CHAPTER XXXI.
After my ninth birthday my parents, for a time, spoke of putting me into boarding-school, so that I might become habituated to the harder ways of life, and since the matter was talked over by all the members of the family, I went about for several days feeling as if I were on the eve of being sent to prison, for I imagined that a boarding-school had high walls and windows guarded by iron bars.
But, upon reflection, they considered that I was too frail and delicate a human plant to be thrown in contact with those others of my kind who, in all probability, would play roughly, and have bad manners; they concluded, therefore, to keep me at home a little longer.
At any rate I was delivered from "Mr.Ratin." The old professor, rotund of figure and kind of manner, who succeeded him, was less distasteful to me, but I made just as little progress under his care.

In the afternoon, at about the time for his arrival, I would hastily begin to prepare my lessons.

I was then usually to be found at my window, hidden behind the venetian blinds, with my book open at the page containing the lesson; and when I saw him come into view at the turning near the bottom of the street I commenced to study it.
And generally by the time he arrived I knew enough to receive, if not to merit, a "pretty good," a mark over which I did not grumble.
I had also my English professor who came to me every morning,--and whom I nicknamed Aristogiton (I do not now recall why).

Following the Robertson method, he had me paraphrase the history of Sultan Mahmoud.
Outside of that, the only thing that I am sure of is that I accomplished nothing, absolutely nothing, less than nothing; but he had the good taste not to growl at me, and in consequence I have an almost affectionate remembrance of him.
During the extreme heat of the summer days it was my custom to study in the yard; I took my ink-stained copy and lesson books and spread them upon a table that stood in the summer house made shady by the vines and honeysuckles that grew over it.

And when I was nicely settled there I felt that I might idle to my heart's content.