I was vain, too. I can remember how gratified I was at occasional words of approbation I heard concerning my efficiency; and when crowds of men and boys would be standing outside waiting for the distribution of the mail while Father, Brother, and I would be darting here and there to put the letters and papers in the boxes, trying at the same time to keep out of one another’s way, I would think with pride that I was helping just as much as the others were; and what a “smart girl” I was to be doing it, too. My cheeks would flush, and I felt a diminutive sense of power: all these persons waiting for something _we_ were doing; we held in our hands letters fraught with happiness, with disappointment, with sorrow. I liked to have them crowd around and peer at us through the windows and from the door in the rear that led to the “store”; and when the work was done, and the public was at liberty to inquire for mail, I just doted on reaching through the tiny window and taking in the little green sign bearing the legend, “Distributing the Mail.” And the self-centred Miss was aware just how her hand and wrist must look as they reached through and lifted the sign from the hook outside the window. (I forgot in cataloguing my unattractive “points” to mention in extenuation that I did have a pretty arm and hand, and actually discovering the fact myself, took a keen satisfaction in the discovery. Perhaps this was not all vanity, as I am especially susceptible to beauty of form and line, wherever seen.) In looking back upon my life it seems to have been a strange, contradictory mixture of sincerity and duplicity. I longed, passionately longed, for sincerity and openness, anything else tortured me; and yet I can see how influences seemed always at work to foster complexity and duplicity. To begin with, I was always fond of playing a part. Beginning as children do, we played at ghosts. Wrapped in sheets at twilight, we peered into the neighbours’ windows to startle them. But I soon wanted something less crude. One day in my early ’teens, dressing as a beggar, I went to the houses in our street asking for “cold pieces.” At first it was a failure, as either I or the others would giggle and spoil it all. Finally, stipulating that the others keep out of sight, I went alone to the Widow Earle’s and told a pitiful tale, and the unsuspicious old soul gave me a slice of her new bread, just out of the oven. Blessing her, I hobbled away, munching the bread under my veil. Soon we all scampered back in great glee, confessing to the widow, who relished the joke far less than I did the bread--no woman likes to cut into her warm bread, then to find she has been hoodwinked! No wonder she was cross!