at home, so last night I reviewed Saintine's masterpiece,
"Picciola."'

"Then instantly I began to read. I was almost paralyzed at my
audacity, and with each word I expected to hear a terse little
interruption. Imagine my amazement when I heard at the end of the
first page: `Wait a minute!' Of course I waited, and the
principal left the room. A moment later she reappeared
accompanied by the superintendent of the city schools. `Begin
again,' she said. `Take your time.'

"I was too amazed to speak. Then thought came in a rush. My paper
was good. It was as good as I had believed it. It was better than
I had known. I did go on! We took that assembly room and the
corps of teachers into our confidence, the Count and I, and told
them all that was in our hearts about a little flower that sprang
between the paving stones of a prison yard. The Count and I were
free spirits. From the book I had learned that. He got into
political trouble through it, and I had got into mathematical
trouble, and we told our troubles. One instant the room was in
laughter, the next the boys bowed their heads, and the girls who
had forgotten their handkerchiefs cried in their aprons. For
almost sixteen big foolscap pages I held them, and I was eager to
go on and tell them more about it when I reached the last line.
Never again was a subject forced upon me."

After this incident of her schooldays, what had been inclination
before was aroused to determination and the child neglected her
lessons to write. A volume of crude verse fashioned after the
metre of Meredith's "Lucile," a romantic book in rhyme, and two