Page:Letters of Life.djvu/65

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MY TEACHERS.
53

when the power arrogated was simply an expression of preference. But the sense of injustice in the young mind is keen, and, when once roused, magnifies trifles and inadvertencies into wrongs.

The next teacher was one of more pretension—an English lady, who came, with her family, to reside in our immediate vicinity, and received both day scholars and boarders. She instructed in what were termed the higher branches, including music, painting, and embroidery. She executed on the piano with great skill, and, as I had been a singer from infancy, I found much pleasure in the practice of uniting an instrument with the voice. Having become an enthusiast about our aborigines, the first tune that I was permitted to choose for my own performance was that sweetly plaintive melody of the "Indian Chief's Death-Song," beginning,


"The sun sets at night, and the stars shun the day,
But glory remains while their lights fade away."


I was never tired of singing and playing this mournful harmony, and curtailed my scientific practice to enjoy it. But my chief delight was to paint and draw in water colors—an accomplishment in which the instructress excelled. In my own little sanctum I had sketched at pleasure from the earliest years, with a pin and lilac leaf, with a slate-pencil and fragment of slate, ere I was the owner of a lead-pencil, or could obtain backs