announced to me that he was going to study law, I recall the occasion vividly: It was an August night when a lot of us young people and our mothers were in the creek, in swimming. Since I have known more of the world, I have wondered that there was never anything unpleasant to look back upon in those associations. But we had all been well brought up and were comparatively innocent, although we did not know it then. (I saw this the other day: “‘I learned of my own existence,’ said Innocence, ‘only when I ceased to exist.’”) We mingled together, youths and maidens, on geological excursions, star-gazing, in the woods botanizing, in the water learning to swim, and never thought of the possibility of anything but the frank, chaste comradeship there was among us. I recall what a display of meteors there was that night, and how the sight thrilled us. We had gone to the willows before sundown and had lingered in the water till the stars came out. During a pause between one of the trials when Walter was teaching me to swim, we stood transfixed by the sudden appearance of a great fiery ball which seemed to burst just over our heads and fall into a near-by meadow. Walter’s arms tightened as he held me; awestruck, we stood there an instant, a thrilling one (perhaps it was not all due to the meteor). Whenever after that I would think of that night, it always made me blush; why, I did not know, unless because I had to admit to myself that I liked to feel those strong, firm arms around me. A broken arm sustained in my school days is closely linked with another of my girlish romances: One May day, instead of going directly home from school to help with house-cleaning, as I had promised, I went to drive with one of the girls. She was bringing home a seamstress. As we neared the railway track, an approaching train, and simultaneously a newspaper fluttering at the horse’s feet, made him shy and jump. Essie was cool enough, but the seamstress shrieked and grabbed the lines, making the horse wheel, which swung the buggy round and down a bank, throwing us out. The woman who had caused the accident, though unharmed, howled with all her might, adding to the confusion. Essie picked herself up and chased her horse. I picked myself up and stood, a little dazed, with gravel and cinders ground in my cheeks and hands, with a general bruised sensation, and with my left arm hanging in a limp, queer way. To a man who asked me if I was hurt, I answered, “No, only my arm is broken.” The by-standers laughed incredulously, but I insisted. They told me to move it; I tried, but could not tell whether it moved or not, till I put my other hand on it to follow it. It felt dead. Putting the pale seamstress and me in a wagon, they drove us home, she groaning and shrieking most of the remaining mile and half-fainting, so that I had to support her with my sound arm.