Principal, opened the schoolroom door upon Lucy Tait, are as poignant,
as sweetly terrible, now as in that far time when the light of her
wondrous presence first fell upon me.

An instant she hesitated timidly in the sombre frame of the doorway,
looking far over our heads. Then old Leggett came in front of her. There
was a word of presentation to Miss Berham, our teacher, the vision was
escorted to a seat at my left front, and I was bade to continue the
reading lesson if I ever expected to learn anything. As a matter of
truth I did not expect to learn anything more. I thought I must suddenly
have learned all there is to know. The page of the ancient reader over
which I then mumbled is now before me. "A Good Investment" was the title
of the day's lesson, and I had been called upon to render the first
paragraph. With lightness, unrecking the great moment so perilously at
hand, I had begun: "'Will you lend me two thousand dollars to establish
myself in a small retail business?' inquired a young man, not yet out of
his teens of a middle-aged gentleman who was poring over his ledger in
the counting room of one of the largest establishments in Boston."

The iron latch rattled, the door swung fatefully back, our heads were
raised, our eyes bored her through and through.

Then swung a new world for me out of primeval chaos, and for aeons of
centuries I dizzied myself gazing upon the pyrotechnic marvel.

"_Continue, Calvin!_--if you ever expect to learn anything."

The fabric of my vision crumbled. Awake, I glared upon a page where the
words ran crazily about like a disrupted colony of ants. I stammered at
the thing, feeling my cheeks blaze, but no two words would stay still