Dr. Dio Lewis was born near our village. One of my schoolmates was related to him (and one to the wicked “Mary Jane”--I, alas! had no illustrious kin); she lent me two of his books: “Our Girls” and “Chastity.” I believe I am indebted to them for a wholesome interest in physiology and physical life, and for a sudden turning from forbidden things learned in childhood. I think it was the reading of them that engendered a repugnance to unchaste thoughts and conversation--a repugnance that the majority of my schoolmates did not have, and that, for a certain period, I did not have, for I engaged in talk and stories and conduct that later made me blush to recall. After reading Dio Lewis I can remember refusing to stay in the midst of girls who insisted on telling improper stories. Many a time I have been ridiculed for my uncompromising attitude, and many a time in later years have had to check women in their recitals of such stories, though making both them and myself uncomfortable by a seeming pharisaical attitude. I would try to lessen the embarrassment by telling them that these things were likely to come unbidden to the mind, polluting by unwelcome, unchaste recollections our sweetest experiences--all of which I learned in the Dio Lewis books. I recall this man’s once lecturing in our town; he was the first author I had ever seen and I was somewhat disappointed to find him so like other folk. On that occasion he confessed to some human weaknesses, such as eating pumpkin-pie late at night--he, the High Priest of Hygiene, lightly and shamelessly confessing this, when advice to the contrary had been so clear in his books! In my ignorance of life I was startled to learn that one could so earnestly preach one thing and so lightly practise the opposite. I thought him somewhat of a fraud. I was getting my eyes opened, and the light hurt. There was a time when I was under the spell of the poems of Emma C. Embury, whoever she was. I borrowed a copy of her poems from a neighbour who lent me the poems of Longfellow in quaint thin volumes; but those of Emma C. Embury--how beautiful they seemed! Most of them were sad; that was why I liked them: Love’s first step is upon the rose His second finds the thorn, was the burden of one; of another: The gathered rose and the stolen heart Can charm but for a day. I would improvise tunes to these verses when I could get away by myself, preferably down by the creek in the heart of my big willow; but if not there, then down in Grandma’s cellar, while she discreetly stayed upstairs, never betraying by word or look her awareness of anything going on below except the tiresome churning, for which she pretended to pity me. Was she laughing in her sleeve all the time? It would have hurt to know it then but would be a delight now if I were sure that her hours of toil were lightened by quiet amusement at my expense.