Our attic became a study; the washstand a student's desk, with a big, ungainly head bent close to a smoking oil lamp.
How I pored over my private lessons!
The pen in cramped fingers would trace those tantalizing letters, while the lips gruffly murmured the spelling. Naturally, arithmetic was also included in my curriculum, and often Bill had flung at him the maddening puzzle: "Seven into thirty-five goes how many times—yes, how many times?"
Bill always sat beside me during my studies and blinked a hundred questions at me.
"Say, Kil, what are you up to now? I am afraid it is some new sort of tomfoolery. If not, why can't I do it, too?"
I often answered and explained, but the situation was not fully grasped by my old pal until he met my teacher. And then? Why the rocks, the hillsides, trees and birds and flowers were all responsive to that little sprite, and Bill, in just one glance, saw that the fairy of our destinies had but begun her miracle of love.
But even dolls can be made to talk and parrots can imitate empty chatter. My teacher wanted me to have the means to lift myself out of my ditch. The little sculptor who was moulding this huge mass of the commonest clay into the semblance of a man wanted to waken that in me which would make me something apart from the thing I had been. Coming out of blackest darkness I was not led at once into the radius of the dazzling light, but, as with the tots in her class at school, she coached me, step by step, into the way of righteous intelligence.
Gradually I began to see—to see with the eyes of my soul—and I found a great world about me abounding in the evidences of an almighty and wise Creator. I began to understand and love this newer and better life, and began to hate the old life, which often tried to tempt me back to it.
Our lessons were carried on with much inconvenience and difficulty. The distance from school to home was little more than ten blocks, and during the time it took us to walk that length I had to report my lesson and to receive instructions for additional study. The inconvenience of this method was not at all conducive to learning, and one day I was asked by my teacher to come to her house to receive my lesson there.
I could hardly believe mine own ears. I was to see the very place in which she lived. It was beyond belief. Was it not a sacrifice on her part? Indeed it was, and I can never sufficiently emphasize the many sacrifices this sweet little girl underwent for me from the beginning to the very end.