During the preceding winter I began to hear talk of my going away to school, and it was decided that I be sent to Colonel Stone’s High School, to board in his family and go home occasionally. This arrangement, I learned in later years, had a double object. I was what is known as a bashful child, timid in the presence of other persons, a condition of things found impossible to correct at home. In the hope of overcoming this undesirable _mauvais honte_, it was decided to throw me among strangers. How well I remember my advent. My father took me in his carriage with a little dressing-case which I dignified with the appellation of “trunk”--something I had never owned. It was April--cold and bare. The house and schoolrooms adjoined, and seemed enormously large. The household was also large. The long family table with the dignified preceptor, my loved and feared teacher of three years, at its head, seemed to me something formidable. There were probably one hundred and fifty pupils daily in the ample schoolrooms, of which I was perhaps the youngest, except the colonel’s own children. My studies were chosen with great care. I remember among them, ancient history with charts. The lessons were learned, to repeat by rote. I found difficulty both in learning the proper names and in pronouncing them, as I had not quite outgrown my lisp. One day I had studied very hard on the Ancient Kings of Egypt, and thought I had everything perfect, and when the pupil above me failed to give the name of a reigning king, I answered very promptly that it was “Potlomy.” The colonel checked with a glance the rising laugh of the older members of the class, and told me, very gently, that the P was silent in that word. I had, however, seen it all, and was so overcome by mortification for my mistake, and gratitude for the kindness of my teacher, that I burst into tears and was permitted to leave the room.