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But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours
of toil, as regular as sunrise,--toil on both sides equal,--by which,
year after year, my mother forced me to learn these paraphrases, and
chapters, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one--try it, good reader, in a
leisure hour!) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or
misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over
again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a
struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the accent of the
"of" in the lines
"Shall any following spring revive
The ashes of the urn?"--
I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct
for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject both of urns and their
contents), on reciting it with an accented _of_. It was not, I say, till
after three weeks' labor, that my mother got the accent lightened on the
"of" and laid on the "ashes," to her mind. But had it taken three years
she would have done it, having once undertaken to do it.


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