men and women, even a few who might be
called great; but they, too, had their affectations and petty vanities.
Being young, I judged them harshly because they set what I considered
too much store upon absurd conventions.

In the course of my travels since, I have come to realize that social
customs are a simple matter of geography! What is proper in England is
bad form in France, and many customs that were correct in Vienna would
be intolerable in Spain. In the formal circles of Vienna no one spoke
to anybody without an introduction. In Spain there was a more subtle
and truly aristocratic standard. The assumption was that anybody one
met in the home of one's host was desirable, and it was courtesy,
therefore, to begin a conversation with any guest. This is the attitude
also in parts of France.

But in those first months I had not acquired my philosophy. I lived
through homesick days, and some that were hard and bitter. I stayed
with Tom that first year only because I was too bewildered to take any
initiative, and because I kept hoping that things would right themselves
and I would wake out of my nightmare. My baby came in the second year,
and then I could not go home. The simple life of my own people slipped
very, very far away. We made a hurried trip back to the United States
that summer, but Tom would not consent to my going West. His own family
wanted to see our baby, and they decided that the little fellow had
traveled enough and should not be subjected to the hardships of a
cross-country train trip. So Tom sent for mother and the twins to come
to us, and they arrived at the Waldorf Hotel, where we were staying.
Dear, simple mother, in her terrible clothes, and the twins, got up with
more thought for economy than for beauty! I shopped extravagantly with
them. The youngsters wanted to see everything in New York; but mother,
despite all of those hard, lonely years in our rough country and the
many interesting things for her to do and see in New York--mother wanted
nothing better than to stay with the baby.

With all the children she had brought into this world one might think
she had seen enough of babies. But she adored my little son. How near
she seemed to me then! How hungry I had been for her, without realizing
it! I felt that she loved my baby boy as she had never loved me or any
of her own children. And I understood why mother never had had time to
love her own babies. In the struggle fo