er influence.

Having skipped about for a time in such haphazard fashion, the idea
seized me of going back to the beginning and reading from the
commencement down to the present.

In the first pages of course I encountered a certain immature crudity of
composition and yet, in spite of these things, there was much here of
the charming fascination of childhood and the beginnings of character.
If the later sections were as fragrant as flowers, the earlier passages
were like the annals of rosebuds and blossoms. I believe I have already
mentioned that in her childhood she had been something of a tomboy. Her
interests had seemed to include many things which might quite naturally
have belonged to the enthusiasms of her brothers. Also one read between
the lines that her charming sense of humor and self-containment had
developed upon overcome tendencies toward passionate temper. A certain
passage had to do with her experience at a girls' boarding-school when
she was probably not more than ten or eleven. One of the teachers--an
unimpeachable lady of great learning and little human perception, it
would seem--had aroused her intense disfavor. There were various
references to this feud and also, even so early, to the mysterious
person vaguely alluded to as He. The principal of the school harbored a
bull terrier of rather uncertain temper. This brute, save for total
fealty to his mistress and to the writer of the diary, seemed to hold in
his nature only distrust for humanity, and among those specially singled
out for his antipathy was the aforementioned teacher.

One day the writer and the dog had met the preceptress on the avenue.
The girl had set down with great glee, the terror with which her enemy
had appealed to her for protection against the onslaughts of the dreaded
Cerberus.

"I told her that I would hold him," naively related the entry, in a
sprawling, childish hand, "and I did hold him until she was _almost_ at
the gate--but when I let him go I gave him a little sound advice and he
took it."

There followed a vivid description, done into mirth-provoking humor, of
the somewhat strenuous events of the next twenty or thirty seconds. A
section of black alpaca skirt remained with the dog as a memento.

"Of course," commented the writer, "I couldn't laugh freely until I got
back to the house, but I am laughing now. She looked so absurd! As I
came in I saw Him ride by on horseback. I'm afraid he wouldn't approve."

The des