We repeated miles of poetry together, smooth lines that sang themselves, mostly out of Longfellow.

Then I would go home and write--oh, about the snow in our back yard!--but when Miss Dillingham came to read my verses, they limped and they lagged and they dragged, and there was no tune that would fit them.
At last came the moment of illumination: I saw where my trouble lay.

I had supposed that my lines matched when they had an equal number of syllables, taking no account of accent.

Now I knew better; now I could write poetry! The everlasting snow melted at last, and the mud puddles dried in the spring sun, and the grass on the common was green, and still I wrote poetry! Again I wish I had some example of my springtime rhapsodies, the veriest rubbish of the sort that ever a child perpetrated.

Lizzie McDee, who had red hair and freckles, and a Sunday-school manner on weekdays, and was below me in the class, did a great deal better.