Elizabeth Eliza was sure her mother would think it made them too public;
and most of the Club papers, she observed, had some thought in them. She
preferred to find an idea.

So she set herself to the occupation of thinking. She went out on the
piazza to think; she stayed in the house to think. She tried a corner of
the china-closet. She tried thinking in the cars, and lost her
pocket-book; she tried it in the garden, and walked into the strawberry
bed. In the house and out of the house, it seemed to be the same,--she
could not think of anything to think of. For many weeks she was seen
sitting on the sofa or in the window, and nobody disturbed her. "She is
thinking about her paper," the family would say, but she only knew that
she could not think of anything.

Agamemnon told her that many writers waited till the last moment, when
inspiration came, which was much finer than anything studied. Elizabeth
Eliza thought it would be terrible to wait till the last moment, if the
inspiration should not come! She might combine the two ways,--wait till
a few days before the last, and then sit down and write anyhow. This
would give a chance for inspiration, while she would not run the risk of
writing nothing.

She was much discouraged. Perhaps she had better give it up? But, no;
everybody wrote a paper: if not now, she would have to do it some time!

And at last the idea of a subject came to her! But it was as hard to
find a moment to write as to think. The morning was noisy, till the
little boys had gone to school; for they had begun again upon their
regular course, with the plan of taking up the study of cider in