One,
written to illustrate a little girl's habit of carelessness about
her own special belongings, told of her rising one morning, and
after hunting around for her shoes half an hour or so, finding
them in the book-case, where she had accidentally locked them up
the night before!
To convince myself that I could write something besides rhymes, I
had attempted an essay of half a column on a very extensive
subject, "MIND." It began loftily:-
"What a noble and beautiful thing is mind!" and it went on in the
same high-flown strain to no particular end. But the editor
praised it, after having declined the verdict of the audience
that she was its author; and I felt sufficiently flattered by
both judgments.
I wrote more rhymes than anything else, because they came more
easily. But I always felt that the ability to write good prose
was far more desirable, and it seems so to me still. I will give
my little girl readers a single specimen of my twelve-year-old
"Diving Bell" verses, though I feel as if I ought to apologize
even for that.
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