ourselves. Unable to buy stilts or skipping-ropes, or any of the
things that were used in the playground, I was driven out of the
games; to gain admission on suffrage I should have had to toady the
rich and flatter the strong of my division. My heart rose against
either of these meannesses, which, however, most children readily
employ. I lived under a tree, lost in dejected thought, or reading the
books distributed to us monthly by the librarian. How many griefs were
in the shadow of that solitude; what genuine anguish filled my
neglected life! Imagine what my sore heart felt when, at the first
distribution of prizes,--of which I obtained the two most valued,
namely, for theme and for translation,--neither my father nor my
mother was present in the theatre when I came forward to receive the
awards amid general acclamations, although the building was filled
with the relatives of all my comrades. Instead of kissing the
distributor, according to custom, I burst into tears and threw myself
on his breast. That night I burned my crowns in the stove. The parents
of the other boys were in town for a whole week preceding the
distribution of the prizes, and my comrades departed joyfully the next
day; while I, whose father and mother were only a few miles distant,
remained at the school with the "outremers,"--a name given to scholars
whose families were in the colonies or in foreign countries.

You will notice throughout how my unhappiness increased in proportion
as the social spheres on which I entered widened. God knows what
efforts I made to weaken the decree which condemned me to live within
myself! What hopes, long cherished with eagerness of soul, were doomed
to perish in a day! To persuade my parents to come and see me, I wrote
them letters full of feeling, too emphatically worded, it may be; but
surely such letters ought not to have drawn upon me my mother's
reprimand, coupled with ironical reproaches for my style. Not