The Charm School
had gone into school-teaching strictly on the commercial basis. One of her letters ran:
Dear Mr. Bevans,—What do you think about moods? I know what you will say—that we should conquer them. I think so, too. But how? All to-day I have been so dreadfully depressed—so that my heart really aches like a tooth, and anything beautiful makes me want to cry. Yet I have no reason for being unhappy—quite the contrary. I keep telling myself how fortunate I am—one of the luckiest girls. Only the world seems so large and dangerous, and I so small and inexperienced.
Respectfully yours,
The subject of punctuation was one to which Austin had never even given a passing thought, but now the idea that Elise used too many dashes haunted him like a nightmare. It was hard on him to feel obliged to get up the whole subject, because, ever since the Latin teacher had quoted something to him which he couldn't understand, he was spending all his evenings trying to reacquire a reading knowledge of Virgil. But now, nothing daunted, he borrowed a book on punctuation from the English teacher, and after he had done his Virgil—that is to say from eleven to midnight, he gave his whole
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