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50 would I have been excused from the repast, for I dared not eat before her. But, peering out from under my drooping eyelids, I ascertained that she made the same use of her large mouth that others did, appropriating good things in goodly quantities, and with correct appreciation of their different ratios of relish and rarity. What I learned of an intellectual nature under her sway, it might be difficult, through the long vista of years, to decipher. My chief enjoyment was in the spelling-class, where we "went above," according to our own skill and the mistakes of others. Having very early learned to read by myself, the forms of words, and their syllabic construction, dwelt in memory like the minutiæ of a picture, so that the usual amount of study made me fearlessly perfect in the daily orthographical lesson. Hence, the mounting by detachments to the head of a regiment of some threescore and ten personages was no unfrequent occurrence. Some were four times my own age, and of formidable altitude and prowess; but the victory was more quietly accorded to a meek-looking lilliputian, than to one better qualified for a rival in other matters. The position being held but one night, the chieftain going to the bottom of the class and rising again, pacified the discomfited, while at the same time it nourished an unslumbering ambition in the bosom of the aspirant.

My next teacher was of the masculine genus. Why, at so tender an age, my parents should commit me thus