worth cultivating. She therefore promptly
requested her aunt to dismiss her music master.

"Oh, but you must learn to play, you know, dear."

"Why must I, auntie?"

"Oh, well, every girl must, you know."

"But why, auntie?" persisted the little female Socrates.

"Why, it's a necessary part of every girl's education, you know."

"Oh, I know they all do it," answered the girl, "but most of them would
do better to leave it alone. You often say that it tortures you to hear
girls 'pound the piano' when they want to show off. Now, I haven't the
gift for music, and I don't want to show off. Why should I learn to
'pound the piano' and make other people miserable?"

So the argument went on, and it ended at last, as it was predestined to
end, in the abandonment of the piano lessons, leaving Barbara to grow up
in complete ignorance of an art which, in that half-barbaric time, was
deemed a necessary "accomplishment" of every young woman who had
fingers, whether she had any perception of music or not.

For the rest, Barbara educated herself upon lines which she deemed
womanly. There was no art of kitchen or laundry or sewing room in which,
as she grew older, she did not make herself the superior of the highly
paid servitors whose skill her aunt employed to perform such functions.
For explanation she said only:

"I am to be a woman. I must know how to do all womanly things. If I
don't know all that better than the servants do, I must always be
dependent upon servants. I think that would be humiliating."

In the same spirit she took up such school studies as she deemed proper
to her womanhood and only such. But she gave to each a degree of
conscience that always surprised her teachers. She had not the gift of
learning easily, but her devotion was such that she learned thoroughly
in spite of all the difficulties. She early conceived the notion that
she must know her own language well--how to spell it, how to pronounce
it, and, still more, how to use it simply, honestly, and effectively in
the expression of her thought. Her over-mastering devotion to truth
would not let her rest content with any loose or inaccurate expression.
"No," she would say, "that isn't the word I want. It doesn't say just
what I mean," and she would never be satisfied until she found the word
she did want.

The handwriting to which she schooled herself was in like manner
scrupulously truthful. The writing masters of that time cared far more
for ornat