try the great nation that it is."

After luncheon one of the guests, a woman of great social prominence,
distinguished both in her own country and abroad, asked me to drive
downtown with her. When we entered her car she said, with much
feeling--"You must go on with the thing you are doing."

Believing she referred to the Curie campaign, I replied that I had
committed myself to the work and could not abandon it. "I was not
referring to the Curie campaign," she replied, "but to the Delineator.
You are right; it is of vital importance to serve the great masses of
people. I know. It will probably surprise you to learn that when I was
fourteen years old I had never seen a table napkin. My family were
pioneers in the Northwest and were struggling for mere existence. There
was no time for the niceties of life. And yet, people like my family
and myself are worth serving and saving. I have known what it means to
lie awake all night, suffering with shame because of some stupid social
blunder which had made me appear ridiculous before my husband's family
or his friends."

This was a most amazing statement from a woman known socially on two
continents, and famed for her savoir faire. There were tears in her
eyes when she made her confession. She was stirred by a very real and
deep emotion. It had been years, she said, since the old recollections
had come back to her, but she had been moved by my plea for service to
home women and to the great mass of ordinary American people.

She told me that while living abroad she had often met American
girls--intelligent women, well bred, the finest stuff in the world--who
suffered under a disadvantage, because they lacked a little training in
the social amenities.

"It has been a satisfaction and a compensation to me," she added, "to be
able sometimes to serve these fellow country-women of mine."

And right there was born the idea which culminated in the writing of
this little book. I suggested that a million women could be helped by
the publishing of her own story.

The thought was abhorrent to her. Her experience was something she had
never voiced in words. It would be too intimate a discussion of herself
and her family. She was sure her relatives would bitterly oppose such a
confession.

It took nearly a year to persuade this remarkable woman to put down on
paper, from her recollections and from her old letters home, this simple
story of a fine American life. She co