After my ninth birthday my parents, for a time, spoke¹ of putting me into boarding-school, so that I might become habituated to the harder ways of life, and since the matter was talked over by all the members of the family, I went about for several days feeling as if I were on the eve of being sent to prison, for I imagined that a boarding-school had high walls and windows guarded by iron bars.  
But, upon reflection, they considered that I was too frail² and delicate a human plant to be thrown in contact with those others of my kind who, in all probability, would play roughly, and have bad manners; they concluded, therefore, to keep me at home a little longer.
 
At any rate I was delivered from “Mr. Ratin.” The old professor, rotund of figure and kind of manner, who succeeded him, was less distasteful to me, but I made just as little progress under his care. In the afternoon, at about the time for his arrival, I would hastily begin to prepare my lessons. I was then usually to be found at my window, hidden behind the venetian blinds, with my book open at the page containing the lesson; and when I saw him come into view at the turning near the bottom of the street I commenced to study it.
 
And generally by the time he arrived I knew enough to receive, if not to merit, a “pretty good,” a mark over which I did not grumble³.
 
I had also my English professor who came to me every morning,—and whom I nicknamed Aristogiton (I do not now recall why). Following the Robertson method, he had me paraphrase⁴ the history of Sultan Mahmoud. Outside of that, the only thing that I am sure of is that I accomplished⁵ nothing, absolutely nothing, less than nothing; but he had the good taste not to growl⁶ at me, and in consequence I have an almost affectionate remembrance of him.
 
During the extreme heat of the summer days it was my custom to study in the yard; I took my ink-stained copy and lesson books and spread them upon a table that stood in the summer house made shady by the vines and honeysuckles that grew over it. And when I was nicely settled there I felt that I might idle to my heart's content. From behind the lattice-work, green with trellised vines, I kept a lookout⁷ in order to see any danger that threatened in the distance. . . . I was always careful to bring with me to this retreat a quantity of cherries and grapes, whichever happened to be in season, and truly I could have passed there hours of the most delicious reverie but for the remorse⁸ that tormented⁹ me almost every moment, a remorse born of the fact that I was not busying myself with my lessons.
 
Through the foliage¹⁰ I saw, close to me, the cool-looking pond with its tiny grottoes wh............