This explains my sincere interest in Mr. Beecher. His works were all realistic and sad. I remember that I saw the first one three years ago, when a mere child, and became violently ill from crying and had to be taken home. The school will recall that last year I wrote a play, patterned on The Divorce, and that only a certain narrowness of view on the part of the faculty prevented it being the class play. If I may be permitted to express an opinion, we of the class of 1917 are not children, and should not be treated as such. Encouraged by the applause of my class-mates, and feeling that I was of a more serious turn of mind than most of them, who seem to think of pleasure only, I decided to write a play during the summer. I would thus be improving my vacation hours, and, I considered, keeping out of mischief. It was pure idleness which had caused my trouble during the last Christmas holidays. How true it is that the devil finds work for idle hands! With a play and this theme I believed that the devil would give me up as a total loss, and go elsewhere. How little we can read the future! I now proceed to an account of my meeting and acquaintance with Mr. Beecher. It is my intention to conceal nothing. I can only comfort myself with the thought that my motives were innocent, and that I was obeying orders and securing material for a theme. I consider that the attitude of my family is wrong and cruel, and that my sister Leila, being only 20 months older, although out in society, has no need to write me the sort of letters she has been writing. Twenty months is twenty months, and not two years, although she seems to think it is. I returned home full of happy plans for my vacation. When I look back it seems strange that the gay and innocent young girl of the train can have been! So much that is tragic has since happened. If I had not had a cinder in my eye things would have been different. But why repine? Fate frequently hangs thus on a single hair--an eye-lash, as one may say. Father met me at the train. I had got the aforementioned cinder in my eye, and a very nice young man had taken it out for me. I still cannot see what harm there was in our chatting together after that, especially as we said nothing to object to. But father looked very disagreeable about it, and the young man went away in a hurry. But it started us off wrong, although I got him--father--to promise not to tell mother. "I do wish you would be more careful, Bab," he said with a sort of sigh. "Careful!" I said. "Then it's not doing things, but being found out, that matters!" "Careful in your conduct, Bab." "He was a beautiful young man, father," I observed, slipping my arm through his. "Barbara, Barbara! Your poor mother----"