ed sane, had I written them, but I have never been
foolishly romantic, although my education has been far from practical.
The first thing I remember was a disappointment, and that was not being
a boy. It may be a vanity, but at that early age I seemed to recognize
the little privileges given to a boy and denied a girl. But as I grew
older I was shocked by the roughness and cruelty of boys, and then I was
pleased to reflect that I was of gentler mold. At some time of life I
suppose we are all enigmas unto ourselves; the mystery of being, the
ability to move, and the marvelous something we call emotion, startles
us and drives us into a moody and speculative silence. I give this in
explanation of my earlier strangeness. I could always talk readily, but
never, not even to you, could I tell completely what I thought. Most
young people are warned against the trash that finds its way--no one
appears to know how--into the library of the home, but I remember to
have been taken to task for reading mannish books. And in some measure I
heeded the lecture thus delivered, but it is to mannish books that I owe
my semblance of common sense."

"What is she trying to get at?" the Major broke in. "Have you read it?
If you have, tell me what she says."

"I am reading it now," his wife replied; and thus she continued:

"The strongest emotion of my life has been pity, and you know that I
never could keep a doll nor a trinket if a strong appeal was made for
it. I grew up to know that this was a weakness rather than a virtue, but
never has my judgment been strong enough to prevail against it. And this
leads me to speak of my marriage. That was the result of pity and fear.
Let me see if I can make you understand me. That poor man's condition
smote my heart as never before had it been smitten. And when he made his
appeal to me, hollowed-eyed and coughing, I trembled, for I knew that
my nature would prompt me to yield, although I might fully estimate the
injustice to myself. So my judgment fought with my sense of pity, and in
the end, perhaps, might have conquered it, but for the element of fear
which was then introduced. The question of his soul was brought forward,
and he swore that I would send it to heaven or to hell. In the light of
what I have read, and in the recollection of what I have often heard
father say in his arguments with preachers, perhaps I should have been
strong enough to scout the idea of a literal torment, but I could not.