LUTHER BURBANK 



I myself well recall that even in somewhat later 

 years I cringed before the kindly scrutiny of our 

 visitors and was dumb before their questions, 

 though drinking in their words with eager interest 

 so long as they were not addressed to me in 

 particular. 



It was the same kind of childish timidity, which 

 I take it is the common endowment of children 

 whose mental development tends to outrun the 

 physical, that made my first school-going an or- 

 deal. I could not at first find voice to recite in the 

 awesome presence of half a hundred schoolmates. 

 And the semi-weekly recitation day, on which each 

 pupil was supposed to come to the platform and 

 declaim, was looked forward to by me with about 

 the same degree of anguished solicitude, I verily 

 believe, with which a condemned criminal con- 

 templates his execution day. 



Fortunately a sympathetic teacher presently 

 permitted me to write an essay weekly in lieu of 

 declaiming; and after that the school days were 

 days of almost unalloyed pleasure. 



Yet I shall always feel that I was sent to school 

 far earlier than was good for me. This, of course, 

 was no fault of my parents. They but followed the 

 traditions of the times. Who could blame the 

 New England housewife of that period, with duties 

 that nowadays would be thought to require a 



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