Page:Letters of Life.djvu/69

Rh ones for perspective being accorded, seemed rather an incumbrance, and I secretly bemoaned my lost satisfactions in sketching ad libitum from the historians and poets.

A boldness of literary enterprise also came over me; and, though I had scarcely perused a novel except surreptitiously, I commenced to write one. It was in the epistolary style, and a part of the scene laid in Italy. I remember several of the letters, which, contrary to my previous habit with all other compositions, I mentioned to my companions. Forthwith there was a burst of ridicule from the grown-up young ladies of the school.

"What a fool Lydia Huntley is! Don't you think, she is undertaking to write a novel, and only just eight years old! She can no more do it than she could tame Bucephalus. She'd better stick to her painting—and that's not over good."

The critics, deeming my precocity too exuberant, and a subject for the pruning-knife, proceeded to occasional browbeatings, which were very slightly regarded. Most of my associates here were fully sensible of the honor of sharing the tuition of a lady from London, and were careful to comport themselves with sufficient exclusiveness, as a patrician order, when they encountered any of the members of the plebeian district schools.

My next instructor was strongly contrasted both in