One of the felicitous orderings of her schooldays was that which placed her as a pupil of the Rev. Roswell Park, the Episcopal rector in Pomfret, and Principal of a school called Christ Church Hall. Here she easily carried off the honors when "compositions" were required.
"Will Miss Ellen Louise Chandler please remain a moment after the school is dismissed," was the disconcerting request of the teacher one day.
The purpose of the interview was a private inquiry where the girl had "found" the poem which she had read in the literary exercises of the afternoon.
"Why, I can't tell," she answered; "it all wrote itself from my own mind."
The instructor looked at her earnestly for a moment,—this dainty young girl with the rose-flush deepening in her sweet face,—and replied: "Then I sincerely congratulate you." And she went on her way.
The commonplace books of her thirteenth year, kept while she was still a pupil at this school, show more clearly than ever the dawning power of the young poet. Her reading was not indiscriminate, but selective, inclining almost equally to poetry and to serious prose. Of the usual schoolgirl love of novels is little evidence; and this is the more curious as her fancy was active, and she was writing many stories. Literary form, also, was beginning to appeal to her, and she copies "A Remarkable Specimen of Alliteration."
She took life seriously in the fashion of her generation. It was a time when every girl loved a diminutive; she wrote her name "Nellie" and signed her verses "Nellie C." Those were the days of the annuals, "Friendship's Wreath," "The Literary Garland" and the like, and to these after once she began to see herself in print, "Nellie C." became quickly a favorite contributor.
She tasted the rapture of a poet born who first sees his verses in print, when she was fourteen. This is her account:
"I used to rhyme as long ago as I can remember anything, and I sent my first contribution to a newspaper when I was fourteen years old.... I remember how secretly, and almost as if it were a crime, I sent it in; and when I found the paper one evening, upon calling at the post-office on my way home from school, and saw my lines—my very own lines—it seemed to me a much more wonderful and glorious event than has anything since that time.... Perhaps it was unfortunate for me that it was accepted at once, since it encouraged me in the habit of verse,—making a habit which future occupations confirmed. But one gain, at least, came to me,—the friendship and encouragement of authors whose work I loved. I was scarcely eighteen when my first book was published. I called it 'This, That, and the Other,' because it was made up of short stories, sketches (too brief and immature to call essays), and the rhymes into which, from the first, I put more of myself than into any other form of expression. Strangely enough, the book sold largely."