accompany me on long walks. He talked with me--not _to_ me--about the
birds and the trees and the sunsets, and then about the deeper things
of life, until, before I realized it, I was sane and sensible once
more, serene and happy in the simple faith of my childhood, with all
the isms and ologies a mere bad dream in the dim past.

I was seventeen, if I remember rightly, when I became worried, not
over my heavenly estate now, but my earthly one. I must have a career,
of course. No namby-pamby everyday living of dishes and dusting and
meals and babies for me. It was all very well, of course, for some
people. Such things had to be. But for me--

I could write, of course; but I was not sure but that I preferred the
stage. At the same time there was within me a deep stirring as of a
call to go out and enlighten the world, especially that portion of it
in darkest Africa or deadliest India. I would be a missionary.

Before I was eighteen, however, I had abandoned all this. Father put
his foot down hard on the missionary project, and Mother put hers down
on the stage idea. I didn't mind so much, though, as I remember, for
on further study and consideration, I found that flowers and applause
were not all of an actor's life, and that Africa and India were not
entirely desirable as a place of residence for a young woman alone.
Besides, I had decided by then that I could enlighten the world just
as effectually (and much more comfortably) by writing stories at home
and getting them printed.

So I wrote stories--but I did not get any of them printed, in spite
of my earnest efforts. In time, therefore, that idea, also, was
abandoned; and with it, regretfully, the idea of enlightening the