ually
bestowed on cousins who reign in one's stead; cousins of practical
views, who have dug up the flower-beds and planted cabbages where roses
grew; and though through all the years since my father's death I have
held my head so high that it hurt, and loftily refused to listen to
their repeated suggestions that I should revisit my old home, something
in the sad listlessness of the November days sent my spirit back to old
times with a persistency that would not be set aside, and I woke from
my musings surprised to find myself sick with longing. It is foolish
but natural to quarrel with one's cousins, and especially foolish and
natural when they have done nothing, and are mere victims of chance.
Is it their fault that my not being a boy placed the shoes I should
otherwise have stepped into at their disposal? I know it is not; but
their blamelessness does not make me love them more. "Noch ein dummes
Frauenzimmer!" cried my father, on my arrival into the world--he
had three of them already, and I was his last hope,--and a dummes
Frauenzimmer I have remained ever since; and that is why for years I
would have no dealings with the cousins in possession, and that is why,
the other day, overcome by the tender influence of the weather, the
purely sentimental longing to join hands again with my childhood was
enough to send all my pride to the winds, and to start me off without
warning and without invitation on my pilgrimage.

I have always had a liking for pilgrimages, and if I had lived in the
Middle Ages would have spent most of my time on the way to Rome. The
pilgrims, leaving all their cares at home, the anxieties of their riches
or their debts, the wife that worried and the children that disturbed,
took only their sins with them, and turning their backs on their
obligations, set out with that sole burden, and perhaps a cheerful
heart. How cheerful my heart would have been, starting on a fine
morning, with the smell of the spring in my nostrils, fortified by the
approval of those left behind, accompanied by the pious blessings of my
family, with every step getting farther from the suffocation of daily
duties, out into the wide fresh world, out into the glorious free world,
so poor, so penitent, and so happy! My dream, even now, is to walk for
weeks with some friend that I love, leisurely wandering from place to
place, with no route arranged and no object in view, with liberty to
go on all day or to linger all day, as we choo