Confident that no one could fail to see the beauty of these lines, or the pro-priety of the identification of myself with Antony, I called upon my Sunday-school teacher, Miss Goss, to report. I never had thought of Miss Goss as a blithe spirit. She was associated in my mind with numerous solemn occasions, and I was surprised to find that on this day she unexpectedly developed a trait of breaking into nervous laughter. I had got as far as "Should the base ple-beian rabble --" when Miss Goss broke down in what I could not but regard as a fit of giggles, and I ceased abruptly.
She pulled herself together after a moment or two, and said if I would fol-low her to the library she thought she could find something -- here she hesi-tated, to conclude with, "more within the understanding of the other chil-dren." I saw that she thought my feel-ings were hurt, and as I passed a mir-ror I feared she had some reason to think so. My face was uncommonly flushed, and a look of indignation had crept, somehow, even into my braids, which, having been plaited too tightly, stuck out in crooks and kinks from the side of my head. Incidentally, I was horrified to notice how thin I was -- thin, even for a dying Antony -- and my frock was so outgrown that it hardly covered my knees. "Ridiculous!" I said under my breath, as I confronted this miserable figure -- so shamefully in-significant for the vicarious emotions which it had been housing. "Ridicu-lous!"
I hated Miss Goss, and must have shown it in my stony stare, for she put her arm around me and said it was a pity I had been to all the trouble to learn a poem which was -- well, a trifle too -- too old -- but that she hoped to find something equally "pretty" for me to speak. At the use of that adjective in connection with William Lytle's lines, I wrenched away from her grasp and stood in what I was pleased to think a haughty calm, awaiting her directions.
She took from the shelves a little vol-ume of Whittier, bound in calf, hand-ling it as tenderly as if it were a price-less possession. Some pressed violets dropped out as she opened it, and she replaced them with devotional fingers.
After some time she decided upon a lyric lament entitled "Eva." I was asked to run over the verses, and found them remarkably easy to learn; fatally impossible to forget. I presently arose and with an impish betrayal of the pov-erty of rhyme and the plethora of sen-timent, repeated the thing relentlessly.
O for faith like thine, sweet Eva, Lighting all the solemn reevah [river], And the blessings of the poor, Wafting to the heavenly shoor [shore].
"I do think," said Miss Goss gently, "that if you tried, my child, you might manage the rhymes just a little better."
"But if you're born in Michigan," I protested, "how can you possibly make 'Eva' rhyme with 'never' and 'be-liever'?"
"Perhaps it is a little hard," Miss Goss agreed, and still clinging to her Whittier, she exhumed "The Pump-kin," which she thought precisely fitted for our Harvest Home festival. This was quite another thing from "Eva," and I saw that only hours of study would fix it in my mind. I went to my home, therefore, with "The Pumpkin" delicately transcribed in Miss Goss's running hand, and I tried to get some comfort from the foreign allusions glit-tering through Whittier's kindly verse.
As the days went by I came to have a certain fondness for those homely lines:
O -- fruit loved of boyhood! -- the old days re-calling, When wood grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in the skin, Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
