My acquaintance grew out of our mutual interest in the flora of any spot where we happened to be. One day as I came in from a botanizing expedition outside the grounds carrying stocks of the lovely field lilies common in the region, Dr. Mahaffy seized my arm: “You care for flowers and plants? I thought American women had no interest in them.” A libel I quickly hooted. In defense of my sisterhood I went diligently to work to show him our summer flora. But he cared for nothing as much as our summer lilies, begged me after the flowering was over to send him bulbs, which I proudly did. In exchange I received from his Dublin garden seeds of a white poppy which, he wrote me, he had originally gathered in the shadow of the statue of Memnon in Egypt. Those poppies have always gone with me; they flourished in my mother’s garden in Titusville—now they flourish in my Connecticut garden. My life was busy, varied, unfolding pleasantly in many ways, but it also after six years was increasingly unsatisfactory, so unsatisfactory that I was secretly, very secretly, meditating a change. I was scared by what _The Chautauquan_ seemed to be doing to the plan I had worked out for the development of my mind. I had grown up with a stout determination to follow one course of study to the end, to develop a specialty. The work I was doing demanded a scattering of mind which I began to fear would unfit me for ever thinking anything through. I realized that an editor of value must have made up his mind about more things than had I, feel himself ready to fight for those things if necessary. I had no program in which _The Chautauquan_ was interested. Moreover, I did not want to be an editor. But to break with _The Chautauquan_ meant sacrificing security. I had always had a vision of myself settled somewhere in a secure corner, simple, not too large. I never had wanted things; I always had a dislike of impedimenta, but I wanted something cheerful and warm and enduring. There I could work over that which interested me, day in and day out, with no alarm for my keep. Now _The Chautauquan_ was a secure berth; so far as I could figure, it would last through my time at least. To give it up meant complete economic insecurity. I probably should not have been willing to sacrifice what I think I had honestly earned if there had not been growing upon me a conviction of the sterility of security. All about me were people who at least believed themselves materially secure. They lived comfortably within their means, they were busy keeping things as they were, preserving what they had. They were the most respectable people in town, but secretly I was beginning to suspect their respectability.