not even go out to walk a little, so great was my mother's fear.

It seems odd, but in spite of my far-reaching memory, I cannot remember when I learned to read. I can recall but one tiny incident relating to the subject of learning. I stood upon a chair and while my hair was brushed and braided I spelled my words, and I had my ears boxed—a custom considered criminal in these better days—because, having successfully spelled "elephant," I came to grief over "mouse," as, according to my judgment, m-o-w-s filled all the requirements of the case. I remember, too, that the punishment made me afraid to ask what "elephant" meant; but I received the impression that it was some sort of a public building.

However, when I was six years old I joyfully betook myself to a primary school, from which I was sent home with a note, saying that "in that department they did not go beyond the 'primer,' and as this little girl reads quite well from a 'reader,' she must have been taught well at home." We were a proud yet disappointed pair, my mother and I, that day.

An odd little incident occurred about that time. One of our hurried flights had ended at a boarding house, and my extreme quietude—unnatural in a child of health and intelligence—attracted the attention of a certain boarder, who was an actress. She was very popular with the public, and both she and her husband were well liked by the people about them. She took a fancy to me, and informing herself that my mother was poor and alone, she offered to adopt me. She stated her position, her income, and her intention of educating me thoroughly. She thought a convent school would be desirable—from ten, say to seventeen.

Perhaps my mother was tempted—she was a fanatic on the question of learning—but, oh! what a big but came in just then: "but when I should have, by God's will, reached the age of seventeen, she (the actress) would place me upon the stage."

"Gracious Heaven! her child on the stage!" my mother was stricken with horror! She scarcely had strength to make her shocked refusal plain enough; and when her employer ventured to remonstrate with her, pointing out the great advantage to me, she made answer: "It would be better for her to starve trying to lead a clean and honorable life, than to be exposed to such publicity and such awful temptations!"

Poor mother! the theatre was to her imagination but a beautiful vestibule leading to a place of wickedness and general wrong-doing!

During those endless months, when I had each day to sit for hours and hours in one particular chair in a corner, well out of the way—sit so long that often when I was lifted down I could not stand at all, my limbs being numbed to absolute helplessness, I had two great days to dream of, to look forward to—Christmas and that wonderful 17th of March, when because it was my birthday all those nice gentlemen, with the funny hats and green collars, walked out behind the band. And I felt particularly well disposed toward those most amusing gentlemen who wore, according to my theory at least, their little girls' aprons tied about their big waists.

I did not like so well the attendant crowd, but then I could not be selfish enough to keep people from looking at "my procession" and enjoying the music that made the blood dance in my own veins, even as my feet danced on the chill pavement.

I always received an orange on that day from my mother, and almost always a book, so it was a great event in my life, and I used to get down my little hat-box and fix the laces in my best shoes days ahead of time that I might be ready to stand on some steps where I could bow and smile to the nice gentlemen who walked out in my honor. Heaven only knows how I got the idea that the procession was meant for me, but it made me very happy, and my heart was big with love and gratitude for those people who took so much trouble for me.

I had but two illusions in the world—Santa Claus and "my procession"—but, alas! on my eighth birthday, when in an outburst of innocent triumph and joy I cried to a grown-up: "Ain't they good—those funny gentlemen—to come and march and play music for my birthday?" I was answered with the assurance that I "was a fool—that no one knew or cared a copper about me—that it was a Saint, a dead and gone man, they marched for!"

All the dance went out of my feet, heavy tears fell fast and stood round and clear on the woolly surface of my cloak, and bending my head low to hide my disappointment, I went slowly home, where the chair seemed harder, the hours longer, and life more bare because I had lost the illusion that had brightened and glorified it.

At the present time, here in my home, there is seated in an arm-chair, a venerable doll. She is a hideous specimen of the beautiful doll of the early "fifties." She sits with her soles well turned up, facing you, her arms hanging from her shoulders in that idiotically helpless "I-give-it-up" fashion peculiar to dolls. With bulging scarlet cheeks, button-hole mouth and flat, blue staring eyes she faces Time and unwinkingly looks him down. To anyone else she is stupidity personified, but to me she speaks, for she came to me on my fourth Christmas, and she is as gifted as she is ugly. Only last birthday—as I straightened out her old, old dress skirt—she asked me if I remembered how I cried, with my face in her lap, over that first loss of an illusion—and I told her quite truly that I remembered well!

CHAPTER THIRD

The experiences of the first two of my third group of years have influenced my entire life. Still flying from my seemingly ubiquitous father, my mother after a desperate struggle gained enough money to pay for our journey to what was then called the "far West"—namely, the southwestern part of Illinois. Child-fashion, I was delighted at the prospect of a change, and happy over the belief that I was going to some place where I could be free to go and come like other children, without dreading the appearance of a big, smiling man from any deep doorway or from around the next corner. To tell the truth, that persistent, indestructible smile always seemed an insult added to the injury of his malicious and revengeful conduct.

Then, too, I experienced my first delicious thrill of imaginary terror. In a torn and abandoned old geography I had seen a picture labelled "Prairie." The grass was as high as a man's shoulders, and stealthily emerging from it was a sort of compound animal, neither tiger nor leopard, but with points of resemblance to both. And here every day I was listening to the grown-ups talking of "prairie lands," and how far we might have to drive across the prairie after leaving the train; and I made up my mind that I would hold our umbrella all the time, and when the uncertain beast came out I'd try to stick his eyes with it, and under cover of the confusion we would undoubtedly escape.

That being settled, I could turn all my attention to preparations for the long journey. Dear me, I remember just where each big red rose came on the carpet-bag, and how sorry I was that the tiny brass lock came right in the side of one. It was a large bag and held a great deal, but was so arranged that whatever you wanted was always found at the bottom—whether it was the tooth-brush or a night-gown or a pair of rubbers. It had a sort of dividing wall of linen in its middle, and while one side held clothing, the other side was the commissary department. No buffet-cars then, travellers ran their own buffets, and though the things did not come into actual contact, there was not an article, big or little, in that bag that did not smell of pickles. And once when my mother had hastily attended to my needs in the miserable toilet-room of the car (no sleeper—just a sit-up-all-night affair), my clean stockings, white apron and little handkerchief all exhaled vinegar so strongly that I