The above-named was not my original graduating essay but was one I had written for our Class Day exercises under the emotional stir-up felt at leaving school. My real essay, written for Commencement, I considered a much finer production (I blush to think of it now); but my instructors had persuaded me to read my allegory at Commencement. I felt aggrieved that the other should be buried in oblivion. It was an absurd affair--“What is Woman?”--which started out attempting to answer in a facetious way some of the arguments in Walter’s essay--“Man’s Place in Nature”--after which I launched forth in a revolt against the prevailing ideas about woman’s inferior place in nature and in society. It was a kind of miniature woman’s rights plea, weak and unoriginal, and with my special thunder directed toward those who would prevent woman from seeking to “heal the sick world that leans on her.” This was “Lucile’s” influence, combined with reading “Eminent Women of the Age,” plus a little Huxley and Spencer. The hodge-podge wound up with a poetical passage probably inspired by parts of “Paradise Lost,” and by a poem of Emma C. Embury’s--“The Mother.” Concerning the ending, I was not aware of its being anything but smooth in expression till, on reading it aloud to one of the girls, she exclaimed, “Why, Eugenie, that isn’t prose--that is poetry!” a verdict which naturally made me feel more keenly than ever the disappointment at not being able to read my masterpiece at Commencement. After graduation I pieced out a summer term in a district school, the regular teacher falling ill. As it was in one of the same schools where my mother had taught as a girl, I tried to imagine what her life and thoughts and hopes had been in those days when she did not know Father, and when I was--nothing. Besides giving me the opportunity to earn money, teaching was a profitable experience: I found it strange to be the mistress of anything. At first when standing up before the little people, it seemed queer to have them obey; it took me some time to get over the surprise of it; had they rebelled I should not have thought it strange. But one quickly learns to rule when he knows it is expected. I was learning for the first time what prestige goes with the mere office. It was soon a delight to direct and sway this little world. I then appreciated what a trial my teachers had had with me. Encountering occasional opposition in my pupils, and feeling the consequent disappointment, I had my first realization of the trouble I had given my own teachers, and felt a wave of tenderness, especially for “Prof.,” as I marvelled at his forbearance.