with great interest, and became for a
time almost intoxicated with the originality and beauty of his thoughts.
While still under his influence I spoke of him to Mr. Bancroft as "der
unentbehrliche," the indispensable Spinoza. He demurred at this,
acknowledged Spinoza's analysis of the passions to be admirable, but
assured me that Kant alone deserved to be called "indispensable;" and
this dictum of his made me resolve to become at once a student of the
"Critique of Pure Reason."

I found this at first rather dry, after the glowing and daring flights
of Spinoza, but I soon learned to hold the philosopher of Koenigsberg in
great affection and esteem. I have read extensively in his writings,
even in his minor treatises, and having attained some conception of his
system, was inclined to say with Romeo: "Here I set up my everlasting
rest."

I devoted some of the best years of my life to these studies, and to the
writings which grew out of them. I remember one summer at my Valley near
Newport, in which I felt that I had read and written quite as much as
was profitable. "I must go outside of my own thoughts, I must do
something for some one," I said to myself. Just then the teacher of my
sister's children broke out with malarial fever. She was staying with my
sister at a farmhouse near by. The call to assist in nursing her was
very welcome, and when I was thanked for my services I could truly say
that I had been glad of the opportunity of rendering them for my own
sake.

The Kantian volumes occupied me for many months, even years. In fact, I
have never gone beyond them. A new philosophy has sometimes appeared to
me like a new disease. If we have found our master, and are satisfied
with him, what need have we of starting again, to make the same journey
with a new guide. Once we have got there, it seems better to abide.

The early years of my married life interposed a barrier between my
literary dreams and their realization. Those years brought me much to
learn and much to do.

The burden of housekeeping was new to me, a sister of mine, highly
gifted in this respect, having charged herself with its duties so long
as we were "girls together." I accordingly found myself lamentably
deficient in household skill and knowledge. I endeavored to apply myself
to the remedying of these defects, but with indifferent success. I was
by nature far from observant, and often passed through a room without
much notion of its condition or co