Ernest Linwood | Page 3

compared to his heaven-high strains. The fainter dawn precedes
the risen day."
Oh! had he addressed me in indulgent words as these, who knows but
that, like burning Sappho, I might have sang as well as loved? Who
knows but that the golden gates of the Eden of immortality might have
opened to admit the wandering Peri to her long-lost home? I might
have been the priestess of a shrine of Delphic celebrity, and the world

have offered burning incense at my altar. I might have won the laurel
crown, and found, perchance, thorns hidden under its triumphant leaves.
I might,--but it matters not. The divine spark is undying, and though
circumstances may smother the flame it enkindles, it glows in the
bosom with unquenchable fire.
I remember very well what the master said, instead of the imagined
words I have written.
"Poetry, is it?--or something you meant to be called by that name?
Nonsense, child--folly--moon-beam hallucination! Child! do you know
that this is an unpardonable waste of time? Do you remember that
opportunities of improvement are given you to enable you hereafter to
secure an honorable independence? This accounts for your reveries
over the blackboard, your indifference to mathematics, that grand and
glorious science! Poetry! ha, ha! I began to think you did not
understand the use of capitals,--ha, ha!"
Did you ever imagine how a tender loaf of bread must feel when cut
into slices by the sharpened knife? How the young bark feels when the
iron wedge is driven through it with cleaving force? I think I can, by
the experience of that hour. I stood with quivering lip, burning cheek,
and panting breast,--my eyes riveted on the paper which he flourished
in his left hand, pointing at it with the forefinger of his right.
"He shall not go on,"--said I to myself, exasperation giving me
boldness,--"he shall not read what I have written of my mother. I will
die sooner. He may insult my poverty but hers shall be sacred, and her
sorrows too."
I sprang forward, forgetting every thing in the fear of hearing her name
associated with derision, and attempted to get possession of the
manuscript. A fly might as well attempt to wring the trunk of the
elephant.
"Really, little poetess, you are getting bold. I should like to see you try
that again. You had better keep quiet."

A resolute glance of the keen, black eye, resolute, yet twinkling with
secret merriment, and he was about to commence another stanza.
I jumped up with the leap of the panther. I could not loosen his strong
grasp, but I tore the paper from round his fingers, ran down the steps
through the rows of desks and benches, without looking to the right or
left, and flew without bonnet or covering out into the broad sunlight
and open air.
"Come back, this moment!"
The thundering voice of the master rolled after me, like a heavy stone,
threatening to crush me as it rolled. I bounded on before it with
constantly accelerating speed.
"Go back,--never!"
I said this to myself. I repeated it aloud to the breeze that came coolly
and soothingly through the green boughs, to fan the burning cheeks of
the fugitive. At length the dread of pursuit subsiding, I slackened my
steps, and cast a furtive glance behind me. The cupola of the academy
gleamed white through the oak trees that surrounded it, and above them
the glittering vane, fashioned in the form of a giant pen, seemed writing
on the azure page of heaven.
My home,--the little cottage in the woods, was one mile distant. There
was a by-path, a foot-path, as it was called, which cut the woods in a
diagonal line, and which had been trodden hard and smooth by the feet
of the children. Even at mid-day there was twilight in that solitary path,
and when the shadows deepened and lengthened on the plain, they
concentrated into gloominess there. The moment I turned into that path,
I was supreme. It was mine. The public road, the thoroughfare leading
through the heart of the town, belonged to the world. I was obliged to
walk there like other people, with mincing steps, and bonnet tied
primly under the chin, according to the rule and plummet line of
school-girl propriety. But in my own little by-path, I could do just as I
pleased. I could run with my bonnet swinging in my hand, and my hair
floating like the wild vine of the woods. I could throw myself down on

the grass at the foot of the great trees, and looking up into the deep,
distant sky, indulge my own wondrous imaginings.
I did so now. I cast myself panting on the turf, and turning my face
downward instead of upward, clasped my hands