Often would I gaze far off at the distant, misty horizon, wondering if I should ever know what was beyond it.

Wild fancies then filled my childish brain.

Strange voices whispered to me thoughts and ideas which, if written down and carried out, would, I am sure, have placed my name higher than it was carved on the old chestnut tree.
"But they came and went like shadows, Those blessed dreams of youth," I was a strange child, I know.

Everybody told me so, and _I_ knew it well enough without being told.

The wise old men at Rice Corner, and their still wiser old wives, looked at me askance, as 'neath the thorn-apple tree I built my playhouse and baked my little loaves of mud bread.