with mystical power on her own fancy, sometimes stimulating her to
convulse the hearer with laughter, sometimes to melt him to tears. When
her power began to languish, she would spin again till fired to
recommence her singular drama, into which she wove figures from the
scenes of her earlier childhood, her companions, and the dignitaries she
sometimes saw, with fantasies unknown to life, unknown to heaven or
earth.

This excitement, as may be supposed, was not good for her. It oftenest
came on in the evening, and often spoiled her sleep. She would wake in
the night, and cheat her restlessness by inventions that teazed, while
they sometimes diverted her companions.

She was also a sleep-walker; and this one trait of her case did somewhat
alarm her guardians, who, otherwise, showed the same profound stupidity
as to this peculiar being, usual in the overseers of the young. They
consulted a physician, who said she would outgrow it, and prescribed a
milk diet.

Meantime, the fever of this ardent and too early stimulated nature was
constantly increased by the restraints and narrow routine of the
boarding school. She was always devising means to break in upon it. She
had a taste which would have seemed ludicrous to her mates, if they had
not felt some awe of her, from a touch of genius and power that never
left her, for costume and fancy dresses, always some sash twisted about
her, some drapery, something odd in the arrangement of her hair and
dress, so that the methodical preceptress dared not let her go out
without a careful scrutiny and remodelling, whose soberizing effects
generally disappeared the moment she was in the free air.