Of the many thousand individuals destined¹ to become the purchasers of a copy of this work, a majority have undoubtedly² been, or are still teachers, and of these many will remember the time when they fancied that to be invested with the dignity of a teacher was to secure the greatest amount of happiness which earth can bestow³. Almost from my earliest remembrance it had been the one great subject which engrossed⁴ my thoughts, and frequently, when strolling down the shady hill-side which led to our schoolhouse, have I fancied myself the teacher, thinking that if such were really the case, my first act should be the chastisement⁵ of half a score or more boys, who were in the daily habit of annoying me in various ways. Every word and action of my teacher, too, was carefully noted⁶ and laid away against the time when I should need them, and which came much sooner than I anticipated; for one rainy morning when Lizzie and I were playing in the garret, I overheard my father saying there was a chance for Rosa to teach school.

 

“What, that child!” was my mother’s exclamation⁷, but ere he could reply, “the child” had bounded down two pair of stairs, and stood at his elbow, asking, “Who is it?—Where 53is it?—And do you suppose I can get a certificate?”

 

This last idea damped my ardor⁸ somewhat, for horrible visions came up before me, of the “Abbreviations” and “Sounds of the Vowels,” in both of which I was rather deficient¹⁰.

 

“You teach school! You look like it!” said my sister Juliet. “Why, in less than three days, you’d be teetering with the girls, if indeed you didn’t climb trees with the boys.”

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