I had learned a great many hymns before the family took any
notice of it. When it came to the knowledge of my most motherly
sister Emilie,--I like to call her that, for she was as fond of
early rising as Chaucer's heroine:--

"Up rose the sun, and up rose Emilie;"
and it is her own name, with a very slight change,--she undertook
to see how many my small memory would contain. She promised me a
new book, when I should have learned fifty; and that when I could
repeat any one of a hundred hymns, she would teach me to write. I
earned the book when I was about four years old. I think it was a
collection of some of Jane Taylor's verses. "For Infant Minds,"
was part of the title. I did not care for it, however, nearly so
much as I did for the old, thumb-worn "Watts' and Select Hymns."
Before I was five I bad gone beyond the stipulated hundred.

A proud and happy child I was, when I was permitted to dip a
goose quill into an inkstand, and make written letters, instead
of printing them with a pencil on a slate.

My sister prepared a neat little writing-book for me, and told me
not to make a mark in it except when she was near to tell me what
to do. In my self-sufficient impatience to get out of "pothooks
and trammels" into real letters and words I disobeyed her
injunction, and disfigured the pages with numerous tell-tale
blots. Then I hid the book away under the garret eaves, and
refused to bring it to light again. I was not allowed to resume
my studies in penmanship for some months, in consequence. But
when I did learn to write, Emilie was my teacher, and she made me
take great pains with my p's and q's.