Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/14

14 her answers would be perfectly correct: still, not exactly recollecting, and unwilling she should find out just then that I was less learned than herself, I used thus to question her:—'Are you quite certain?' 'Oh yes, quite!' 'You feel sure you are correct?' 'Yes, very sure.' 'Well then, to be perfectly right, bring the book and let us look over it again.' I never knew her to be wrong. * * * At so early an age as this, she would occupy an hour or two of the evening amusing her father and mother with accounts of the wonderful castles she had built in her imagination; and when, rambling in the garden in fair weather, she had taken with her, as a companion, a long stick, which she called her measuring stick; she was asked, 'What that was for?' her answer would be, 'Oh, don't speak to me, I have such a delightful thought in my head.' And on she would go talking to herself. There was a little world of happiness within her; and even then, the genius afterwards developed was constantly struggling to break forth." The works read at this period were precisely those that happened to be at hand, or were most readily procurable. The list opens, of course, with grammars and catechisms, glances at geography, Rollin's Ancient History, Hume and Smollett; then come Plutarch's Lives, the Fables of Gay and Æsop, Life of Josephus, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, Dobson's Life of Petrarch, and many others, more or less adapted to the young reader. "I always," remarks the thoughtful cousin, "made it my particular care never to allow of her reading any novels, knowing it would only weaken her mind, and give it a distaste for more serious reading." Nevertheless, this restriction was somewhat less effective than it was intended to be; for he who