When I had finished my oration, I stood somewhat astonished at my own audacity, but after a moment’s silence Lily said,
“Thank you—thank you, for you have learned me two lessons—I’ll not forget them; no, I will never take the serpent back, you may depend on that.”
A few days after Lily was established at the larger school, dwelling with other boarders in the family of the principal, the wonder of all the scholars, and the pet pupil with the teachers.
The hopeful expectations of her family were kept up by her progress, and by her own increasing courage and cheerfulness. And in reality it seemed no unfounded expectation, that which they cherished, that the young girl would soon be able to support them all by dint of her genius. Her efforts became daily more worthy and more promising, now that she possessed these superior advantages; fortune seemed really determined to work good things for the rich peoples’ _protégé_.
Lily was not yet seventeen, but her poems had many of them attracted much attention; injudicious praises were lavished upon her; by their attentions and flattery, the proud, and the rich, and the learned seemed to have conspired to spoil a girl—a school-girl—poor “from her youth up.” They did not take it into consideration that it was quite possible for them to raise her hopes and self-appreciativeness too high; they did not give heed to the fact that it might require years of struggling and disappointment for her to produce any thing worthy the reward and honor they would fain believe were rightfully hers even then.
But soon enough they had cause to regret this course they adopted.
“A change came o’er the spirit of her dream.” Self-confidence rapidly usurped the place of a befitting humility, which had once characterized her. Instead of comparing herself with the great masters of song and painting, Lily seemed to think that in outstripping all her schoolmates, and in being considered a prodigy among teachers, she was rapidly filling the measure of her greatness; and the laudations which good-will prompted others to speak, instead of being listened to and valued at their worth, came at last to be considered as quite true and well-deserved.
It is said that more strength of mind is requisite to bear composedly a sudden _favorable_ turn of fortune than is necessary calmly to endure reverses. Having never had occasion to test the truth of the proposition, I, of course, have only a right to _suppose_ there is somewhat “more of truth than poetry” in the idea; at all events, that is a very easy way to account for Lily’s derelictions.