them really low in the neck? Ever
thine, CARTER.

It will be perceived that I had sent him the letter to mother, by
mistake.

I was very unhappy about it. It was not an auspisious way to begin the
Holadays, especially the low neck. Also I disliked very much having told
him my waist measure which is large owing to Basket Ball.

As I have stated before, I have known very few of the Other Sex, but
some of the girls had had more experience, and in the days before we
went home, we talked a great deal about things. Especially Love. I felt
that it was rather over-done, particularly in fiction. Also I felt and
observed at divers times that I would never marry. It was my intention
to go upon the stage, although modafied since by what I am about to
relate.

The other girls say that I look like Julia Marlowe.

Some of the girls had boys who wrote to them, and one of them--I refrain
from giving her name had--a Code. You read every third word. He called
her "Couzin" and he would write like this:

Dear Couzin: I am well. Am just about crazy this week to go home. See
notice enclosed you football game.

And so on and on. Only what it really said was "I am crazy to see you."

(In giving this Code I am betraying no secrets, as they have quarreled
and everything is now over between them.)

As I had nobody, at that time, and as I had visions of a Career, I was
a man-hater. I acknowledge that this was a pose. But after all, what is
life but a pose?

"Stupid things!" I always said. "Nothing in their heads but football and
tobacco smoke. Women," I said, "are only their playthings. And when they
do grow up and get a little intellagence they use it in making money."

There has been a story in the school--I got it from one of the little
girls--that I was disapointed in love in early youth, the object of my
atachment having been the Tener in our Church choir at home. I daresay I
should have denied the soft impeachment, but I did not. It was, although
not appearing so at the time, my first downward step on the path that
leads to destruction.

"The way of the Transgresser is hard"--Bible.

I come now to the momentous day of my return to my dear home for
Christmas. Father and my sister Leila, who from now on I will term
"Sis," met me at the station. Sis was very elegantly dressed, and she
said:

"Hello, Kid," and turned her cheek for me to kiss.

She is, as I have stated, but 20 months older than I, and depends
altogether on h