Unconsciously, I suppose, it has become a habit of mine to choose the footways through the Park which skirt the bridle path, drawn to them by my childhood habit and girlish love of riding. Even to see from day to day what one once had but no longer has is to keep alive hope that one may some day have it again. You should some time go to Kentucky and ride there. My cousins will look to that. Yours sincerely, TILLY SNOWDEN. _June the Eighteenth._ TILLY SNOWDEN TO DR. MARIGOLD MY DEAR DR. MARIGOLD: I was passing this morning and witnessed the accident, and I must express my condolences for what might have been and congratulations upon what was. You certainly fell well--not unlike a Kentuckian! I feel sure that my cousins could not have known the horse was tricky. Any horse is tricky to the end of his days and the end of his road. He may not show any tricks at home, but becomes tricky in new places. (Can this be the reason that he is called the most human of beasts?) You buying a Kentucky horse brings freshly to my mind that of late you have expressed growing interest in Kentucky. More than once, also (since you have begun to visit me), you have asked me to tell you about my life there. Frankly, this is because I am something of a mystery and you would like to have the mystery cleared up. You wish to find out, without letting me know you are finding out, whether there is not something _wrong_ about me, some _risk_ for you in visiting me. That is because you have never known anybody like me. I frighten you because I am not afraid of people, not afraid of life. You are used to people who are afraid, especially to women who are afraid. You yourself are horribly afraid of nearly everything. Suppose I do tell you a little about my life, though it may not greatly explain why I am without fear; still, the land and the people might mean something; they ought to mean much. I was born of not very poor and immensely respectable parents in a poor and not very respectable county of Kentucky. The first thing I remember about life, my first social consciousness, was the discovery that I was entangled in a series of sisters: there were six of us. I was as nearly as possible at the middle of the procession--with three older and two younger, so that I was crowded both by what was before and by what was behind. I early learned to fight for the present--against both the past and the future--learned to seize what I could, lest it be seized either by hands reaching backward or by hands reaching forward. Literally, I opened my eyes upon life's insatiate competition and I began to practise at home the game of the world.