Most of the work in the First Room was merely a continuation of that in the Second, but there were two new books to be bought and two entirely new subjects to be taken up. One of these new subjects was the writing of compositions. This was the dread of the whole class.
“I don’t see why you should dread that,” said the mother. “You liked to write your ‘Little Pearls’ when you were only eight years old; and you and Boy Cousin had a fine time writing the ‘Bearcamp Books.’ I have seen you spend half an evening over ‘Parker’s Aids to Composition.’ You liked that.”
“Yes,” replied Ella thoughtfully, “but I picked out from Parker’s just what I liked to do. There were sentences with a word left out, and there were sentences where one word was used till I was tired of it. It was just like a puzzle in a paper to make those right; it was play. And when Boy Cousin and I wrote the ‘Bearcamp Books,’ we only wrote the things that came into our own heads. The girls in the First Class say that in school compositions we have to write the things that come into other people’s heads.”
“And you don’t know how to get them out?” said the mother with a smile. “Wait till your first subject is given you, and perhaps it won’t be so bad as you think.”
“The First Class had to write last year on ‘The Seasons,’ ‘Taste and Fashion,’ ‘Books of Value,’ ‘Art and Artists,’ ‘What costs nothing is worth nothing’; and I am sure as sure that I haven’t a word to say about those,” said Ella dolefully.
When the first subject was given, it proved to be “Printing.” Ella tried her best to produce what she thought was in grown-people’s minds about it. She read the articles on printing in two encyclopædias, and then she set to work. After many struggles she wrote:
The honour of inventing printing is usually given to Gutenberg. Scarcely anything is known of his life until the age of thirty-six, when he entered into a contract with a certain company, promising to impart to them whatever knowledge he possessed concerning the secret of printing. The company probably intended to commence the practice of this art, but their plans were frustrated by the death of one of the leading members of the association.
So Ella wrote, primly and stiffly, as she imagined grown-ups always did when they wrote for one another. She even spelled the familiar “honor” with a u, because it had a u in the encyclopædia, and she supposed it ought to have one in a composition.
She struggled with that composition with an energy worthy of a better result; and when it was returned, the world seemed hollow as she read, “Spelling, 5 off,” and saw that the guilty cause of her loss was that word “honour.” Farther down the page, however, there was a comforting little note, “10 extras for the expressions being your own.” Her own, indeed!
One of the two new books bought for use in the First Room was a Sixth Reader. Remembering that the date of its publication was 1866, one can almost name the articles of prose and poetry of which it consisted. Compiled at the close of the Civil War and only fourscore years after the American Revolution, there was of course much about union and freedom and independence. There was the eloquence of Webster and the “Gettysburg speech” of Lincoln; there was “Sheridan’s Ride” and “The Ride of Paul Revere,” and “The Antiquity of Freedom.”