There was a lackadaisical girl in our class, several years older than I, who had been thus inclined toward me. I did not understand it at first. She followed me about, trying to absorb my time and attention, eager to do all sorts of little services for me; but I quickly put a stop to it, though having to seem unkind in doing it. And there was a married woman in our class who attempted a like attachment. One night when several of us were discussing this topic, I must have spoken of myself as bullet proof, as I ridiculed such folly. Suddenly this student seized and kissed me, not once or twice, but several times, fiercely, almost brutally. Surprised and indignant, I was actually weak and unresisting for a moment, the others looking and laughing while this aggressive creature triumphed and sparkled as she said, “There! that is the way I would make you love me!” There were but two ways to treat her assault--as a jest, or an indignity--I chose the former, and shunned her throughout the rest of the course. I had disliked her glittering black eyes and her personality anyhow, and this incident only strengthened my instinctive repugnance. Still another student, one of the juniors when I was “middler,” showed a romantic inclination toward me: I had befriended her in little ways because she seemed forlorn, and because I remembered every little kindness shown me during the first year. She was of the pronounced masculine type and seemed to glory in it, was careless in dress; unprepossessing, and with a heavy voice. She was docile as a lamb with me, and I succeeded in getting her to abandon some of her mannish ways, and to be more mindful of her appearance. She would have been my willing slave; but her devotion was irksome and I nipped it in the bud; I neither wanted to adore, nor to be adored. Even at their best, these inordinate attachments seem like outlets into a false channel--the natural one being impeded. They affect me much as does a woman’s silly devotion to a pet dog when, failing to find its natural outlet, her maternal love degenerates, descending to the dog-kennel, instead of blessing the nursery.