In this connection I recall that when I was perhaps in my early ’teens, the instinct of acquisition developing, I went about the house placing my name upon all my belongings--every book and picture, even on the bottoms of little toy vases, a porcelain lamb, and so on. As to Red Riding Hood, I seemed to think it fitting to write my name in a big sprawling child’s hand, every letter a capital, with the notion, I suppose, that it would be thought that I had written it there when a child. I even selected a date, reckoning back as well as I could, and putting it upon one of my early birthdays. In the same way I mutilated a quaint book that had belonged to Grandpa, by writing his name on the fly leaf, and the legend, “His Book,” in what I considered an old-fashioned hand-writing. Some years later, coming upon these evidences of my silly deception, my cheeks burned with shame, and I erased the false records. Fondness for my own belongings did not prevent me from a cruel piece of vandalism in regard to a cherished possession of my sister’s: She had made a clove-apple by sticking a greening full of cloves, and hiding it in a cuff-box in the upstairs closet, had declared she was going to keep it till she grew up. Laughing at her, I said it would decay, but she maintained that it would not. On rare occasions, as if it were a religious rite, she would peep into the box and sniff at the apple, vouchsafe us a sniff also, and put it carefully away. As it dwindled and dwindled, her attachment strengthened and strengthened. I believe she kept it six years. Although I had often threatened to throw it away, she never believed I would. But one day, whether out of spite, or because of my strenuous housekeeping, I did it, probably silencing my compunctions by thinking she was too old longer to indulge in such nonsense. But her grief and anger on learning of the loss were so moving that I was conscience-stricken, and would then have given anything to have restored the treasure. She scorned all attempts at extenuation. It is with real shame that I confess this misdeed--more, perhaps, than I feel for later, graver ones. I know now that as one of her treasures it should have been respected. Anything that another really loves--a toy, a bauble, an idol, a comforting superstition--why not let him keep it as long as he can?