Whatever relates to Gypsy belongs properly to this narrative; therefore I offer no apology for rescuing from oblivion, and boldly printing here a short composition which I wrote in the early part of my first quarter at the Temple Grammar School.  It is my maiden effort in a difficult art, and is, perhaps, lacking in those graces of thought and style which are reached only after the severest practice.

Every Wednesday morning, on entering school, each pupil was expected to lay his exercise on Mr. Grimshaw’s desk; the subject was usually selected by Mr. Grimshaw himself, the Monday previous.  With a humor characteristic of him, our teacher had instituted two prizes, one for the best and the other for the worst composition of the month.  The first prize consisted of a penknife, or a pencil-case, or some such article dear to the heart of youth; the second prize entitled the winner to wear for an hour or two a sort of conical paper cap, on the front of which was written, in tall letters, this modest admission:  I am A dunce!  The competitor who took prize No. 2. wasn’t generally an object of envy.

My pulse beat high with pride and expectation that Wednesday morning, as I laid my essay, neatly folded, on the master’s table.  I firmly decline to say which prize I won; but here’s the composition to speak for itself.

It is no small-author vanity that induces me to publish this stray leaf of natural history.  I lay it before our young folks, not for their admiration, but for their criticism.  Let each reader take his lead-pencil and remorselessly correct the orthography, the capitalization, and the punctuation of the essay.  I shall not feel hurt at seeing my treatise cut all to pieces; though I think highly of the production, not on account of its literary excellence, which I candidly admit is not overpowering, but because it was written years and years ago about Gypsy, by a little fellow who, when I strive to recall him, appears to me like a reduced ghost of my present self.

I am confident that any reader who has ever had pets, birds or animals, will forgive me for this brief digression.

Chapter Twelve—­Winter at Rivermouth

“I guess we’re going to have a regular old-fashioned snowstorm,” said Captain Nutter, one bleak December morning, casting a peculiarly nautical glance skyward.

The Captain was always hazarding prophecies about the weather, which somehow never turned out according to his prediction.  The vanes on the church-steeples seemed to take fiendish pleasure in humiliating the dear old gentleman.  If he said it was going to be a clear day, a dense sea-fog was pretty certain to set in before noon.  Once he caused a protracted drought by assuring us every morning, for six consecutive weeks, that it would rain in a few hours.  But, sure enough, that afternoon it began snowing.