'sweetly rosetted' . . . I wish the teacher wasn't away; she
would like 'sweetly rosetted,' and she would like to hear me
recite 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!' that I
learned out of Aunt Jane's Byron; the rolls come booming out of
it just like the waves at the beach. . . . I could make nice
compositions now, everything is blooming so, and it's so warm and
sunny and happy outdoors. Miss Dearborn told me to write
something in my thought book every single day, and I'll begin
this very night when I go to bed."

Rebecca Rowena Randall, the little niece of the brick-house
ladies, and at present sojourning there for purposes of board,
lodging, education, and incidentally such discipline and
chastening as might ultimately produce moral excellence,--Rebecca
Randall had a passion for the rhyme and rhythm of poetry. From
her earliest childhood words had always been to her what dolls
and toys are to other children, and now at twelve she amused
herself with phrases and sentences and images as her schoolmates
played with the pieces of their dissected puzzles. If the heroine
of a story took a "cursory glance" about her "apartment," Rebecca
would shortly ask her Aunt Jane to take a "cursory glance" at her
oversewing or hemming; if the villain "aided and abetted" someone
in committing a crime, she would before long request the pleasure
of "aiding and abetting" in dishwashing or bedmaking. Sometimes
she used the borrowed phrases unconsciously; sometimes she
brought them into the conversation with an intense sense of
pleasure in their harmony or appropriateness; for a beautiful
word or sentence had the same effect upon her imagination as a
fragrant nosegay, a strain of music, or a brilliant sunset.