shore, picked up my umbrella, carefully tore
three of the steel ribs from it and, with these as a whip, I thrashed
Clarence. Clarence "sat" with discomfort for some days, and I believe
his mother seriously contemplated making a police charge against me for
beating him.

This temper--or temperament--often found expression at home in moods,
when for hours, sometimes days, I wouldn't break silence. If any one
interfered with or spoke to me during these moments I felt just as
though some one were combing my nerves the wrong way with a fine,
grating comb. My mother was wise enough to leave me alone in my intense
irritability and depression. She appreciated the extremes of my nature,
which were somewhat like the well-known little girl of our childhood
rhymes:

"When she was good she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid."

I fear, at times, I was very, very horrid. But I planned a danger
signal! One day I came home with a pair of most distinctive
black-and-white checked stockings, the most hideous things one can
imagine.

"Mother," I said, "when I wear these stockings I want to be let alone."

Thus it was an understood thing that no one should speak to me or notice
me in the least while these horrors adorned me. Perhaps after a few
hours, or a day, I would go up the back stairs, change my stockings--and
the sun would shine again.

It was at this time that I was the victim of an accident which resulted
in a neat bit of surgery. My mother and I were spending a summer in the
little village of Sandwich, New Hampshire. I was crazy to carve a small
horse out of wood, and went down to the woodshed in the rear of the
country house where we were staying, armed with a hatchet and followed
by an admiring youngster from the village. The hatchet was very sharp.
My experience in carving wooden horses was limited. Suddenly the hatchet
came down and clipped a tiny bit off the extreme ends of my left thumb
and forefinger.

I screamed with agony and cried in amazement as the poor little bleeding
tips of my fingers fell to the floor, but the country boy, with
wonderful presence of mind, picked them up, and keeping them warm in his
closed hand, ran with me at full speed to the nearest doctor.
Fortunately, he happened to be at home. When the village boy showed him
the wounded hand and the tiny bleeding bits of finger, he clamped them
instantly on the fingers where they belonged, put on ointments, and
bound t