of biting at it; though the angler thought it a clever and tempting bit
to bite at.

How apt we all are to be deceived--by ourselves.

So Elvira resolved to make a school teacher out of herself.

Being somewhat dull intellectually, and detesting severe study, she
abjured all paths that would lead her to teach the higher branches of
learning, and bent her rather spare and somewhat stale energies to
fitting herself for primary work. This, too, in the face of the fact
that she naturally despised children, except sweet little girls in
their best clothes, with long curls, freshly made up, and hanging like
a golden flood over neck and shoulders; or bright little boys, also
well dressed and duly curled, for about a minute, when they came into
the parlor where Miss Stone used to sit with her smile. For these she
had a fancy merely, it could not be called an affection. Miss Stone
was not affectionate.

She went to St. Louis and associated herself with the Kindergarten of
that far-famed city.

Far be it from this record to intimate that this is not a good thing to
do, on occasion. With this point I have naught to do. But history is
history, and facts must be duly recorded; and the fact is, Miss Stone
went to St. Louis, as before stated, and let out the job of being
fashioned into a Kindergarten, to certain persons who dwelt in that
city, and whose business it was to do just this sort of thing.

Neither can it be here set down what her ultimate success might have