d girl. Always perfect in
her lessons, she was so modest that she recited in a noticeable
tremor, and had to be told frequently to raise her voice. Florence
wore her light brown hair brushed flatly back and braided in a single
plait, at a time when pompadours were six inches high and braids hung
in pairs. Florence had a pocket in her dress for her handkerchief, in
a day when pockets were repugnant to fashion. All these things ought
to have made me feel the kinship of humble circumstances, the
comradeship of intellectual earnestness; but they did not.

The truth is that my relation to persons and things depended neither
on social distinctions nor on intellectual or moral affinities. My
attitude, at this time, was determined by my consciousness of the
unique elements in my character and history. It seemed to me that I
had been pursuing a single adventure since the beginning of the world.
Through highways and byways, underground, overground, by land, by sea,
ever the same star had guided me, I thought, ever the same purpose
had divided my affairs from other men's. What that purpose was, where
was the fixed horizon beyond which my star would not recede, was an
absorbing mystery to me. But the current moment never puzzled me. What
I chose instinctively to do I knew to be right and in accordance with
my destiny. I never hesitated over great things, but answered promptly
to the call of my genius. So what was it to me whether my neighbors
spurned or embraced me, if my way was no man's way? Nor should any one
ever reject me whom I chose to be my friend, because I would make sure
of a kindred spirit by the coincidence of our guiding stars.

When, where in the harum-scarum life of Dover Street was there time or
place for such self-communing? In the night, when everybody slept; on
a solitary walk, as far from home as I dared to go.

I was not unhappy on Dover Street; quite the contrary. Everything of
consequence was well with me. Poverty was a superficial, temporary
matter; it vanished at the touch of money. Money in America was
plentiful; it was only a matter of getting some of it, and I was on my
way to the mint. If Dover Street was not a pleasant place to abide in,
it was only a wayside house. And I was really happy, actively happy,
in the exercise of my mind in Latin, mathematics, history, and the
rest; the things that suffice a studious girl in the middle teens.

Still I had moments of depression, when my whole being protes