and girls stood aside in silence as I passed, leaving me alone with my grief.

For six weeks I played the tragedy; and then in the twinkling of an eye the mood, in which I had been genuinely serious, passed away. In life this young boy had meant absolutely nothing to me; in death he became a dramatic possibility which I utilized unconsciously as an outlet for my emotion. I was not pretending; I was terribly in earnest. I actually believed in my grief. Who can say that it was "only acting"?

A temper, which I regret to confess time has not very much chastened, came to the front in my school days, to the dismay of my mother. In 1892, when I was ten years old, the city of Melrose held a carnival and celebration to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Floats were planned to represent the thirteen original States. The selection of the school girl to impersonate Massachusetts fell to my class in the Grove Street School, and I was anxious for this honor, not only because of the personal glory and prominence, but because I really believed that I could impersonate Massachusetts better than any other girl in the class!

Well, I did appear as Massachusetts, and, with the other "twelve States," was driven through the streets of Melrose, mounted on the float, bearing the flag of the nation. But two girls in the school, who had voted against me in the election, watched me from afar with swollen and blackened eyes; I had struck them in a moment of quick anger because their choice had been against me.

A YOUNG GIRL WITH A PHENOMENAL SOPRANO VOICE

The following winter, while many of the boys and girls were skating, a boy of twelve or thirteen, named Clarence, annoyed me exceedingly by trying to trip me with his hockey stick. I warned him three times that he "had better let me alone," but he persisted in his persecution. After the third time, I skated to shore, picked up my umbrella, carefully tore three of the steel ribs from it and, with these as a whip, I thrashed Clarence. Clarence "sat" with discomfort for some days, and I believe his mother seriously contemplated making a police charge against me for beating him.

This temper—or temperament—often found expression at home in moods, when for hours, sometimes days, I wouldn't break silence. If any one interfered with or spoke to me during these moments I felt just as though some one were combing my nerves the wrong way with a fine, grating comb. My mother was wise enough to leave me alone in my intense irritability and depression. She appreciated the extremes of my nature, which were somewhat like the well-known little girl of our childhood rhymes:

I fear, at times, I was very, very horrid. But I planned a danger signal! One day I came home with a pair of most distinctive black-and-white checked stockings, the most hideous things one can imagine.

"Mother," I said, "when I wear these stockings I want to be let alone."

Thus it was an understood thing that no one should speak to me or notice me in the least while these horrors adorned me. Perhaps after a few hours, or a day, I would go up the back stairs, change my stockings—and the sun would shine again.

It was at this time that I was the victim of an accident which resulted in a neat bit of surgery. My mother and I were spending a summer in the little village of Sandwich, New Hampshire. I was crazy to carve a small horse out of wood, and went down to the woodshed in the rear of the country house where we were staying, armed with a hatchet and followed by an admiring youngster from the village. The hatchet was very sharp. My experience in carving wooden horses was limited. Suddenly the hatchet came down and clipped a tiny bit off the extreme ends of my left thumb and forefinger.

I screamed with agony and cried in amazement as the poor little bleeding tips of my fingers fell to the floor, but the country boy, with wonderful presence of mind, picked them up, and keeping them warm in his closed hand, ran with me at full speed to the nearest doctor. Fortunately, he happened to be at home. When the village boy showed him the wounded hand and the tiny bleeding bits of finger, he clamped them instantly on the fingers where they belonged, put on ointments, and bound them tight with bandages. This marvelous surgery, without a stitch being taken, actually was successful; the fingers healed, and now only a slight scar remains.

I regret to say that this physician, whose presence of mind thus saved my fingers from being permanently mutilated, is entirely unknown to me now. Some few years ago, in Boston, I told this story in an interview, and a physician wrote me from some other city that he was the man who had saved my fingers for me. I wrote and thanked him for his kindness toward a little girl; but his letter was mislaid and destroyed, so that even now I do not know his name. Wherever he is, however, he will always have my thanks and warmest admiration.

Finally, the time came for me to enter the Melrose High School. I objected seriously to the further routine of public schooling, as I wished to study only music. But both my father and mother insisted; so I began the study of languages. I was intensely interested in mythology, history, and literature, but I hated mathematics. I always preferred to count on my fingers rather than to use my brain for such merely mechanical feats as adding or multiplying figures. In the study of languages I soon found that my teachers were excellent grammarians, but I pleaded that I wanted to learn to talk and not merely to conjugate.

I took a supplementary course in literature, and well remember the most important incident when I competed for the prize. I was quite sure my essay would win. In fancy I had already rehearsed the pretty speech in which I should thank the committee for the honor conferred on me. But the prize went to some one else. My anger was sudden and hot. Then and there I made up my mind that if ever I could not be first in what I attempted, I would drop it at once. I believed my material was best and deserved the prize, and I was hurt at not conquering before an admiring and enthusiastic audience!

GROWING UP

Thus I early learned that maybe I could not always win, could not always be first; that perseverance must aid natural talents; and that it is cowardly to drop a thing when at first you don't succeed. The sting of adverse criticism may often prove the best of tonics! I have since found it so.

CHAPTER III

I RESOLVE TO SING CARMEN

Each spring in Melrose there was a May Carnival. One of the features of the carnival in 1894, when I was twelve years old, was a pageant of famous women impersonated by local talent. I was selected to represent Jenny Lind and was told by the committee that I must sing "Home, Sweet Home," but with characteristic disregard for the expected tradition I decided to sing an aria in Italian first. The prima donna of my dreams would naturally dazzle her hearers with a selection in some