ch a
child's hand could manage--Who, feeling for it, could help pressing
it, if only to see--

"I was always a reckless girl, mad for pleasure and without any
thought of consequences. When school bored me, I took all my books
out of my desk, called upon my mates to do the same, and, stacking
them up into a sort of rostrum in a field where we played, first
delivered an oration from them in which reverence for my teachers
had small part, then tore them into pieces and burned them in full
sight of my admiring school-fellows. I was dismissed, but not with
disgrace. Teachers and scholars bewailed my departure, not because
they liked me, or because of any good they had found in me, but
because my money had thrown luster on them and on the whole
establishment.

"This was when I was twelve, and it was on account of this reckless
escapade that I was sent west and kept so long from home and all
my flatterers. My guardian meant well by this, but in saving me
from one pitfall he plunged me into another. I grew up without
Cora and also without any idea of the requirements of my position
or what I might anticipate from the world when the time came for me
to enter it. I knew that I had money; so did those about me; but I
had little or no idea of the amount, nor what that money would do
for me when I returned to Washington. So, in an evil day, and when
I was just eighteen, I fell in love, or thought I did, with a man--(Oh,
Francis, imagine it, now that I have seen you!)--of sufficient
attraction to satisfy one whose prospects were limited to a
contracted existence in some small town, but no more fitted
to content me after seeing Washington life than if he had been a
common farm hand or the most ordinary of clerks in a country store.
But I was young, ignorant and self-willed, and thought because my
cheek burned under his look that he was the man of men, and suited
to be my husband. That is, if I thought at all, which is not likely;
for I was in a feverish whirl, and just followed the impulse of the
moment, which was to be with him whenever I could without attracting
the teacher's attention. And this, alas! was only too often, for
he was the brother of one of our storekeepers, a visitor in Owosso,
and often in the store where we girls went. Why the teachers did
not notice how often we needed things there, I do not know. But
they did not, and matters went on and--

"I can not write of those days, and you do not want to he