. But the sweet voice of Number Five and her sincere way of addressing him seemed to touch his feelings. That was the meaning of his momentary silence, in which I saw that his eyes glistened and a faint flush rose on his cheeks. In a moment, however, as soon as he was on his hobby, he was all right, and explained his new and ingenious system as follows: