She
quite wore this book out, carrying it about with her in her
working-dress pocket. After that, "Locke on the Understanding"
was used in the same way. She must have known both books through
and through by heart. Then she read Combe and Abercrombie, and
discussed their physics and metaphysics with our girl boarders,
some of whom had remarkably acute and well-balanced minds. Her
own seemed to have turned from its early bent toward the
romantic, her taste being now for serious and practical, though
sometimes abstruse, themes. I remember that Young and Pollock
were her favorite poets.
I could not keep up with her in her studies and readings, for
many of the books she liked seemed to me very dry. I did not
easily take to the argumentative or moralizing method, which I
came to regard as a proof of the weakness of my own intellect in
comparison with hers. I would gladly have kept pace with her if I
could. Anything under the heading of "Didactick," like some of
the pieces in the old "English Reader," used by school-children
in the generation just before ours, always repelled me.
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