to this teacher's inculcation of her own love of na- 

 ture and art and literature that I have shaped my 

 own career. The seeds she planted, admittedly, 

 were long in germinating, but, at any rate, they 

 never died. She did the best she could with the soil 

 at hand. So if the fruit of my experience bears no 

 further promise than this, that it inspires courage 

 in some chance reader who has perhaps lost faith 

 in the future because of a seemingly misdirected 

 past, her husbandry will have been well worth the 

 labor. 



O Paragon of Pedagogues ! How can I repay my 

 debt to you! How well I remember that patience 

 and forbearance which was yours, when cloyed 

 with the day's monotonous round you sought in 

 after-hours to instil in this benighted urchin's 

 breast a fondness for the finer things of life. Nor 

 have I forgotten your private treasures edifyingly 

 displayed for my wondering eyes alone — your sea- 

 shells, beautiful beyond utterance; but your de- 

 scriptions of their identities, luminous, revealing; 

 your minerals, rare in kind, radiant in color, all 

 arranged in becoming order in their pretty boxes of 

 delicate robin's-egg blue; your stuffed pelican, 

 standing stark, immobile on its ebony base, yet 



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