The Heiress of Mcgregor by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

FOR two or three weeks Marion's lessons went on better. Bending all her powers of mind, which were by no means contemptible, to the construing and understanding of her lessons in Virgil, she made the remarkable and delightful discovery that she was reading poetry. Now, I am well aware that there are many teachers who either never make this discovery for themselves, or if they do by any chance find it out, they use every effort to conceal the fact from their unlucky pupils, and try to make those pupils consider the "sweet singers of old days" as only so much material for parsing.

But Miss Oliver was not such a teacher. She had a strong sense of beauty in all things; she had a correct and highly cultivated taste, and she gave her pupils the benefit thereof; she wished to make them readers as well as students. She gave them subjects for composition which involved study and consultation of books, and the school library books showed more signs of wear under her administration than they had ever done before. In short, Miss Oliver tried in every way to create and encourage a love of knowledge and literature for their own sake, and she succeeded. Under her management the Crocker school had become as good and useful as any institution in the whole State, and its scholarships began to be eagerly looked after.