That is what Guy said, and I wrote it right down to copy into the book as a kind of preface or introduction. I am not much pleased with having to keep a journal, and maybe I shall coax Zillah to keep it for me. I don’t care to _fix_ things in my mind. I don’t like things _fixed_, anyway. I’d rather they would lie round loose, as they surely would, if I had not Zillah to pick them up. She is a treasure, and it is almost worth being married to have a waiting-maid,—and that reminds me that I may as well begin back at the time when I was not married, and did not want to be either, if we had not been so poor, and obliged to make so many shifts to keep up appearances and seem richer than we were. My maiden name was Margaret McDonald, and I am seventeen next New Year’s Day. My father is of Scotch descent, and a lawyer; and mother was a Barnard, from New Orleans, and has some very good blood in her veins. I am an only child, and very handsome,—so everybody says; and I should know it if they did not say it, for can’t I see myself in the glass? And still I really do not care so much for my good looks except as they serve to attain the end for which father says I was born. Almost the first thing I can remember is of his telling me that I must marry young and marry rich, and I promised him I would, provided I could stay at home with mother just the same after I was married. Another thing I remember, which made a lasting impression, and that is the beating father gave me for asking before some grand people staying at our house, "Why we did not always have beefsteak and hot muffins for breakfast, instead of baked potatoes and bread and butter?" I must learn to keep my mouth shut, he said, and not tell all I knew; and I profited by the lesson, and that is one reason, I suppose, why I so rarely say what I think or express an opinion either favorable or otherwise.