ral mansion up the street, the big old house that had passed
out of the hands of our family.

I would have no honeymoon trip; I wanted the money instead. John
kissed each of my palms before he put the money into them. My
fingers closed greedily over the bills; it was the nest egg, the
beginning.

Next I had him dismiss his bookkeeper and give me the place. I
didn't go to his store--Southern ladies didn't do that in those
days--but I kept the books at home, and I wrote all the business
letters. So it happened when John came home at night, tired from his
day's work at the store, I had no time for diversions, for
love-making, no hours to walk in the rose garden by his side--no, we
must talk business.

I can see John now on many a hot night--and summer _is_ hot in the
Gulf States--dripping with perspiration as he dictated his letters
to me, while I, my aching head near the big hot lamp, wrote on and
on with hurried, nervous fingers. Outside there would be the evening
breeze from the Gulf, the moonlight, the breath of the roses, all
the romance of the southern night--but not for us!

The children came--four, in quick succession. But so fixed were my
eyes on the goal of Success, I scarcely realized the mystery of
motherhood. Oh, I loved them! I loved John, too. I would willingly
have laid down my life for him or for any one of the children. And I
intended _sometime_ to stop and enjoy John and the children. Oh,
yes, I was going really to _live_ after we had bought back the big
house, and had done so and so! In the meanwhile, I held my breath
and worked.

"I'll be so glad," I remember saying one day to a friend, "when all
my children are old enough to be off at school all day!" Think of
that! Glad when the best years of our lives together were passed!
The day came when the last little fellow trudged off to school and I
no longer had a baby to hamper me. We were living now in the big
old home. We had bought it back and paid for it. I no longer did
John's bookkeeping for him--he paid a man a hundred dollars a month
to do that--but I still kept my hand on the business.

Then suddenly one day--John died. _Died_ in what should have been
the prime and vigor of his life.

I worked harder than ever then, not from necessity, but because in
the first few years after John left I wa