November 1, 18----. It is just three years to-day since I began to
keep this journal. I am so glad now that I persisted in doing so,
in spite of the temptations that have often assailed me to throw it
aside. How else could I realize, bring home to myself, these past
three years, strong and vivid as my remembrance of them is? No effort
of mere recollection could have preserved for me as this book has done
a record of my struggles and failures, and of my victories. Yes, I
write the word proudly, _victories_, for I have been beyond my hopes
successful. How well I remember my dear mother's distress at my queer
notions, as she called them--her entreaties, her tender illogical
protests against my making myself "conspicuous"! Dear mother! I can
see now that it was very natural she should have disliked and dreaded
my becoming a "strong-minded woman," for anything narrower than her
ideas of a woman's education and sphere one cannot imagine. She was an
excellent specimen of the old-fashioned mother and wife, and I believe
sincerely thought her whole duty in life and the intention of her
creation was "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

Let me see: yes, here it is at the very beginning--November 1, 18----.
How faded the ink looks! Let me read it: "To-day I told mother I meant
to attend a course of medical lectures: we had a scene, and she called
in Cousin Jane to reason with me. How I detest Cousin Jane! She is
nothing but a mass of orthodox dogmatism. Of course we quarreled over
it, and she ended by telling me I was disgracing the family, and
was no true woman. Well, we shall see which of us has the truer
comprehension of a woman's sphere."

It is three years since I wrote that. Those lectures were my first
step, and, like all first steps, cost me more of a struggle than
anything I have done since. As I look back over these three years, I