I found myself talking freely to him of myself, of my hopes and my fears.
I forgot the tyrant of yesterday in the friend of to-day.

I remember one thing he said, which is worth recording.
"It is very unfortunate when a child, in consequence of a facility of making rhyme, is led to believe herself a poetess,--or, in other words, a prodigy.

She is praised and flattered by injudicious friends, till she becomes inflated by vanity and exalted by pride.

She wanders idly, without aim or goal, in the flowery paths of poesy, forgetful of the great highway of knowledge, not made alone for the chariot wheels of kings, but the feet of the humblest wayfarer." When he began to address me, he remembered that I was a child, but before he finished the sentence he forgot my age, and his thoughts and language swelled and rose to the comprehension of manhood.

But I understood him.