We used to compare verses; and while I do not remember that I ever had the grace to own that she was the better poet, I do know that I secretly wondered why the teachers did not invite her to stay after school and study poetry, while they took so much pains with me.

But so it was always with me: somebody did something for me all the time.
Making fair allowance for my youth, retarded education, and strangeness to the language, it must still be admitted that I never wrote good verse.

But I loved to read it.

My half-hours with Miss Dillingham were full of delight for me, quite apart from my new-born ambition to become a writer.

What, then, was my joy, when Miss Dillingham, just before locking up her desk one evening, presented me with a volume of Longfellow's poems! It was a thin volume of selections, but to me it was a bottomless treasure.