Page:Letters of Life.djvu/198

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LETTER IX.


EDUCATIONAL REMEMBRANCES.


The memories of the time devoted to the education of others are faithfully cherished and fondly recalled. They beckon me with a loving smile, and I willingly follow. They embrace the most cloudless period of my life, the most methodical, tranquil, and congenial.

My earliest promptings of ambition were, not to possess the trappings of wealth or the indulgences of luxury, but to keep a school. A modest aspiration truly, yet predominant in the reveries to which I was addicted. Only children, probably, are more in the habit of making their lonely hours dramatic, than those whose companionship with brothers and sisters leads them to the sports and affinities of outer life. At all events, with the visiting thoughts that cheered my solitary childhood, snatches of song I know not from whence, and scenes peopled by fancy, came vivid pencillings of the delight, dignity, and glory of a school-