It was my duty then to carry him down into the cellar and shut him
in the wood-box, where he was out of the way of it all. Poor Sport
laid his head against my shoulder and wept great tears that wrung
peals of laughter from me and from the boys who always hung around
to see the show.
One of these was just beginning the struggle with his Homer, which
I knew by heart almost, and it may have been the discovery that I
was able to steer him through it between chores, as well as to teach
him some tricks of fencing, that helped make the doctor anxious that
I should promise to stay with him always. He would make me rich,
he said. But other ambitions than to milk cows and plant garden
truck were stirring in me. To be rich was never among them. I had
begun to write essays for the magazines, choosing for my topic, for
want of any other, the maltreatment of Denmark by Prussia, which
rankled fresh in my memory, and the duty of all Scandinavians
to rise up and avenge it. The Scandinavians would not listen when
I wrote in Danish, and my English outpourings never reached the
publishers.
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