could snatch an opportunity to do so unobserved, to put down upon paper
the visions of his awakening soul. Sometimes these scribblings took the
form of little stories--crudely conceived and incoherently expressed,
but rich in the picturesque thought and language of an exceptionably
imaginative and precocious child. Sometimes they were in verse. For
subjects these infant effusions had generally to do with the lonely
grave in the churchyard in Richmond and the sad joy of the heart that
mourns evermore; with the beauty of flowers--the more beautiful because
doomed to a brief life; with the Gothic steeple, asleep in the still,
blue air, and the bell in whose deep iron throat dwelt a note that was
hollow and ghostly; with the great wall around the Manor House grounds
and with the mighty gate that swung upon hinges in which the voice of a
soul in torment seemed to be imprisoned, and with other things which
filled him with a terror that

"was not fright,
But a tremulous delight."

His learning to write bore still another fruit.

When Mrs. Allan had first adopted him and set apart a room in her home
for him, she had placed in a little cabinet therein the packet of
letters his dying mother had given him. She had not opened the packet,
for she felt that the letters were for the actress's child's eye alone.
He, when he looked at it, did so with a feeling of mixed reverence and
fascination which was deepened by his inability to decipher the secrets
bound together by the bit of blue ribbon tied around it. How the sight
of the packet recalled to him that sad, that solemn hour in which it
had been given into his hands! When getting him ready for
boarding-school, Mrs. Allan had packed the letters with his other