Page:Tales of the Dead.djvu/87

 feet were extremely pretty, he could do nothing with them, as her head seldom took the trouble to guide them.

“By way of retaliation, she made such wonderful progress in music that she soon excelled her masters. She sang in a manner superior to that of the best opera-singers.

“My father acknowledged that his plans for the education of this extraordinary child were now as much too enlarged, as they were before too circumscribed; and that it would not do to keep too tight a hand over her, but let her follow the impulse of her own wishes.

“This new arrangement afforded Seraphina the opportunity of more particularly studying the science of astronomy; which was one they had never thought of as needful for her. You can, my friends, form but a very indifferent idea of the avidity with which (if so I may express myself) she devoured those books which treated on celestial bodies; or what rapture the globes and telescopes occasioned her, when her father presented them to her on her thirteenth birth-day.

“But the progress made in this science in our days did not long satisfy Seraphina’s curiosity. To my father’s great grief, she was wrapped up in reveries of astrology; and more than once she was found in the morning occupied in studying books which