o nearly every one. He
had a glad hand and a smile for the public--because it was the public.
I watched to see if he had a slightly different smile for the people of
Back Bay and his own particular social class; sometimes I thought he
had, and it made me a little soul-sick.

I longed for a home for my baby and a few friends I could love and
really enjoy. I was not fitted to be the wife of a public man. It was
the poverty and crudeness of my youth that had made me intolerant. One
of the big lessons life has taught me is that people can be amiable,
tolerant, and even friendly, and still be sincere. The pleasantry of
social relations among the civilized peoples of the earth is a mere
garment we wear for our own protection and to cover our feelings. It is
the oil of the machinery of life. I have found that men and women who
take part in the big work of the earth wear that garment of civility and
graciousness, and yet have their strong friendships and even their
bitter enmities.

But I did not understand this when we went back to Europe. I only knew
that my husband was amiable to people he did not like, and I questioned
how deep his affection for me went. How much of his kindness to me was
just the easiest way and the manner of a gentleman?

A hard and bare youth had made me supersensitive and suspicious and
narrow. I wanted to measure other people by the standards of my own
primitive years. Out on the frontier we had judged life in the rough.
Courage and truth were the essentials. A man fought his enemies out in
the open, and made no compromises. There was nothing easy in life, no
smooth rhythm. And I tried to drag forward with me, as I went, the bold
ethics of the frontier. I resented good manners because I believed they
were a cloak of hypocrisy.

A few months after we returned to Europe the shadow of death crossed our
path, swiftly and terribly. My little son died. Other babies came to
us later, but that first little boy had brought more into my life than
all the rest of the world could ever give. He had restored my faith in
life, my hope, and for a while was all my joy.

People were kind, but I felt that many called merely because it was
"good form"--"the thing to do." Bitterness was creeping into my heart.

Yet why should it not be "the thing to do" to call on a bereaved mother?
It is a gesture of humanity. Tom seemed very far away. I felt that his
pride was hurt, perhaps his vanity; for he ha